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Comment by carefree-bob | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to know which funds/wealthy individuals are bankrolling this rush of age verification mandates. It's certainly not a grass roots phenomenon.

View on HN

Here is a glimpse

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47530718

Here is some more breakdown

https://x.com/moo9000/status/2037184457069760717?s=20

Thank you, that's informative. Interpol? Orwellian stuff.

Interpol would be legitimately for child porn prevention reasons here, actually.

Doesn't matter - police don't get to decide the fucking laws. That is separation of powers 101 for places which aren't shitholes.

Yeah it does seem to be a new 'thing'. I'm betting it's like the heritage foundation who figured out age-restrictions give them a new end-run around the first amendment. Started with porn (because who is going to defend porn) and now they're going to slide down the slippery slope.

Heritage foundation? Lol give me a break.

From Project 2025[0], published by the Heritage Foundation:

   Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it 
   should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be 
   classed as registered sex offenders.

[0] https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeade...

Check out https://agelesslinux.org/lobbyists.html

They're specially trying to get people to believe this is a right wing thing. Effective strategy as we can see by the comments.

> This matters because it preempts the easiest dismissal: that age verification mandates are a right-wing culture war project. They are not.

Interestingly, I saw this linked to on Mastodon just now and immediately thought of you.

Check it[0] out. I think you'll find it illuminating.

[0] https://www.techdirt.com/2026/04/16/the-right-wing-origins-a...

Are you claiming that Project 2025[0] isn't a right wing thing?

If, by you, the Heritage Foundation isn't right wing then what would be?

That's not a rhetorical question.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

Meta

Also, it's not only in the USA. In Europe too, all at the same time. Don't worry though, it's just conspiracy theory that those things are related.

Don't underestimate the grassroots popularity of these measures. Look at any Hacker News thread regarding age verification and you will find a lot of comments coming out in support of age verification. Most of them are assuming that age verification is something that will only apply to sites they don't use like Facebook.

There are a couple parallel moral panics intersecting on this topic. Again even on HN you'll find people parroting dodgy statistics about child trafficking on social media, proclaiming that short form video is equivalent to highly addictive drugs, or making sweeping claims that under-18s should be banned from having smart phones. It's apparent none of them ever considered that the age restrictions they've been inviting might apply to something they use. It's always assumed to apply only to the kids on the TikTok or something.

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