What hurts LGBTQ+ minors is the political environment that considers such topics age inappropriate unless you're 18+. In saner societies, teens with teen-level site filtering set up are able to access the resources they need to understand that they're not broken and they do belong. It's just here in parts of the USA that we have certain backwards segments of the country that labor under the delusion that if you prevent a teenager from learning that there's nothing wrong with being LGBTQ+, they'll just "choose" to be straight. (No, it doesn't work like that.)

The age gates aren't the problem. The mindset that LGBTQ+ youth aren't deserving of love and acceptance, is.

Changes will most likely be age gates rather than reworking the sites to make them less "addictive". If social media can't get adults to stick around doomscrolling all day, they'll go out of business. Kicking all the rug rats off (or walled off in a sanitized "kids only" section of the site) might be a slightly more survivable outcome.

Yeah, just like the cigarette companies of old, the social media companies have been operating under the assumption that if you don't hook 'em young, you may never get them as customers. The reality is probably a bit more nuanced than that, as we're not dealing with something that's physically addictive. Social media also has aspects that make it more appealing as you reach adulthood, such as being a place to share pictures of your family and vent over political disagreements, whereas if you didn't start smoking when you were young and stupid, you're probably not ever going to start.

That was always one of the suspension of disbelief breaking aspects of Star Trek, too. As if anyone would deal with all the responsibilities and risks involved in being a starship crew member when you could just fake the entire experience in a holosuite instead.

Of course, open source developers working on their own time have the worst of both worlds - along with the rest of us, they're not living in a Star Trek post-scarcity society, and they're also not getting paid. I've always been kind of surprised that the movement didn't immediately fizzle out. If anyone asked me to do more of the same tasks I perform during my day job, but for gratis during my free time, I'd tell them in some not-so-kind language exactly where they can stick it.
 

Consume, consume, consume, yep, that's all you can do on modern social media - pointlessly shout into the void or read the insipid ramblings of people who are more rich/famous and/or more socially/politically connected than you. Because if you're just Joe Nobody, may the algorithm have mercy on your soul. Come back when you're wealthy or a public figure.

That's why I haven't bothered with BlueSky. If I wanted to circle jerk over famous people or shout into an empty void, I can still do that just fine over on the site formerly known as Twitter.

I don't think dating and casino apps are the best examples, because any app where you're going to be providing billing information already has a de facto age gate in place.

The idea that the user knows best was idealistic and from a time when the majority of people who used computers were technology enthusiasts. Nowadays, the bulk of people using connected devices just want to scroll through social media, take pictures of their kids/pets, and don't understand why they shouldn't click the link claiming their driver's license is about to be revoked for unpaid traffic tickets.

From the perspective of people who aren't interested in the inner workings of technology, software that protects you from your own dumb mistakes is a feature. Look at how much praise the MacBook Neo has been receiving as "this is the computer to get for your boomer parents".

It's probably why there hasn't been much backlash against age gate laws outside of the tech sphere. To people who don't follow this stuff, it just amounts to being automatic parental controls you don't even have to bother setting up. From that perspective, what's not to like about that?

Presumably, the sysadmin's age. If literally no one can log in, you are having a bad problem and will not go to space today.

The Christmas before last, I was over at my partner's relative's place to see his family. One of his teenage nephews asked me if there was a way to get a fantasy football app onto his iPhone because the rest of their family wanted him to join in. Turns out that since the phone was set up with parental controls by an aunt who'd given him the phone, there was no workaround I could think of that would allow the app to be installed. Even adding a second Apple account to the device wouldn't allow the app to download.

Apple's stuff locks down pretty good, and short of getting the adult who set it up originally to turn the parental controls off, a kid is probably not getting around them. Even if you wiped the phone and reinstalled iOS, it'd still remain iCloud locked to the adult's account and you wouldn't even be able to use the device.

Kids being crafty and finding ways around this will likely look more like "going to Walmart and buying a cheap prepaid device", rather than hacking the phone their parents/relatives gave them.

I guess if that's the hill you want to die on. If you read the article, it's not even going to age check users where Apple already reasonably knows the account belongs to an adult. I'm fairly certain I made my Apple account around when the 3rd gen iPod was released, so that'd be back in 2003. I also have an Apple Card, which they already needed more information than just the fact that I'm a middle-aged adult in order to approve me.

So, if this comes here, I'll literally have to do absolutely nothing to be verified as an adult, because Apple already is in possession of all the information they need to make that call. Ironic thing is, most people have set up some sort of billing through their Apple account anyway, either to purchase apps, use the credit/debit cards they already have with Apple Wallet, or like me, have an Apple Card, so for them this process will also be completely transparent.

If you've somehow managed to navigate the mobile app ecosystem in 2026 without giving your billing details to either of our smartphone duopoly players, neat, I suppose. That ship sailed for me when I decided to buy some music for my iPod.

It's not like that's a new exploit. Underagers have been getting people to buy cigarettes and booze for them for as long as there's been age check laws. No laws have perfect compliance, except maybe the law of gravity.

Oops.

Texas's age check law for porn sites was upheld by the SCOTUS, though. I was following it closely because I'm in Florida and we have a similar law.

Honestly, anyone trying to make this into a single-sided partisan issue is just posting genuine flamebait, because age gate laws are being pushed by both sides of the political spectrum.

I think it's more along the lines that big social media realizes they're going to get their ass handed to them in court (for being perceived as harmful to children) without some sort of age gate to keep the kids out.

Sure, Facebook technically could just ask for your credit card when you sign up, but a lot of people aren't willing to trust Zuck with their billing details. Pushing it off on Apple/Microsoft/Google means users have already gone over that speedbump before deciding to use Facebook. You already saw it here on Slashdot with the backlash over whatever sort of age checking scheme Discord came up with. Nobody wants to have to prove they're an adult every time they sign up for some site that is trying to keep out kids.

I'm pretty sure my Mac will let me run su and then send a text to my ex, but I'm not going to try it.

If you're implying that parents will just do the age verification step and set the device up with adult credentials for their kid, yeah, that will probably happen at least sometimes. But now you've at least established some form of willful negligence of the part of the parents, which is probably a very nice get-out-of-court-free card for the likes of Facebook the next time some teen becomes a victim of online bullying and "unalives" (as the kids say) himself.

Right now, the whole "parental controls are hard, how I was I supposed to know my kid was on PornHub?" excuse still flies.