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Comment by dgxyz | Hacker News Reader

We just got fucked by this today. My 22 year old daughter doesn't have a driving license or a credit card but does have a passport and it didn't work. She's now got a kids phone. I haven't tried the 20 year old yet who is in the same situation...

They have 5 days to unfuck this or I'm literally rolling out Pixels + Graphene to the family.

Exit plan for the Mac is a Linux desktop.

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Could you emit a virtual credit card for them that you then cancel after the verification is done?

What "unfucking" looks like though? The law is mandated in the UK. What other way of age verification would work better for them?

That is a possibility but it's a stupid verification method as not everyone has credit cards. It's just cheap for the vendor.

Unfucking looks like a "look what the UK government policy is causing" PR disaster and a rollback and consultation.

Edit: I suspect this might happen when MPs start getting upgraded...

Phones can read biometric information from passports and identity cards just fine. Why didn't you think of a personal ID document as the first step to prove ID?

If a passport isn't working then their age verification is broken, full stop.

You are aware that the law applies to Linux desktops and will likely be included in a system update soon?

You do realise I am free to modify it or pick a distribution so that isn't the case too?

How long till that’s illegal?

This situation is being treated like a bad business decision. It’s not. It’s a new set of laws. It’s bigger than just Apple.

It's not really bigger than Apple. They could just say "no", and the UK could just go offline until they fixed their laws.

Pretty sure it’s California that’s got the OS law

You'd be surprised at how often I do illegal stuff.

That depends on if you live in a jurisdiction that lives or dies by free speech, and if it considers code speech[0]. Forcing you to implement age verification is effectively forcing you to speak things you don't want to say, which isn't free speech.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junger_v._Daley

the law in the UK doesn't require any of that. It didn't even required Apple to do it. Ofcom is praising Apple for doing it even though it was not required. Social Networks need to do it.

This UK law does not apply to OSes. It applies to online platforms. The author ran into this problem because using the iPhone required an Apple account, which could be used for something that the law applies to, but Apple didn't want to implement lazy verification and instead required verification up front.

This seems like a rational approach as opposed to say, calling Apple support.

I'm monitoring other discussions about this elsewhere. Apple support cannot help at the moment. They are "aware of the issue".

Sorry but I don't want there to be an issue full stop.

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