howdy, y’all got a license fer that there app?
Americans need to get more shit for this. Literally the country that inspired the nazis.
“Yeeee-HAW pardner! Y’all got dat dere dem’ PAR-MITZ for dem mell-uh-nun!”
yeee haw, limited gumbit can’t make me have a reliable power grid or teach kids how to read guud, but damn straight they put a stop to all this app downloading without a government ID, i tell u h-whut.
Massive ID data leak in 3…2…
Just use a vpn lol
I have bad news: Apple and Google both know where you really are.
Unless you’re using a VPN provided by a wifi gateway you’re connected to because they provision the VPN on your phone they know your actual IP and can use that.
Worse because phones universally have GPS and aGPS provided by cell phone tower pings they know for a fact where you are geographically located down to 20 yards. Maybe they’ll half-ass it but maybe the law includes provisions or maybe they simply don’t want to risk fines.
On top of that they probably have your billing address and your credit card company is happy to confirm your zip code.
The only way around it seems to be not having a phone, sacrificing so many basic features it makes no sense to have the device yet still being on proprietary hardware with hacky workarounds, buying a Pixel and hoping GrapheneOS sticks around, or ROMs like LineageOS not on a Pixel thereby leaving your phone boot unlocked which makes you vulnerable to theft + malware + cell towers + wifi 😃👍
The CIA won for now. You cannot have cellular connection safely. Every single internet connection related to a billed service or phone number is FUCKED. Woe! Woe!
But I live in Texas, and I’ve been using a VPN for like a year to get around new forms of censorship already. I guess we’ll wait and see and I can tell you if a VPN does in fact work for this.
The funny thing is that I’ve had to change the VPN location from Louisiana to Denver because other southern state are passing similar laws, too.
If you mean porn sites or reddit or whatever demanding an ID because of porn content those companies have no way of verifying who you are or your real IP, all they know is where your connection request is coming from, what that IP is and maybe things like your timezone. That’s all. They aren’t in a position to really verify off anything but IP address.
Google and Apple on their phones especially (not so much Macs and Chromebooks or Ipads) have multiple good ways of strongly determining with high reliability exactly where you are because of cellular networks, because of GPS and aGPS, because they have your billing info, etc.
hahahaahahahaha FREEDOM!
idgod dot ph gang rise up
Don’t mess with Texas!
I mean - why bother? Their own state government is messing with them.
anyway china bad because mass surveillance or whatever now shut up and get hit by a car because there’s no train for you to take to get anywhere
Yeehaw freedom baby! Everything is bigger as they say including future data breaches.
Even my antifa app?
Update: It’s been blocked by a federal judge
Texas Phone App Age Law Blocked Days Before Taking Effect `
By Jared Foretek ·
Law360 (December 23, 2025, 6:30 PM EST) – A Texas federal judge on Tuesday overturned a state law that would age-gate app downloads and require app stores to display age ratings, holding that the law failed the narrow-tailoring standard under strict scrutiny, just days before it was set to take effect.
In his order granting a preliminary injunction Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman wrote that strict scrutiny under the First Amendment applied because the law featured content-based restrictions by which certain apps — like emergency services, educational testing and governmental apps — would be exempted based on their content. Under the review, Judge Pitman held that the law wasn’t tailored narrowly enough, as it would restrict access to vast amounts of protected speech in forms such as news and weather apps and dictionaries.
“Nothing suggests Texas’s interest in preventing minors from accessing a wide variety of apps that foster protected speech (such as the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal, Substack, or Sports Illustrated) is compelling,” the judge wrote. “While [the law] may have some compelling applications, the categories of speech it restricts are so exceedingly overbroad that [Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton] likely cannot show a compelling state interest.”
At the same time, the judge said that the law was also “underinclusive,” as that the content on the age-gated apps could easily be found elsewhere.
Texas S.B. 2420 would have taken effect on Jan. 1 had Judge Pitman not granted the preliminary injunction blocking its implementation. The bill, signed into law in May, would require that app stores verify the age of their in-state users and link children’s accounts to a specified parent or guardian’s account. Children would have needed consent for each app downloaded.
Meanwhile, app developers would have had to assign age ratings for their products and say what content led to the rating. In addition, the law would have imposed stricter restrictions on what kind of data the developers could collect from children.
But the Computer & Communications Industry Association challenged its constitutionality in October, calling the law’s requirements a “broad censorship regime.” A youth advocacy group has also sued for an injunction blocking the law, comparing the age-verification requirements to a law requiring bookstores to age-gate books.
“Even accepting that Texas has a compelling interest in requiring age-verification and parental permission to mitigate an overall mental- or physical-health effect of mobile phone app use — an interest which Texas has not offered evidence of at this stage — SB 2420 is not narrowly tailored to that interest,” Judge Pitman wrote Tuesday. He quoted from the Ninth Circuit’s opinion last year in a similar case challenging a California law that would have restricted how social media platforms can interact with young users, NetChoice v. Bonta : “Rather, Texas ‘could have easily employed less restrictive means to accomplish its protective goals, such as by (1) incentivizing companies to offer voluntary content filters or application blockers, [and] (2) educating children and parents on the importance of using such tools.’”
Paxton’s office did not immediately respond to Law360’s request for comment on the injunction Tuesday.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association is represented by Brian Willen, Lauren Gallo White and Deno Himonas of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and Laura Lee Prather, Catherine L. Robb and Michael J. Lambert of Haynes Boone.
Paxton is represented by Zachary W. Berg and Steven B. Loomis of the Office of the Attorney General of Texas.
The case is Computer & Communications Industry Association v. Paxton, case number 1:25-cv-01660, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.
–Additional reporting by Allison Grande and Hailey Konnath. Editing by Brian Baresch.`
