California and Colorado want Apple, Google, and Microsoft checking IDs at setup, handing the OS makers a gatekeeper job nobody's explained how to police.

California and Colorado have both passed laws requiring age verification at device setup on Windows, iOS, and macOS, effectively deputizing Apple, Google, and Microsoft as the internet's new bouncers. The pitch sounds tidy: check age once at the OS level instead of forcing every app and site to build its own verification wall. The problem is nobody involved has said much about how enforcement, accuracy, or cross-state consistency actually works in practice.This is not a new fight. Our age verification arc, now past ninety entries built over a decade of coverage, has tracked the same pattern every time a jurisdiction tries this: good intentions, vague implementation, and adult users left holding the privacy risk.