Just found out California passed their AV bill they've been cooking for a bit, which uses device-based AV instead of ID surrendering or AI face scanning methods.

What does this mean? Well, the oversimplified explanation is that the law makes OS devs and device manufacturers implement a system that asks for the user's age on setup, and has it as an anonymized token to send to websites when they request it. It's similar to the system Ry proposed in the news post about age verification when the OSA was in the process of beating the shit out of the site.

Why am I bringing this up if it's state-specific, hot off the press, and shit like the OSA is still in effect? It has some implications on the future of the internet:

• This bill essentially makes KOSA and co. redundant. Why bother passing KOSA, an extremely unpopular and invasive bill, or carbon copies of the OSA, when we can just copy California's homework? Again, senate and reps fold like chairs to people's feedback. If copying Cali's homework gets them yelled at less than pushing KOSA (which is toxic waste to them atp save for some really dedicated ""advocates""), then why not lol. Also the bill has support from big tech corporations like Google, which usually sounds like a bad thing but apparently it's perfectly fine in this case?
• Since the bill mandates local setup to generate an anonymized token to send off to any websites that need it, it puts more power in the hands of the parents rather than the government, which I'll take as a win honestly.
  • There's a similar bill slowly gaining support named Sammy's Law which makes websites provide parental control tools to parents, and has some safeguards to keep abusive parents from.. well.. abusing it to block LGBTQ+ stuff. It was written by a grieving father who lost his son to online opioid dealers, and the bill was named after him. Little fact about the bill.
• Hopefully this encourages states with invasive AV laws (Bluesky namedropped those states) to drop their bs and adopt what Cali has cooked.

Links
https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalOptimism/comments/1o5lodq/ca_ab_1043_the_worlds_first_devicebased_av_law/ (minor plug for r/PoliticalOptimism, might make a journal dedicated to them at some point)

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/13/california-law-online-age-checks-00606115

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/10/13/governor-newsom-signs-bills-to-further-strengthen-californias-leadership-in-protecting-children-online/

I understand that people may be split on this, from support of Cali's bill because it's not as privacy invasive to disapproval because it's still technically putting a leash on the internet (wild west internet bros... is it over...?), as well as the bill still being hot off the press and therefore we don't know how it'll play out. Regardless, I'm interested in where this is gonna go. Worth mentioning is that this is not the end. We still have some ways to go before we see the end of this AV censorship bs that started over the summer. While AV itself may not be 100% going away, at least we're getting less invasive options
compared to wtf is going on in the UK.

As for payment processors, no news on that end other than an executive order being out there that forces them to be neutral. I have heard some NSFW and furry artists got their funds back from PayPal due to the order but take this info with a grain of salt. Also EO's are technically not law so we still have ways to go on that end, more fighting against payment processor financial censorship to still do than the AV stuff, but that's for another journal.

Also semi-related but should I start trying to do a journal series of optimistic news/hopeposting or smthing, at least similar to this journal? I feel like it's a good break from the constant fucking negativity you see everywhere 🥀🪫

Also, also I kinda just wrote the journal quickly because I wanted to share this so if there's some weird inconsistencies or issues, please lmk!