Today’s Big Story

Ethical Age Verification

Current laws are raising alarm bells, but there might be a better solution out there

This newsletter is typically safe for work and age-appropriate, if you’re interested in news. But perhaps you’ve heard that age-verification laws are sweeping the world. These mandates typically require websites that host explicit content—and some that don’t—to obtain personal data from visitors to ensure they’re over 18.

Lawmakers who put these laws forward say they do so to keep minors away from adult content. But experts have also warned about the privacy and security risks that could arise from these mandates. This year, multiple studies have suggested that these laws don't actually work to keep minors off explicit sites. For instance, some sites that are not U.S.-based may not feel the need to comply with the law, and people can use VPNs to pretend like they’re in another location.

Last week, members of Congress considered 19 online safety bills that may soon have a major impact on the future of the internet as age-gated internet laws have spread to half of the U.S. Many of the proposed bills include a clause for ID or age verification, which forces people to upload an ID, allow a face scan, or otherwise authenticate that they are not a minor before viewing adult content. Fight for the Future says the policies will lead to increased censorship and surveillance. Digital rights advocates are pushing back against legislation they say will actually make the internet less safe. In March, over 90 human rights advocacy groups signed a coalition letter opposing online ID-check mandates.

Mashable asks what would constitute ethical age-verification? They spoke to several experts, and they all had a similar answer: device-level filters. Most age verifications are platform-based. This means that it's the responsibility of websites to install these age checks—and it hasn't been going well. “Age gating, especially the current technology that is available, is ineffective at achieving the goals it seeks to achieve, and minors can circumvent it,” said senior policy counsel for ACLU, Cody Venzke.

Most agree that storing people’s IDs and actual birth dates on company servers is probably not a good way to approach this, especially for minors—you can't change your birth date if it gets leaked. One real age assurance approach that's more privacy-preserving, according to Torney, is outlined in California’s law AB 1043, which will take effect in 2027. AB 1043 requires operating systems—the software that powers phones, tablets, and computers—to request an age or birthday during setup. Then, it creates an age bracket signal (not your exact age, but a range) on the device, and that signal will be sent to applications, blocking someone if they’re underage. It might not be perfect (yet), but it’s a solid step forward that everyone should be happy about.

Trump Pushes Foreign Food Crackdown

The president’s new tactic for fighting high grocery prices

The facts are bleak: Grocery prices have been on the rise for most of the past five years, as supply chain bottlenecks, the war in Ukraine and excessive profit-taking here in America have put a strain on consumers’ wallets. Of course, Trump campaigned heavily on the price of food in 2024, promising that if elected he would lower costs. The average price of eggs—a frequent stand-in for inflation during the campaign—had declined from its peak in the spring and is back below last November’s prices. But average orange juice prices are up 26.5% and ground beef prices are up 14.2% from where they were a year ago.

Now, the president—facing mounting pressure over inflation at the grocery store—has ordered a sweeping investigation into food price-fixing that especially targets foreign companies. He issued an executive order Saturday directing the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission to establish task forces on anti-competitive behavior in the food supply chain. The order highlights a key tension of his domestic policy. It has proven difficult to have cheap food without cheap foreign labor, imports and capital.

The order specifically directs them to look at “whether control of food-related industries by foreign entities is increasing the cost of food products in the United States or creating a national or economic security threat to Americans.” You might remember that the administration has already moved to lower food costs by acknowledging policy impacts elsewhere. In October, the Labor Department moved to make it cheaper to hire foreign workers for farm jobs, in the face of immigration crackdowns that had squeezed agricultural labor and raised farmers' costs.

ICE Has Arrested 75K People Without Criminal Records

And the data doesn’t include arrests made by Border Patrol, which has launched aggressive operations, too

The Trump administration is continuing its cracking down and making headway on the key first step towards mass deportations: Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests have soared since the start of President Trump’s second term, according to recently released data. But more than a third of the roughly 220,000 people arrested by ICE officers in the first nine months since Trump took office had no criminal histories.

The data, which includes ICE arrests from Jan. 20 to Oct. 15, shows that nearly 75,000 people with no criminal records have been swept up in immigration operations that the president and his top officials have said would target murderers, rapists and gang members. Homeland Security claims it’s arrested closer to an average of 1,800 people a day, based on figures a spokesperson provided to Axios. But DHS has stopped sharing immigration enforcement data since Trump started his second term. And the figures do not include arrests made by Border Patrol, which has launched aggressive immigration operations in several cities, from Chicago and Los Angeles to Charlotte and New Orleans.

The data also reveals that about 90% of the people ICE arrested through mid-October were male. Mexican nationals accounted for the largest share of the overall arrests, with about 85,000, followed by nationals of Guatemala at 31,000 and Honduras at 24,000. According to NBC News, it’s currently not clear from the data how many of those who were arrested were deported, but 22,959 are listed under the category of “voluntary departure,” meaning they left the United States of their own accord.

A Fentanyl Vaccine to Get Its First Major Test

It could protect against fentanyl-related overdose and death

Fentanyl is a deadly drug. We know this. But did you realize just how deadly? A meager amount—the equivalent of a few grains of sand—is enough to stop a person’s breathing. The synthetic opioid is tasteless, odorless and invisible when mixed with other substances, and drug users are often unaware of its presence … until it’s too late.

Cheap to make and incredibly addictive, fentanyl is now found in street drugs and counterfeit pills, because it boosts their potency and cuts costs. The drug is the biggest driver of overdose deaths in the United States and the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45. But Wired reports that a vaccine is being developed that would be given before a person even encounters the drug.

Collin Gage, the CEO of ARMR Sciences (the biotech firm in New York developing the drug), says that the vaccine could “completely change the paradigm” for how individuals respond to overdoses, because it would no longer require someone to be carrying medicine—like Narcan—on their person to treat an overdose. The proposed vaccine would eliminate fentanyl in the bloodstream before it reaches the brain. By keeping it out of the brain, it would prevent the drug from causing respiratory failure and death. It would also prevent the extreme highs that come from using fentanyl.

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Normal is boring.