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EFF Also Will Host a Reddit AMA and a Livestreamed Panel DiscussionSAN FRANCISCO—With ill-advised and dangerous age verification laws proliferating across the United States and around the world, creating surveillance and censorship regimes that will be used to harm both youth and adults, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched a new resource hub that will sort through the mess and help people fight back.  To mark the hub's launch, EFF will host a Reddit AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) next week and a free livestreamed panel discussion on January 15 highlighting the dangers of these misguided laws.  “These restrictive mandates strike at the foundation of the free and open internet,” said EFF Activist Molly Buckley. “While they are wrapped in the legitimate concern about children's safety, they operate as tools of censorship, used to block people young and old from viewing or sharing information that the government deems ‘harmful’ or ‘offensive.’ They also create surveillance systems that critically undermine online privacy, and chill access to vital online communities and resources. Our new resource hub is a one-stop shop for information that people can use to fight back and redirect lawmakers to things that will actually help young people, like a comprehensive privacy law.”  Half of U.S. states have enacted some sort of online age verification law. At the federal level, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee last week held a hearing on “Legislative Solutions to Protect Children and Teens Online.” While many of the 19 bills on that hearing’s agenda involve age verification, none would truly protect children and teens. Instead, they threaten to make it harder to access content that can be crucial, even lifesaving, for some kids.  It’s not just in the U.S.  Effective this week, a new Australian law requires social media platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under the age of 16 from creating or keeping an account.  We all want young people to be safe online. However, age verification is not the panacea that regulators and corporations claim it to be; in fact, it could undermine the safety of many.  Age verification laws generally require online services to check, estimate, or verify all users’ ages—often through invasive tools like government ID checks, biometric scans, or other dubious “age estimation” methods—before granting them access to certain online content or services. These methods are often inaccurate and always privacy-invasive, demanding that users hand over sensitive and immutable personal information that links their offline identity to their online activity. Once that valuable data is collected, it can easily be leaked, hacked, or misused.   To truly protect everyone online, including children, EFF advocates for a comprehensive data privacy law.  EFF will host a Reddit AMA on r/privacy from Monday, Dec. 15 at 12 p.m. PT through Wednesday, Dec. 17 at 5 p.m. PT, with EFF attorneys, technologists, and activists answering questions about age verification on all three days.  EFF will host a free livestream panel discussion about age verification at 12 p.m. PDT on Thursday, Jan. 15. Panelists will include Cynthia Conti-Cook, Director of Research and Policy at the Collaborative Research Center for Resilience; a representative of Gen Z for Change; EFF Director of Engineering Alexis Hancock; and EFF Associate Director of State Affairs Rindala Alajaji. RSVP at https://www.eff.org/livestream-age.  For the age verification resource hub: https://www.eff.org/age  For the Reddit AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/   For the Jan. 15 livestream: https://www.eff.org/livestream-age     Tags: age verificationage estimationage gatingContact:  MollyBuckleyActivistmollybuckley@eff.org

Age verification laws are proliferating fast across the United States and around the world, creating a dangerous and confusing tangle of rules about what we’re all allowed to see and do online. Though these mandates claim to protect children, in practice they create harmful censorship and surveillance regimes that put everyone—adults and young people alike—at risk. The term “age verification” is colloquially used to describe a wide range of age assurance technologies, from age verification systems that force you to upload government ID, to age estimation tools that scan your face, to systems that infer your age by making you share personal data. While different laws call for different methods, one thing remains constant: every method out there collects your sensitive, personal information and creates barriers to accessing the internet. We refer to all of these requirements as age verification, age assurance, or age-gating. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by this onslaught of laws and the invasive technologies behind them, you’re not alone. It’s a lot. But understanding how these mandates work and who they harm is critical to keeping yourself and your loved ones safe online. Age verification is lurking around every corner these days, so we must fight back to protect the internet that we know and love.  That’s why today, we’re launching EFF’s Age Verification Resource Hub (EFF.org/Age): a one-stop shop to understand what these laws actually do, what’s at stake, why EFF opposes all forms of age verification, how to protect yourself, and how to join the fight for a free, open, private, and yes—safe—internet.  Why Age Verification Mandates Are a Problem In the U.S., more than half of all states have now passed laws imposing age-verification requirements on online platforms. Congress is considering even more at the federal level, with a recent House hearing weighing nineteen distinct proposals relating to young people’s online safety—some sweeping, some contradictory, and each one more drastic and draconian than the last. We all want young people to be safe online. However, age verification is not the silver bullet that lawmakers want you to think it is. The rest of the world is moving in the same direction. We saw the UK’s Online Safety Act go into effect this summer, Australia’s new law barring access to social media for anyone under 16 goes live today, and a slew of other countries are currently considering similar restrictions. We all want young people to be safe online. However, age verification is not the silver bullet that lawmakers want you to think it is. In fact, age-gating mandates will do more harm than good—especially for the young people they claim to protect. They undermine the fundamental speech rights of adults and young people alike; create new barriers to accessing vibrant, lawful, even life-saving content; and needlessly jeopardize all internet users’ privacy, anonymity, and security. If legislators want to meaningfully improve online safety, they should pass a strong, comprehensive federal privacy law instead of building new systems of surveillance, censorship, and exclusion.   What’s Inside the Resource Hub Our new hub is built to answer the questions we hear from users every day, such as: How do age verification laws actually work? What’s the difference between age verification, age estimation, age assurance, and all the other confusing technical terms I’m hearing? What’s at stake for me, and who else is harmed by these systems? How can I keep myself, my family, and my community safe as these laws continue to roll out? What can I do to fight back? And if not age verification, what else can we do to protect the online safety of our young people? Head over to EFF.org/Age to explore our explainers, user-friendly guides, technical breakdowns, and advocacy tools—all indexed in the sidebar for easy browsing. And today is just the start, so keep checking back over the next several weeks as we continue to build out the site with new resources and answers to more of your questions on all things age verification. Join Us: Reddit AMA & EFFecting Change Livestream Events To celebrate the launch of EFF.org/Age, and to hear directly from you how we can be most helpful in this fight, we’re hosting two exciting events: 1. Reddit AMA on r/privacy Next week, our team of EFF activists, technologists, and lawyers will be hanging out over on Reddit’s r/privacy subreddit to directly answer your questions on all things age verification. We’re looking forward to connecting with you and hearing how we can help you navigate these changing tides, so come on over to r/privacy anytime between Monday (12/15) at 12pm PT and Wednesday (12/17) at 5pm PT, and ask us anything! 2. EFFecting Change Livestream Panel: “The Human Cost of Online Age Verification” Then, on January 15th at 12pm PT, we’re hosting a livestream panel featuring Cynthia Conti-Cook, Director of Research and Policy at the Collaborative Research Center for Resilience; a representative of Gen Z for Change; EFF Director of Engineering Alexis Hancock; and EFF Associate Director of State Affairs Rindala Alajaji. We’ll break down how these laws work, who they exclude, and how these mandates threaten privacy and free expression for people of all ages. Join us by RSVPing at https://livestream.eff.org/. A Resource to Empower Users Age-verification mandates are reshaping the internet in ways that are invasive, dangerous, and deeply unnecessary. But users are not powerless! We can challenge these laws, protect our digital rights, and build a safer digital world for all internet users, no matter their ages. Our new resource hub is here to help—so explore, share, and join us in the fight for a better internet.

The red solo cup never left his hand, though. Respect. Yesterday, Post Malone was performing in Guwahati, India, at the Khanapara Veterinary Ground, marking his first solo headline show in the country. Of course, he ran through hits like “Sunflower,” “rockstar,” “Circles” and “Congratulations,” but it was his tumble onstage that has fans talking. It’s something that’s a sort of rite of passage for an performing artist, and we’ve seen plenty of country stars take some hard falls during shows over the years. I still think Ernest’s fall at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Missouri in 2023 while opening for Morgan Wallen on his One Night At A Time Tour is one of the worst I’ve seen… he was okay, but it was kind of scary looking at first: @ernest Lil weekend recap…. Im a survivor. #FYP ♬ Cowgirls – Morgan Wallen Sure, it’s embarrassing, but as long as no one gets hurt, it can be pretty funny and always grabs headlines. So that means that Posty’s fall is making quite a bit of news, and you can see in the video below that he loses his footing walking down the stairs and absolutely busts it. It looked like the only think that might’ve hurt a little was his pride, but he popped back up pretty fast and continued on, greeting fans near the barricades with his red solo cup still in-hand: Ouch. Post Malone takes a dramatic tumble mid-show in India. https://t.co/vWB1QdAzGe pic.twitter.com/4HLT7Nn0ak — TMZ (@TMZ) December 9, 2025 Post is wrapping up a big year of touring in 2025, where he embarked on his first-ever headlining stadium tour this past summer, in addition to doing a European run. He will headline Bud Light’s Super Bow concert, Bud Light Presents: Post Malone & Buddies, on the Friday before the Super Bowl, February 6th, at 8 p.m. in Fort Mason, San Francisco, which is about an hour outside of Santa Clara, where the game is being held inside the 49ers’ Levi Stadium. He has also teased that new music is coming soon, and it sounds like he’s planning to release his second country album in 2026, so we have that to look forward to as well. He says it will be much more traditional than F-1 Trillion, and I loved the solo deluxe edition he did of that record, which was also much more traditional than all of the collabs he did for that.The post Post Malone Takes A Tumble Going Down The Stairs, Red Solo Cup Hilariously Never Left His Hand first appeared on Whiskey Riff.

‘Tis the season for believing. Larry Fleet joined the Whiskey Riff Raff podcast to talk new music, faith, sobriety, and to dive into some downright wild stories. He shared how he connects with fans around the world, and why he still writes drinking songs despite stepping away from alcohol. Larry also opened up about the role God plays in his music… and later told us all about his run-ins with aliens, ghosts and Bigfoot. Okay… he actually hasn’t had an interaction with Bigfoot, but Fleet did confirm a couple of crazy encounters with ghosts and a possible UFO. Larry Fleet lit up like a Christmas tree when we got a little off topic and started talking conspiracies. He actually brought up the question about aliens, and not too long after he did, the country singer revealed that he’s seen an unidentified flying object with his own eyes: “I’ve seen a UFO. Now, this was back in my drinking days, but I was out with a friend and we were riding down this old back road and I thought it was a helicopter. It literally flew over, and it had kind of weird looking lights in this cow pasture out there. It flies real low, and I said, ‘Pull over for a minute.’ When we did, it just sort of hovered, and it moved around like a helicopter, but then it just went *phew* and it took off super fast. It was gone. That was my time I saw a UFO. It literally made my hair stand up.” @whiskeyriff Check out the full podcast with @Larry Fleet out now. #whiskeyriff #whiskeyriffraff #ufo ♬ original sound – Whiskey Riff He did concede that his sighting was back in his drinking days, but that story makes sense to me. Aliens are always hanging around cow pastures in sci-fi films, and that stereotype had to come from somewhere. The alien talk really cracked open the conspiracy side of Larry Fleet. Following his UFO story (and saying he believes in aliens because of it), the “Where I Find God” singer busted out an eerie, unexplainable meeting with a shadowy, ghost figure. It was just as creepy as his UFO story: “I have seen ghosts too. We used to live in a house that was built in the 1920s back in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I walked in one night, and there was a street light behind me. When I came in, I looked and I saw this shadow in this door frame. When I walked  in, I was like, ‘Is that my shadow?’ I moved back and forth, and the shadow didn’t move. Then all of the sudden, it just slipped back behind the door frame.” Fleet says he turned on every light in his house, got his gun out of the safe, and checked every nook and cranny of the home… and never saw anything. That was the day he started believing in ghosts, and consequently got really into ghost hunting shows. And hey, because we had already talked aliens and ghosts, we had to go for the “Triple Crown” and touch on Bigfoot. Though Larry Fleet hasn’t seen the elusive beast (yet), he thinks Bigfoot definitely exists, and believes that he resides out in the Redwood forests: “I think he’s out there. I really do… I’ve seen those videos, and I know that some of them are a hoax or whatever. But I don’t know. There’s some pretty compelling stuff there.” I need a Larry Fleet ghost hunting/alien hunting/Bigfoot hunting reality show like I need air to breathe. There’s a good chance we have Larry Fleet back on sometime in the future and just talk conspiracy theories (he said he was down). But until then, you’ll have to make do with what he gave us at this end of this episode. To hear more from the country singer on his belief in ghosts, Bigfoot and aliens, make sure to download the podcast on Apple Podcasts by searching “Whiskey Riff Raff” or by clicking here. We’re also available on Spotify and wherever else you can listen to podcasts. Cheers, y’all. Audio Video The post Larry Fleet Believes In Bigfoot, Ghosts & Claims To Have Seen A UFO With His Own Eyes: “Made My Hair Stand Up” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.