Leviathan’s Hardware

     The sudden and seemingly coordinated drive in both Blue and Red states to require age verification in order to use an operating system or an app store claims another state, Michigan.   However, the twin bills introduced in the Legislature, one by a Democrat and one by a Republican, extends this to hardware and requires that device manufacturers. Both HB 4429 and SB 284 describe a “covered manufacturer” as “a manufacturer of a device, an operating system for a device, or an application store.” and requires them to:

Sec. 5. (1) A covered manufacturer shall take commercially reasonable and technically feasible steps to do all of the following:

(a) On activation of a device, determine or estimate the age of the device’s user or users.

(b) Using an application programming interface, provide an application store, website, application, and online service with a digital signal regarding the age of the device’s user or users, […]

     Unsurprisingly, it uses the same exact age brackets as all the other bills. It also has the same convenient safe-harbor protection for those who use “commercially reasonable and technically feasible steps”.

     The bills also allow the Attorney General to “promulgate rules […] to establish the processes covered manufacturers must use to comply with this act” without any check or balance.

     This is the camels nose sticking in the tent; allow that in and soon you’re getting trampled.

     HB 4429 can be read here and SB 284 here.   Due to there being encryption on the files, which preventing uploading to the hosting site, your humble author physically printed and then scanned in the documents in order for you all to be able to read the proposed law on this site. The original PDF are available, respectively, here and here,

Michigan HB 4429 (2025) by ThePoliticalHat

Michigan SB 284 (2025) by ThePoliticalHat

     Hat Tip: The Lunduke Journal.