k-ID

SAVE THE DATE - July 21 - San Francisco Character.AI in conversation with k-ID - for AI builders, leaders and Trust & Safety practitioners only - invitation coming soon.

Yesterday the US House passed the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, 267 to 117, the first time a version of the Kids Online Safety Act has cleared the chamber. It sets federal rules on safety settings and parental controls, minors' data and targeted advertising, age verification for adult content, and new obligations for AI chatbots and games. The question we keep hearing is whether it matters, given the tough Senate road ahead. We think it does, because of what it signals. This is not happening in isolation: 🇦🇺 Australia enforcing an under-16 ban, penalties set to double. 🇬🇧 UK under-16 ban confirmed for 2027. 🇪🇺 EU privacy-preserving age verification moving to deployment. 🇨🇦 Canada's Safe Social Media Act introduced this month. 🇧🇷 Brazil's Digital ECA in force since March. 🇫🇷 France, 🇹🇷 Turkey, 🇮🇩 Indonesia and 🇲🇾 Malaysia all now moving too, with Denmark, Spain, Germany, Italy, Norway, New Zealand and Singapore close behind. Each differs in the detail, and we are not arguing for or against any specific law. But it is hard to ignore how fast protecting the privacy and safety of children online has become a top priority worldwide, and the pace is only accelerating. For any platform with a global audience, that is the planning signal. The destination is no longer in doubt. Only the route and the timing are. Treating each new law as a one-off fix means re-engineering every time a threshold moves or a market comes online. Building age assurance and compliance as infrastructure, once, lets you meet whatever standard lands next, wherever it lands. That is the work we are focused on at k-ID, and through the OpenAge Initiative, keeping privacy first. It is what we mean by powering the age-adaptive internet. Read more on our blog at: https://hubs.li/Q04ngwGw0 #OnlineSafety #KidsOnlineSafety #AgeAssurance #PrivacyByDesign #DigitalTrust

🇧🇷 A Brazilian court just ordered major game publishers to pay ~$58M over loot boxes — and gave them 90 days to add age verification. This one matters even if you don't operate in Brazil. Episode 1 of the neimo. Compliance Brief is live. Joe Newman breaks down a ruling every gaming, social, and platform compliance team should have on their radar. Three things stood out: 🔹 It was won by a child-protection group — not a regulator. Enforcement is not waiting for the ANPD. 🔹 It relied on decades-old consumer and child-protection law — not the new ECA Digital. The "that law didn't exist yet" defense failed. 🔹 Affected publishers have 90 days to act. Loot box warnings, refunds, odds disclosure, and age verification that blocks minors. What's the best move for game publishers? Feature-level age verification. Verified adults keep buying. Underage users are blocked. Revenue is protected. Full 60-second breakdown below 👇 This is the first of a new series — short, fast briefs the moment the rules change. Follow k-ID so the next one finds you.

Welcome Richard Zhou, k-ID's newest Enterprise Account Manager! So excited for Richard to bring his years of experience and expertise in this space to k-ID's clients. He'll be the point-person working closely with some of the largest gaming, social media and consumer AI companies to guide the implementation of global compliance infrastructure that will keep millions of kids and teens safe. We know our clients are going to love working with him - be sure to give him a high-five when you see him!

🇬🇧 The UK has confirmed it: under-16s will be banned from social media, with rules due in early 2027. It goes further than Australia. A few things stood out to us this morning: • It's a full ban, not just functionality limits. Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X are named. Private messaging is out of scope. • Games look set to be caught, not just social apps. Platforms must block under-16s from livestreaming and stop strangers from contacting children, and those rules are expected to reach gaming services too. If you build games, this is one to watch closely. The restrictions are on by default for under-17s to avoid a cliff-edge at 16. • More is coming in July: curfews for 16 and 17-year-olds, breaks in infinite scrolling, and AI chatbot rules. • The ban is definitive, but its shape isn't yet. The enabling law is passed, so this is happening. The detailed rules, including the age assurance standard, come through regulations still to clear Parliament before Christmas. That's the window to engage on how it's drawn. Setting an age limit is a policy decision. Meeting it is an architecture problem. No single check works for everyone, the rules are about features and not just front doors, and doing it without creating a new privacy risk is the real test. We wrote up what was announced, what's still open, and what platforms should do now. Read the full piece: https://hubs.li/Q04ln5V70 What's your read on the July detail? We'd love to hear it in the comments. #AgeAssurance #OnlineSafety #ChildSafety #TrustAndSafety #PrivacyByDesign #DigitalCompliance

For years, compliance has been one of the biggest barriers to launching games globally. At GamesBeat Summit, k-ID Head of Product Mike Mongeau argued that compliance is becoming infrastructure during a sponsored session, bringing regulatory expertise directly into the AI tools developers already use every day. The challenge of tracking changes in regulations from markets and countries all over the world and updating products to comply with each one has become drastically easier. “A decade ago, going global on day one was a big studio thing,” Mongeau said. “Today, going global on day one should be everyone's thing.” The session explored how k-ID's Neimo platform is helping studios navigate regulations, automate compliance workflows, and spend more time building games. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gHCgCymA

Curious k-ID’s takeaways from the Games Industry Law Summit in Berlin? Our writeup is here! https://lnkd.in/gdjxgecV Online safety is on nearly everyone’s mind, and for good reason. But how does one tackle such a nuanced issue in practice?

From GamesBeat 2026 → a side-by-side worth watching. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝘀𝗸: draft a privacy policy for a game launching in Vietnam. Compare: → 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗲 𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝘄𝗻: a confident, fluent draft — with the kind of gaps a Vietnamese regulator would flag. → 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗡𝗲𝗶𝗺𝗼 𝗠𝗖𝗣: accurate, detailed, and cited to the actual Vietnamese sources. Either draft still needs a lawyer's final review. The difference is whether your legal team is drafting the privacy policy from scratch or reviewing one your product team has already run the regulatory diff against. That's the shift — compliance moves from a multi-week external-counsel cycle to a feedback loop your dev and PM teams own end-to-end. First of three demos from the GamesBeat Summit. Compliance, in your AI tool. 𝗧𝗿𝘆 𝗶𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳 𝗳𝗿𝗲𝗲 → https://k-id.com/neimo-mcp

The single most common question I've had today on Apple's suite of age APIs: why are they so different from Google's age APIs? Well, that's just the tip of the iceberg 🧊 We have had a *lot* of developers reach out (especially over the past 24 hours) to ask how they should parse Apple's age & parental control APIs 📱 👨👩👧👦. Earlier this year we released an entirely new module for k-ID's CDK to handle everything from the age category to assurance method to jurisdiction, all of which pipes through Apple's API. And while we were at it, the team added support for platform signals from Google, XBOX, PlayStation, Nintendo & Amazon's own age APIs. The challenge is multi-fold: - each platform uses different age categories to define a minor, teen and (in some cases) adult - each platform defines jurisdictional limits differently (e.g., EU vs country-by-country) - each platform uses different ways of categorizing their assurance level It's up to developers to figure out how to take all of these, distill down to some common framework, and then adjust the user experience accordingly. That's why we built the CDK platform signal module: it's a one-stop-shop for parsing the various (very different) age signals coming through to developers from different platforms. It has top-up age assurance, age appeal, & conflict harmonization built in. Following the latest announcements from Apple at WWDC yesterday, Mike Mongeau and I cast an eye over the broad surface area of Apple's various APIs and developer rules and put together a blog that explains it all in one place (link in comments 👇).

Welcome Dave Matli to k-ID! Dave joins k-ID as our first 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴, where he'll build awareness for a new category — 𝗮𝗴𝗲-𝗮𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗿𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲. The tools that help game, AI, and social platform builders design experiences that welcome players of all ages, adapt the experience to fit each player's age, and meet changing compliance obligations across 200+ jurisdictions globally. The k-ID team has been growing quickly and we'll be welcoming several other team members over the next few weeks - be sure to congratulate them and say hi!