Age verification now required for DNS resolution

A domain host dropped a bomb of an announcement: before you can change your internet name settings, you’ll have to take a selfie to prove your age—powered by surveillance-software titan Palantir’s ID check. If you don’t verify, your site won’t load. The post even advised stretching timers to avoid repeated selfies. Cue chaos. Within seconds, the crowd pounced with a collective eye-roll and a chorus of “April Fools!” Ranger_danger said the quiet part loud, while geetee confessed they “almost got got,” adding a nervous laugh about “scary times.” And that’s the mood: it’s funny—until you realize how plausible it sounds in 2026.

The drama hit a nerve. Close04 scolded the company for playing with fire: jokes like this “hit too close to home” when lawmakers are floating age-check laws and nobody reads past the headline. Others leaned all the way into prepper mode—drnick1 basically said, “it’s April 1, but seriously, run your own server,” the internet equivalent of churning your own butter. Meanwhile, waltbosz pinpointed the tell: that bureaucratic sign-off—“Thank you for your attention in this matter”—felt too on-the-nose to be real. Still, the Palantir partnership and the threat to block unverified domains made it feel like a Black Mirror cold open. Was it a gag? Almost certainly. But the community’s split between laughing, lecturing, and low-key panicking shows how a prank can expose a very real anxiety about a selfie gatekeeper standing between you and the open web. Read the whole thing here: the announcement.