[Tyrubias]

I don’t like to shill for companies, but I’m glad System76 made a statement. The addendum does feel like their legal team made them add it though:

> Some of these laws impose requirements on System76 and Linux distributions in general. The California law, and Colorado law modeled after it, were agreed in concert with major operating system providers. Should this method of age attestation become the standard, apps and websites will not assume liability when a signal is not provided and assume the lowest age bracket. Any Linux distribution that does not provide an age bracket signal will result in a nerfed internet for their users.

> We are accustomed to adding operating system features to comply with laws. Accessibility features for ADA, and power efficiency settings for Energy Star regulations are two examples. We are a part of this world and we believe in the rule of law. We still hope these laws will be recognized for the folly they are and removed from the books or found unconstitutional.

Anyways, it feels like all sides of the political spectrum are trying to strip away any semblance of anonymity or privacy online both in the US and abroad. No one should have to provide any personal details to use any general computing device. Otherwise, given the pervasive tracking done by corporations and the rise of constant surveillance outdoors, there will be nowhere for people to safely gather and express themselves freely and privately.

[idle_zealot]

> No one should have to provide any personal details to use any general computing device

I agree. I also agree with S76 that some laws regarding how an operating system intended for wide use should function are acceptable. How would you react to this law if the requirement was only that the operating system had to ask the user what age bracket it should report to sites? You get to pick it, it isn't mandatory that it be checked, and it doesn't need to be a date, just the bucket. Is that still too onerous?

I ask because I feel like if we don't do something, the trajectory is that ~every website and app is going to either voluntarily or compulsorily do face scans, AI behavior analysis, and ID checks for their users, and I really don't want to live in that world.

[AnthonyMouse]

The main problem with the "report your age to the website" proposals is that they're backwards. You shouldn't be leaking your age to the service.

Instead, the service should be telling your device the nature of the content. Then, if the content is for adults and you're not one, your parents can configure your device not to display it.

[ray_v]

It may often times be trickier than that - content often mixed of course. My 10 y/o hit me with a request yesterday to play Among Us where the age verification system wanted my full name, address, email, AND the last 4 digits of my SSN. I refused.

[just6979]

If the content is mixed, it makes even more sense to have the content supply the age data. This is how it has worked with broadcast media pretty much forever. TV shows and movies gain their ratings based on the worst case on display. IE: a show doesn't have to consist entirely of swearing to gain a "language" warning, it just has to have some. Definitively mixed content.

I think your example exemplifies this. Among Us is not inherently adult-only, but since it's multiplayer, they don't control what other player say and do. Definitively mixed content. They should not be asking you to verify, they should be telling you and letting you decide if your kid can play.

I kinda can't beleive their lawyers decided to go that route and assume all the PII responsibility that comes with collecting that data, instead of just making the "it's online and there might be d-bags on our servers" rating much more obvious and explicit.

[autoexec]

They can profit off of the personal data they collect, so it's no surprise they'd take any opportunity and use any available excuse to collect more of it. From their perspective there is effectively zero responsibility to secure that data properly and handle it safely because there are effectively zero consequences for companies when they fail to.

[alexfoo]

There's a good chance that they're never going to verify any of the information you give them, in which case it's another download for Mr M Mouse of 1375 E Buena Vista Dr, 32830, with a SSN that ends in 1234.

[TYPE_FASTER]

I made the mistake of providing my date of birth as being 1/1/1900 on multiple websites, and have been receiving marketing material from the AARP in the mail for many years.

[roryirvine]

My "birthdate" is the same as yours. It was fine when I started using it in the late 90s, but has become increasingly awkward over the past few years - lots of sites seem to assume a maximum age of 120.

If I ever turn uBO off, the ads I get are mostly for funeral plans or incontinence products, with a smattering of "126 year old mom lost 30 lbs of belly fat - click to see how!" (yeah, decomposition's a bitch...)

[just6979]

That's not a mistake. You'd be getting spam marketing anyway, why not make sure it's something obvious? I always pick the oldest possible age when asked, just to mess with their data, because they shouldn't fucking care.

Don't limit, notify.

Has worked for TV (and movies to an extent, though theaters do limit somewhat, must have been some litigation around that...) pretty much forever.

[b112]

Giving fake info feeds the machine. It means you still consume, and a bad actor profits.

[thbb123]

I disagree. Giving fake info adds noise to the mechanism, makes it useless. Ultimately I'm inclined to believe that privacy through noise generation is a solution.

If I ever find some idle time, I'd like to make an agent that surfs the web under my identity and several fake ones, but randomly according to several fake personality traits I program. Then, after some testing and analysis of the generated patterns of crawl, release it as freeware to allow anyone to participate in the obfuscation of individuals' behaviors.

[acomjean]

Last century my dad would give our pets names out with our real phone #(oddly or by mistake). The pets did start getting phone calls.

If the info becomes bad, it becomes much less useful and valuable.

I’m in the us and we o need some rights to privacy.

[VLM]

I would assume its fake and an attempt at identify theft at some level of the system. Is their PC infected at the OS level or just a fraudulent browser extension or something more like a popup ad masquerading as a system dialogue? A less trusting person would assume any request made by a computer is totally non-fraudulent and would gladly submit any requested private information.

"Dad, I can't do my math homework, a pop up says you need to provide a copy of your bank statement, your mom's maiden name, and a copy of your birth certificate, SS card, and drivers license, and can you hurry up Dad, my homework is due tomorrow morning." And people will fall for this once they get used to the system being absurd enough.

The fraud machine must be kept fed...

[cwillu]

That's an argument for “let the service inform the parent and let the parent decide”, not against it.

[AnthonyMouse]

> It may often times be trickier than that - content often mixed of course.

So put the content tag at the granularity of the content.

[onli]

Awesome. Now you have a system where every blog entry, every Facebook post needs a lawyer consultation.

Around 20 years ago, Germany actually made a law that would have enforced such a system. I still have a chart in my blog that explained it, https://www.onli-blogging.de/1026/JMStV-kurz-erklaert.html. Content for people over 16 would have to be marked accordingly or be put offline before 22:00, plus, if your site has a commercial character - which according to german courts is every single one in existence - you would need to hire a someone responsible for protecting teenagers and children (Jugenschutzbeauftragten).

Result: It was seen as a big censor machine and I saw many sites and blogs shut down. You maybe can make that law partly responsible for how far behind german internet enterprises still are. Only a particular kind of bureaucrat wants to make business in an environment that makes laws such as this.

Later the law wasn't actually followed. Only state media still has a system that blocks films for adults (=basically every action movie) from being accessed without age verification if not past 22:00.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Now you have a system where every blog entry, every Facebook post needs a lawyer consultation.

You have that with any form of any of these things. They're almost certainly going to be set up so that you get in trouble for claiming that adult content isn't but not for having non-adult content behind the adult content tag.

Then you would be able to avoid legal questions by labeling your whole site as adult content, with the obvious drawback that then your whole site is labeled as adult content even though most of it isn't.

But using ID requirements instead doesn't get you out of that. You'd still need to either identify which content requires someone to provide an ID before they can view it, or ID everyone.

That's an argument for not doing any of these things, but not an argument for having ID requirements instead of content tags.

[like_any_other]

> plus, if your site has a commercial character - which according to german courts is every single one in existence - you would need to hire a someone responsible for protecting teenagers and children (Jugenschutzbeauftragten).

That is pretty much what the UK Online Safety Act requires: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023

Many small forums had to simply shut down, as was widely reported on HN at the time.

[close04]

> Awesome. Now you have a system where every blog entry, every Facebook post needs a lawyer consultation.

The alternative is that "just to be safe" you'll mark your entire site as needing age (identity, stool sample, whatever) verification. A single piece of sensitive content sets the requirements for the entire site.

[valleyer]

Honestly, <span content-filter-level="adult">fuck</span> that.

[iso1631]

It feels to me that parental controls are seen as another profit centre. If we want to put laws in place, we should be putting in laws to empower parents.

[tuetuopay]

Heh that's already what parental controls do (granted, the website don't report the content, and it's based on blacklists), but they are trivial to bypass. Even the article mention it:

> The child can install a virtual machine, create an account on the virtual machine and set the age to 18 or over

It's precisely how I worked around the parental control my parents put on my computer when I was ~12. Get Virtualbox, get a Kubuntu ISO, and voilà! The funniest is, I did not want to access adult content, but the software had thepiratebay on its blacklist, which I did want.

In the end, I proudly showed them (look ma!), and they promptly removed the control from the computer, as you can't fight a motivated kid.

[AnthonyMouse]

> but they are trivial to bypass.

That's assuming the parental controls allow the kid to create a virtual machine. And then that the kid knows how to create a virtual machine, which is already at the level of difficulty of getting the high school senior who is already 18 to loan you their ID.

None of this stuff is ever going to be Fort Knox. Locks are for keeping honest people honest.

[tuetuopay]

We could argue on the technical feasability all day, as non-kvm qemu does not need any special permission to run a VM (albeit dog slow).

I honestly don't really agree on the difficulty, as if this becomes a commonplace way to bypass such laws, you can expect tiktok to be full of videos about how to do it. People will provide already-installed VMs in a turnkey solution. It's not unlike how generations of kids playing minecraft learnt how to port forward and how to insatll VPNs for non-alleged-privacy reasons: something that was considered out of a kid's reach became a commodity.

> None of this stuff is ever going to be Fort Knox. Locks are for keeping honest people honest.

On that we agree, and it makes me sad. The gap between computer literate and illiterate will only widen a time passes. Non motivated kids will learn less, and motivated ones will get a kickstart by going around the locks.

[AnthonyMouse]

> We could argue on the technical feasability all day, as non-kvm qemu does not need any special permission to run a VM (albeit dog slow).

That's assuming the permission is for "use of kernel-mode hardware virtualization" rather than "installation of virtualization apps".

Notice that if the kid can run arbitrary code then any of this was already a moot point because then they can already access websites in other countries that don't enforce any of this stuff.

[Ntrails]

If the kid knows how to ask an llm, they can do whatever technical hacks are required

[autoexec]

Would that make the LLM (or the company who made it) liable under the DMCA for showing someone how to work around a digital lock that controls access to a copyrighted work.

[stavros]

It might be Fort Knox just fine at some point, when computers will require a cryptographically signed government certificate that you're over 18, and you can't use the computer until you provide it.

[AnthonyMouse]

Even in that case the large majority of the population would then have that certificate and the motivated minors would just beg, borrow or steal one.

[voakbasda]

No one has ever faked a government ID?

[b112]

And then that the kid knows how to create a virtual machine

It's just a bunch of clicks, even under linux.

Just install virtualbox. It literally walks you through a VM creation.

[AnthonyMouse]

> It's just a bunch of clicks

I promise there are people who can't figure out how to do it.

And again, the point of the lock on the door where you keep the porn is not to be robustly impenetrable to entry by a motivated 16 year old with a sledgehammer, it's only to make it obvious that they're not intended to go in there.

[muyuu]

a kid who can install Linux, or set up an ssh tunnel to a seedbox, is a kid who doesn't need to be told by the government what he or she should be watching

that is the job of parents/guardians

[sidewndr46]

I'd actually argue that's exactly the kid who the government is there to tell them what they shouldn't be watching. The government is never really there to restrict the incompetent, they are pretty good at doing that themselves.

[muyuu]

it's the kid they are up against to, but not the kid who "needs" it

[ycombinator_acc]

There's an ocean of difference between your device changing behavior based on a flag set by individual sites and your device using a blacklist set by some list maintainer - the main difference being that the latter is utterly useless due to being an example of badness enumeration.

[qzx_pierri]

>Then, if the content is for adults and you're not one, your parents can configure your device not to display it.

That would require people to be a responsible adult and actively parent their kids.

It's ironic, because people in this country identify with how hard they grind at work, but refuse to put a fraction of that effort into being an involved parent.

It's easier to just let the government ruin everyone else's good time online.

In return, the parents:

1. Get the illusion that their kids are safer (they aren't)

2. Get a clear conscience, and feel better mentally equipped to run on their corporate hamster wheel

[idle_zealot]

> Instead, the service should be telling your device the nature of the content. Then, if the content is for adults and you're not one, your parents can configure your device not to display it.

That makes sense for purely offline media playback, but how could that work for a game or application or website? Ship several versions of the app for the different brackets and let the OS choose which to run? Then specifically design your telemetry to avoid logging which version is running?

You'd also not be reporting your age, you'd be sending a "please treat me like an adult" or "please treat me like a child" flag. That's hardly PII. More like a dark/light mode preference, or your language settings (which your browser does send).

[AnthonyMouse]

> That makes sense for purely offline media playback, but how could that work for a game or application or website? Ship several versions of the app for the different brackets and let the OS choose which to run?

Suppose you had an ID requirement instead. Are you going to make two different versions of your game or website, one for people who show ID and another for people who don't? If so, do the same thing. If not, then you have one version and it's either for adults only or it isn't.

> You'd also not be reporting your age, you'd be sending a "please treat me like an adult" or "please treat me like a child" flag.

Except that you essentially are reporting your age, because when you turn 18 the flag changes, which is a pretty strong signal that you just turned 18 and once they deduce your age they can calculate it going forward indefinitely.

This is even worse if it's an automated system because then the flag changes exactly when you turn 18, down to the day, which by itself is ~14 bits of entropy towards uniquely identifying you and in a city of a 100,000 people they only need ~17 bits in total.

[gzread]

The alternative wasn't an ID requirement, the alternative was the client/OS sending the flag to the server/app.

[AnthonyMouse]

The fear is that once you have devices sending services a flag, some asshats are going to start demanding that it be verified by the government.

But how does that do anything for you either way? Either you have two different versions based on whether the flag is present or not or you have one version and if it's adults only then you have to send the flag indicating you're an adult in order to use it.

[lavela]

The shifts between flags will correlate with date of birth though, or do you think someone turning 16 or 18 will wait a year or two to switch to more adult content for privacy? Also I'd guess the tech industry would push for more specific age buckets.

Games already have PG ratings and similar in different countries, I don't see the issue there. Web content could set a age appropriateness header and let browsers deal with it, either for specific content or for the whole website if it relies on e.g. addictive mechanics.

Applications is a wide field, but I'd be interested in specific examples where you think it wouldn't work.

[idle_zealot]

> Applications is a wide field, but I'd be interested in specific examples where you think it wouldn't work.

Sure. Take a game with voice chat. Child mode disables voice chat. How does the game, which presumably uses a load of telemetry, avoid incidentally leaking which users are children via the lack of voice telemetry data coming from the client? It's probably possible, but the fact is we're talking about third party code running on a computer, and the computer running different code paths based on some value. The third party code knows that value, and if it has internet access can exfiltrate it. In that sense, if there's an internet connection, there's not a meaningful difference between "the OS tells the service/app your age rating preference" and "the OS changes what it displays based on your age rating preference."

Though while I'm throwing out fantasy policies we could solve this by banning pervasive surveillance outright.

[AnthonyMouse]

You're assuming that everything not mandatory is prohibited. If the device is required to provide every service with the flag, every service gets the flag, even if it contains no adult content or adult content that the user agent could display or not without the service having a way to know about it.

The service would then have to deduce the information instead of getting it explicitly and may be able to do that some of the time instead of all of the time, which is an improvement. And then people can work on anti-fingerprinting technologies with the premise that if they succeed it actually does something, instead of the information being required by law to leak to the service.

[l72]

Games already have ratings. Every app submitted to the App Store or Google Play is rated.

90% of an R rated movie might be ok for a 12 year old but those one or violent or sex scenes makes it R. Should we be rating every scene in movies?

Give parents general guidance and let them define the controls.

[glitchc]

Windows already allows this. Content can be set based on age in Microsoft Family. Set an age on a user's account and MS curates the store experience, regardless of which computer the user is logged into.

[IndySun]

Who decides the 'nature' of the content? Who decides what constitutes age appropriate?

These questions of liberty are as old as the hills. And the keepers of the internet and virtually every single government past and present have repeatedly and endlessly shown themselves to be lying, conniving, self interested parties. When will 'we' ever learn?

*who decides who 'we' are.

[gzread]

It's necessary if the page contains mixed content. Under your proposal, Google Search would need a separate search page that shows adult content, and that would be even worse for privacy - logs would show whether you accessed the adult search page - and adult sites (not only porn) would try quite hard to not be relegated to that second, less discoverable, search page.

[_heimdall]

What you're describing with Google Search already exists, search engines already offer their own search settings including "safe search" or whatever they call it which filters out adult images.

Services can absolutely decide to provide their own content settings. It doesn't require a universal setting or OS requirements, and it doesn't require providing PII to every website or telling a central authority every site you visit.

[avhception]

I haven't even thought of this, I'm kinda surprised! This should be how it's done!

[panzi]

Exactly. Except this way you can't build a complete biometric database if all citizen! Since it's so obvious how to do it correctly without creating such a database one could make the assumption the creation of such a database is the actual goal.

[ethanwillis]

My parents?

[heavyset_go]

> if we don't do something, the trajectory is that ~every website and app is going to either voluntarily or compulsorily do face scans, AI behavior analysis, and ID checks for their users

You're going to get that, anyway. Platforms want to sell their userbases as real monetizable humans. Governments want to know who says and reads what online. AI companies want your face to train their systems they sell to the government, and they want to the be the gatekeepers that rank internet content for age appropriateness and use that content as free training material.

Age verification across platforms is already implemented as AI face and ID scans. This is where we're already at.

[idle_zealot]

I am well aware of the alignment of interests and the dismal state of things. I'm of the opinion that the only way to divert is radical legal action that shatters the defense industry and social media titans, and it sure as hell won't be Gavin Newsom who delivers it.

[gzread]

And laws like this California one actually make it more illegal.

[tsukikage]

My objection to all this stuff is the requirement to share government ID / biometrics / credit card info etc with arbitrary third party sites, their 228 partners who value my privacy and need all my data for legitimate interest, and whatever criminals any of those leak everything to, and also give the government an easily searchable history of what I read when those sites propagate the info back.

Any scheme that doesn’t require this won’t get pushback from me.

As an alternative: I already have government-issued ID and that branch of government already has my private info; have it give me a cryptographic token I can use to prove my age bracket to the root of trust module in my computer; then allow the OS to state my age to third parties when it needs to with a protocol that proves it has seen the appropriate government token but reveals nothing else about my identity.

Other alternatives are possible.

[biofox]

That would require technical know-how.

It's much easier for clueless lawmakers to write "the computer check the age", and make it everyone else's problem.

[jprjr_]

I think a better approach would be incentives versus punishments.

Like - you don't make it illegal to not do age attestations, but you provide a mechanism to encourage it.

You get a certification you can slap on your website and devices stating you meet the requirements of a California Family-Friendly Operating System or whatever. Maybe that comes with some kind of tax break, maybe it provides absolution in the case of some law being broken while using your OS, maybe it just means you get listed on a website of state-recommended operating systems.

That certification wouldn't necessarily have to deal with age attestation at all. It could just mean the device/OS has features for parents - built-in website filtering, whatever restrictions they need. Parents could see the label and go "great, this label tells me I can set this up in a kid-safe way."

Hell, maybe it is all about age certification/attestation. Part of that certification could be when setting it up, you do have to tell it a birthdate and the OS auto-applies some restrictions. Tells app stores your age, whatever.

The point is an OS doesn't want to participate they don't have to. Linux distros etc would just not be California Family-Friendly Certified™.

I wouldn't have to really care if California Family-Friendly Certified™ operating systems are scanning faces, IDs, birth certificates, collecting DNA, whatever. I'd have the choice to use a different operating system that suits my needs.

[sophrosyne42]

The push to do biometric data collection is entirely the result of entrepreneurs trying to get ahead before laws are passed. Their behavior is the result of the push to restrict the open internet. If we don't do anything, they will stop. You don't always have to do "something". Sometimes the harm comes by trying to do something.

[Xelbair]

Exactly the same way as i do now for such laws.

It's pointless, does not increase security, does increase complexity of every interaction, and introduces a lot of weird edge cases.

What i want is full anonymity enshrined in law, while at the same time giving parents, not governments, but parents, options to limit what their children can do on the internet.

[edflsafoiewq]

What makes you think this is going to stave off that world? More likely you'll get both, since I doubt this API is going to satisfy other states' age verification requirements.

[idle_zealot]

Sometimes a token effort or theater is sufficient to quell public sentiment. Like the oft-ignored and ineffective speed limits on roads, or the security theater at airports. That only handles the sentiment angle though. You still have to do something about would-be autocrats who want censorship and surveillance tools, and the oligarchs who want tracking and targeting data.

[ApolloFortyNine]

>I ask because I feel like if we don't do something, the trajectory is that ~every website and app is going to either voluntarily or compulsorily do face scans, AI behavior analysis, and ID checks for their users, and I really don't want to live in that world.

The only reason they'd _have_ to do that is government laws making them do so. When the law is vague around what age verification is, if one company decided to do ID verification, now any site that doesn't might not be doing 'enough' in the eyes of the law (it'd come down to a court case if not specifically defined).

Though it may seem more convenient to just do it at the os level (though really the browser level would make more sense with a required header/cookie no?), I'd be shocked if you don't see it expanded in the future to be more than a checkbox.

[latentsea]

> I agree. I also agree with S76 that some laws regarding how an operating system intended for wide use should function are acceptable. How would you react to this law if the requirement was only that the operating system had to ask the user what age bracket it should report to sites? You get to pick it, it isn't mandatory that it be checked, and it doesn't need to be a date, just the bucket. Is that still too onerous?

What's the point in doing any of this if it doesn't result in materially better outcomes?

[idle_zealot]

The point is that I think it's one of a few things that if done together could result in better outcomes. First, it standardizes parental controls, which ought to be so easy to use that failure to do so is nearly always a proactive decision on the part of the guardian. It doesn't need to be perfect, just reduce friction for parents and increase friction for kids accessing the adult internet.

Second, it would signal to worried parents and busybodies that something has been done to deal with the danger that unmediated internet access might pose to minors. I don't think that it's a big issue, but a lot of energy has gone into convincing a lot of people that it is.

The other part of achieving a good outcome would be to disempower those in the political and private sphere who benefit from a paranoid and censorious public and have worked to foment this panic. That's the much harder part, but it's not really the one being discussed here. I'm pitching the low-intrusiveness version to gauge sentiment here for that easier part of the path.

[latentsea]

Your last point is the only one I partially agree with. The rest... will make no practical difference to what is going on in the world today.

I genuinely think the only two solutions to this problem that are workable are "zero privacy, zero freedom" or "fuck the children, we don't care".

Now, to be fair... there is a middle-ground that is neither of those options that I believe would be much more effective and allow us to retain our freedom and privacy and keep kids a lot safer. It's called education. But... no one will go for it, because I think for it to truly be effective you'd have to go as far as showing very young kids all the darkness that's out there and lay it out in paintstaking detail exactly how it works and deeply drill it into them. Ain't a snowballs chance in hell anyone would go for that, BUT... would it work? I'd bet you bottom dollar it would. The current extent of this education in public schools is a half hour visit from a police offer to the classroom and handing out a sheet to the kids and giving a 'good touch' / 'bad touch' talk. What's needed is a full length university level course on the whole topic from end to end.

If you're in an adversarial relationship and need to defend yourself the best thing you can do is "know your enemy". But no... "they're too young to learn about that stuff, we need to shield them from it - think of the children!" is the reasoning people throw back at you when you suggest it. It hands down has to be the number one thing that could actually move the dial significantly, and it's just completely unpalatable to the majority of the populace.

[hellojesus]

> First, it standardizes parental controls, which ought to be so easy to use that failure to do so is nearly always a proactive decision on the part of the guardian.

If this mattered to the market, don't you think a company would have implemented it or would have been built to fill the need?

[idle_zealot]

1. No, I don't think that the market does what people want. That's not the primary reward signal.

2. I'm making an ought statement of values, like "we ought not pollute rivers." I don't really care what any system of resource allocation has to say about that.

[pc86]

> I also agree with S76 that some laws regarding how an operating system intended for wide use should function are acceptable.

The only laws the government should pass regulating software running on someones computer are laws protecting those consumers from the companies writing that software. For example, anti-malware/anti-spyware.

The government has no business telling a random company that their software needs to report my age, whether it's unverified and self-reported or not.

[idle_zealot]

> protecting those consumers from the companies writing that software

Of course, but that's exactly the framing of the verification laws. Protecting underage computer users from products/services unsuitable for them. If you want protection to be effective then it needs to be on by default, but also needs to ultimately be controlled by the user, and it's that second part that ID checks and the like fail.

[soulofmischief]

A cornerstone philosophy behind the American legal system is that we must view every single increase in State power as a potential slippery slope, and must prove that it isn't.

In this case, it's a slippery slope; if we're normalized to this, what other incursions into our 1A rights to free speech, religious freedom and public gathering will we allow?

And I say religious freedom, because these kinds of laws are largely peddled by religious folk or people who otherwise have been deeply influenced by early American Puritan religious culture.

I, nor my children, should be forced to subject to such religiously-motivated laws. I can decide for myself and for my child what is appropriate.

I, nor my children, cannot be compelled to enter personal information into a machine created by someone who is also illegally compelled to require it.

I, nor my children, can be compelled to avoid publicly gathering on the internet just because we don't want to show identification and normalize chilling surveillance capitalism.

I thought this was fucking America.

[thayne]

> How would you react to this law if the requirement was only that the operating system had to ask the user what age bracket it should report to sites? You get to pick it, it isn't mandatory that it be checked, and it doesn't need to be a date, just the bucket. Is that still too onerous?

Isn't that what the CA law is?

[db48x]

Almost. Technically an adult must create an account for any non–adult who wants to use the computer, and configure it with the appropriate age category.

Honestly it’s the dumbest thing ever. Best just not to play that game.

[ohhnoodont]

How is that dumb? It seems reasonable and pragmatic. If the current status quo is ID uploads and face scans, this seems like the better approach. It shifts the responsibility back to parents. All adult service operators have to do is filter requests with the underage HTTP header set.

[db48x]

How about the part where children cannot legally create accounts of their own, on computers that they own? I did that by the time I was 10.

> It shifts the responsibility back to parents.

Without these stupid laws parents already _have_ that responsibility.

[ohhnoodont]

> How about the part where children cannot legally create accounts of their own, on computers that they own?

Where is that actually stated in any law being discussed? If a parent gives a child a device with admin access, that’s their choice to do so. But it also makes sense that we, the minds behind all of this technology, also provide parents with the most basic of tools to restrict a child’s access online and hold accountable companies that knowingly serve adult content to children. That’s all the CA law does AFAIK.

Sure, my generation was raised on 4chan. But I can understand why parents today may want the tools to limit that.

[idle_zealot]

Unfortunately no. There's a requirement that the OS disregard the user-indicated age if it has reason to think they're lying. Presumably this creates the obligation to monitor the user for such indicators.

[vineyardmike]

I assume this is less "if they're lying" and more "if you've independently collected this data". It doesn't require you to challenge the user-indicated age, it requires you to use your own signal before that of the OS.

As a silly example, tax software probably has your full birthday, including year, which is more precise. Many social networks collected this data, as did a lot of major tech companies that implemented parental controls already.

[flir]

> Is that still too onerous?

Isn't it just pointless?

I'm getting upset by face scan creep too. I do not like it. No sir. But mandating a self-reporting mechanism feels about as useful as DNT cookies, or those "are you 18? yes/no" gates on beer sites.

[idle_zealot]

It'd be more useful than DNT because there would be legal teeth on the side of the sender and receiver of the signal. It'd be more useful than the yes/no gates because an operating system could choose to allow the creation of child accounts.

I.e. it would be a standardization of parental controls with added responsibility on sites/apps to self-determine if they should be blocked or limit functionality, rather than relying on big white/blacklists. Basically an infrastructure upgrade, rather than relying on a patchwork of competing private solutions to parental controls and age checks. The hope is also that a system like this would remove concerned parents from the list of supporters for pervasive mass surveillance and age scans. If they feel like you'd need to be a moron to miss the "This is a child device" button while setting up their kid's phone and laptop, and it's broadly understood that just pressing that button locks down what the device can access pretty effectively, that puts and damper on the FUD surrounding their child's internet usage.

[Hizonner]

> You get to pick it, it isn't mandatory that it be checked, and it doesn't need to be a date, just the bucket. Is that still too onerous?

Yes, because (a) it wouldn't do anything, and (b) it would take about 5 seconds for the morons who push this stuff to start whining about that fact, and using the fact that "Society(TM) has mandated this and people are avoiding it" to demand effective verification, which would be a huge disaster.

They won't be placated by anything short of total victory, and if you give them anything, you're just enouraging them.

[iugtmkbdfil834]

Sadly, the only real response here is non-compliance. Recently, credit card company wanted me to provide ID upon login ( I was amused -- while my setup may not be common, it has not changed for years now ). So I didn't and just ignored it. I checked on it this month and it suddenly was fine. But then.. one has to be willing to take a hit to their credit and whatnot.

The point remains though. They have zero way to enforce it if we choose to not comply. Just saying.

[idle_zealot]

They have plenty of ways to enforce it. It's a law, they can take you to court. I guess it's easy to forget these days but laws do still apply to some people. If you're going to host a service, I guess consider using Tor or something.

[iugtmkbdfil834]

Friend. On this very forum, you will normally see me argue that further deterioration of civil society is bad and we should be doing everything to maintain society as is. However, as with most things, there is a limit. That limit varies from person to person, but it is getting harder and harder to argue that laws apply ( especially once you recognize they don't quite apply across the board ).

<< If you're going to host a service, I guess consider using Tor or something.

That one confused me. What do you mean?

[hellojesus]

I think the person meant that if you don't comply there may be civil or criminal consequences, so if you want to knowingly provide a non compliant website or app, you should host it on tor to prevent your person from being the subject of the state.

I know the CA law is civil only, so I don't think there is much CA can do if you publish an OS and don't make money from CA folks, but other implementations may decide to impose criminal penalties.

[iugtmkbdfil834]

Thank you. That makes sense.

[Alan_Writer]

Totally agree, but I think we are heading to a full intrusion system in every aspect. And this is just the beginning. Even decentralized identity systems are not that decentralized, of course.

[shevy-java]

> Accessibility features for ADA

The problem is that the comparison falls flat. ADA does not sniff for birth date and surrender that data to others. One has to look at things at a cohesive unit, e. g. insecure bootloaders by Microsoft surrendering data to others. It seems as if they try to make computers spy-devices. That in itself is suspicious. Why should we support any such move? Some laws are clearly written by lobbyists.

[hulitu]

> The California law, and Colorado law modeled after it, were agreed in concert with major operating system providers.

So it is Microsoft, Google and Apple pushing for this.

[teekert]

Makes sense, these laws are great for the establishment. Difficult to adhere to for newcomers or smaller parties. Compliance to this madness eats away a much larger proportion of thin profits.

[Thorrez]

That quote doesn't imply that those companies are pushing for it. The lawmakers might be pushing for it, and the companies might be ambivalent to whether it's done or not but said "if you're going to do this, then it should be worded this way."

Disclosure: I work at Google, but not on anything related to this.

[strangattractor]

Cigarette vending machines had little stickers that said it was illegal for those under 18 to purchase cigarettes. Sure stopped all my friends from buying them.

Seems exactly like the useless process fixation that Abundance advocates abhor.

[paulddraper]

Point being the service provider/vendor has to do it directly.

[curt15]

>Anyways, it feels like all sides of the political spectrum are trying to strip away any semblance of anonymity or privacy online both in the US and abroad. No one should have to provide any personal details to use any general computing device.

What was the legislative history for the California law? Who sponsored it, and who are their backers? Is there some coordinated effort by surveillance state proponents?

[Spivak]

I mean I can already answer the last question in the affirmative even without knowing anything else. That's just how the sausage is made—if you see similar laws being pitched in multiple states it's because some org is lobbying for it. It's not so much coordination but all coming from the same place. Now they're probably not cloak and dagger surveillance state people, just misguided folks who are true believers in the protecting children narrative.

Generally any actual surveillance state people would be tag-along donors to the org.

[threatofrain]

> Anyways, it feels like all sides of the political spectrum are trying to strip away any semblance of anonymity or privacy online both in the US and abroad.

It's not this or that political party, your neighbors simply don't share your values. Maybe you don't agree with their values either — like to what degree we should be ceding privacy in favor of fighting child exploitation on the internet. Child protection arguments work because it is a compass to the true feelings of your neighbors.

[ls612]

It is as Aristotle said, the average person is a natural born slave (to their emotions, and thus to the rhetoriticians most skilled in changing them). That is why democracy always fails in the end. Americans just had such good geographic and historic luck to delay this reckoning by a century or two.

If you see politics through this lens then the 'democratic backsliding' that has been universal across the world for the past two decades is entirely unsurprising.

Vae Victus.

[kij]

Vae victo — Vae victis

[AnthonyMouse]

> your neighbors simply don't share your values

The problem with this argument is that everyone agrees with protecting children.

"Think of the children" arguments are the legislator's fallacy: Something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do this.

In reality there are alternative means to accomplish any given goal, and the debate is about what should be done, because no one benefits from using methods that cost more than they're worth.

Well, almost no one. The opportunists who drape themselves in the cloak of "safety" when they want to have the government mandate the use of their services or use it as an excuse to monopolize markets or establish a chokepoint for surveillance and censorship do benefit from the machinations that allow them to screw the majority of the population. But the majority of the population doesn't.

[gzread]

There's fake protecting children and there's real protecting children. The Colorado and California parental controls API laws (not age verification laws, there is no age verification in these laws) are clearly "real protecting children" since all they do is mandate standardisation of a parental controls API on each OS.

We kept saying parental controls are all that's really needed, these states said "ok then, do parental controls" and we're still complaining.

[pluralmonad]

If there is such widespread demand for such mechanisms as some comments suggest, why did it take coercion through law making to bring it to market?

[gzread]

Because manufacturers don't want it because it reduces their revenue?

[nottorp]

Who's we? I personally taught my kid to lie about their age so they don't get silly censorship on the internet.

[gzread]

Good, if that's what you want for your kids, then don't set them up with a child restricted account. It's completely up to you.

[nicman23]

nah let them die i tell you

[FpUser]

I remember western public laughing about requirement of the former USSR to register a typewriters. So we have a case of he who slays the dragon becomes one

[brutal_noodle]

>register a typewriters

_register typewriters_

>he who slays the dragon

никто тут этого кина не видел и никто не понял какого в сраку дракона в какую позу.

у меня тоже знакомый из СССР->США->Канада прокатился в 90-ых. вы не из академгородка?

[sharperguy]

The same politicians who claim to support the free market will do deals like ttis with corporate oligopolies to cement their position into eternity.

[gzread]

The California law doesn't strip away any anonymity or privacy except for the additional fingerprint signal of you being a kid or not, which is no worse than Accept-Language

[hellojesus]

It kind of does. Depending on how the mechanism works, if I check the user's age every time my executable is launched, and my user launches daily, I can determine with certainty what the user's birthday is. That information may be enough to deanonyimize in rural regions. It certainly gives away pii.

[gzread]

One allowed way to implement it is that your mom has to log in as root and unrestrict your account, and the user's age is only set to one of 4 different brackets so you'd better be watching the user every day for several years. Also if you are root you can just lie.

[EmbarrassedHelp]

That additional "fingerprint" makes it easier to track people online. If the system was meant to protect privacy and anonymity, the signal would only be present if the user was underage.

[jadbox]

Why can't it be the BROWSER that reports age instead of the OS?

[cmxch]

Still not good enough to comply in advance.

[panja]

Gotta find a way to profitability I suppose