[ndriscoll]

> App and website developers shouldn't be burdened with extra costly liability

Why not? Physical businesses have liability if they provide age restricted items to children. As far as I know, strip clubs are liable for who enters. Selling alcohol to a child carries personal criminal liability for store clerks. Assuming society decides to restrict something from children, why should online businesses be exempt?

On who should be responsible, parents or businesses, historically the answer has been both. Parents have decision making authority. Businesses must not undermine that by providing service to minors.

[Ray20]

> Why not?

This implies the creation of an infrastructure for the total surveillance of citizens, unlike age verification by physical businesses.

[ndriscoll]

Spell it out: how do ID checks for specific services (where the laws I've read all require no records be retained with generally steep penalties) create an infrastructure for total surveillance? Can't sites just not keep records like they do in person and like the law mandates? Can't in-person businesses keep records and share that with whomever you're worried about?

How do you reconcile porn sites as a line in the sand with things like banking or online real estate transactions or applying for an apartment already performing ID checks? The verification infrastructure is already in place. It's mundane. In fact the apartment one is probably more offensive because they'll likely make you do their online thing even if you could just walk in and show ID.

[pixl97]

>create an infrastructure for total surveillance

I mean, we're talking about age verification in the OS itself in some of these laws, so tell me how it doesn't.

Quantity is a quality. We're not just seeing it for porn, it's moving to social media in general. Politicians are already talking about it for all sites that allow posts, that would include this site.

So you tell me.

[ndriscoll]

App and website developers having liability is an alternative to OS controls. Mandatory OS controls are OS/device manufacturers having liability. I agree that's a poor idea, and actually said as much like a year ago pointing out that this California bill was the awful alternative when people were against bills like the one from Texas. It's targeting the wrong party and creates burdens on everyone even if you don't care about porn or social media.

[heavyset_go]

No, in the CA law OS controls are part and parcel with app and website developer liability.

[ndriscoll]

They're separate concepts. Clearly, obviously, mandating OS controls is creating liability for OS providers, not service operators. Other states do liability for providers without mandating some other party get involved.

California is also stupid for creating liability for service/app providers that don't even deal in age restricted apps, like calculators or maps. It's playing right into the "this affects the whole Internet/all of computing" narrative when in fact it's really a small set of businesses that are causing issues and should be subject to regulation.

[gzread]

Knowing if the user's over 18 doesn't imply total surveillance, it only implies a user profile setting that says if they're over 18.

[vaylian]

It implies that the user has access to the technical infrastructure that supports age verification. Sucks to be you, if you can't afford a recent Apple or Android device to run the AgeVerification app.

There is also the problem of mission creep. Once the infrastructure is in place, to control access to age-restricted content, other services might become out of reach. In particular, anonymous usage of online forums might no longer be possible.

[gzread]

That technical infrastructure: a drop-down menu on the user's account settings

[Magnusmaster]

The EU Digital Wallet requires hardware attestation so only it only works on locked-down government-approved OSes. That opens the door for government control of all electronic devices.

[gzread]

What a shame. The California one is just an input box.

[pc86]

Do you know what the word "infrastructure" means?

[gzread]

Do you know what "total surveillance" means? It doesn't mean a checkbox for over 18

[pc86]

I can't tell if this is a troll or not.

OS-level ability to verify the age of the person using it absolutely provides infrastructure for the OS to verify all sorts of other things. Citizenship, identity, you name it. When it's at the OS level there's no way to do anything privately on that machine ever again.

[gzread]

I agree that a checkbox for if the user is over 18 opens the door to a checkbox for if the user is a citizen and even a textbox for the user's full name (which already exists on Linux so you better boycott Debian now!). I don't see how such input fields are "total surveillance".

[MonkeyClub]

> Physical businesses have liability if they provide age restricted items to children.

Ok, suppose the strip club is the website, and the club's door is the OS.

Would you fine the door's manufacturer for teens getting into the strip club?

[jerf]

Dueling physical analogies is never a productive way to resolve a conversation like this. It just diverts all useful energy into arguing about which analogy is more accurate but it doesn't matter because the people pushing this law don't care about any of them and aren't going to stop even if the entire internet manages to agree about an analogy. This needs to be fought directly.

[johnnyanmac]

>This needs to be fought directly.

How do we fight? It seems like agree or disagree, this isn't going to stop. There's so much money behind it in a time where the have nots can barely survive as is.

[ndriscoll]

The OS is not the club's door. The OS is unrelated. The strip club needs to hire someone to work their door and check ID, not point at an unrelated third party. They should have liability to do so as the service provider.

[scythe]

For one thing, it's fairly uncommon for children to purchase operating systems. As long as there is one major operating system with age verification, parents (or teachers) who want software restrictions on their children can simply provide that one. The existence of operating systems without age verification does not actually create a problem as long as the parents are at least somewhat aware of what is installed at device level on their child's computer, which is an awful lot easier than policing every single webpage the kid visits.

[ndriscoll]

So I agree that operating systems and device developers should not be liable. That's putting a burden on an unrelated party and a bad solution that does possibly lead to locked down computing. I meant that liability should lie with service providers. e.g. porn distributors. The people actually dealing in the restricted item. As a role of thumb, we shouldn't make their externalities other people's problems (assuming we agree that their product being given to children is a problem externality).

[gzread]

What if all the useful apps refuse to run on the childproof operating system?

[anthk]

Then ditch propietary software completely and join free as freedom OSes.

[scythe]

I think the market is pretty good at situations like that.

[MSFT_Edging]

> Physical businesses have liability if they provide age restricted items to children.

These are often clear cut. They're physical controlled items. Tobacco, alcohol, guns, physical porn, and sometimes things like spray paint.

The internet is not. There are people who believe discussions about human sexuality (ie "how do I know if I'm gay?") should be age restricted. There are people who believe any discussion about the human form should be age restricted. What about discussions of other forms of government? Plenty would prefer their children not be able to learn about communism from anywhere other than the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

The landscape of age restricting information is infinitely more complex than age restricting physical items. This complexity enables certain actors to censor wide swaths of information due to a provider's fear of liability.

This is closer to a law that says "if a store sells an item that is used to damage property whatsoever, they are liable", so now the store owner must fear the full can of soda could be used to break a window.

[ndriscoll]

That's not a problem of age verification. That's a problem of what qualifies for liability and what is protected speech, and the same questions do exist in physical space (e.g. Barnes and Noble carrying books with adult themes/language).

So again, assuming we have decided to restrict something (and there are clear lines online too like commercial porn sites, or sites that sell alcohol (which already comes with an ID check!)), why isn't liability for online providers the obvious conclusion?

[MSFT_Edging]

> That's a problem of what qualifies for liability and what is protected speech

The crux is we cannot decide what is protected speech, and even things that are protected speech are still considered adult content.

> why isn't liability for online providers the obvious conclusion?

We tried. The providers with power and money(Meta) are funding these bills. They want to avoid all liability while continuing to design platforms that degrade society.

This may be a little tin-foil hat of me, but I don't think these bills are about porn at all. They're about how the last few years people were able to see all the gory details of the conflict in Gaza.

The US stopped letting a majority of journalists embed with the military. In the last few decades it's been easier for journalists to embed with the Taliban than the US Military.

The US Gov learned from Vietnam that showing people what they're doing cuts the domestic support. I've seen people suggesting it's bad for Bellingcat to report on the US strike of the girls school because it would hurt morale at home.

The end goal is labeling content covering wars/conflicts as "adult content". Removing any teenagers from the material reality of international affairs, while also creating a barrier for adults to see this content. Those who pass the barrier will then be more accurately tracked via these measures.

[gzread]

However there are also parts of the internet that are clear cut, like porn.

[MSFT_Edging]

What about nude paintings/photography that aren't made with erotic intent?

Anatomical reference material for artists with real nude models?

What about Sexual education materials? Medical textbooks?

Women baring their breasts in NYC where it's legal?

Where is the clear cut line of Pornography? At what point do we say any depiction of a human body is pornographic?

[gzread]

Some things being unclear doesn't mean all things are unclear.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>Plenty would prefer their children not be able to learn about communism

Plenty of people would prefer that children not learn about scientology from pro-scientology cultists too. It's not that they can't know about scientology (they probably should, in fact, because knowledge can have an immunizing effect against cults)...

And it's not that they can't know about communism (they probably should, in fact, because knowledge can have an immunizing effect against cults)...

[MSFT_Edging]

Would you also be against learning about Capitalism from the Heritage foundation?

This is a comment section about large corporations lobbying against our ability to freely use computers and you break out the 80's cold war propaganda edition of understanding a complicated economic system that intertwines with methodology for historical analysis with various levels of implementations from a governmental level.

You're either a mark or trying to find a mark.

[inetknght]

> Physical businesses

Physical businesses nominally aren't selling their items to people across state or country borders.

Of course, we threw that out when we decided people could buy things online. How'd that tax loophole turn out?

[ndriscoll]

But when they do, federal law requires age verification (at least with e.g. alcohol).

It turned out we pretty much closed the tax loophole. I don't remember an online purchase with no sales tax since the mid 00s.