[davkan]

Can someone help me understand? Why is it not enough to just be able to manually set an age on local OS user account. If unset assume adult. If set applications can use it to verify age. Require admin permissions to change. All responsibility on parents to restrict admin and set the age. No data collection. No responsibility for services beyond a simple check. It seems like an incredibly simple solution with very little compromise on either side that gets everyone 95% of their stated goals.

EDIT: Oh it seems like that’s what the CA bill does? Seems good to me. I have zero problem with age restriction if age verification goes no further than mom buys kid iPhone enters birthdate, Instagram asks phone is user 18.

[9rx]

The compromise is that it is either really easy to work around, effectively defeating what it is trying to do, or it becomes tightly locked down to trusted devices only, destroying the free internet.

[nitwit005]

It'll be easy to work around no matter what. We don't succeed at keeping under age kids from getting alcohol. Adults give it to them.

These sorts of rules can only ever achieve "mildly difficult".

[davkan]

How would you work around it without admin access to the computer?

[9rx]

A full answer is somewhat dependent on specific implementation details, but the simplest approach is much like the simplest way to acquire alcohol or other age-restricted product as a child: Ask someone else to act as an intermediary. Get another computer that identifies as an adult, and that isn't concerned about your age, to send the data to you.

And maybe that's a healthy way to think about it. That it doesn't matter if kids find it easy to work around. There is no child who hasn't been able to get their hands on alcohol when they want it, but perhaps the infinitesimally small amount of friction leaves many to second guess their choices? Then again, from what I see out there, just rationally explaining why alcohol might have negative consequences is enough to see that second guessing. Alcohol consumption amongst the youth has completely plummeted now that we no longer treat it as some magical taboo thing and finally started talking honestly about it. The same pattern has been observed over and over in other things with undesirable consequences for children.

[davkan]

Yeah there’s no getting around that kind of thing. My parents would unplug the router at night and take the power cable so i found another device in the house with the same cable and plugged it in. But my sister never did that so at least it worked for half of us.

I’m all for sane best efforts for restricting children’s access to mind warping materials online if the consequences on the overall internet are minimal which I think this does. I’m not on board with killing the internet as we know it to get from 80% of children off social media to 90%.

The problem with social media and to a lesser extent porn is addiction. If a kid had to go to a friend’s house or sneak on to their parents computer to scroll tiktok that’s already a huge step in a healthy direction.

[9rx]

> The problem [...] is addiction.

Is it? Only around 10% of the population will develop an addiction (of any kind). About the same rate as the population who live chronic sedentary lifestyles, which comes with equally (or maybe even worse) health and social consequences. Where is the regulation that forces you to prove you are of a certain age to sit on the couch?

This seems like a lot of effort for something that impacts such a relatively small group of people — a group of people (in size) that we otherwise don't normally care about one bit. 10% of the population is marginalized time and time again. What's special about this particular case?

[davkan]

I would hazard a guess that much higher percentage than 10% of the population thinks that they themselves are on social media more than they’d like to be, whether thats addiction or not idk.

You’re probably right though, i don’t think 10 year olds should be on social media in any capacity. Why? Partially because they can easily get addicted sure, but also because really any amount of interaction with these platforms is bad for them because they are monstrous mind warping engagement machines.

[lII1lIlI11ll]

> the simplest approach is much like the simplest way to acquire alcohol or other age-restricted product as a child: Ask someone else to act as an intermediary.

They can do exactly the same with other proposed solutions - ask an adult to register a social media account with their id or pass selfie-age-verification for them.

[Duralias]

That is when the conspiracies start popping up, because a lot of people agree with you, me included.

However, you cannot make parents actually use such systems, so ignoring the obvious control this gives nation states, giving states this power might help the children of those irresponsible parents, which is the only real argument I have heard, since the effects of it are the same if the child simply had responsible parents.

[davkan]

Well it’s not even necessarily irresponsible parents, good luck keeping your child from going anywhere you don’t want them to go if you have internet enabled devices in your house.

In my mind you have states mandate that adult content (porn, gore) and social media services are legally required to check for the age from the OS. No other sites need to do anything. No data collection or ID verification anywhere. All responsibility on parents.

I would imagine for the zealots out there its worth it to go further and destroy the entire internet to prevent a single 14 year old from jerking it to a tiddy. And then of course the advertisers want device attestation. At least it seems California is picking a sensible middle ground.

[djaro]

Because many children will have parents that arent responsible and that doesnt mean they deserve to be taken advantage of by a billion dollar corporation.

[davkan]

Well to that i would say we should probably start at the source.