https://le.utah.gov/~2025/bills/static/SB0142.html
https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/html/SB02420S...
Those are all specifically targeted at mobile app stores—which already verify age—and have nothing to do with general purpose operating systems or their account creation.
Try moving the goalposts more carefully next time.
Richard Stallman advised us about it long ago.
Thank god Plan9 got relicensed into GPL. 9front might not totally free, but it's a step in case GNU+Linux gets utterly broken.
And, yes, please, go try Trisquel (novice users), GUIX (experts) and Hyperbola (experts and protocol purists).
Avoid every Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Netflix service with nonfree JS.
Today his blog is filled with weird rants against voter ID, the Iran conflict, and a list of other countries he dislikes because they have national ID cards and this is a bad thing apparently.
For someone who is a renowned world traveler, you would think he has heard of passports by now.
Not a peep about these bills that could have a very real impact on an operating system he invented (gah-noo).
Then again, since he's never installed it himself*, account creation is not something he would have to deal with or care about.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umQL37AC_YM
Maybe the solution is as simple as having an adult create your account for you.
Like paying a homeless guy to buy you booze or cigarettes, not that anyone would ever do that.
That's what has me down about US politics big time. Even the most extreme voices in politics (warren, sanders, aoc,etc..) don't even come close to holding these people accountable. I don't care about taxing them, I care about prison time for interfering with a democracy like this (not retroactively of course). No one is even entertaining properly criminalizing such behavior. Even they made it illegal, they'll just make it a fine a billionaire can pay like an oopsie parking ticket.
These ruling class types have always been there, and human nature is such that they will always be there. But you have to understand, this isn't feudal era England, the government and society isn't built to tolerate them. Their behavior as such is parasitical and only leads to destruction of society. In their parasitism, they've fooled themselves into believing their wealth can shield them. But the nature of the parasite is such that it can't live without a viable host.
Whatever you believe about billionaires controlling politicians, it's much much worse than you think.
1 10 0000
or even better
1 10 -2000
This will turn into most useless set of laws ever
Red states: paternalism over your body, liberty for your property
Meta's lobbying spending is cited for states not doing that kind of bill, but that's their total lobbying spending in that state.
These new bills in the style of the California one do not require any actual age verification and don't give any information to sites or apps other than the age range that whoever made the user account on the device entered.
It is essentially just requiring a simple parental control mechanism be provided by the OS which provides a way for parents to set age ranges for the accounts of their children and an API that apps that need to check age can query.
On a Unix or Unix like system this could be as simple as having the command to create a user account ask for age or birthdate and store that somewhere (maybe a new field in /etc/passwd) and then adding a getage() function to the standard library that apps can call to get the age range for the current user.
From the "we want to slurp up everything we can about you" point of view usually associated with Meta it is not obvious why Meta would support this approach.
Age checks can broadly be divided into 3 categories.
1. Done entirely on the local system, with only the result being revealed to the app/site that is asking. Age information comes from the owner/administrator of the system. I.e., the parental control approach.
2. Done using the local system and some external source of age information like your government. Only the result is revealed to the app/site that is asking.
3. Verification is done directly with the site that is asking, or through a third party. You have to supply sensitive documents like your government ID to the site or the third party.
#3 is terrible for privacy and anonymity. The red state laws tend to be in this category.
#2 depends on the details. There may be ways using the timing of the communications between your system and your ID supplier (e.g., your government) and the communications between your system and the site you are proving ID to that could allow the site and the government to get more information that you want them to. There are cryptographic ways to prevent that, especially if the device has a hardware security module. It thus comes down to with #2 that you really need to look at the details.
I'm not sure if any US state is taking this approach. The EU is, with cryptography to make it GDPR compatible and allow anonymous verification. Google and Apple are also working on such systems.
#1 is basically equivalent to the "Are you 18+" dialogs on many adult web sites, except moves to the device and the admin can if they wish prevent non-admin users from lying.
It is not really surprising that blue states are tending more toward #1, especially considering that several of them are among the states that have the strongest state privacy and data protection laws.
If you were interested in information beyond your own echo chamber, you’d realize that literally every significant app store is run by an OS vendor.
Try using basic critical thinking next time.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rmhxk1/i_pulled_the...
Blue states were paternalistic over both your property (business and social gathering shutdowns) and your body (masking, social distancing enforcement), while red states (particularly Texas, Florida) were very laissez-faire for both.
What's perplexing about this is that research has generally correlated higher amygdala activity (fear/worry) with political conservatism, and lower amygdala activity with political progressivism, but in this case, the effect seemed almost inverted.
It seems their strategy is to externalize their responsibility to verify age themselves, and thus reduce their exposure to liabilities when child protection acts like COPPA are violated.
It abso-fucking-lutely should not be at the OS level though, for so many reasons. Even the implementation alone would be a nightmare. Do I need to input my ID to use a fridge or toaster oven? Ridiculous.
Why?
We don't externalize age verification when buying alcohol or visiting the strip club. It's on the responsibility of those establishments to verify age.
As there has been a market failure for decades at this point, it would be reasonable to give this a legislative nudge - spelling out the specific labels, requiring large websites to publish the appropriate labels, and requiring large device manufacturers to include parental controls functionality. The labels would be defined such that a website not declaring labels (small, foreign, configuration mistake, etc) would simply not be shown by software configured with parental controls, preserving the basic permissionless nature of the Internet we take for granted.
But as it stands, this mandate being pushed is horribly broken - both for subjecting all users to the age verification regime, and also for being highly inflexible for parents who have opinions about what their kids should be seeing that differ from corporate attorneys!
I think this is a reasonable balance without being invasive as there's now a defined path to do reasonable parenting without being a sysadmin and operators cannot claim ignorance because the user input a random birthday. The information leaked is also fairly minimal so even assuming ads are using that as signal, it doesn't add too many bits to tracking compared to everything else. I think the California bill needs a bit of work to clarify what exactly this applies to (e.g. exclude servers) but I also think this is a reasonable framework to satisfy this debate.
I've seen the argument that this could lead to actual age verification but I think that's a line that's clearly definable and could be fought separately.
I pay the company to verify me, I am their customer. They take on the liability of the OS makers and app makers of age verification.
If you have a valid token signed by a licensed IDS that verified your age in your OS, that's all anyone needs to know.
So we have to pay some 3rd party service to hoard information about Children? Why we want to set that up? Why would we want to take that power from the parents and give it to some company?
So, they want to profit off children, but do nothing to protect them?
> but there should be a trusted 3rd party service that does that
Gee, if only Facebook would use their incredible might to create this, rather than trying to rob our representative government from underneath us.
> It abso-fucking-lutely should not be at the OS level though
It's not my problem. It shouldn't involve me at all. I don't use social media and I think if you let your kids on there unsupervised you have a screw loose.
We were completely fine 30 years ago without any phone. They will survive. They will probably thrive because now they have to learn how to hack the system.
Instead, we just give them everything they need and all the thinking they do is scrolling.
No, there shouldn't be any such thing; everyone pushing for any shape of this should just bugger off.
At some level I don't blame him. It is also a bit strange how in that act alone he showed more accountability than most of the politicians that were questioning him, never mind most executives. I suppose Josh Hawley wants to be liable for personal lawsuits for his acts of Congress too... people cringe at his "robotic" demeanor but I can't remember the last time someone turned and faced people and apologized like this. Most people asked to do the same (even in front of the same body) never do.
For the record, I'm against age verification laws. But I think companies are pushing for them because of liabilities they face under other laws, not because they would actually like to have the data.
Nothing less, nothing more.
Most things that are not suitable for children were recognized so long ago that it was decades, centuries, or millennia before anybody living was ever born.
Like porn, when it got on the web it has always been instinctively gatekept as traditionally as possible, and complaints which do arise over the decades are addressed by the websites in ways that measure up to how you expect a company to act. Consistent with the way they truly don't want underage visitors to their websites at all.
Those complaints are now dwarfed by what parents are saying about Facebook in particular.
Facebook, and now Meta, is just not something that previous generations had to deal with, so it didn't get handled in a very adult way as it should have been from the beginning. And it only got worse as it got bigger.
If it wasn't worse for their kids than porn, parents wouldn't be screaming so much louder than ever.
I guess it turns out the combination of fundamentally devaluing privacy across-the-board including minors is the main problem, and then the idea of hooking them early, like cigarette companies would do with as much habit-forming reinforcement as possible, is what leverages the lack of overall privacy through the roof.
What's really needed is bold gatekeeping on Meta's digressions alone, they should be the ones to aggressively keep everyone underage off their site. Like they really mean it, which has not existed before. That's what's been wrong the whole time, the internet was so much better before Facebook came along with their anti-privacy mission, and it got put on steroids.
Reining in Meta alone should be big enough to be noticeable, no-one else has a shred of responsibility by comparison.
Facebook has invested $billions in these underage crowds and they want to know exactly when everyone else on the internet turns a certain age even if they are not on Facebook.
Don't give it to them no matter how much they pay.
It would be the complete opposite of an advanced thinker who wants to respond by compromising more people's privacy across the regular internet, when Meta is the primary source of the problem, and they're who stand to benefit the more privacy is compromised in any way, child or adult.
Like my 19th century grandmother would say, "what's wrong with some people?"
There have been numerous cases in history where governments have attempted to legislate the outcome they want without regard to how that might be done or if it was possible in the first place. Obviously it can never deliver the results they want.
It would be like passing a law to say every company must operate an office on the moon, and then saying that companies lobbying for an advanced NASA space program is them externalising their responsibility.
It would be a mess, but solve the problem. It’s not that we don’t have the technology, we just don’t want to because the friction would decimate user numbers and engagement; it would be much simpler to regulate (e.g. usage limits on minors); and minors are less monetizable, which would lead to lower CPM on ads.
Then there’s the legal liability if you know someone is a minor and they’re sending nudes, for example. And the privacy concerns of tying that back to de-anonymized individuals.
But obviously I wouldn’t believe that social media companies care about user privacy on behalf of people.
It's not about protecting children. It's about increasing adtech intrusion, protecting revenue from liability, pushing against anonymity, and for all the various apparatus of power, it's about increasing leverage and control over speech.
It's better for them if this "responsibility" rests with another organisation, they don't get blamed as much when the information leaks and it is replaceable.
Millennials had their hippie era in their 20s (same stuff their parents did rebranded as "hipster" instead of "hippie," where instead of building a lifestyle of free love and bong hits in the Haight-Ashbury, they built a lifestyle of free love and bong hits in Williamsburg Brooklyn).
Now in their 30s-40s they've moved to the suburbs, they're voting Reagan, and are falling for hysterical media-driven moral panics about "what kids these days are up to" just like their Boomer parents did in the 80s-90s.
What's even more funny about all these "social media is evil" legislative proposals, they're motivated by the idea of what social media used to be when millennials were in college...which doesn't even exist anymore.
The classic narrative that teens are depressed because they're seeing what parties they didn't get invited to is wildly outdated now. Social media isn't social anymore (see Tiktok), it's just algorithmic short form TV. Nobody is seeing content from their peers anymore.
In reality, most modern research on social media finds little to no affect on teen mental health. But of course, if you have ulterior motives to undermine privacy or shirk corporate responsibility under the cover of "saving the kids," this moral panic is an already burning flame waiting to be stoked.
More modern version: my experiences don’t look like the Instagram shots, my body doesn’t look like theirs, etc.
> modern research on social media finds little to no affect on teen mental health
Sounds like you know what you’re talking about, but if you have references I would read them.
How about research on the effects of social media on academic performance?
No disagreement at all that this is another power and surveillance grab.
It legally mandates the existence of a required "age" field in user account records, a user interface to populate it during account setup, a mechanism for service providers to read this field, and that providers act as if it has been populated accurately.
As someone who has been the de facto "system administrator" for my family's computer systems since kindergarten, this has to be one of the stupidest policies I've ever seen gain traction.
If you connect it with a permission system where you can choose whether to provide this information (e.g. >13 as a bool or age as an integer or the birthday as a date) that can't be too bad I guess?
I haven't read the whole thing of course.
What I expected was that we'd end up with the OS vendors actually being mandated to really do age verification, and then submitting that using Web Credentials and Secure Attestation so that the far end could trust the whole thing, locking open-source OS's out of the mix and creating more of a walled garden online than we already have. I was guessing it would become a simple checkbox on e.g. Cloudflare - "[ ] allow adult users only" or whatever - and that it would end up with vast swathes of the internet going off limits for anyone not on closed-source systems.
Now, it looks like this is just a way for parents to tell the OS "this is a kid account" and have it flow through to websites so they can easily proactively block kids from connecting without having to implement any of that crap. Yes, it's much potentially easier for a child to circumvent; but any kid who can get around that sort of thing from within an OS could probably just wipe/reinstall anyway, so who cares?
As a parent whose kids are continually trying to see what trouble they can get into, I appreciate that I will get one more potential weapon in the fight.
Can someone tell me whether I am being a fool by actually being a bit relieved it's going this way?
Surely I'm missing something? Is the backlash due to fear of a slippery slope?
Don’t say this too loud please, I don’t honestly think we’re too far from this reality, at least from an “Overton Window” point of view.
Unless your specifically calling out accounts that require online registration for the OS. I'm vehemently against that requirement.
> the Children's Social Media Safety Act
>
> provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder to indicate the birth date, age, or both
> provide an operator who has requested a signal with respect to a particular user a signal that identifies the user's age by category
Answer: they don't want to be liable and get fined $400 Million, like Meta got fined, for letting kids on social media. (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/05/business/meta-children-da...)
This is why Meta is forcing this legislation through nation-wide. They are forcing Google/Apple to take the liability, despite it not actually being Google or Apple that's providing the "harmful" social media. Meta are doing this state-by-state so nobody can track that it's them. Easier than pushing at a federal level, and raises fewer red flags from news media.
Since Google and Apple won't want to accept this liability either, the next step is requiring digital IDs and third-party verification to prove the user is of age. This will enable tracking of all users, whatever app or website they go to. Bills requiring this are already being passed at state and federal level.
Is the government going to require some sort of automated checks that verify every person who connects to the internet has this API on their OS and go after individuals that aren't in compliance?
Haiku could just run an automatic dialog asking you if you are minor, in Illinois or California and write a text file with the corresponding age category of said person.
These bills do not mandate that the user cannot modify that information AFAIK.
None but them corporations sure do. And with a little cash in the right place I'm sure they can push recourse onto people of power. We really need to end political lobbying one of these days
2. Plenty of websites make their own apps, and then you're back to just having every website under the sun trying to verify everyone's age to know who to show explicit content to.
Because there's no remotely compelling evidence for this and it'd be thrown out by a judge as a huge parental rights violation.
Not to mention that computing is a global thing, and in order for this to be useful it would definitely have to be providing more specific information than just a bool. Maybe chats require 13+, but pornography requires 18+. Maybe those ages are different based on location. All advertisers would need to do is ping the various different checks to get your actual or at least very approximate age.
This kind of thing is a slippery slope, and its ripe for abuse by doxxers, advertisers and big brother himself. Burn this with fire. I'm totally in agreement with the others that suggest stuff like this should b just get banned from getting introduced and reintroduced constantly trying to sneak it in as a rider or hidden provision. The people DON'T want it.
Argumentation 101: “it’s stupid” isn’t a reason.
1. Creates a protocol with desired signals (country and a variable list of whatever others i.e. age,state) that clients (including browsers) CAN choose to use and forward.
2. Create an api OSs CAN implement to inform clients of those signals and if they can be overidden in the client. (Possibly even create an OS or service to run on OSs that implements it, parents can choose to install specific OS or service)
3. A open source server for governments to specify common classes of content and what to do when a specific SIGNAL (from the protocol in 1) is recieved (Serve content to SIGNAL group/serve content to everyone/never serve content). And what to do if content isn't in a class it recognizes(Serve content/not serve content). Association could also be extend it's duties to coordinate a list of types of content.
4. Maintain an authoritative list of servers by country so that those hosting services can reach the servers hosted in 3. So that webservers can visit those servers to find what they can serve if they wish to apply the law for that jurisdiction.
Horrible because it does codify less freedom and censorship. The advantages are that for a jurisdiction liability can fall on the right actor.
If you run a website/app you worry only if your in a jurisdiction that mandates you use the protocol and can easily geoblock crazy countries by using that signal and choose if a jurisdiction you want to deal with is worth the effort of coding for or whether you want to ignore that countries laws.
If you are a user you can choose to install the API or use an OS that implements it or an OS that spoofs it with only the liability of your jurisdiction. If you are a parent you can use an OS(or install a service) to implement it on your kids accounts.
If your an OS developer you can add functionality if desired/appropriate.
If you are a country you can specify what signals you use/require and can specify required signals (i.e. US may request the State signal so it can decide if it needs other signals to evaluate whether to serve "Social Media" content (i.e. age in the case of state=california)).
Not perfect but actually keeps punishment/enforcement to appropriate jurisdiction and means you can actually gracefully avoid liability for sites in broken jurisdictions rather than either kowtowing or being in breach. Also means it can be implemented in client if you don't want it on your OS or want the convenience of not being asked age without the ridiculous other stuff.
Second, there's no certainty about how courts might interpret compliance. If the intent of the law is to positively identify minors, a user editable field may not be interpreted as sufficient to comply. We don't know what the safe level of identification will be outside of trying the law in court. Who wants to be on the bad side of that?
One way is that you log in under a guest account and the guest account requires you to indicate your age. After your session is over, guest account logs out.
Another way is that the library has two sets of computers, ones set for adults, ones set for minors. You need access card to use computer and the librarian will give you the age-appropriate access card.
Another way is computers are set for restrictive (child) account by default. If you need adult access you have to ask librarian to unlock it.
You're being a fool by actually being a bit relieved it's going this way.
These bills are meant to nudge the overton window[0] of digital politics in the direction of mandating realtime identity verification for all forms of computing. Advertisers want it, governments want it, _bad people and bad governments want it_. By pushing a very small and "weak" legally-required form of user identification on everything under the guise of "saving the kids", all involved parties can point at those who disagree and say "Look, if you disagree you must want to hurt children!" And so the bills pass, and a weak form of identity verification passes and is enforced. Then it'll be shown it doesn't work, and the proposed solution will be to make these identity verification laws more intrusive and more restrictive. Repeat ad-nauseum.
Time to start throwing up hobby BBS sites... and I think in this case text mode interfaces over web might be an advantage.
There is no verification beyond that in these sorts of bills (CA, CO, IL). It's the parent's responsibility to watch their kids when they set up an account.
> Legitimate adult websites will not show the content.
This is a big problem (that won't necessarily be solved by this particular legislation, granted). There are already voluntary rating HTML tags websites can add to indicate parental control software should block them, but they're voluntary and non-standardized. Websites can choose not to comply with no real-world consequences. And I don't think platforms like Reddit or X, which are ostensibly all-ages social media but also have an abundance of adult content, are properly set up to serve tags like that on NSFW posts but not other ones.
It's a tricky problem to solve, and, imo, it's one the tech industry has demonstrated it doesn't have any desire to solve itself, hence legislation starting to get involved.
> Websites can send down a single header indicating adult content.
It sounds at first glance like a no-brainer that websites shouldn't have access to any information and the enforcement should be done at a local level (like the current voluntary HTML tags that locally installed parental control software can sometimes read). But some websites might want to display alternate content to minors-- e.g. a Wikipedia article with some images withheld, or Reddit sending a user back to an all-ages subreddit instead of just fully breaking or failing to load when the user stumbles upon something 18+. For anything like that, the website will need to know in some form that the user isn't able to see 18+ content.
Detractors will say parents should just install existing parental control software, even though it's existed in its current form for decades and is obviously not effective. And they'll say it should be the parents' responsibility to enforce what their kids are doing with computers, while ignoring the fact that these laws provide tools allowing parents to do just that (the parents are the ones responsible for supervising their kids when they create accounts to ensure they're not lying about their age-- if the kids lie during setup, it's on the parents).
Anyone with kids will probably acknowledge that it's much easier supervising your kid once when they first set up an account on a new device than it would be to supervise them 24/7 when they're using the internet. But for some reason, lots of people without kids are in a panic about having to type in any date older than 18 years ago. The arguments I've heard against it are almost all slippery-slope (e.g. "they're gonna do this first, and then add ID requirements next year, because that's what I fear will happen.")
Because that's exactly what will happen. This is battlespace preparation for the destruction of anonymity on the internet, because politicians find this inconvenient.
Except what about my OS which doesn't have parental controls and can't reasonably be expected to provide them because who's gonna do it and be responsible for it?
And the arguments for it don't promise to fight tooth and nail not to make sure it's not slippery. If the slope does turn out to be slippery, today's proponents will be tomorrow's Hindsight Harrys (e.g. "the cat's already out of the bag, if you cared so much you should have fought this back when we all saw it coming").
These tools are called "parental controls" and already exist - we don't need laws to compel their production.
...unless, of course, the true aim is to use this as a beachhead for further expansion of privacy-violating requirements.
You write this off as a "slippery-slope" argument, but given that there are already quite a few tools that do what this law aims for, what's the point?
> if the kids lie during setup, it's on the parents
Pretty much a "Yes, and?" scenario. See above.
> The arguments I've heard against it are almost all slippery-slope (e.g. "they're gonna do this first, and then add ID requirements next year, because that's what I fear will happen.")
I get where you're going, but precisely this. These things always start slow... then fast. The old adage "first they came for x, then y" is not a joke or an exaggeration. It is pretty much historic observation. I've lived long enough to know that whenever someone invokes the "think of the children" defense, there's always a catch.
This is not a theory. Laws requiring this are going through the state and federal level right now.
> (b) An operator shall request a signal with respect to a particular user from an operating system provider or a covered application store when the application is downloaded and launched.
Unlike the California law I do not see anything that restricts this to child accounts only.
So let say I have a program:
print("Hello, World!")
import ageBracket
ageBracket.get()
print("Hello, World!")
Does the hidden Minix installation on every Intel CPU with the Intel Management Engine count?
The root cause is a corrupt government doing the bidding of a few rich people and other countries. Fixing that will be very difficult but is nonetheless necessary and possible to largely thwart legislators from working against their own ostensible constituency.
>"Operating system provider" means a person or entity that develops, licenses, or controls the operating system software on a computer, mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device.
I.e Linux will most likely to be immune, since its not tied to a particular computer.
Which just means Linux stay winning. It already made big headway in the video game space, so its prime to take over personal computing too.
That's a really weird and nonsensical reading of "operating system software on a computer".
i'm from illinois, worked in california, and no longer live in either. from afar, it seems that whatever california bureaucrats propose, after a short delay, gets proposed by their little sibling bureaucrats in illinois.
Linux distros always have a "root" user. Does that user have to be asked its age before being usable? What about docker containers, which often come with a non-root user? What about installation media, which is often a perfectly usable OS? It would either have to be so easy to get around this law that most kids could do it easily, or so overzealously enforced as to disrupt the entire cloud industry.
what is the solution then to age gating apps that the public feels should be age gated? (TikTok, Instagram, etc). it seems like every app implementing its own guessing system would have even more holes, right?
this is one where I am sympathetic. the moment when someone, with their parent, is setting up a device seems like the best point to check age. right?
am I missing something?
My guess reading the law as linked is that it's much closer to the former than the latter. That being said, you're right that it does bring a bunch of headache alongside with it for little-to-no benefits.
The slippery slope isn't a fallacy in this case as we've seen the pot slowly come to a boil after 9/11 with various laws like the Patriot Act, FISA, etc. and classified programs within the NSA (and I'm sure all the three letters) which violate the rights of Americans everyday. Now it's a coordinated effort across multiple western countries all of a sudden to introduce laws around verifying your age. It's clear where this is going.
There are so many ways for this to go badly or simply be annoying.
I’m a guy in my 40s with no kids. I shouldn’t need to deal with all of this. Let the parents turn on parental controls for their kids; don’t force it on everyone.
If Meta needs to find a way to verify age, then that is also their problem. They are trying to make it the world’s problem. I don’t use any Meta products, so again I would question why I need to care about this… why will it become my problem?
The slippery slope then comes in addition to all of this.
It seems Apple already implemented their age verification API. I got prompted for it when opening the MyChart app a few weeks ago. The API used in that case only sends a Boolean if the user is over 18 or not, this is the best of the bad options. However, they have other APIs to get other data from a digital ID. The user is at the whim of the API the developer chooses to use. They can say no, but then they can’t use the app. I’m not sure how Apple validated my age, as I hadn’t loaded an ID into my wallet, but my Apple account is nearly 18 years old, so that might be good enough? If I were to get a Mac and just want to use a local account, then what happens? Can I not verify my age? Will I be able to use the computer or be locked out of the browser? These are some of the fears I have if they take this too far. Maybe some of them are unfounded, but I guess time will tell.
Meta and TikTok (and YouTube shorts to an extent) are the new Sackler family and Purdue pharma. They will hold on to these profit and power engines as long and hard as possible. They will not stop causing the harm unless forced to with regulation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sackler_family
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic_in_the_United_...
Do you mind expanding on why that is? Is it because it allows them to say "well the API told us they're adults so we're all good"?
Umm isn’t that what we want? Or are you suggesting there should be some other legislation in place?
The bill itself sort of goes against its "purpose". If the purpose is to make a convenient API for stores to know their user, and avoid showing them certain content then why did the bill state: "If an operator has internal clear and convincing information that a user's age is different than the age indicated by a signal received in accordance with this Section, the operator shall use that information as the primary indicator of the user's age."
because many people lie in those forms. Many people on steam will select they were born in 1900, including myself. So how will this API help? the only way for it to be useful is if they later require full verification.
That being said, I don't think this bill was that well thought out as the implication are far reaching (will I need to enter an age when provisioning a VM?).
I mostly see it as a clumsy attempt to provide a mechanism for age-category attestation in a way that is more privacy-friendly than Texas's "upload-your-id" law.
What that means is that we will have to amp it up, if we want to achieve it's purpose. So, that's not a slippery slope, that's a prophecy.
When we get cryptographically backed identity verification on all computing, that will legitimately be the end of computing as we know it.
Or, in contrary, when it is very reliable, so it can map a very specific real person to a reliable and true birth date, then f off binding myself to a randome computer account that gives it out to whomever is asking it!
There is no good in this story.
Yes, this is just the beginning of a huge swath of innocent APIs to identify people on the internet. Meta isn’t going to stop, and neither will governments.
Edit: also, before the same jackass from the last few discussions on this mentions “muh ADA” again, the ADA has never been shown to apply to an OS in court nor does it mention anything about operating systems.
They want to abolish anonymous use of internet services, because anonymous publishing at scale is powerful and dangerous to incumbents when they can’t retaliate with malicious prosecution, police harassment, or assassination.
Meta just wants to do it in the most habit-forming way, that is embedded in a system crafted to mold young behavior into more manipulable consumers.
>Meta already knows the age of all its users
Roger, now they want a government mandate to target everyone else on the internet.
Which has led some to suspect much is LLM generated and not properly human-reviewed, in addition to the very short timeframe from initial self-disclosed start of the research to publishing it online (mere 2-3 days) despite the confident tone the author uses.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20260317184359/https://lobste.rs...
Zero difference from the reality TV/tabloid era. "Influencer" is just a rebranding of "celebrity," and instead of seeing their Hollywood Hills mansion and chiseled bodies on MTV cribs and in Abercrombie ads you see them on your phone.
Here's a few quick pulls, the best stuff is the meta-analysis studies but don't have time to dig them all out:
[1] Effects of reducing social media use are small and inconsistent: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266656032...
[2] Belief in "Social media addiction" is wholly explained by media framing and not an actual addiction: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-27053-2
[3] No causal link between time spent on social media and mental health harm: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jan/14/social-media-t...
[4] The Flawed Evidence Behind Jonathan Haidt's Panic Farming: https://reason.com/2023/03/29/the-statistically-flawed-evide...
Of course, nobody can ever stop you from running anything you're building yourself, privately. But you might end up finding that you need to implement additional APIs anyway in order to access what you want to on the internet, just as you're expected to have some sort of HTTP support and HTML rendering in order to get that far. The part you'd be able to "cheat" on in your own custom OS is just reporting a higher age bracket without making you type an age in first.
Also, I don't want my OS to report my age range to every website I visit anyway.
I feel like if we assume this is in good faith, and they want to make sure adults can ensure minors don't have access to certain content, why would they use age as the information? This can be solved, or even have been solved by having Parental Control feature like in IOS which provides finer options than what you would get with age.
This could OK if this was requiring that any device or operating system have access to parental control in any capacity (either by default or via third party application) and limited for things that would be used by minors so that VMs or other stuff don't have to worry about this. Or, they could mandate products to indicate that the feature exist. That way, a parent can decide what to give their child.
Let us not blame humans for suboptimal brain chemistry taken advantage of by malicious torment nexus threat actors. Fix the policy, bug fix the human, disempower the threat actors. Defend and empower the human. My pattern matching in the comment you replied to stands imho, and while it is admittedly imperfect (as you point out), I believe it remains directionally accurate.
[1] Why Ozempic Beats Free Will - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hot-thought/202410/w... - October 4th, 2024
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45907422 (additional citations)
(think in systems)
Not to counteract your point, just as an anecdote I like remembering.
While laws that target engineering decisions are sometimes reasonable, they are always accompanied with specific guidance from a credible academic based institution (e.g. mechanical and civil engineering use private licensing bodies and develop specific curriculum and best practices).
The only time this law will ever be enforced is punitively for other crimes against major actors who are extremely limited in number. It is unenforceable for Linux, trivial for Apple, Microsoft, and Google to add to their OS. Presumably easy to spoof, the law describes it as minimal but once again, there isn't a specification so who knows. Websites won't be liable, they're getting a sweetheart deal here.
In practice what this law does is absolve abusive platforms an from any responsibility. It adds extra meaningless work and overhead for legitimate adult platforms while opening themselves up to new potential legal challenges, and ultimately doesn't replace the responsibility its removing.
This doesn't make children safer. This doesn't make the internet safer. This kind of legislation makes it easier to abuse children online by removing responsibility from platforms that are known to be dangerous to them yet profit from their presence the most.
How are you not outraged? People are missing the above forest for the "oh but it's a tiny little easy API and I don't see any downsides" trees.
Also, not every jurisdiction defines adult and/or legally able to use social media the same way. Parents need to parent at the level 0 social layer than push this off to everything at technical layers and everyone else.
It's a moral panic ruse in legislative form for greed and power.
[1] https://legiscan.com/NH/bill/HB1658/2026
[2] https://www.nh.gov/glance/state-constitution/bill-rights
[1] Tracking Efforts To Restrict Or Ban Teens from Social Media Across the Globe - https://www.techpolicy.press/tracking-efforts-to-restrict-or... - February 23rd, 2026
Seems you are contradicting yourself
Would you prefer to inform each movie theater in town which movies your child is permitted to watch? Or just rely on the rating system that applies to most movies and is honored by most theatres?
Parents want one setting that says "this is a child" and then expect online platforms to respond appropriately. As we expect and mostly have in the real world.
This law does not do that. It breaks the age of children into several buckets so that platforms, websites, and advertisers can target specific demographics. They won't "respond appropriately" they'll just use this data point as another way to improve how they exploit children online. Now every pedo with a website can tell how old the kid is so they can better adjust their grooming for that age bracket.
Content providers are not incentivized to care about the problem, and will serve any content with ads next to it that they can unless they are forced not to. Ad-hoc solutions attempting to paper over that behavior on the consumer end are not adequate or effective. That's why they have a rationale at all for the laws here.
I hear this and it makes me wonder if you have kids. Do you really have the ability to supervise their internet access at all times? Mine are in the next room, I check in on them regularly, but that still results in them being up to no good. Conversations on the topic are a regular thing, losing privileges as a punishment for breaking the rules is happening all the time, but they still always want to push up against the boundaries of what's allowed and what isn't.
And they're not even teenagers yet, with hormones and thirst-traps and whatever else there is to watch out for.
A little bit more control within the house would be useful - I don't want it to come in the form of anything that impacts anyone else, though. I don't need draconian laws, I just need some voluntary, owner-informed device controls that aren't completely trivial for unprivileged users to bypass.
> The fact that they won't even though there are (non-required!) tools they could be using to do so is baffling to me.
My parents set me up with an AOL account when we first got a computer and dial-up internet. At first, I was kind of required to go through the AOL desktop application to browse the web since that's how we connected to the dial-up. Sometimes a website would be blocked through AOL, and I'd have to have one of my parents come and sign in to allow me into it.
But once we moved onto broadband DSL, I eventually figured out I could just open Internet Explorer instead of AOL to bypass the parental controls without having to get my parents to come allow a website. Of course, a few years after that, I was secretly browsing porn... at 10 years old.
As a parent today, what non-required tools would you suggest I use to effectively filter NSFW content from the internet for my kids? Network-level methods don't work in the age of laptops and smartphones. Any on-device software you might suggest would probably be for iOS/Android or Windows, not both. And which software supports Ubuntu, or do you think I shouldn't let my kids use it? Yes, it's probably possible to lock things down eventually (for me, as an IT professional). The parents next door probably have no clue about half the stuff I'd use, and my kid's gonna end up having access to whatever their kid does. Even if everyone does everything perfectly, all it takes is a slight paradigm shift or new piece of technology to sidestep all of it-- like when my parents did their jobs setting up AOL parental controls but then switched our connection type and inadvertently broke them.
The value of this legislation isn't necessarily making parental controls technically possible. The value is standardizing and normalizing it. As someone in another comment chain brought up, you're not expected to individually coordinate with every movie theater or every liquor store, or to helicopter your kids IRL with it being your fault if someone sells them beer when you let them go out with their friends. There's a basic societal understanding that certain things aren't available to kids. The internet being "wild west" for a few decades doesn't invalidate that, imo. This isn't parents not parenting, it's adjusting the level of burden we're expecting to come with parenting to a more reasonable level.
We tell our kids that smoking is bad for them. It's still illegal to sell cigarettes to minors.
> As a kid, if I had seen a case of beer left out I wouldn't have gotten drunk because I wouldn't have wanted to.
Good for you, and neither would I, but that's because I'm a wet blanket (still don't drink today). Selling alcohol to kids and teenagers is still illegal.
User account creation wizards could just create the dot files for the App Store. These weird laws ban OS.
So for example operating system that does not ask this question could simply declare itself "inappropriate"/"illegal" in the jurisdiction.
Say, GrapheneOS can explicitly disallow image downloads from Californian IPs and not sell phones with preinstalled GOS there.
You don't need to be complaint with the Mongolian law to sell in Burkina Faso.
Similarly they don't need to be complaint with Ohio law if they do not operate and have presence there.
American companies that decide to surveil users ont heir websites with pervasive tracking without consent would only contravene the European GDPR if they allowed EU users to use them. Block the EU (famous http/451), and they're in the clear.
IMO, but IANAL.
> for all users that the operator has actual knowledge to be a minor, the operator shall use specified default settings for the minor.
I just think it should be opt-in. Applications should presume <13 unless the user opts in.
So again, what does that have anything to do with THIS law which mandates something completely different??
They could've written these laws to go after Apple and Microsoft specifically, and assume that most kids wouldn't have the wherewithal to install Linux themselves. That may or may not be effective. But no, the way the law is written, any hobbyist OS dev is now legally liable for the abuse kids might suffer on massive social networks that are completely unrelated to the OS.
The funny thing is that Estonia actually already figured this all out. Their national ID system allows any platform to reliably verify anybody's age without gaining access to any other information about them. It's the perfect system for reliable checking age while maintaining perfect privacy about all other personal data. But I don't think we'll see that in the US in my lifetime, so we'll just have to keep fighting over all these ineffective privacy nightmares instead.
This conclusion is up for debate, but that's what they mean.
As an "operating system provider," the law as written still requires me to provide an accessible interface for you to indicate your age to the operator.
Should we be asking your age every single time you use a credit card reader or ATM? If not, embedded operating system providers need exceptions to the law in each state that adopts their own non-standardized approach.
Edit: I have no control over who links to my library.
Literally not what's happening with these bills. There is no identity, you would only have to type in a valid date (and nobody's forcing you at gunpoint to make it your actual birth date).
> The proper analogy would be require verification on the part of the porn sellers.
Red states tried that first, and it was very poorly received by the left and the porn industry, among other parties. Asking anonymously at the device level and leaving it to parents to enforce it is more privacy-respecting and less of a burden to adults. Which is exactly why blue states are now trying to do it this way (and is one of the reasons why Aylo & others have been asking for it to be done this way, with the other reason being it's also easier & cheaper on their end).
Requiring all online account creation to go through some government vouching system sounds far worse for privacy than OS doing age verification.
Source? Another commenter claims the opposite: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47416653
Even if they used an open source zero knowledge proof, HN will still immediately dismiss it as an attempt to steal your data. The proposal here and the similar bill that passed in California doesn't require any validation that you enter you age correctly.
HN is also much less representative of the demographics within the American tech industry now as well - almost all the references I see on here are stuff only men in their late 30s to 50s would recognize, and an increasing amount of users appear to be based in Western and Central Europe.
Heck, I'm on the younger end by HN standards (early/mid 30s) and when I introduced HN to my peers over a decade ago (this is my throwaway) even back then they complained that it was "toxic", "snooty", and "unhelpful". And it's reputation amongst the younger generation has only gotten worse.
HN has "SlashDot"ified, because most people are either in private groupchats on signal/imessage/discord or meeting each other with Luma invites.
Don't get me wrong, it's good to know but it's not earth shattering information.
How does getting the OS to do age verification "get rid of anonymity online" or help "sell ads"? Assuming the verification is implemented in a competent way (ie. it's not just providing an id scan for any app to read), it's probably one of the more privacy friendly ways to implement age verification, that's also more secure than an "are you over 18" prompt on every website.
> implemented in a competent way (ie. it's not just providing an id scan for any app to read)
What if there are vulnerabilities? You're inherently introducing more attack surface and providing more data than you would without these laws.
Their entire top leadership has shown a multi-year tendency towards psychopathy and lying. Knowing Meta is pushing this bill makes me want to understand why my views and theirs randomly agree as well as carefully read the bill text for any signs Adam Mosseri was within 500 feet of it.
Right now, it's not even clear how to create parental controls at a reasonable level so there's no clear path for what to do or how to respond.
Basically unsolveable, so why worry about that edge case? Kids will always get through to some adult content somewhere. A token system will make parents feel better in the meantime.
Its trivially easy to see if the user (child) has indeed created multiple OS level user accounts with different permission levels if you want to spot check the computer.
You'll see it on first startup and then you can have "a chat". With Guest account access disabled, spawning a new account on a computer takes 2-3 minutes, will send emails and dashboard notices to the parent.
Its very much near impossible to verify that the child is not just going to Facebook etc. and using separate accounts and just logging out religiously.
That said I wish Apple/Microsoft/Google had more aggressively advertised their Parental Control features for Mac/Windows/ChromeOS as a key differentiator to avoid Ubuntu/Open Source distros from having to implement them.
On what OS? Microslop Windows? On my computer no one is notified when an account is created. And the account list isn't visible when I log in. I log in to the TTY.
Now, granted, I am not the norm. But my OS falls under these regulations. So what is my OS vendor supposed to do? For that matter, who is the vendor? What if I were using LFS? Who even would be the vendor for LFS? It's not even a distro!
I think this is a sensible compromise. It gives parents more control than before without relying on shady third-party software or without turning every platform into a cop. Yeah, it also aligns with Meta's interests, but so what?
The age attestation solutions pursued by the EU are far more invasive in this respect, even though they notionally protect identity. They mean that the "default" internet experience is going to be nerfed until you can present a cryptographic proof that you're worthy.
It doesn't give parents any control whatsoever. It just forces the OS to tell every website your child goes to how old they are. It doesn't require those websites to hide certain content for certain age groups. It doesn't define what types of content are appropriate for which age groups, it just makes sure that every advertiser bidding on your child's eyes knows what age range they fall into to.
If anything this takes control away from parents because even the cases where a website does their best to restrict content based on which age the OS tells them your kid is, it's the website setting the rules and not the parents. You might think that your 16 year old can read an article about STDs, but if the website your kid visits doesn't think so you as the parent don't get any choice.
With 3rd party software parents are controlling what software is used, they have the ability to decide which kinds of content are appropriate for their children and can be allowed and which types of content should be blocked. They can black/whitelist as they see fit. All of the power is in the parent's hands. This law gives parents one choice only: "Do I honestly tell my OS how old my child is". That's the end of the parent's involvement and the end of their power.
It works for the in-person context because it's a physical object, making it easier to control access to it. A high resolution picture of the same ID is a privacy problem as it can be copied, shared, transferred, etc without the knowledge of the ID holder.
I think that main goal would be to keep the ability to have accounts be anonymous or pseudo anonymous.
If social mean company has to verify an accounts age themselves they then have to use some for of official government identification and with that any chance of anonymous or pseudo anonymous access.
My comment was not about what I knew/know about facebook or not. I was answering the question of why age verification should be externalized to a degree and in this case externalized means the power stays with the user and parents rather than being in the hands of say facebook/meta.
I was not talking about why facebook/meta would want it or not want it. Large companies want lots of different things. Sometimes it is required to know their motivations to discuss or decide on something. I think it can be detrimental to do that though without discussing/analyzing a topic/idea on its own merits first or at least parallel. My comment was focused on the merits not the motivations or desires of companies like facebook.
Meta Apps can have age verification but it should be at the point of service, not the supply chain.
And even if we were to agree to this, uploading your IDs to an untrusted third party is asking too much.
So have the government do it? They already know who we are and when we were born.
But in a perfect world it would be parents doing their job and parenting. You can grab your child's pad, phone, laptop, whatever, and black list the entire internet allowing only a few select white lists of your choice. But it's too hard to educate parents on how to do that I guess, assuming this was ever about children and not data collection, which it is that.
When you provision a Windows, Mac or Chromebook these days as a child's device using your parental account, it will require a parental account to enable new user accounts and/or re-enable guest user on the device.
Like I said - my preference would have been for Microsoft, Apple, Google and Meta and TikTok to have made an industry effort to educate parents about the existence of such tools a priori of any legislation, we could have avoided Linux etc. getting sucked in.
It's not an accident that this appeared within a month or two of the California one. I would bet good money that there's someone shopping this bill around.
If you do a frequency analysis of when these bills are being introduced, you'll notice an odd cluster internationally. Less charitably, they're coordinating / talking / being pushed by someone. More charitably, the "idea" is spreading.
It's a very odd idea to spread though. Age "verification" isn't something people are truly passionate about.
I suspect that, long-term, this is about surveillance. The powers that be would rather kill the golden genie that's general purpose compute than have teens and radical youth with compute.
This is going to get bad.
This is happening after several other states have introduced age verification laws that actually require age verification which typically involves uploading your identity documents to each website that is required to verify your age.
Apply Occam's razor. Which do you think is more likely?
1. These states that have a record of concern for privacy are now introducing an age verification law that relies entirely on the age that the administrator enters when configuring a user account in order to give a push down a slippery slope toward their nefarious secret goal...even though it would be a complete waste of time since as the examples from numerous other states shows it is not hard to pass a law that starts with making people upload their ID documents to any social media they want to use.
2. These states that have a record of concern for privacy are doing age verification in the way that many privacy advocates said it should be done when they were objecting to those bills in those other states that required uploading ID documents, because those states do not want to go down the slippery slop that those other state approaches risk going down. Namely, through parental controls on the devices that children use that put the parents in control and leave the government out of it (other than requiring that such controls be included with the OS).
https://nationalpress.org/topic/model-legislation-statehouse...
https://www.thegazette.com/opinion/guest-columnists/lawmaker...
I have looked into hiring lobbyists. I have seen how the sausage gets made.
Pop quiz, who do you think funds https://www.digitalchildhoodalliance.org/ ?
https://ifstudies.org/in-the-news/over-50-conservative-group...
:)
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/reddit-user-uncovers-beh...
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_b...
https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings
---
In general, this is an example of the Martha Mitchell effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Mitchell_effect
Real conspiracies exist. Openly. They're open secrets for those in the know.
You'd be surprised by how banal so much of this is. So many parties trying to get what they want. Doing a cost v benefit analysis and looking the other way.
How is this a counter-argument? I often read this, as if there's some international trusted organization of logical thinkers that has approved inclusion of slippery slope to a list of logical fallacies that must never be invoked in a conversation.
Every single time five years later it turns out that the slope actually was slippery.
I read it as a call to action: things only go down the slope if they're pushed that way, so now is the time to try and prevent said push.
Why do people imagine that I said words I didn’t say, get mad at those words, then reply as if I had said them? This happens all the time.
Humans are stupid and I sincerely believe that we, as a species, will fail because we are so prone to this kind of behavior. We really are a garbage race.
I didn’t. So why do you say “everyone”? Stop imagining people saying things that they didn’t actually say.
Every step we take down this “slope” is intentional and happens because there is more force pushing things down the slope than there is force resisting that push. There is no slippage, just people who refuse to act in their own best interests letting people who are acting in their own best interests do whatever they want.
Putting aside the real possibility that the ability to lobby against certain things is already actively under attack, it isn't speech alone that is being addressed, it's political and cultural momentum.
Would you call it a fallacy that making incremental rather than sudden movement in a specific direction makes it politically easier to accomplish?
We have already seen the federal government use facial recognition data to create an app that tells ICE goons who's legal. We should not tolerate the government forcing more data tracking and privacy violations just because you are not "sliding" today.
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for meFirst they came for the Communists
And I was like fuck those Commies
Because I was not a Communist
ditto
ditto
ditto
Then they came for me
And what the fuck bro this is totally not what I voted for
facebook and similar social media companies have a ton of ways to get peoples age and or to narrow it down.
> either way, in the end facebook will know that your child is 6-9.
The main point of the law is not about restricting facebook or similar operator in the laws lanuage from knowing user ages. Though the does say the age bracket can not be used for anything other than to implement the intent of the law.
> The power is then in facebook's hands. Facebook won't see a copy of their government issued ID, but what difference does that make when they've got their age, their selfies, and a list of every friend and family member.
May not matter much for facebook or similar, it matters a bunch for any random website/forum/service you might sign up for where the intent of the service is not about public posting that sort of personal infromation.
You're right about that. There are websites and services that won't have the kind of data needed to identify an individual using the age bracket data, and there are those who could do it anyway or could make some guesses about the ages of users even without having OS gathered age data sent to them. That said, I've seen how bad companies are at making those kinds of assumptions. For example, I've seen youtube's AI age guesser fail completely and mischaracterize viewers ages in both directions.
> Though the does say the age bracket can not be used for anything other than to implement the intent of the law.
I didn't see that anywhere in the text. It does have a section where it says that the age data collected can't be shared with third parties unless they're made a part of the implementation of age-check scheme. There's also this: "All information collected for the purpose of obtaining the verifiable parental consent required under this Section shall not be used for any purpose other than obtaining verifiable parental consent and shall be deleted immediately after an attempt to obtain verifiable parental consent" but it's entirely unclear if age bracket data is considered part of the data collected when "obtaining verifiable parental consent". I suspect that it isn't and this language is intended to protect the data of the adults who will be forced to prove they are the child's parents. In fact they don't define at all what "obtaining verifiable parental consent" should or shouldn't involve.
And cheat devices can be taken away as soon as the parent notices them.
It is also the wrong model. Instead of creating child-safe devices, just like there is a difference between toys and power tools, this regulation pretends that all devices are child safe and parents have to figure out which ones really aren't.
So trying to force a very very basic child safe mode makes sense.
And I don't think this regulation pretends all devices are child safe.
If you're trying to imply Meta is behind the "overton window shift", that's plainly not the case. The popular sentiment that smartphones and social networks are harming kids (thereby necessitating bans/verification) has been boiling over for a while now (eg. "The Anxious Generation, 2024", and the recent social media bans in Australia), and meta is just trying to get ahead of this with laws that favor them.
>What if there are vulnerabilities? You're inherently introducing more attack surface and providing more data than you would without these laws.
Probably less likely to cause vulnerabilities than web usb or web bluetooth , both of which gets some pushback here but nowhere as much an API that returns a number.
No, I'm saying the exact opposite: Meta is just one player in a campaign from intelligence agencies and other tech companies who want to normalize mandated prompts in your OS that collect information. Right now it's "just a DOB field bro" turns into "well... people can lie with the DOB field, let's just add a ID check step in that dialog" and build on it from there. Of course the pot has been boiling for a while and it's not just Meta looking for regulatory capture.
> Probably less likely to cause vulnerabilities
I don't care about likelihoods, this "feature" inherently introduces more risk and for something I don't even want on my computer. Even a small chance that this can be abused is unacceptable.
> because you fail to understand people really are worried about their children
No, I completely understand but that doesn't give anyone the right to start mandating that we give up our privacy in pursuit of that. That's sorta the joke with "save the children", it's meant to tug at your emotions and make you look like a bad person for not consenting to massive overreach.
You are right it is hard to use it for anything else though given the constraints.
> An operator that receives a signal in accordance with 20this Section shall use that signal to comply with this Section 21but shall not: 22 (1) request more information from an operating system 23 provider or a covered application store than the minimum 24 amount of information necessary to comply with this 25 Section;
You know the age bracket but nothing else and are not allowed to store more data on the topic to figure anything out. So you can not legally figure out someones age by keeping track of when they change age brackets.
> In fact they don't define at all what "obtaining verifiable parental consent" should or shouldn't involve.
It is the "Account holder". The user that set up the account and provide the age is considered the parent or legal guardian.
Black holes have less strength to destroy goodwill than posts like yours.
The tone of your post makes people dislike you intensely, makes them ignore you, and go about their business. But they’ll remember you and the repulsion they feel to posts like yours (which all of you saying this message seem to use) whenever they even think someone is saying something like you’re saying here.
You guys are your own worst enemies because you can’t see how fucking abrasive your posts are
:)
I just want my peers and future generations to live in a society without perpetual, personalized surveillance and gated generalized compute. I think everyone deserves freedom. I appreciate your input!
A) 18+ content is behind a pinky swear
B) 18+ content is behind a parental control (what this bill would do)
C) The internet can't have 18+ content anymore
D) Some other system? Please describe it.
You might think you can keep 16 year olds from looking at porn, if they want to. You can't. You have never been able to. All you can do is teach them that the law is stupid and pointless, and they should treat rules with contempt. But they'll still be able to look at porn.
What you can do is allow the government and private companies to track everyone, everywhere, all the time. And you can create more gatekeepers that hold personal identity data, misuse it, and leak it.
There are really two "core" issues at play:
1. The prudish nature of US society
2. The fact that we don't have data privacy laws and restrictions on digital surveillance by private companies
But we can't realize all the supposed glorious promise of all this tech bullcrap for education and free exploration of younger kids if we can't at least come pretty damn close to guaranteeing that an eight-year-old won't stumble on Rotten.com or hardcore porn if an adult isn't looking over their shoulder constantly. And whatever that solution is needs to work for parents who don't have the know-how or time to be sysadmins for their household.
> What you can do is allow the government and private companies to track everyone, everywhere, all the time. And you can create more gatekeepers that hold personal identity data, misuse it, and leak it.
This is already happening. A central setting would improve privacy over the way things are right now.
B) makes things worse in several ways, but primarily by stifling innovation. Only large incumbents will have no trouble paying for the measures required to ensure compliance.
There's also the cost of enforcement, which will likely have to be borne by the taxpayers. I don't think this is a good thing to spend money on.
C) cannot be enforced, and any good faith attempts will cost more than the damage from harm they're supposed to prevent.
> Only large incumbents will have no trouble paying for the measures required to ensure compliance.
Oh my gawwwwwd. People trot this out any time any regulation is mentioned. Option B is a single easily accessible age category value. It's simpler than the status quo.
I’d say nearly 50 years is precedent enough that government intervention is unnecessary.
Kids can turn apple juice into wine in their closet
they can drive their bicycle to a drug dealer
they can rub a butter knife against the sidewalk until it's pointy
Do we need govt AI cameras in kids closets and on their bicycles? How do we verify they're cycling somewhere safe? How do we make sure they're not getting shitfaced on bootleg hooch they made with bakers yeast and a latex glove?
Rather, companies would have to submit a formal proposal to get their website listed on Kid Internet. This inverts the responsibility. It's not my cost, or your cost, it's their cost now. If they want kids, they better prove it.
Then, you can trivially configure your router or any computer, with any operating system, to use the Kid Internet DNS. It's now completely operating system and device agnostic. It can be organizational wide with the flick of a switch. It can be global, if we want.
The proposal we're seeing here is bad, bad, bad. Not just for privacy reasons, but because it will not work. Not might, will. This will not work. For many reasons:
1. Most operating systems are not going to implement some stupid ass bullshit.
2. Most websites do not give a single fuck. Porn websites will not care. Trying to play wack-a-mole is ALWAYS a losing game, no exceptions.
3. This is trivial to bypass.
4. If it's not trivial to bypass, it still will not work, but it will now be the end of computing as we know it.
How do we decide what sites resolve as part of the Kid Internet? Is there some process where a site submits itself for approval to be part of the Adult Internet?
How do we stop the government from using this to stop access to parts of the internet it doesn't like?
This proposal looks even less workable
Things were way, way, way sketchier in like 2005 than they are now and those people turned out mostly fine.
And there's plenty of examples (J&J, oil titans) escaping financial consequences by other means.
Parents have always had the ability (though maybe not explicitly the right to) control their children’s environment for the purposes of teaching personal beliefs. So long as the belief itself wasn’t deemed harmful to the child, society would allow it to continue propagate that way. Racism unfortunately has never been seen as innately harmful. It’s looked down on, yes, but not to the point of making it illegal to enforce in family life.
Protect people's rights and don't get tricked in to giving them up just cause someone has a story about a child.
"Google's data harvesting operation became a load bearing piece of the Internet before the public understood digital privacy. And now we can't get rid of it."
The public has been conditioned to expect web services free at point of use. Legitimately it's hard to monetize things like YouTube without ads, and I get that. But turning our entire ecosystem of tech into a massive surveillance mini-state seems like an astonishingly shitty idea compared to just... finding a way to do advertising that DOESN'T involve 30 shadowy ad companies knowing your resting blood pressure. My otherwise creative and amazing industry seems utterly unwilling to confront this.
Edit: Like, I don't know, am I crazy for thinking that simply because we can target ads this granularity, that it simply must be that? I get that the ad-tech companies do not want to go back to blind-firing ads into the digital ether on the hope that they'll be seen, but that's also plus or minus the entirety of the history of advertising as an industry, with the last 20 or so years being a weird blip where you could show your add to INCREDIBLY specific demographics. And I wouldn't give a shit except the tech permitting those functions seems to be socially corrosive and is requiring even further erosion of already pretty porous user privacy to keep being legally tenable.
However it appears that it takes pretty disasterous consequences for us to be able to walk anything back.
It will just decay until it’s a short squeeze into oligarchy or worse (the corrupt will be forced into an arms race of accelerating corruption as opportunity becomes scarce). Then some other country who isn’t leaving it up to their society to do the right thing will be in charge. Until the same happens to them.
This is the value of religion historically, one of the few ways of coercing a population into doing the right thing for their own good. But every group can be spoiled or hijacked by a small handful of bad actors who are willing to do what others are not.
I'm sure there's plenty of software that can block sites entirely, but that's a lot less useful.
And how much should I trust the popular products on a scale of 1-10? An OS setting doesn't need much trust.
> And with regards to account creation specifically, what do you see as a workable solution that isn’t defeated by a “pinky swear”?
I'll copy a different reply: "It's set by the administrator of the computer, so a parent can set it for their child instead of hoping their child is honest to every single individual site. That's the difference between a parental control and a pinky swear."
The idea of something like this isn't to replace parents, it's to give them a simple centralized tool. The parent has the admin account.
What? How? What improvement are you seeing that I'm not?
Putting all our PII into one huge repository and then letting corps and govts access it sounds like a dystopian nightmare. This is why we don't like Palantir.
What happens if a bad guy steals that data and your identity? They go and look at CSAM using your ID? The police turn up at your door and cart you off to prison? Are you really going to be able to argue that it wasn't you? If so, what is the point of the system? If we're relying on IP addresses and other evidence for access (so you can fight these charges) can't we just use them in the first place?
This kind of bill is about the OS telling things whether you're: 0-12, 13-15, 16-17, 18+
No databases, no stealable identity, only the barest sliver of 2 bits of PII.
As for how it's an improvement, we already have sites asking to see your driver's license or pictures of your face for much worse age verification paradigms. If most of those changed to a local age setting, privacy would go up.
And this is the thin edge. Because in a few years there'll be a bill saying something like "too many children are lying about their age online. We need to verify their age" and then we're capturing IDs and storing them somewhere.
Yes, all routers currently have this built-in. Most software outside of routers does, too.
Will it be perfect? No. But, for example, this is how content filters work at schools and just about every workplace. And it seems to be good enough for them.
And, this will work better than that. Because the key point is we're not blacklisting anything. Nobody has to maintain a list of banned websites.
> How do we decide what sites resolve as part of the Kid Internet?
Companies or people send an application. The website is reviewed by a human, and they get approved or denied. If you don't care to target kids, which most people don't, you do nothing.
So I don't have to do anything, nor do you. But Meta does. Google does. I'm fine with that.
And, this "board" or whatever who hands out Kid-Friendly certificates can also take complaints. Why not?
> Is there some process where a site submits itself for approval to be part of the Adult Internet?
No, this it the beauty of it. If you want to be a part of adult internet, you do nothing. You already are.
Every website is implicitly adult internet, and it naturally completely subsumes kid internet. So, if you're just making a blog or whatever, nothing changes. In fact, you don't have to update anything from right now. It will all still work. Because Kid Internet is new thing, and it's whitelist only.
> How do we stop the government from using this to stop access to parts of the internet it doesn't like?
Related to above, adult internet is what we currently have. Nothing changes. You and I won't notice, and we can't notice. There will be the free-range internet, and then the subset of the internet approved for kids.
Maybe they are vastly more sophisticated now but when I was a kid it was a sport for us to break these filters - and pretty easy too
It would imo be much easier to effect a culture change so that not every kid needs or gets access to the internet or internet capable devices.
But those are not the best solutions, because of blacklisting. There are basically infinite porn websites. So, if you're going to try to block every porn website, you will lose, point blank.
So, even considering that, they do quite good. So if we just take the principle and invert it, it will be very good.
I mean, whitelisting vs blacklisting is why I am able to open my computer up to the internet via SSH. I'm not out here blocking 1 billion sites. No, I'm just allowing my laptop. And that gives me a lot of confidence, and it works.
And, I agree with culture change. But, culture change is very hard and I don't think it's something we can rely on.
This bill FORBIDS platforms from operating in the state unless they provide age verification.
Forbid an OS for operating in Illinois? Sounds insane to me. When I bring my Linux laptop from California, what happens?
I mean, how is the OS going to actually verify the age of the operator?
I see how this helps Facebook - if you lie to the OS, and the OS tells Facebook that you're over 18, then it's not Facebook's fault if they provide you an 18+ service.
I don't see how this helps anyone else.
Have you seen distrowatch? Are you going to go track down maintainers from every distro - many of whom live outside of the U.S. - and demand they implement this? The smaller ones would probably ignore you or tell you to get fucked, the larger ones with funding might decide to drag you into court.
And everything else is Adult Internet, and there are many DNS servers that serve Adult Internet.
You sign your household router up for Kid Internet, and it ignores Adult DNS servers, and only routes according to Kid DNS, is that right?
I can think of about 50 ways around this already, but let's assume we're not talking about anyone with any knowledge of how the internet works. So the entire household is signed up for Kid Internet, and there's no way an adult can view an Adult Internet site from this household, is that right?
That sounds an awful lot like this proposal, right? Well yes and no. No because this would actually work. Just letting the iPhone say "im a kid" does fuck all, because all the websites we're targeting with that will just ignore it.
And of course there are ways around this. Wanting a solution with no ways around it is dystopian. But is it a better solution than this? I think yes, it is.
If Little Timmy signs in then OS chooses the Kids DNS, but if Uncle Bob signs in then it chooses the Adult DNS?
As you say, I can see a few ways around this ;)
Again, this feels like it just moves the responsibility for everything onto the parents, without meaningfully giving them any control. If something screws up and Little Timmy gets to see some boobies, who gets blamed? Is it the OS provider, the hardware provider, or the parents? Did the parents actually configure this themselves? If so, who taught them how to do that? Or did they buy the machine pre-configured? So does the vendor take responsibility?
That's the difference between a parental control and a pinky swear.
The thing this creates is liability on parents, or schools, or anyone who provides computer access to children. And access to PII for bad guys (who can ask your computer for your date of birth in this proposal, right?)
That has little connection with this law.
And having no age settings at all is where you'll have the most brainwashing.
> The thing this creates is liability on parents, or schools, or anyone who provides computer access to children. And access to PII for bad guys (who can ask your computer for your date of birth in this proposal, right?)
They're already responsible for controlling that. I think they should have more tools to help.
> And access to PII for bad guys (who can ask your computer for your date of birth in this proposal, right?)
Did you look at the law(s)? They get one of four age ranges.
You are assuming the parent is the administrator of the computer.
Sure, or per-device, or per-network, or per-organization. It depends on how each particular person wants to implement it.
> As you say, I can see a few ways around this ;)
Yes, notably less than the current proposal. Which, again, will just straight-up not work.
> f something screws up and Little Timmy gets to see some boobies, who gets blamed?
I think this really hit the nail on the head. None of this is about solving problems or helping little Timmy. It's about accountability management.
If we implement the OS syscall, then Meta gets to point their grimey finger at someone else while they continue to fuel genocide in Myanmar.
> Did the parents actually configure this themselves? If so, who taught them how to do that? Or did they buy the machine pre-configured? So does the vendor take responsibility?
Well, um, both. You can configure your router, sure, or your Linux computer. But I imagine a new iPhone would just come with a checkbox you can check at account creation time. Again, very similar to this proposal, except it works.
No one says it has to be automatic. The OS could require the parent to manually update it.
> The OS could require the parent to manually update it.
At some point one of two things is required:
1) A promise that the user is a certain age
- Which puts us exactly where we are
2) Official identification is used to verify age
- Which creates a PII nightmare
[0] https://cybernews.com/privacy/persona-leak-exposes-global-su...
The difference here is it can be set by the parent on the OS and locked. Requiring sudo equivalent to change.
The way it is now, there's nothing stopping a (18-) user from logging out of a 'parental control enabled' account and making a new account without those controls on any service from Facebook to Steam. So the only effective option at that point is to entirely block that app or service.
This gives more power to parental control software. And yeah moves the responsibility from the service to the parents, which is what the services want cuz COPPA and other similar laws.
The OS has the birth date. Of probably 1-5 people.
> And this is the thin edge. Because in a few years there'll be a bill saying something like "too many children are lying about their age online. We need to verify their age" and then we're capturing IDs and storing them somewhere.
Those things are already happening. I see this kind of mechanism as significantly more of an alternative to privacy invasion than an enabler of privacy invasion.
The political establishment used to be able to control what you read, through control of the media. Then 1995 happened and everyone got access to anything they wanted. The establishment have wanted to put that genie back in the bottle ever since. This is part of that effort.
Yes, agreed.
And this type of proposal has no central database, so it removes the scary part.
(Unless you're talking about the local accounts on each computer storing dates of birth for a single household as a "central database" in which case you're being ridiculous and please stop doing that.)
And, of course, the response so far has included similar thoughts as the UK about banning VPNs [1]
[0] https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/media-releases-and-expert-comme...
[1] https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/no-approa...
But you do bring up another issue people aren't discussing. That the default setting is under 18.
So we protect the children from adults by... having no way to actually verify someone is a child?
The problem is less kids getting access to porn and more pedos getting accounts to spaces designed for children. Places like Club Penguin or very famously Roblox.
Here's the problem, you can't verify children. They don't have identification in the same way adults do. And worse, if we gave them that then it only makes them more vulnerable!
Then we have the whole problem of a global internet. VPN usage is already skyrocketing to circumvent these policies.
So the only real "solution" to this is global identification systems where essentially everyone is carrying around some dystopian FIDO key (definitely your phone) that has all your personal information on it and you sign every device you touch. Because everything from your fridge to your car is connected to the Internet.
But that's a cure worse than the poison. I mean what the fuck happens to IOT devices? Do we just not allow them on the internet? That they're assumed 18+? So all kids need to do is get a raspberry pi? All they need to do is install a VM on their phone? On their computer? You might think that kids won't do this but when I was in high school 20 years ago we all knew how to set up proxies. That information spread like wildfire and you bet it got easier as the smarter kids put in the legwork.
This is a losing battle. It's not a cat and mouse game it's While E Coyote vs Road Runner.
We're on HN FFS. If there's anywhere on the Internet that the average user is going to understand how impossible this is it should be here. We haven't even talked about hacking! And yes, teenage script kiddies do exist.
These policies don't protect kids, they endanger them. On top of that they endanger the rest of us. Seriously, just try to work it out. Try to create a solution and then actually try to defeat your solution. Don't be fucking Don Quixote.
Some things do that. This law doesn't have a default. If the admin sets all the user accounts to 18+, then the users are stuck with the setting being 18+.
> I mean what the fuck happens to IOT devices? Do we just not allow them on the internet?
Sounds pretty good to me.
But yeah they need a different handling of some manner. Maybe a "give no access to anything age-gated" category, though is that really different from under-13 in practice?
> So all kids need to do is get a raspberry pi? All they need to do is install a VM on their phone? On their computer? You might think that kids won't do this but when I was in high school 20 years ago we all knew how to set up proxies.
Just delaying unrestricted access to high school would already solve most of the problem.
> These policies don't protect kids, they endanger them. On top of that they endanger the rest of us.
They do not. Some totally different system could endanger people, but this one doesn't.
> Some things do that.
> Sounds pretty good to me
> They do not.
There is no evidence that these companies are actually handling that data properly. There is a lot of evidence that they are handling it improperly. That data being leaked does in fact, endanger kids.
I'm also unconvinced these things even achieve the goals they claim to be after. Which is keeping pedos away from kids. i.e. the reason I said you're missing the point. So either it is not achieving that goal, or lulling people into a false sense of security. Imagine if Roblox was saying "we don't allow adults on the platform" and so now all the tech illiterate parents and kids think their kids are exclusively talking to other kids. That's just a worse situation than now.
So what do these laws even solve?! I'm serious
The serious answer is in the next line.
> They definitely do. I explicitly stated how that happens too. [...] data being leaked
Again "Some totally different system could endanger people, but this one doesn't."
Any system that has companies handling personal data and able to leak it is not the system this kind of law talks about.
> false sense of security. Imagine if Roblox was saying
In that situation, Roblox is the problem, not the law.
> So what do these laws even solve?! I'm serious
If widely implemented, a parent can set a single toggle and then the accounts their kids make will all be appropriately restricted.
It wouldn't replace direct checks from the parent on what their kids are doing, but it would greatly reduce the risk profile. And making it simple and built-in means that non-tech-expert parents can set it.
>> Be a bit more serious now.
> The serious answer is in the next line.
> ...
> Again "Some totally different system could endanger people, but this one doesn't."
>> If you want me to take you seriously you have to respond with something better than "trust me bro".
> If widely implemented, a parent can set a single toggle and then the accounts their kids make will all be appropriately restricted.
Up here you wrote two options.
People keep telling you option 1 is the correct one, and that it's not actually useless.
You keep describing privacy problems that only exist with option 2.
This law is not option 2. Stop interpreting people as if they're badly defending option 2. They're not.
> HOW
They take an OS where only admins can change the age setting. They set the age on a non-admin account, which they give their child access to. The OS passes the age setting along to programs, which pass it along to services that need to restrict behavior.
This is not the same as how it works today. It's impossible for a parent to do this today. The best they can do is try to keep track of every account their child has and dig through the settings manually.