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Comments (311)

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  Slow_Hand
  If I’m not mistaken, Meta has been lobbying heavily for all of these age-verification bills lately.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.
• ottah
  This coordinated state level attack on the legislative process is crazy. These people can't seem to be bothered to do the basics of governing, but they always find time to do this cross-state nightmare fuel.
• tsoukase
  In a perfect world the right way to protect children from digital dangers is by proper parenting. In the real world the government steps in so that the next generation doesn't come up crippled. The solution is imperfect and might be a privacy nightmare but is better than nothing. There is a lot of bad parenting in preventing digital-related problems in children.
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  firtoz
  It's kinda convenient because every service needs to ask you for the age now because they can't serve under 13s in a lot of cases. Having it be a simple API would be a decent convenience, no?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.
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  glitchc
  The law as is written mainly targets social media platforms. For an OS to comply, all it needs to do is provide a field during account creation that records the user's date of birth as supplied by the user. There is no onus on the operator to confirm the veracity of this information, or even record it anywhere other than the local OS install itself. I think we're safe.
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  spullara
  this is completely insane. we need some kind of constitutional amendment to get rid of all this kind legislation forever.
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  strongpigeon
  People here seem very against this, but I don't really see it. This only require to have a form asking about your age and provide an API to read it, right?Surely I'm missing something? Is the backlash due to fear of a slippery slope?
• 0xbadcafebee
  > 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 Thank goodness kids can't lie about their age! > provide an operator who has requested a signal with respect to a particular user a signal that identifies the user's age by category Wait - if this is just to pass a signal to an operator ("social media site"), why can't the "operator" just ask for the age themselves?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.
• rnxrx
  There's something I've never seen a good answer to: why is this being mandated in the OS vs requiring it for apps - or classes of apps? There's plenty of parental controls already available for browsers - after verifying the user's age on startup, why not add a header field that the browser inserts along with AgentID (for example) and call it a day?
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  1970-01-01
  The "one weird trick" that all government hates? Stop forcing OSes to function with accounts. "User account" is an artifact of UNIX. You don't need an account to start a car, send and email, nor boot an operating system. I know it's hard to grasp, but it's true.
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  mikestorrent
  I don't like this whole thing, but compared to what I was fearing would happen, this idea is nowhere near as bad.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?
• zb3
  I didn't know a single company could just pay politicians state-by-state to pass a given law - in my country that would be a crime, but it seems in the US this is how the legislation process works :)
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  tracker1
  I wonder how this will mix wit federal laws saying you aren't allowed to track users under the age of 13yo? Will this then be forced as a browser API/header passed to every server/request?
• saityi
  Even if open source operating systems comply and add such a feature, what's to stop individual people from removing this and blocking the API requests before they install the OS? Or providing dummy responses? They're open source, after all.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?
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  TheChaplain
  Curious how OpenBSD or Haiku will comply.
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  clcaev
  How will public libraries comply?
• kevincloudsec
  three states passing the same template bill in three months isn't organic legislation
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  balozi
  What recourse would Illinois have against open-source operating systems? Anyone can roll their own Linux distro and share it with whomever they want.
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  bigbuppo
  If allowing children access to social media is dangerous, then why aren't they enforcing existing child abuse and child endangerment laws? Throw the parents in prison for failing to control their children.
• anon
  undefined
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  albertsw
  How old is root?
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  longislandguido
  The most progressive states doing exactly what their constituents elected them to do. I don't understand why everyone is so surprised.
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  jdprgm
  What the hell is going on. Why does it seem like largely out of nowhere there is suddenly such a dramatic push on age verification and internet censorship popping up literally all over the world at the same time.
• johnisgood
  What is the reasoning behind this exactly? Yeah, I know Meta is behind it, but surely they will throw it out if it is absord, right... right?
• thrill
  “Use of this computer is illegal in the state of Illinois - your friendly neighborhood SWAT team has been notified.”
• TutleCpt
  My future OS: https://agelesslinux.org
• fhn
  These people are just so clueless. All they will find is that everybody on the internet is an adult.
• pengaru
  i look forward to the police showing up and explaining to me how computing is a privilege, not a right
• wosined
  Karens making stupid bills. What is and what is not an OS?
• stackedinserter
  Too much for Dem's state.
• desireco42
  Why would California be dumb alone, let's show them we can be too... I don't know how else to read this.
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  SilverElfin
  Every single sponsor of this bill is a Democrat. Why is that? I would think they’re against the type of puritanical moralizing that is behind most age verification bills.
• hypeatei
  What are they going to do to enforce this? Take down open source projects that "operate" in Illinois because a user downloaded the software there? Absolute joke and everyone should treat it that way; advanced compliance here means implicit support for the surveillance state.
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  exabrial
  Why suddenly are all of the blue states doing this BS? What is going on and what control is this affording the government?
• johndecktwo
  Agelesslinux
• fredgrott
  here is the date I will put out....1 10 0000or even better1 10 -2000This will turn into most useless set of laws ever
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  anthk
  Read and share "Free Software, Free Society" now.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.
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  Mars008
  Somehow I'm not surprised. They voted for Biden in 2020 then for Kamala. Just like california with it's OS age verification.
• bitbytebane
  [dead]
• shablulman
  [dead]
• anon
  undefined