[HN Gopher] System76 on Age Verification Laws
___________________________________________________________________
System76 on Age Verification Laws
Author : LorenDB
Score : 792 points
Date : 2026-03-06 04:12 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.system76.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.system76.com)
| akersten wrote:
| Aaaaand to throw it all away at the end with "well when the
| rubber meets the road we'll comply anyway, thanks for inhaling my
| hot air." Take a damn stand and dare them to sue the hacker known
| as Linux or whatever.
| sahilkerkar wrote:
| I'd say that anger is better directed towards the legislators
| in charge of creating these absurd policies, not the folks at
| System76. It's not reasonable to expect a company to sacrifice
| its entire business on a moral battlefield.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Right, but in turn it is _absolutely reasonable and good_ for
| consumers to threaten a company with (legal) harm or
| extinction on a moral battlefield.
| bitwize wrote:
| Age attestation (edited) _is the law_ now in California.
| Noncompliance can mean stiff penalties. If you don 't like it,
| write your Congressman.
| rockskon wrote:
| *attestation, not verification
| gzread wrote:
| Which means an OS must have a parental controls API, and
| that's all if means.
| rockskon wrote:
| No it doesn't. It might lead to that someday, but it
| isn't that far yet.
| gzread wrote:
| That is literally what the California and Colorado laws
| say. Have you read them?
| rockskon wrote:
| Have you?
|
| To my knowledge they require the OS to have an API for
| websites and services to access a determination of the
| age range from.
|
| This is a far cry from the breadth of what a "parental
| control API" would entail even if it would be part of
| such a thing.
| gzread wrote:
| Indeed. It's basically bool AreParentalControlsEnabled();
|
| The way you enable them is by the root user typing a
| number less than 18.
| arjie wrote:
| tl;dr they don't like them and don't want them in place but will
| comply
| Tyrubias wrote:
| I don't like to shill for companies, but I'm glad System76 made a
| statement. The addendum does feel like their legal team made them
| add it though:
|
| > Some of these laws impose requirements on System76 and Linux
| distributions in general. The California law, and Colorado law
| modeled after it, were agreed in concert with major operating
| system providers. Should this method of age attestation become
| the standard, apps and websites will not assume liability when a
| signal is not provided and assume the lowest age bracket. Any
| Linux distribution that does not provide an age bracket signal
| will result in a nerfed internet for their users.
|
| > We are accustomed to adding operating system features to comply
| with laws. Accessibility features for ADA, and power efficiency
| settings for Energy Star regulations are two examples. We are a
| part of this world and we believe in the rule of law. We still
| hope these laws will be recognized for the folly they are and
| removed from the books or found unconstitutional.
|
| Anyways, it feels like all sides of the political spectrum are
| trying to strip away any semblance of anonymity or privacy online
| both in the US and abroad. No one should have to provide any
| personal details to use any general computing device. Otherwise,
| given the pervasive tracking done by corporations and the rise of
| constant surveillance outdoors, there will be nowhere for people
| to safely gather and express themselves freely and privately.
| panja wrote:
| Gotta find a way to profitability I suppose
| threatofrain wrote:
| > Anyways, it feels like all sides of the political spectrum
| are trying to strip away any semblance of anonymity or privacy
| online both in the US and abroad.
|
| It's not this or that political party, your neighbors simply
| don't share your values. Maybe you don't agree with their
| values either -- like to what degree we should be ceding
| privacy in favor of fighting child exploitation on the
| internet. Child protection arguments work because it is a
| compass to the true feelings of your neighbors.
| ls612 wrote:
| It is as Aristotle said, the average person is a natural born
| slave (to their emotions, and thus to the rhetoriticians most
| skilled in changing them). That is why democracy always fails
| in the end. Americans just had such good geographic and
| historic luck to delay this reckoning by a century or two.
|
| If you see politics through this lens then the 'democratic
| backsliding' that has been universal across the world for the
| past two decades is entirely unsurprising.
|
| Vae Victus.
| kij wrote:
| _Vae victo -- Vae victis_
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > your neighbors simply don't share your values
|
| The problem with this argument is that _everyone_ agrees with
| protecting children.
|
| "Think of the children" arguments are the legislator's
| fallacy: Something must be done, this is something, therefore
| we must do this.
|
| In reality there are alternative means to accomplish any
| given goal, and the debate is about what should be done,
| because no one benefits from using methods that cost more
| than they're worth.
|
| Well, almost no one. The opportunists who drape themselves in
| the cloak of "safety" when they want to have the government
| mandate the use of their services or use it as an excuse to
| monopolize markets or establish a chokepoint for surveillance
| and censorship do benefit from the machinations that allow
| them to screw the majority of the population. But the
| majority of the population doesn't.
| nicman23 wrote:
| nah let them die i tell you
| gzread wrote:
| There's fake protecting children and there's real
| protecting children. The Colorado and California parental
| controls API laws (not age verification laws, there is no
| age verification in these laws) are clearly "real
| protecting children" since all they do is mandate
| standardisation of a parental controls API on each OS.
|
| We kept saying parental controls are all that's really
| needed, these states said "ok then, do parental controls"
| and we're still complaining.
| nottorp wrote:
| Who's we? I personally taught my kid to lie about their
| age so they don't get silly censorship on the internet.
| gzread wrote:
| Good, if that's what you want for your kids, then don't
| set them up with a child restricted account. It's
| completely up to you.
| pluralmonad wrote:
| If there is such widespread demand for such mechanisms as
| some comments suggest, why did it take coercion through
| law making to bring it to market?
| hulitu wrote:
| > The California law, and Colorado law modeled after it, were
| agreed in concert with major operating system providers.
|
| So it is Microsoft, Google and Apple pushing for this.
| teekert wrote:
| Makes sense, these laws are great for the establishment.
| Difficult to adhere to for newcomers or smaller parties.
| Compliance to this madness eats away a much larger proportion
| of thin profits.
| Thorrez wrote:
| That quote doesn't imply that those companies are pushing for
| it. The lawmakers might be pushing for it, and the companies
| might be ambivalent to whether it's done or not but said "if
| you're going to do this, then it should be worded this way."
|
| Disclosure: I work at Google, but not on anything related to
| this.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| > No one should have to provide any personal details to use any
| general computing device
|
| I agree. I also agree with S76 that some laws regarding how an
| operating system intended for wide use should function are
| acceptable. How would you react to this law if the requirement
| was only that the operating system had to ask the user what age
| bracket it should report to sites? You get to pick it, it isn't
| mandatory that it be checked, and it doesn't need to be a date,
| just the bucket. Is that still too onerous?
|
| I ask because I feel like if we don't do _something_ , the
| trajectory is that ~every website and app is going to either
| voluntarily or compulsorily do face scans, AI behavior
| analysis, and ID checks for their users, and I really don't
| want to live in that world.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| What makes you think this is going to stave off that world?
| More likely you'll get both, since I doubt this API is going
| to satisfy other states' age verification requirements.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| Sometimes a token effort or theater is sufficient to quell
| public sentiment. Like the oft-ignored and ineffective
| speed limits on roads, or the security theater at airports.
| That only handles the sentiment angle though. You still
| have to do something about would-be autocrats who want
| censorship and surveillance tools, and the oligarchs who
| want tracking and targeting data.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _if we don 't do something, the trajectory is that ~every
| website and app is going to either voluntarily or
| compulsorily do face scans, AI behavior analysis, and ID
| checks for their users_
|
| You're going to get that, anyway. Platforms want to sell
| their userbases as real monetizable humans. Governments want
| to know who says and reads what online. AI companies want
| your face to train their systems they sell to the government,
| and they want to the be the gatekeepers that rank internet
| content for age appropriateness and use that content as free
| training material.
|
| Age verification across platforms is _already_ implemented as
| AI face and ID scans. This is where we 're already at.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| I am well aware of the alignment of interests and the
| dismal state of things. I'm of the opinion that the only
| way to divert is radical legal action that shatters the
| defense industry and social media titans, and it sure as
| hell won't be Gavin Newsom who delivers it.
| gzread wrote:
| And laws like this California one actually make it more
| illegal.
| thayne wrote:
| > How would you react to this law if the requirement was only
| that the operating system had to ask the user what age
| bracket it should report to sites? You get to pick it, it
| isn't mandatory that it be checked, and it doesn't need to be
| a date, just the bucket. Is that still too onerous?
|
| Isn't that what the CA law is?
| db48x wrote:
| Almost. Technically an adult must create an account for any
| non-adult who wants to use the computer, and configure it
| with the appropriate age category.
|
| Honestly it's the dumbest thing ever. Best just not to play
| that game.
| ohhnoodont wrote:
| How is that dumb? It seems reasonable and pragmatic. If
| the current status quo is ID uploads and face scans, this
| seems like the better approach. It shifts the
| responsibility back to parents. All adult service
| operators have to do is filter requests with the underage
| HTTP header set.
| db48x wrote:
| How about the part where children cannot legally create
| accounts of their own, on computers that they own? I did
| that by the time I was 10.
|
| > It shifts the responsibility back to parents.
|
| Without these stupid laws parents already _have_ that
| responsibility.
| ohhnoodont wrote:
| > How about the part where children cannot legally create
| accounts of their own, on computers that they own?
|
| Where is that actually stated in any law being discussed?
| If a parent gives a child a device with admin access,
| that's their choice to do so. But it also makes sense
| that we, the minds behind all of this technology, also
| provide parents with the most basic of tools to restrict
| a child's access online and hold accountable companies
| that knowingly serve adult content to children. That's
| all the CA law does AFAIK.
|
| Sure, my generation was raised on 4chan. But I can
| understand why parents today may want the tools to limit
| that.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| Unfortunately no. There's a requirement that the OS
| disregard the user-indicated age if it has reason to think
| they're lying. Presumably this creates the obligation to
| monitor the user for such indicators.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I assume this is less "if they're lying" and more "if
| you've independently collected this data". It doesn't
| require you to challenge the user-indicated age, it
| requires you to use your own signal before that of the
| OS.
|
| As a silly example, tax software probably has your full
| birthday, including year, which is more precise. Many
| social networks collected this data, as did a lot of
| major tech companies that implemented parental controls
| already.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The main problem with the "report your age to the website"
| proposals is that they're backwards. You shouldn't be leaking
| your age to the service.
|
| Instead, the service should be telling your device the nature
| of the content. Then, if the content is for adults and you're
| not one, your parents can configure your device not to
| display it.
| ray_v wrote:
| It may often times be trickier than that - content often
| mixed of course. My 10 y/o hit me with a request yesterday
| to play Among Us where the age verification system wanted
| my full name, address, email, AND the last 4 digits of my
| SSN. I refused.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > It may often times be trickier than that - content
| often mixed of course.
|
| So put the content tag at the granularity of the content.
| valleyer wrote:
| Honestly, <span content-filter-level="adult">fuck</span>
| that.
| onli wrote:
| Awesome. Now you have a system where every blog entry,
| every Facebook post needs a lawyer consultation.
|
| Around 20 years ago, Germany actually made a law that
| would have enforced such a system. I still have a chart
| in my blog that explained it, https://www.onli-
| blogging.de/1026/JMStV-kurz-erklaert.html. Content for
| people over 16 would have to be marked accordingly or be
| put offline before 22:00, plus, if your site has a
| commercial character - which according to german courts
| is every single one in existence - you would need to hire
| a someone responsible for protecting teenagers and
| children (Jugenschutzbeauftragten).
|
| Result: It was seen as a big censor machine and I saw
| many sites and blogs shut down. You maybe can make that
| law partly responsible for how far behind german internet
| enterprises still are. Only a particular kind of
| bureaucrat wants to make business in an environment that
| makes laws such as this.
|
| Later the law wasn't actually followed. Only state media
| still has a system that blocks films for adults
| (=basically every action movie) from being accessed
| without age verification if not past 22:00.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Now you have a system where every blog entry, every
| Facebook post needs a lawyer consultation.
|
| You have that with any form of any of these things.
| They're almost certainly going to be set up so that you
| get in trouble for claiming that adult content isn't but
| not for having non-adult content behind the adult content
| tag.
|
| Then you would be able to avoid legal questions by
| labeling your whole site as adult content, with the
| obvious drawback that then your whole site is labeled as
| adult content even though most of it isn't.
|
| But using ID requirements instead doesn't get you out of
| that. You'd still need to either identify which content
| requires someone to provide an ID before they can view
| it, or ID everyone.
|
| That's an argument for not doing _any_ of these things,
| but not an argument for having ID requirements instead of
| content tags.
| onli wrote:
| Funnily enough, marking content that's harmless as only
| for adults was also punishable, though that might have
| been in context of a different law. That would be
| censorship, blocking people under 18 from accessing legal
| content, was the reasoning. Welcome to German
| bureaucracy.
|
| But you are right. It's an argument that the "just mark
| content accordingly" is also not a better solution, not
| that ID requirements are in any way better. The only
| solution is not to enable this censorship infrastructure,
| because no matter which way it's done, it will always
| function as one.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Funnily enough, marking content that's harmless as only
| for adults was also punishable, though that might have
| been in context of a different law. That would be
| censorship, blocking people under 18 from accessing legal
| content, was the reasoning. Welcome to German
| bureaucracy.
|
| That's how you get the thing where instead of using
| different equipment to process the food with and without
| sesame seeds, they just put sesame seeds in everything on
| purpose so they can accurately label them as containing
| sesame seeds.
| LinXitoW wrote:
| An internet where every wikipedia article has like a
| picture of boobs as fine print would be very funny.
| gzread wrote:
| I understand they can't say "contains sesame seeds" if it
| doesn't, but why can't they say "processed on equipment
| that also processes sesame seeds" like some packages do?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Some jurisdictions tried to ban them from saying maybe
| which is when they started putting them in on purpose so
| they could say definitely.
| close04 wrote:
| > Awesome. Now you have a system where every blog entry,
| every Facebook post needs a lawyer consultation.
|
| The alternative is that "just to be safe" you'll mark
| your entire site as needing age (identity, stool sample,
| whatever) verification. A single piece of sensitive
| content sets the requirements for the entire site.
| like_any_other wrote:
| > plus, if your site has a commercial character - which
| according to german courts is every single one in
| existence - you would need to hire a someone responsible
| for protecting teenagers and children
| (Jugenschutzbeauftragten).
|
| That is pretty much what the UK Online Safety Act
| requires:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023
|
| Many small forums had to simply shut down, as was widely
| reported on HN at the time.
| cwillu wrote:
| That's an argument for "let the service inform the parent
| and let the parent decide", not against it.
| alexfoo wrote:
| There's a good chance that they're never going to verify
| any of the information you give them, in which case it's
| another download for Mr M Mouse of 1375 E Buena Vista Dr,
| 32830, with a SSN that ends in 1234.
| b112 wrote:
| Giving fake info feeds the machine. It means you still
| consume, and a bad actor profits.
| thbb123 wrote:
| I disagree. Giving fake info adds noise to the mechanism,
| makes it useless. Ultimately I'm inclined to believe that
| privacy through noise generation is a solution.
|
| If I ever find some idle time, I'd like to make an agent
| that surfs the web under my identity and several fake
| ones, but randomly according to several fake personality
| traits I program. Then, after some testing and analysis
| of the generated patterns of crawl, release it as
| freeware to allow anyone to participate in the
| obfuscation of individuals' behaviors.
| noam_k wrote:
| You might want to take a look at differential privacy. It
| takes an unintuitive amount of noise to make the system
| useless.
|
| You also need to account for how "easy" it is to de-
| anonymize a profile.
|
| (Sorry I don't have links to sources handy.)
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > You might want to take a look at differential privacy
|
| Differential privacy is just a bait to make surveillance
| more socially acceptable and to have arguments to silence
| critics ("no need to worry about the dangers - we have
| differential privacy"). :-(
| fsflover wrote:
| Sounds a bit like AdNauseam Firefox extension.
| thbb123 wrote:
| In my vision, it's the opposite of ad blocker, it's
| something that generates non existent traffic and views
| beyond what I would have done.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| I believe that is what adnauseum does. Fake clicking ads
| and things like that
| autoexec wrote:
| And just like AdNauseam using it would be dangerous and
| pointless.
| b112 wrote:
| _Giving fake info adds noise to the mechanism_
|
| Yes, but in this case which we're discussing:
|
| _It may often times be trickier than that - content
| often mixed of course. My 10 y /o hit me with a request
| yesterday to play Among Us where the age verification
| system wanted my full name, address, email, AND the last
| 4 digits of my SSN. I refused._
|
| The bad actor still gets ROI, eg 'paid', for another bit
| of user data.
|
| Making the overall system less useful is good. However,
| not allowing a company to profit, and giving fake info
| still allows for that, is paramount. EG, even with fake
| info, many metrics on a phone are still gamed and
| profitable.
|
| That's why they're collected, after all. For profit.
| autoexec wrote:
| > I disagree. Giving fake info adds noise to the
| mechanism, makes it useless.
|
| There's no such thing as useless info. Companies will
| sell it, buy it, and act on it regardless of how true it
| is. Nobody cares if the data is accurate. Nobody is
| checking to see if it is. Filling your dossier with false
| information about yourself won't stop companies from
| using that data. It can still cost you a job. It can
| still be used as justification to increase what companies
| charge you. It can still influence which policies they
| apply to you or what services they offer/deny you. It can
| still get you arrested or investigated by police. It can
| still get you targeted by scammers or extremists.
|
| Any and all of the data you give them will eventually be
| used against you somehow, no matter how false or
| misleading it is. Stuffing your dossier with more data
| does nothing but hand them more ammo to hit you with.
| acomjean wrote:
| Last century my dad would give our pets names out with
| our real phone #(oddly or by mistake). The pets did start
| getting phone calls.
|
| If the info becomes bad, it becomes much less useful and
| valuable.
|
| I'm in the us and we o need some rights to privacy.
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| I made the mistake of providing my date of birth as being
| 1/1/1900 on multiple websites, and have been receiving
| marketing material from the AARP in the mail for many
| years.
| just6979 wrote:
| That's not a mistake. You'd be getting spam marketing
| anyway, why not make sure it's something obvious? I
| always pick the oldest possible age when asked, just to
| mess with their data, because they shouldn't fucking
| care.
|
| Don't limit, notify.
|
| Has worked for TV (and movies to an extent, though
| theaters do limit somewhat, must have been some
| litigation around that...) pretty much forever.
| roryirvine wrote:
| My "birthdate" is the same as yours. It was fine when I
| started using it in the late 90s, but has become
| increasingly awkward over the past few years - lots of
| sites seem to assume a maximum age of 120.
|
| If I ever turn uBO off, the ads I get are mostly for
| funeral plans or incontinence products, with a smattering
| of "126 year old mom lost 30 lbs of belly fat - click to
| see how!" (yeah, decomposition's a bitch...)
| palmotea wrote:
| > If I ever turn uBO off, the ads I get are mostly for
| funeral plans or incontinence products, with a smattering
| of "126 year old mom lost 30 lbs of belly fat - click to
| see how!" (yeah, decomposition's a bitch...)
|
| And, for the record, it's way better to get ads for BS
| like that than stuff that may actually influence you.
| iso1631 wrote:
| It feels to me that parental controls are seen as another
| profit centre. If we want to put laws in place, we should
| be putting in laws to empower parents.
| VLM wrote:
| I would assume its fake and an attempt at identify theft
| at some level of the system. Is their PC infected at the
| OS level or just a fraudulent browser extension or
| something more like a popup ad masquerading as a system
| dialogue? A less trusting person would assume any request
| made by a computer is totally non-fraudulent and would
| gladly submit any requested private information.
|
| "Dad, I can't do my math homework, a pop up says you need
| to provide a copy of your bank statement, your mom's
| maiden name, and a copy of your birth certificate, SS
| card, and drivers license, and can you hurry up Dad, my
| homework is due tomorrow morning." And people will fall
| for this once they get used to the system being absurd
| enough.
|
| The fraud machine must be kept fed...
| just6979 wrote:
| If the content is mixed, it makes even more sense to have
| the content supply the age data. This is how it has
| worked with broadcast media pretty much forever. TV shows
| and movies gain their ratings based on the worst case on
| display. IE: a show doesn't have to consist entirely of
| swearing to gain a "language" warning, it just has to
| have some. Definitively mixed content.
|
| I think your example exemplifies this. Among Us is not
| inherently adult-only, but since it's multiplayer, they
| don't control what other player say and do. Definitively
| mixed content. They should not be asking you to verify,
| they should be telling you and letting you decide if your
| kid can play.
|
| I kinda can't beleive their lawyers decided to go that
| route and assume all the PII responsibility that comes
| with collecting that data, instead of just making the
| "it's online and there might be d-bags on our servers"
| rating much more obvious and explicit.
| autoexec wrote:
| They can profit off of the personal data they collect, so
| it's no surprise they'd take any opportunity and use any
| available excuse to collect more of it. From their
| perspective there is effectively zero responsibility to
| secure that data properly and handle it safely because
| there are effectively zero consequences for companies
| when they fail to.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| Heh that's already what parental controls do (granted, the
| website don't report the content, and it's based on
| blacklists), but they are trivial to bypass. Even the
| article mention it:
|
| > The child can install a virtual machine, create an
| account on the virtual machine and set the age to 18 or
| over
|
| It's precisely how I worked around the parental control my
| parents put on my computer when I was ~12. Get Virtualbox,
| get a Kubuntu ISO, and voila! The funniest is, I did not
| want to access adult content, but the software had
| thepiratebay on its blacklist, which I _did_ want.
|
| In the end, I proudly showed them (look ma!), and they
| promptly removed the control from the computer, as you
| can't fight a motivated kid.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > but they are trivial to bypass.
|
| That's assuming the parental controls allow the kid to
| create a virtual machine. And then that the kid knows how
| to create a virtual machine, which is already at the
| level of difficulty of getting the high school senior who
| is already 18 to loan you their ID.
|
| None of this stuff is ever going to be Fort Knox. Locks
| are for keeping honest people honest.
| Ntrails wrote:
| If the kid knows how to ask an llm, they can do whatever
| technical hacks are required
| autoexec wrote:
| Would that make the LLM (or the company who made it)
| liable under the DMCA for showing someone how to work
| around a digital lock that controls access to a
| copyrighted work.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| We could argue on the technical feasability all day, as
| non-kvm qemu does not need any special permission to run
| a VM (albeit dog slow).
|
| I honestly don't really agree on the difficulty, as if
| this becomes a commonplace way to bypass such laws, you
| can expect tiktok to be full of videos about how to do
| it. People will provide already-installed VMs in a
| turnkey solution. It's not unlike how generations of kids
| playing minecraft learnt how to port forward and how to
| insatll VPNs for non-alleged-privacy reasons: something
| that was considered out of a kid's reach became a
| commodity.
|
| > None of this stuff is ever going to be Fort Knox. Locks
| are for keeping honest people honest.
|
| On that we agree, and it makes me sad. The gap between
| computer literate and illiterate will only widen a time
| passes. Non motivated kids will learn less, and motivated
| ones will get a kickstart by going around the locks.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > We could argue on the technical feasability all day, as
| non-kvm qemu does not need any special permission to run
| a VM (albeit dog slow).
|
| That's assuming the permission is for "use of kernel-mode
| hardware virtualization" rather than "installation of
| virtualization apps".
|
| Notice that if the kid can run arbitrary code then any of
| this was already a moot point because then they can
| already access websites in other countries that don't
| enforce any of this stuff.
| stavros wrote:
| It might be Fort Knox just fine at some point, when
| computers will require a cryptographically signed
| government certificate that you're over 18, and you can't
| use the computer until you provide it.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Even in that case the large majority of the population
| would then have that certificate and the motivated minors
| would just beg, borrow or steal one.
| voakbasda wrote:
| No one has ever faked a government ID?
| stavros wrote:
| Nope, not a zero-knowledge proof with cryptographic
| signatures.
| b112 wrote:
| _And then that the kid knows how to create a virtual
| machine_
|
| It's just a bunch of clicks, even under linux.
|
| Just install virtualbox. It literally walks you through a
| VM creation.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > It's just a bunch of clicks
|
| I promise there are people who can't figure out how to do
| it.
|
| And again, the point of the lock on the door where you
| keep the porn is not to be robustly impenetrable to entry
| by a motivated 16 year old with a sledgehammer, it's only
| to make it obvious that they're not intended to go in
| there.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| Depends on how much people want the hidden content.
| People in Eastern Europe, regular people, noch tech wiz
| kids, know how to use torrent and know about seed ratios
| etc. At least it was so ca 5 years ago. People can learn
| when the thing matters to them.
|
| Regular people want to get things done, the tinkering is
| not a goal for them in itself and they gravitate to
| simple and convenient ways of achieving things, and don't
| care about abstract principles like open source or tech
| advantages or what they see as tinfoil hat stuff. But if
| they want to see their favorite TV series or movie, they
| will jump through hoops. Similarly for this case.
| ycombinator_acc wrote:
| There's an ocean of difference between your device
| changing behavior based on a flag set by individual sites
| and your device using a blacklist set by some list
| maintainer - the main difference being that the latter is
| utterly useless due to being an example of badness
| enumeration.
| muyuu wrote:
| a kid who can install Linux, or set up an ssh tunnel to a
| seedbox, is a kid who doesn't need to be told by the
| government what he or she should be watching
|
| that is the job of parents/guardians
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I'd actually argue that's exactly the kid who the
| government is there to tell them what they shouldn't be
| watching. The government is never really there to
| restrict the incompetent, they are pretty good at doing
| that themselves.
| muyuu wrote:
| it's the kid they are up against to, but not the kid who
| "needs" it
| idle_zealot wrote:
| > Instead, the service should be telling your device the
| nature of the content. Then, if the content is for adults
| and you're not one, your parents can configure your device
| not to display it.
|
| That makes sense for purely offline media playback, but how
| could that work for a game or application or website? Ship
| several versions of the app for the different brackets and
| let the OS choose which to run? Then specifically design
| your telemetry to avoid logging which version is running?
|
| You'd also not be reporting your age, you'd be sending a
| "please treat me like an adult" or "please treat me like a
| child" flag. That's hardly PII. More like a dark/light mode
| preference, or your language settings (which your browser
| does send).
| lavela wrote:
| The shifts between flags will correlate with date of
| birth though, or do you think someone turning 16 or 18
| will wait a year or two to switch to more adult content
| for privacy? Also I'd guess the tech industry would push
| for more specific age buckets.
|
| Games already have PG ratings and similar in different
| countries, I don't see the issue there. Web content could
| set a age appropriateness header and let browsers deal
| with it, either for specific content or for the whole
| website if it relies on e.g. addictive mechanics.
|
| Applications is a wide field, but I'd be interested in
| specific examples where you think it wouldn't work.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| > Applications is a wide field, but I'd be interested in
| specific examples where you think it wouldn't work.
|
| Sure. Take a game with voice chat. Child mode disables
| voice chat. How does the game, which presumably uses a
| load of telemetry, avoid incidentally leaking which users
| are children via the lack of voice telemetry data coming
| from the client? It's probably possible, but the fact is
| we're talking about third party code running on a
| computer, and the computer running different code paths
| based on some value. The third party code _knows that
| value_ , and if it has internet access can exfiltrate it.
| In that sense, if there's an internet connection, there's
| not a meaningful difference between "the OS tells the
| service/app your age rating preference" and "the OS
| changes what it displays based on your age rating
| preference."
|
| Though while I'm throwing out fantasy policies we could
| solve this by banning pervasive surveillance outright.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You're assuming that everything not mandatory is
| prohibited. If the device is required to provide every
| service with the flag, every service gets the flag, even
| if it contains no adult content or adult content that the
| user agent could display or not without the service
| having a way to know about it.
|
| The service would then have to deduce the information
| instead of getting it explicitly and may be able to do
| that some of the time instead of all of the time, which
| is an improvement. And then people can work on anti-
| fingerprinting technologies with the premise that if they
| succeed it actually does something, instead of the
| information being required by law to leak to the service.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > That makes sense for purely offline media playback, but
| how could that work for a game or application or website?
| Ship several versions of the app for the different
| brackets and let the OS choose which to run?
|
| Suppose you had an ID requirement instead. Are you going
| to make two different versions of your game or website,
| one for people who show ID and another for people who
| don't? If so, do the same thing. If not, then you have
| one version and it's either for adults only or it isn't.
|
| > You'd also not be reporting your age, you'd be sending
| a "please treat me like an adult" or "please treat me
| like a child" flag.
|
| Except that you essentially are reporting your age,
| because when you turn 18 the flag changes, which is a
| pretty strong signal that you just turned 18 and once
| they deduce your age they can calculate it going forward
| indefinitely.
|
| This is even worse if it's an automated system because
| then the flag changes _exactly_ when you turn 18, down to
| the day, which _by itself_ is ~14 bits of entropy towards
| uniquely identifying you and in a city of a 100,000
| people they only need ~17 bits in total.
| gzread wrote:
| The alternative wasn't an ID requirement, the alternative
| was the client/OS sending the flag to the server/app.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The fear is that once you have devices sending services a
| flag, some asshats are going to start demanding that it
| be verified by the government.
|
| But how does that do anything for you either way? Either
| you have two different versions based on whether the flag
| is present or not or you have one version and if it's
| adults only then you have to send the flag indicating
| you're an adult in order to use it.
| gzread wrote:
| Browsers send a language flag to servers but I don't see
| anyone asking for a certification that you actually know
| that language.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| I don't see anyone asking that browsers be legislatively
| required to send a language tag without certification
| either.
| l72 wrote:
| Games already have ratings. Every app submitted to the
| App Store or Google Play is rated.
|
| 90% of an R rated movie might be ok for a 12 year old but
| those one or violent or sex scenes makes it R. Should we
| be rating every scene in movies?
|
| Give parents general guidance and let them define the
| controls.
| panzi wrote:
| Exactly. Except this way you can't build a complete
| biometric database if all citizen! Since it's so obvious
| how to do it correctly without creating such a database one
| could make the assumption the creation of such a database
| is the actual goal.
| IndySun wrote:
| Who decides the 'nature' of the content? Who decides what
| constitutes age appropriate?
|
| These questions of liberty are as old as the hills. And the
| keepers of the internet and virtually every single
| government past and present have repeatedly and endlessly
| shown themselves to be lying, conniving, self interested
| parties. When will 'we' ever learn?
|
| *who decides who 'we' are.
| gzread wrote:
| It's necessary if the page contains mixed content. Under
| your proposal, Google Search would need a separate search
| page that shows adult content, and that would be even worse
| for privacy - logs would show whether you accessed the
| adult search page - and adult sites (not only porn) would
| try quite hard to not be relegated to that second, less
| discoverable, search page.
| _heimdall wrote:
| What you're describing with Google Search already exists,
| search engines already offer their own search settings
| including "safe search" or whatever they call it which
| filters out adult images.
|
| Services can absolutely decide to provide their own
| content settings. It doesn't require a universal setting
| or OS requirements, and it doesn't require providing PII
| to every website or telling a central authority every
| site you visit.
| avhception wrote:
| I haven't even thought of this, I'm kinda surprised! This
| should be how it's done!
| glitchc wrote:
| Windows already allows this. Content can be set based on
| age in Microsoft Family. Set an age on a user's account and
| MS curates the store experience, regardless of which
| computer the user is logged into.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| >Then, if the content is for adults and you're not one,
| your parents can configure your device not to display it.
|
| That would require people to be a responsible adult and
| actively parent their kids.
|
| It's ironic, because people in this country identify with
| how hard they grind at work, but refuse to put a fraction
| of that effort into being an involved parent.
|
| It's easier to just let the government ruin everyone else's
| good time online.
|
| In return, the parents:
|
| 1. Get the illusion that their kids are safer (they aren't)
|
| 2. Get a clear conscience, and feel better mentally
| equipped to run on their corporate hamster wheel
| sophrosyne42 wrote:
| The push to do biometric data collection is entirely the
| result of entrepreneurs trying to get ahead before laws are
| passed. Their behavior is the result of the push to restrict
| the open internet. If we don't do anything, they will stop.
| You don't always have to do "something". Sometimes the harm
| comes by trying to do something.
| flir wrote:
| > Is that still too onerous?
|
| Isn't it just pointless?
|
| I'm getting upset by face scan creep too. I do not like it.
| No sir. But mandating a _self-reporting_ mechanism feels
| about as useful as DNT cookies, or those "are you 18?
| yes/no" gates on beer sites.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| It'd be more useful than DNT because there would be legal
| teeth on the side of the sender and receiver of the signal.
| It'd be more useful than the yes/no gates because an
| operating system could choose to allow the creation of
| child accounts.
|
| I.e. it would be a standardization of parental controls
| with added responsibility on sites/apps to self-determine
| if they should be blocked or limit functionality, rather
| than relying on big white/blacklists. Basically an
| infrastructure upgrade, rather than relying on a patchwork
| of competing private solutions to parental controls and age
| checks. The hope is also that a system like this would
| remove concerned parents from the list of supporters for
| pervasive mass surveillance and age scans. If they feel
| like you'd need to be a moron to miss the "This is a child
| device" button while setting up their kid's phone and
| laptop, and it's broadly understood that just pressing that
| button locks down what the device can access pretty
| effectively, that puts and damper on the FUD surrounding
| their child's internet usage.
| latentsea wrote:
| > I agree. I also agree with S76 that some laws regarding how
| an operating system intended for wide use should function are
| acceptable. How would you react to this law if the
| requirement was only that the operating system had to ask the
| user what age bracket it should report to sites? You get to
| pick it, it isn't mandatory that it be checked, and it
| doesn't need to be a date, just the bucket. Is that still too
| onerous?
|
| What's the point in doing any of this if it doesn't result in
| materially better outcomes?
| idle_zealot wrote:
| The point is that I think it's one of a few things that if
| done together could result in better outcomes. First, it
| standardizes parental controls, which ought to be so easy
| to use that failure to do so is nearly always a proactive
| decision on the part of the guardian. It doesn't need to be
| perfect, just reduce friction for parents and increase
| friction for kids accessing the adult internet.
|
| Second, it would signal to worried parents and busybodies
| that something has been done to deal with the danger that
| unmediated internet access might pose to minors. I don't
| think that it's a big issue, but a lot of energy has gone
| into convincing a lot of people that it is.
|
| The other part of achieving a good outcome would be to
| disempower those in the political and private sphere who
| benefit from a paranoid and censorious public and have
| worked to foment this panic. That's the much harder part,
| but it's not really the one being discussed here. I'm
| pitching the low-intrusiveness version to gauge sentiment
| here for that easier part of the path.
| latentsea wrote:
| Your last point is the only one I partially agree with.
| The rest... will make no practical difference to what is
| going on in the world today.
|
| I genuinely think the only two solutions to this problem
| that are workable are "zero privacy, zero freedom" or
| "fuck the children, we don't care".
|
| Now, to be fair... there is a middle-ground that is
| neither of those options that I believe would be much
| more effective and allow us to retain our freedom and
| privacy and keep kids a lot safer. It's called education.
| But... no one will go for it, because I think for it to
| truly be effective you'd have to go as far as showing
| very young kids all the darkness that's out there and lay
| it out in paintstaking detail exactly how it works and
| deeply drill it into them. Ain't a snowballs chance in
| hell anyone would go for that, BUT... would it work? I'd
| bet you bottom dollar it would. The current extent of
| this education in public schools is a half hour visit
| from a police offer to the classroom and handing out a
| sheet to the kids and giving a 'good touch' / 'bad touch'
| talk. What's needed is a full length university level
| course on the whole topic from end to end.
|
| If you're in an adversarial relationship and need to
| defend yourself the best thing you can do is "know your
| enemy". But no... "they're too young to learn about that
| stuff, we need to shield them from it - think of the
| children!" is the reasoning people throw back at you when
| you suggest it. It hands down has to be the number one
| thing that could actually move the dial significantly,
| and it's just completely unpalatable to the majority of
| the populace.
| hellojesus wrote:
| > First, it standardizes parental controls, which ought
| to be so easy to use that failure to do so is nearly
| always a proactive decision on the part of the guardian.
|
| If this mattered to the market, don't you think a company
| would have implemented it or would have been built to
| fill the need?
| idle_zealot wrote:
| 1. No, I don't think that the market does what people
| want. That's not the primary reward signal.
|
| 2. I'm making an _ought_ statement of values, like "we
| ought not pollute rivers." I don't really care what any
| system of resource allocation has to say about that.
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| Sadly, the only real response here is non-compliance.
| Recently, credit card company wanted me to provide ID upon
| login ( I was amused -- while my setup may not be common, it
| has not changed for years now ). So I didn't and just ignored
| it. I checked on it this month and it suddenly was fine. But
| then.. one has to be willing to take a hit to their credit
| and whatnot.
|
| The point remains though. They have zero way to enforce it if
| we choose to not comply. Just saying.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| They have plenty of ways to enforce it. It's a law, they
| can take you to court. I guess it's easy to forget these
| days but laws do still apply to some people. If you're
| going to host a service, I guess consider using Tor or
| something.
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| Friend. On this very forum, you will normally see me
| argue that further deterioration of civil society is bad
| and we should be doing everything to maintain society as
| is. However, as with most things, there is a limit. That
| limit varies from person to person, but it is getting
| harder and harder to argue that laws apply ( especially
| once you recognize they don't quite apply across the
| board ).
|
| << If you're going to host a service, I guess consider
| using Tor or something.
|
| That one confused me. What do you mean?
| hellojesus wrote:
| I think the person meant that if you don't comply there
| may be civil or criminal consequences, so if you want to
| knowingly provide a non compliant website or app, you
| should host it on tor to prevent your person from being
| the subject of the state.
|
| I know the CA law is civil only, so I don't think there
| is much CA can do if you publish an OS and don't make
| money from CA folks, but other implementations may decide
| to impose criminal penalties.
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| Thank you. That makes sense.
| Alan_Writer wrote:
| Totally agree, but I think we are heading to a full intrusion
| system in every aspect. And this is just the beginning. Even
| decentralized identity systems are not that decentralized, of
| course.
| tsukikage wrote:
| My objection to all this stuff is the requirement to share
| government ID / biometrics / credit card info etc with
| arbitrary third party sites, their 228 partners who value my
| privacy and need all my data for legitimate interest, and
| whatever criminals any of those leak everything to, and also
| give the government an easily searchable history of what I
| read when those sites propagate the info back.
|
| Any scheme that doesn't require this won't get pushback from
| me.
|
| As an alternative: I already have government-issued ID and
| that branch of government already has my private info; have
| it give me a cryptographic token I can use to prove my age
| bracket to the root of trust module in my computer; then
| allow the OS to state my age to third parties when it needs
| to with a protocol that proves it has seen the appropriate
| government token but reveals nothing else about my identity.
|
| Other alternatives are possible.
| biofox wrote:
| That would require technical know-how.
|
| It's much easier for clueless lawmakers to write "the
| computer check the age", and make it everyone else's
| problem.
| Xelbair wrote:
| Exactly the same way as i do now for such laws.
|
| It's pointless, does not increase security, does increase
| complexity of every interaction, and introduces a lot of
| weird edge cases.
|
| What i want is full anonymity enshrined in law, while at the
| same time giving parents, not governments, but parents,
| options to limit what their children can do on the internet.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| A cornerstone philosophy behind the American legal system is
| that we must view every single increase in State power as a
| potential slippery slope, and must _prove_ that it isn 't.
|
| In this case, it's a slippery slope; if we're normalized to
| this, what other incursions into our 1A rights to free
| speech, religious freedom and public gathering will we allow?
|
| And I say religious freedom, because these kinds of laws are
| largely peddled by religious folk or people who otherwise
| have been deeply influenced by early American Puritan
| religious culture.
|
| I, nor my children, should be forced to subject to such
| religiously-motivated laws. I can decide for myself and for
| my child what is appropriate.
|
| I, nor my children, cannot be compelled to enter personal
| information into a machine created by someone who is also
| illegally compelled to require it.
|
| I, nor my children, can be compelled to avoid publicly
| gathering on the internet just because we don't want to show
| identification and normalize chilling surveillance
| capitalism.
|
| I thought this was fucking America.
| jprjr_ wrote:
| I think a better approach would be incentives versus
| punishments.
|
| Like - you don't make it illegal to not do age attestations,
| but you provide a mechanism to encourage it.
|
| You get a certification you can slap on your website and
| devices stating you meet the requirements of a California
| Family-Friendly Operating System or whatever. Maybe that
| comes with some kind of tax break, maybe it provides
| absolution in the case of some law being broken while using
| your OS, maybe it just means you get listed on a website of
| state-recommended operating systems.
|
| That certification wouldn't necessarily have to deal with age
| attestation at all. It could just mean the device/OS has
| features for parents - built-in website filtering, whatever
| restrictions they need. Parents could see the label and go
| "great, this label tells me I can set this up in a kid-safe
| way."
|
| Hell, maybe it is all about age certification/attestation.
| Part of that certification could be when setting it up, you
| do have to tell it a birthdate and the OS auto-applies some
| restrictions. Tells app stores your age, whatever.
|
| The point is an OS doesn't want to participate they don't
| have to. Linux distros etc would just not be California
| Family-Friendly Certified(tm).
|
| I wouldn't have to really care if California Family-Friendly
| Certified(tm) operating systems are scanning faces, IDs,
| birth certificates, collecting DNA, whatever. I'd have the
| choice to use a different operating system that suits my
| needs.
| pc86 wrote:
| > _I also agree with S76 that some laws regarding how an
| operating system intended for wide use should function are
| acceptable._
|
| The only laws the government should pass regulating software
| running on someones computer are laws protecting those
| consumers from the companies writing that software. For
| example, anti-malware/anti-spyware.
|
| The government has no business telling a random company that
| their software needs to report my age, whether it's
| unverified and self-reported or not.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| > protecting those consumers from the companies writing
| that software
|
| Of course, but that's exactly the framing of the
| verification laws. Protecting underage computer users from
| products/services unsuitable for them. If you want
| protection to be effective then it needs to be on by
| default, but also needs to ultimately be controlled by the
| user, and it's that second part that ID checks and the like
| fail.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| >I ask because I feel like if we don't do something, the
| trajectory is that ~every website and app is going to either
| voluntarily or compulsorily do face scans, AI behavior
| analysis, and ID checks for their users, and I really don't
| want to live in that world.
|
| The only reason they'd _have_ to do that is government laws
| making them do so. When the law is vague around what age
| verification is, if one company decided to do ID
| verification, now any site that doesn't might not be doing
| 'enough' in the eyes of the law (it'd come down to a court
| case if not specifically defined).
|
| Though it may seem more convenient to just do it at the os
| level (though really the browser level would make more sense
| with a required header/cookie no?), I'd be shocked if you
| don't see it expanded in the future to be more than a
| checkbox.
| Hizonner wrote:
| > You get to pick it, it isn't mandatory that it be checked,
| and it doesn't need to be a date, just the bucket. Is that
| still too onerous?
|
| Yes, because (a) it wouldn't do anything, and (b) it would
| take about 5 seconds for the morons who push this stuff to
| start whining about that fact, and using the fact that
| "Society(TM) has mandated this and people are avoiding it" to
| demand effective verification, which would be a huge
| disaster.
|
| They won't be placated by anything short of total victory,
| and if you give them anything, you're just enouraging them.
| shevy-java wrote:
| > Accessibility features for ADA
|
| The problem is that the comparison falls flat. ADA does not
| sniff for birth date and surrender that data to others. One has
| to look at things at a cohesive unit, e. g. insecure
| bootloaders by Microsoft surrendering data to others. It seems
| as if they try to make computers spy-devices. That in itself is
| suspicious. Why should we support any such move? Some laws are
| clearly written by lobbyists.
| FpUser wrote:
| I remember western public laughing about requirement of the
| former USSR to register a typewriters. So we have a case of he
| who slays the dragon becomes one
| gzread wrote:
| The California law doesn't strip away any anonymity or privacy
| except for the additional fingerprint signal of you being a kid
| or not, which is no worse than Accept-Language
| hellojesus wrote:
| It kind of does. Depending on how the mechanism works, if I
| check the user's age every time my executable is launched,
| and my user launches daily, I can determine with certainty
| what the user's birthday is. That information may be enough
| to deanonyimize in rural regions. It certainly gives away
| pii.
| gzread wrote:
| One allowed way to implement it is that your mom has to log
| in as root and unrestrict your account, and the user's age
| is only set to one of 4 different brackets so you'd better
| be watching the user every day for several years. Also if
| you are root you can just lie.
| sharperguy wrote:
| The same politicians who claim to support the free market will
| do deals like ttis with corporate oligopolies to cement their
| position into eternity.
| curt15 wrote:
| >Anyways, it feels like all sides of the political spectrum are
| trying to strip away any semblance of anonymity or privacy
| online both in the US and abroad. No one should have to provide
| any personal details to use any general computing device.
|
| What was the legislative history for the California law? Who
| sponsored it, and who are their backers? Is there some
| coordinated effort by surveillance state proponents?
| jadbox wrote:
| Why can't it be the BROWSER that reports age instead of the OS?
| strangattractor wrote:
| Cigarette vending machines had little stickers that said it was
| illegal for those under 18 to purchase cigarettes. Sure stopped
| all my friends from buying them.
|
| Seems exactly like the useless process fixation that Abundance
| advocates abhor.
| cmxch wrote:
| Still not good enough to comply in advance.
| piraccini wrote:
| I love Pop!_OS (and Cosmic) but if they start with this bullshit
| I need to switch to other Linux distributions. Worst case, will
| build my own...
| byproxy wrote:
| What constitutes "this bullshit"?
| winrid wrote:
| Your ISP will require it.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Crazy how few can see where this is heading and don't realize
| locked down OS with age verification is now the norm, iOS has
| it.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Are these laws not 1A violations due to code being speech and the
| gov not being allowed to compel speech?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| To the extent code is functional rather than expressive it is
| _not_ speech, and when the government seeks to compel code, it
| generally seeks to compel _function_ not expressive content.
|
| (That doesn't mean it is not a bad idea, and even perhaps
| unconstitutional for other reasons.)
| arcfour wrote:
| Code is speech, though, and is protected by the first
| amendment: see Bernstein v. United States.
|
| I don't think a cryptographic algorithm is "expressive" any
| more than it is purely functional; indeed, the 9th circuit
| evaluated and rejected the expressive/functional distinction
| for source code in the above case.
|
| Regardless - code is speech, and the government cannot compel
| or prevent speech except in very narrow circumstances.
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| Very narrow circumstances like the DMCA? I don't think the
| jurisprudence is as simple as you're making it out to be.
| LoganDark wrote:
| Code may be speech, but the functional characteristics of
| systems that happen to rely on code may not always also be
| speech.
| arcfour wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but if you are
| suggesting that writing an "API", as is legally required
| in AB1043, can be done without writing code I would be
| interested to know how!
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Writing an API is not required by AB1043.
|
| Providing an API is required if you do some other thing,
| but you are not required to do that other thing.
| Requirements that are triggered by engaging in some other
| activity are not compulsions if the activity they are
| triggered by is not compulsory. (Now, whether restricting
| the thing that triggers the requirement by adding the
| requirement is permissible is a legitimate question, but
| that is not the question that is addressed when you
| ignore the thing triggering the requirement and treat the
| requirement as a free-standing mandate.)
| arcfour wrote:
| > Provide a developer who has requested a signal with
| respect to a particular user with a digital signal via a
| _reasonably consistent real-time application programming
| interface_ that identifies, at a minimum, which of the
| following categories pertains to the user...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Yes, and the other thing you have to do for this to be
| applicable to you is choose to be an "operating system
| provider", as defined in the law.
|
| If you don't want to write, hire someone to write, pay
| someone to provide an implementation that has already
| been written, or acquire an implementation already
| written that is available without payment, such an API,
| you can simply choose _not_ to do what is defined as
| being an "operating system provider", and no obligation
| attaches,
|
| No one is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to
| do labor to write code for an API.
| arcfour wrote:
| If you write an operating system and distribute it (an
| act of speech) you are forced to do this or else you risk
| $7500/child/day in fines from the California AG. The law
| makes no distinction between Terry Davis and Microsoft.
| (In fact, you could say TempleOS is protected _religious_
| speech...!)
|
| I don't know what's wrong with you, honestly, that you
| would so vivaciously defend this impractical, immoral and
| completely nonsensical law so vivaciously.
|
| It is seriously disturbing.
| iamnothere wrote:
| > I don't know what's wrong with you, honestly, that you
| would so vivaciously defend this impractical, immoral and
| completely nonsensical law so vivaciously.
|
| I do, these people are entryists and they have evil goals
| in mind.
|
| Do not hire people like this, and block them from working
| on your projects.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Code is speech, though, and is protected by the first
| amendment: see Bernstein v. United States.
|
| That is very much overstating the holding in the case [0],
| the most relevant part of which seems to be:
|
| "encryption software, in its source code form and as
| employed by those in the field of cryptography, must be
| viewed as expressive for First Amendment purposes"
|
| The ruling spends a key bit of analysis discussing the
| expressive function of _source code_ in this field as
| distinct from the function of object code in controlling a
| computer.
|
| A law compelling providing functionality which it is merely
| most convenient to comply with by creating source code as
| part of the process _is not_ directing speech, any more
| than an law delivery of physical goods where the most
| convenient method of doing so involves interacting by
| speech with the person who physically holds them on your
| behalf is.
|
| [0] text here: https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporte
| r/F3/176/176.F3d...
| panny wrote:
| >A law compelling providing functionality
|
| That's forced labor. I'm not required to write a line of
| code to please anyone. It's free software with no
| warranty. They have LLMs, let's see them build it. :)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > > A law compelling providing functionality
|
| > That's forced labor.
|
| Well, that's a 13th Amendment issue not a 1st Amendment
| one, but, in any case, its not _forced_ if it doesn 't
| direct who does the work to create the functionality,
| only requires you to have the functionality provided if
| you are doing some other activity, it is more of an in-
| kind tax. [0] (Now, if you want to make an argument that
| when the activity it is conditioned on is expressive that
| that makes it a 1A violation as a content-based
| regulation when the condition is tied to the content of
| the expressive act, _that_ is a better 1A argument, that
| might actually have some merit against many of the real
| uses of, say, age verification laws; but "if I am doing
| this activity, I must either create or acquire and use
| software that has a specified function" is not, in
| general, a 1A violation.)
|
| [0] It's not really that other than metaphorically,
| either, any more than _every regulation of any kind_ is
| an "in-kind tax", but its far closer to that than "forced
| labor".
| panny wrote:
| >its not forced if it doesn't direct who does the work
|
| Good, because I'm not writing it, f\/ck them. Free
| software, no warranty. Use it if you want to. Otherwise,
| pound sand.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Good
|
| Don't you mean "bad"? Shouldn't you _want_ it to be a
| violation of the constitution so it gets thrown out?
| arcfour wrote:
| > In the government's view, by targeting this unique
| functional aspect of source code, rather than the content
| of the ideas that may be expressed therein, the export
| regulations manage to skirt entirely the concerns of the
| First Amendment. This argument is flawed for at least two
| reasons...
|
| I think you should read it a bit more closely. The court
| threw out the "functional/expressive" argument for source
| code, like I said in my original comment.
|
| Secondly, what are you talking about that source code is
| the most "convenient" way to implement this? It's the
| literal, only possible way to present an interface to a
| user, ask them a question, and "signal" to other
| applications if the user is a minor or not. You're being
| completely nonsensical there. There's no other way to do
| that: someone must write _some_ code. The bill
| specifically says "an API"!
| dragonwriter wrote:
| I think you should read a bit more closely, both to the
| decision, and to the post you are responding to (which
| addresses that), and to the context of what is being
| discussed in the thread (which is not "source code").
| arcfour wrote:
| I look forward to your blog post on how to implement "an
| API" without writing source code. It should be
| informative!
| labcomputer wrote:
| Real Men use a magnetized needle.
| cobbzilla wrote:
| Bernstein v US says you're right but let's see if it gets there
| and hope they get legal reasoning right. One can hope the EFF
| and others are on this. Anyone know about any current
| challenges?
| gzread wrote:
| To about the same extent that food labeling is a 1A violation.
| muyuu wrote:
| I'm not American but it seems to me like both things are
| violations, which is troubling because you enter into the
| disturbing necessity to start carving exceptions
|
| obviously these regulations are very different, but both do
| compel speech
| gzread wrote:
| Yes. And yet nobody opposes food labelling except for
| fraudulent food companies. Sometimes people just think
| compelled speech is good.
| cyberax wrote:
| The age verification laws are awesome!
|
| I mean... How else would you educate children about computers and
| evading stupid restrictions?
| jrm4 wrote:
| I mean, genuine question, is Linux Mint or MX Linux endangered by
| this?
|
| Unless I'm missing something, I have _zero_ concern for companies
| who sell out by complying.
|
| The code was "free as in freedom" when you decided to build your
| company on it; and while you're not legally obligated to defend
| that freedom, and I, and hopefully other consumers, find that you
| are _morally_ obligated to.
| pgn674 wrote:
| I think this is the way that Linux desktop distributions are
| endangered, quoting from the article: "... apps and websites
| will not assume liability when a signal is not provided and
| assume the lowest age bracket. Any Linux distribution that does
| not provide an age bracket signal will result in a nerfed
| internet for their users."
| gzread wrote:
| Not by the California law, since that law poses no danger.
| k310 wrote:
| I have to wonder
|
| A. If end users will mod their distros to send a "signal" (TBD?)
| to websites.
|
| B. If end users will just grab a pirate OS with apps compiled to
| not care about age.
|
| Hopefully the latest TAILS I downloaded is free of Big (over 18)
| Brother. And (A)
|
| Or just compile, Gentoo and LFS style.
|
| C. If pirates just take care of all this for friends and
| neighbors.
|
| D. When, not if, this unconstitutional coercion is challenged in
| court and cancelled via petition. Remember Proposition 8?
| armadyl wrote:
| I could see them eventually going far enough to bypass all of
| that and either requiring age verification at the point of the
| internet uplink on the ISP side or making it a crime similar to
| using a fake ID to buy alcohol if you try to bypass it. And
| then also punish companies that happen to be serving
| underage/non verified users.
| akersten wrote:
| There is already age verification at the ISP level. They only
| sell Internet service to adults. What the adults choose to do
| with it or with whom they share it with should be of zero
| concern to the government.
|
| Of course, that's an ineffective argument, because the long-
| term goal of these laws (in the sense of, "the goal of the
| system is what it does") was never going to be about keeping
| kids off the Internet.
| deno wrote:
| Yes, it will be ineffective, so then they will point at all
| those examples, but will they decide the law is stupid? Of
| course not.
|
| The computers are not secure and they should only be able to
| run "verified" operating systems using attestation mechanisms.
| This was always where this was ultimately going. The idea has
| been fermenting since the DVD players had copy protections.
|
| It's the planet destroying asteroid. We know the trajectory, we
| always knew it was coming for us. But once you can see with the
| naked eye it's too late to do anything.
| gzread wrote:
| Why do you have to mod your distro when you could simply go to
| the settings program and set "age bracket" to "18+"?
| al_borland wrote:
| > Throwing them into the deep end when they're 16 or 18 is too
| late.
|
| I saw this a lot in college. Kids that didn't have any freedom or
| autonomy while living at home went wild in college. They had no
| idea how to self-regulate. A lot of them failed out. Those who
| didn't had some rough years. Sheltering kids for too long seems
| to do more harm than good. At least if they run into issues while
| still children, their parents can be there to help them through
| it so they can better navigate on their own once they move out.
| FuckButtons wrote:
| Counterpoint, my parents didn't shelter me from shit and my
| life went off the rails at 12.
| Guestmodinfo wrote:
| 12 is the magic number when things start going to shit. I'm
| sorry for what happened to you but maybe you should start a
| counselling service for clueless parents and tell them what
| should they do and what they shouldn't to correctly shelter
| the children. Because sheltering is an art. I think about it
| all the time. I always wish some one would take a bit of
| money but tell me how to guide or not guide my child to be
| independent in the rough world and to take decisions
| independently
| discardable_dan wrote:
| I watched an older sibling go off the rails. That is what
| kept me from doing it.
| ball_of_lint wrote:
| There needs to be both things - the opportunity to make
| mistakes, and the support to make it okay after mistakes are
| made.
|
| Sounds like you got the first but not the second, which must
| have been tough. Hope you're doing better now.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That's not a counterpoint. The inverse of "shelter too long"
| is "shelter less long", not "zero shelter ever".
|
| (And the proper way to do "less long" is to slowly loosen up
| over time.)
| FuckButtons wrote:
| I think the point I'm trying to make, albeit very bluntly
| is people often make the banal point that kids these days
| are too sheltered because they turned out fine. But they're
| actually just observing survivorship bias.
| Aachen wrote:
| How to avoid that survivorship bias though?
|
| I'm sure a study can follow kids or look in records, but
| that takes serious time, so I can understand looking at
| oneself and everyone you know and coming to a conclusion
| that way. Do you know if such a study had been done and
| the results or conclusions are publicly available
| somewhere?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The person you replied to didn't mention their own life
| at all, and they were talking about a good number of data
| points. That's not "just survivorship bias". The data of
| college kids _is_ biased in some ways but it 's not
| useless.
| lawn wrote:
| There's a balance to be struck, it shouldn't be all or
| nothing.
| jusssi wrote:
| Potential confusion of cause and effect: maybe some weren't
| given any freedom _because_ they were repeatedly unable to
| self-regulate.
| Tade0 wrote:
| It's not an innate ability. Takes a solid decade of actual
| parenting for people to acquire this skill.
|
| And if the person is high energy, then that energy needs to
| be channeled.
| mrheosuper wrote:
| if they are unable to self-regulate, then jailing them at
| home and school is definitely not a solution for that.
| jusssi wrote:
| I think you're responding to an argument I didn't make. And
| I feel necessary to point it out because it looks like
| other people may be reading it like that, too.
| Aachen wrote:
| I read it in the same way. What did you mean instead?
| jusssi wrote:
| I mean what I wrote, nothing more.
|
| (a) Quote from TFA is about using internet. GP talks
| about "didn't have any freedom or autonomy" which I don't
| take quite as literally as you do, because they also
| mention "I saw this a lot in college". So it would have
| been quite regular level of (over)controlling, _instead
| of locking them in and not letting them leave the house
| except for school_.
|
| (b) I am not advocating anything as a solution. I am
| pointing out that the simple cause and effect presented
| by GP might be more complicated.
| themafia wrote:
| Then it's a questionable move to one day hand them _all_ the
| responsibility they had previously lacked.
|
| You can also ask if the rate of this occurrence is increasing
| or decreasing.
| pona-a wrote:
| It is a common tactic among abusive parents to convince their
| child without them, they'd be unable to survive in the wider
| world. Any mistakes will become irrefutable proof thereof,
| and any attempts to break this control and do things on their
| own will be treated as ingratitude, often prompting the
| abuser to instantly abandon all parental duties to "teach a
| lesson".
| jusssi wrote:
| Uh huh. And some kids haven't got their head straight after
| puberty at 16, and still need (or would have needed) the
| training wheels. Blaming it on their parents would seem
| unfair.
|
| Society works on averages. Most people being ready little
| adults at 16 doesn't mean everyone is.
|
| Edit: yeah, look at the downvotes. How are you all doing
| with that self-regulation?
| Hizonner wrote:
| > And some kids haven't got their head straight after
| puberty at 16, and still need (or would have needed) the
| training wheels.
|
| But _on average_ they don 't.
|
| > Society works on averages.
|
| Right. So setting the rules around the outliers is wrong.
| Glad you're clear on that.
|
| > Most people being ready little adults at 16 doesn't
| mean everyone is.
|
| You don't have to be a completely self-sufficient adult
| to handle the freaking Internet.
| jusssi wrote:
| I feel like I'm in a comedy show where I'm the only one
| who actually reads what others are writing.
| pessimizer wrote:
| There's no evidence in this response or others that
| you're reading what other people are writing.
| crims0n wrote:
| I don't disagree, but in this context I don't think those
| are the same parents that are yeeting their kids off to
| board at university as soon as they are of age.
| Hizonner wrote:
| Sometimes the kids basically _run away_ to universities
| as soon as they 're of age.
| xerox13ster wrote:
| As one of those kids, you could've just stopped at "I
| don't think", because you're not thinking critically if
| you think we don't exist.
|
| I wasn't allowed to have a personal device or
| unsupervised internet access until I graduated.
|
| My parents forced me to go to a school with a summer work
| program. I was yeeted to university by my wing clipping
| abusers THREE DAYS AFTER GRADUATION.
|
| Rural, miles from the nearest town of 1200 so I didn't
| have access to the resources needed to change any aspect
| of this.
|
| I was deeply hampered by this, and despite being one of
| the salutatorians of my graduating class (we had ties due
| to AP), I crashed out of that university after a
| semester.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| This is a comforting fiction. I've seen it go both ways where
| children with freedom develop pornography or drug habits and
| sheltered kids turn out well-adjusted and regulated.
| HighGoldstein wrote:
| Freedom without supervision vs supervision without freedom,
| both failures of parenting.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| How is the supervision without freedom a parenting failure
| if they've turned out great in every regard?
| al_borland wrote:
| That's usually coupled with a lot of anxiety. Some level
| anxiety could be useful, as it can make a person look
| responsible. This can come at a heavy cost though, which
| they may not let others see, and might not even realize
| themselves until later in life.
| Aachen wrote:
| A failure of management can still lead to a successful
| business for a variety of reasons, ranging from an in-
| demand product and lucky timing to great employees. Bad
| parenting with a great child or a great school might,
| too, lead to positive outcomes
|
| I'd call an approach suboptimal or bad depending on how
| likely it is to lead to bad outcomes, given what the
| parents know about the child at the time of course
| (sheltering or other special approaches may be needed in
| some cases, depending on behavior or health
| circumstances). It doesn't have to turn out bad in every
| single case, or even a majority, there just has to be
| consensus about the evidence and the parents must have
| been able to know of it. It would have to be really bad
| (like complete neglect) before I'd call it a failure
| though
| array_key_first wrote:
| Because they don't. In order to do anything successfully
| you need practice. You're just depriving the kid of
| practicing the single most important skill - autonomy.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Supervision is only one of many factors that impact a
| child's development. Good genes alone can make up for a
| lot of crappy parenting.
| thunderfork wrote:
| "pornography habits"
|
| Putting onanism in the same sentence as drug abuse really
| weakens your argument.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Onanism != pornography habit
| Aachen wrote:
| I thought it was a typo but I see you've replied elsewhere
| that these really are the two options
|
| > I've seen it go both ways where children with freedom [turn
| bad] and sheltered kids turn [good]
|
| So you've seen it one way, as in, each approach leading to
| one specific outcome? "Both ways" would be sheltered leading
| to different outcomes in different cases, or unsheltered
| leading to different outcomes in different cases
|
| I don't feel like I've been sheltered. My parents literally
| proposed that I drink some alcohol and encouraged that I go
| out partying at some point. Both things still don't interest
| me. (At least they didn't tell me to smoke, lol. But alcohol
| seems to be considered normal and potentially even healthy in
| small doses so they thought I should try it.) Online, I later
| learned that their opinion was that I'll just not look up
| things which I don't want to see, and in my case that has
| been true. I'm sorry to tell you I never had a porn addiction
|
| Someone else pointed out that such anecdotes are survivorship
| bias: you might not see the people that didn't turn out
| alright. In my case that's certainly true, I'm not sure that
| I know anyone who didn't turn out okay. We take different
| paths through life but if you can provide for yourself and
| dependents, and are happy most of the time, I'd count that as
| success (also dependent on age: I'm not counting that my 90yo
| grandpa is currently often unhappy due to bad health)
| trinsic2 wrote:
| I have been saying this all along. You can't prevent kids from
| getting around restrictions. All you can do is try to help them
| understand what they find on the other side and what some options
| are. Age-gating is just a way to push forward a surveillance
| agenda. The fact thats happening everywhere all at once proves my
| point.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >You can prevent kids from getting around restrictions
|
| I'm guessing you meant can't
| trinsic2 wrote:
| Yes. Fixed
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It's pushed both by those with surveillance agendas and AI
| companies like Anthropic, who donated millions to PACs and
| politicians that are pushing online age verification and
| surveillance laws[1].
|
| The goal for the AI side is that they get to be censors and
| gatekeepers of all user-generated content on the internet,
| their models will rank/grade/censor content for age-
| appropriateness and they will have the pleasure of being paid
| to train on all new content uploaded to the internet in real-
| time, in perpetuity.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47162956
| bruceb wrote:
| You can. Most children are not going to end up on HN when they
| are older. The stories you read here about hacking system at 11
| are outliers.
| leni536 wrote:
| And the outliers brag about them, then help out their
| classmates.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Lol I remember back in the day when we used to replace the
| windows logo during boot with our own bitmaps (if I can
| appropriately remember the file format) at school. We
| showed kids and suddenly every computer was booting with
| unexpected media. Admins were not pleased.
|
| But the real fun began when we showed people how to set
| bios passwords and that cascaded into kids rendering an
| entire classroom of computers unbootable.
|
| And then there was the time I thought I was really clever
| because I realized I could open arbitrary files in notepad,
| so I attempted to edit save files for a learn-to-type
| program by replacing the score with my own. It seemed to
| work so I told my friends and then they started copying the
| same save file into their program files. I don't remember
| exactly what happened, but I do know the UI update did not
| propagate to the actual scores and also it introduced a bug
| into the prodgram which would cause it to crash at distant
| future epochs, so we destroyed the program for everyone,
| not just our user profiles. There was an investigation and
| I think they gave up because the same bad file somehow was
| on everyone's computer and everyone just told them they got
| the file from someone else and there was no root of the
| chain.
|
| This is all to say, any bypass will be identified and
| implemented at the speed of virality.
| stephbook wrote:
| What you're saying is we should allow kids to buy tobacco, to
| gamble, to purchase Meth and Heroine because Kids get around
| restrictions anyway
| budududuroiu wrote:
| > What you're saying is we should allow kids to buy tobacco,
| to gamble, to purchase Meth and Heroine because Kids get
| around restrictions anyway
|
| This is false equivalence. All of the above are vices that
| objectively carry more harm than good. There's no inherent
| harm in using a computer, there's a subset of ways in which
| using a computer can be harmful, which kids can be taught how
| to avoid or navigate, there's no subset of meth use that
| isn't harmful
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Desoxyn (methamphetamine) is prescribed for ADHD and is
| indicated for children
| gzread wrote:
| Well then it's good then computer will have the option to
| disable the harmful stuff, so a parent can let a kid use
| the good stuff without the harmful stuff.
| gzread wrote:
| It's basically the same as forbidding bars from serving minors.
| Minors can still get alcohol, but we still do it.
| ArchieScrivener wrote:
| California and Colorado do not get to govern out of state
| residence, thats interstate commerce and its federal domain,
| period.
|
| The time is coming where we will unseat legislative traitors who
| use EU/Old World manipulations in the USA.
|
| An unjust law is no law at all. That is the exception the rule of
| law requires to remain moral.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Just a reminder of what liability the CA age verification law
| imposes upon developers and providers.
|
| It's not enough to adhere to the OS age signal:
|
| > _(3) (A) Except as provided in subparagraph (B), a developer
| shall treat a signal received pursuant to this title as the
| primary indicator of a user's age range for purposes of
| determining the user's age._
|
| > _(B) If a developer has internal clear and convincing
| information that a user's age is different than the age indicated
| by a signal received pursuant to this title, the developer shall
| use that information as the primary indicator of the user's age._
|
| Developers are still burdened with additional liability if they
| have reason to believe users are underage, even if their age flag
| says otherwise.
|
| The only way to mitigate this liability is to confirm your users
| are of age with facial and ID scans, as it is implemented across
| platforms already. Not doing so opens you up to liability if
| someone ever writes "im 12 lol" on your app/platform.
| stephbook wrote:
| How do you know all this before any court decided upon it?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Do you want to go to court to find out where the line is?
| That's expensive, risky and time consuming. It's easier to
| just scan faces and IDs to make sure your users are of age
| and not take on that liability.
| wtallis wrote:
| > if they have reason to believe users are underage
|
| The law requires "clear and convincing information", not merely
| "reason to believe". And since the law requires developers to
| rely on the provide age signal as the _primary_ indicator of
| the user 's age, developers are not incentivized to create a
| system that uses sophisticated data mining to derive an
| estimated age. If someone posts a comment on a YouTube video
| saying "I'm twelve years old and what is this?", that would
| absolutely _not_ require YouTube to immediately start treating
| that account as an under-13 account.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| That would have to be litigated in court, and the easiest and
| cheapest way to avoid litigation is to just scan faces and
| IDs so you're sure your users won't upload or say anything
| that can bankrupt you while you sleep.
| wtallis wrote:
| It would be at least as valid a strategy to _avoid_
| collecting any unnecessary personal information about your
| users, so that you don 't have to worry about whether the
| information you've amassed adds up to "internal clear and
| convincing information".
|
| Remember, only the state AG can bring a suit under this
| law, and the penalty is limited to $2500 per child for
| negligent violations. It's probably cheaper to get
| insurance against such a judgement than to implement an
| invasive ID-scanning age verification system (and assume
| the risks of handling such highly-sensitive personal
| information).
| heavyset_go wrote:
| No platform is going to forgo analytics and using
| demographic information for advertising, that's their
| bread and butter.
|
| I'd also argue it's clear and convincing if a kid changes
| their profile picture to a selfie of themselves, says
| they're 12, says they're in grade school, etc. Any
| reasonable person would take that at face value.
|
| > _implement an invasive ID-scanning age verification
| system (and assume the risks of handling such highly-
| sensitive personal information)_
|
| It's already implemented as face and ID scans by all the
| major platforms as it is. The systems are already there
| and they're already deployed.
|
| Apps and platforms already integrate with 3rd party age
| verification platforms who handle the face and ID data,
| nothing ever has to touch your servers.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > I'd also argue it's clear and convincing if a kid
| changes their profile picture to a selfie of themselves,
| says they're 12, says they're in grade school, etc. Any
| reasonable person would take that at face value.
|
| That's so fragile, and it's not like they're making those
| claims to the site, it's natural language posting.
|
| And someone who knows what they're doing would never take
| "I'm twelve years old and what is this?" at face value.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Would you be willing to send explicit content to someone
| who presents themselves as a child online? A reasonable
| person wouldn't.
|
| No one is suggesting a meme should be taken literally.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You've completely changed the scenario. A human doing a
| one on one examination and personally sending data is
| totally different from a website allowing an account to
| exist and browse.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I'm using send as a synonym for serve, would you serve
| such content to someone who presents themselves as a
| child on your platform? No.
|
| Like do you really think someone who presents themselves
| as a child on Pornhub will stay registered and not
| banned? They aren't going to serve porn to someone who
| presents themselves as a kid.
|
| I think it's pretty clear and convincing when someone
| presents themselves as a child on your platform. I'd be
| convinced and wouldn't take that liability on.
| hellojesus wrote:
| I agree with you, but then the implication becomes, "any
| platform that allows user content must scan all content
| posted or uploaded by the user to determine if any of it
| suggests they are a minor".
|
| I adds a bit of burden to all sites under the threat of
| civil penalties. Say I own a site that allows user posts
| like HN. If someone mentions they're in grade school in
| any post and later starts receiving links to adult sites
| in their DMs, now I'm liable.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| "presents themselves" is too vague here. Presents to who?
| When you talk about a person instead of a webserver, that
| person is actually reading the profile, which makes a big
| difference.
|
| In the pornhub situation, someone who reads the comments
| will report them. The website doesn't need to throw
| machine learning at everything people type.
| crote wrote:
| ... except that analyzing profile pictures isn't exactly
| reliable (plenty of people use photos of their cats),
| people lie in chat, and advertising profiles are _at
| best_ an educated guess.
|
| The current analytics profiles are closer to "
| _definitely_ into Roblox, 70% chance of being 13-18 "
| than "This user was beyond any reasonable doubt born on
| 07-03-2002". Calling them "clear and convincing
| information" would be a _massive_ exaggeration.
| crote wrote:
| I read it the exact opposite way: you are _forbidden_ from
| using facial and ID scans solely for age verification (as the
| OS-provided signal shall be the primary indicator of age), but
| if you already need to obtain the user 's age for other reasons
| using more reliable means (say, a banking KYC law requiring ID
| scans) you are not _required_ to discard this more reliable
| source in favor of the OS-provided signal.
| gzread wrote:
| I read it as you're not _allowed_ to discard the more
| reliable source.
| gzread wrote:
| If you aren't already scanning ID or similar then you don't
| have clear and convincing reasoning to believe the user is
| underage.
|
| This section targets spyware companies like Facebook, who
| already know damn well if the user is underage and this section
| forbids them from pretending they don't know.
|
| It doesn't say you have to go and become Facebook.
| lokar wrote:
| How does a website know if the age signal from a client is
| authentic? That seems unworkable.
| choonway wrote:
| this is how and adult sounds like in a room full of children.
| 06867457397658 wrote:
| How very adult of you to cheer for totalitarianism.
| charcircuit wrote:
| I don't think the argument that children might bypass parental
| controls therefore devices should not have parental controls.
|
| >Limiting a child's ability to explore what they can do with a
| computer limits their future.
|
| Parents don't want to limit their children from writing software.
| Saying that limiting minors from accessing porn will limit their
| future is another argument I doing think many will agree with.
| bradley13 wrote:
| These lawd prove one thing: the politicians know nothing about
| the subject matter.
|
| What is almost more disturbing: at least some of the politicians
| will have been advised by consultants or lobbyists who _know_
| what they 're advocating for. What's their game?
| gzread wrote:
| Can you elaborate what you know that the writers of the
| California law don't know?
| DoctorMckay101 wrote:
| I was gifted my first computer, running Windows 95, at 11 years
| of age. By age 13 I was probably within the five people who
| better understood how to do stuff on a computer in my town. By
| age 16 I was making Pokemon hackroms, flash animations for
| newgrounds and translating manga for pirate sites in photoshop.
| By then I knew my entire life would be tied to computers somehow.
|
| Now some 50-60yo politician who has never even created a folder
| in their desktop without help wants to dictate how I should have
| used my device?
|
| Fuck'em
| colinmarc wrote:
| There are obviously certain harms we are comfortable (trying
| to) prevent 13yos from having access to. So it's a matter of
| degree.
|
| The internet you describe has been gone for a long time. The
| internet that replaced it is several degrees more harmful, to
| adults and children alike.
| wao0uuno wrote:
| So maybe instead of trying to control the people we could try
| controlling the corporations responsible for this problem?
| Bring back the old internet. Make addictive services and
| algorithmic recommendations illegal. Make commercial entities
| more responsible for the services they offer.
| colinmarc wrote:
| I would absolutely be in favor of those measures.
| gzread wrote:
| No, they want your parents to have the optional option to
| dictate how you use your device.
| bradley13 wrote:
| Let's be clear: this is a first step. The obvious next step is to
| require _proof_ of age.
|
| This ties in nicely with the international movement to require ID
| to use social media.
|
| _Why_ is this an international movement? Suddenly,
| simultaneously, all over the Western world? It 's enough to make
| on believe in conspiracies...
| azangru wrote:
| > Why is this an international movement? Suddenly,
| simultaneously, all over the Western world?
|
| Sometimes kids hurt themselves through the use of the internet.
| And their parents lash out to blame someone [0]. And mainstream
| media pick up these stories. And the worry spreads. And more
| and more adults of voting age say that yeah, it's only
| reasonable to protect the kids from that internet monster,
| because kids are trusting and vulnerable, and won't somebody
| please think of the children. And they do not push back against
| age restriction campaigns. And so it goes...
|
| As for the Western world, it generally moves in lockstep,
| doesn't it?
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0024x58
| wao0uuno wrote:
| So where are those big protests and public calls for online
| age verification? It all seems to be coming from the very
| top. I have not heard of anyone that actually want any of
| this. The fact that politicians are to be excluded from
| European regulations is only a proof that it's all a scheme
| to kill what remains of privacy and freedom of speech online.
| gzread wrote:
| First, this isn't age verification. At least the California
| one isn't.
|
| Second, where are the protests to keep kids out of bars?
| fruitworks wrote:
| Why are all of these attempts at controlling the web coinciding
| at the same time now? I don't think it is a coincidence that
| this is happening at the same time that the younger generation
| wakes up to our greatest ally.
| gzread wrote:
| Because there's only one internet and it's becoming a problem
| for every country at the same time because it's the same
| problem.
| 06867457397658 wrote:
| Free thought and dissent is truly a problem for these
| regimes.
| gzread wrote:
| There's free thought and dissent, and then there's
| teaching a child from birth that Obama is a lizard
| person.
| hellojesus wrote:
| This is where parents come into play...
| 3A2D50 wrote:
| I'll echo what I've already said elsewhere in the comment
| section. It's about AI! Particularly massive swarms of
| persuasive AI controlled by an adversary convincing the public
| to elect bad people with bad policies. Also, companies that
| rely on ad revenue would love to serve ads only to humans
| instead of bots.
| vasco wrote:
| This is the one thing that truly scares me. I've decided I'm not
| going to verify my age anywhere or use facial recognition apps to
| login anywhere. And this is a much bigger fear for my job than
| AI.
|
| At the moment only some countries banning porn, social media and
| gambling. But how soon will I have to do it for a work app? And
| will I lose my job then if I refuse?
| krautburglar wrote:
| The prostitutes pushing for this do not deserve words. They
| deserve ridicule, public humiliation, and worse. The computer is
| a tool. Whoever would encumber it is an obvious shill for the
| corporations (google/apple/microsoft) who would like to attach an
| identity (i.e. tolls and controls) to actions prior generations
| could do freely and without surcharge. It is a modern-day
| enclosure movement. Its proponents should be juicily spat upon.
| vladms wrote:
| Is this the free speech we are trying to protect?
|
| I do not think the proposal is smart or that will it work, but
| I am more worried that some people seem to think they hold the
| absolute truth (on any side of the a debate).
| krautburglar wrote:
| This is not a "free speech" issue. This is an assault upon
| the citizenry. This is the rich and the powerful trying to
| put everyone's ass on the plantation. Some want it to extract
| wealth from you (thievery). Others want it to control you
| (slavery). They are begging for the guillotines.
| hananova wrote:
| I can't fathom all the rage and confusion here about these laws.
| It's been a well-known effect since forever that when a
| government deems that something needs to be done, they'll go for
| the first "something-shaped" solution.
|
| This all could've been avoided. Governments all over the world
| have been ringing the alarm bells about lack of self-regulation
| in tech and social media. And instead of doing even a minimum of
| regulation, anything to calm or assuage the governments, the
| entire industry went balls-to-the-wall "line go up" mode. We,
| collectively, only have ourselves to blame, and now it's too
| late.
|
| If you look back, it didn't have to be this way: - Governments
| told game publishers to find a system to handle age rating or
| else. The industry developed the ESRB (and other local systems),
| and no "or else" happened. - Governments told phone and smart
| device manufacturers to collectively standardize on a charging
| standard, almost everyone agreed on USB-C and only many years
| later did the government step in and force the lone outlier to
| play ball. If that one hadn't been stubborn, there wouldn't have
| been a law.
|
| The industry had a chance to do something practical, the industry
| chose not to, and now something impractical (but you better find
| a way anyway, or else) will be forced upon them. And I won't shed
| a tear for the poor companies finally having to do something.
| shevy-java wrote:
| > We, collectively, only have ourselves to blame, and now it's
| too late.
|
| Why would we have to be blamed for a law written by some
| lobbyists? That makes no sense at all. There are of course some
| folks that are in favour of this because "of the children" but
| their rationale does not apply to me nor to many other people.
| Why should they be able to force people to surrender their
| data, with the operating system becoming a sniffer giving out
| private data to everyone else? That makes no sense.
| pear01 wrote:
| The invocation of "lobbyists" in this context is meaningless.
| People lobby for all kinds of things. Doesn't really matter
| once it becomes a law anyway.
|
| If people could just say I don't agree with this law, it
| "makes no sense" and it's written by "lobbyists" and the
| government should not "be able to force" me to comply then we
| don't have a society anymore.
|
| You had better come up with some better arguments otherwise
| it just seems like the typical sad case of the losing side
| suddenly griping about the referee's monopoly of force when
| it's no longer going their way...
|
| The comment you replied to rightly pointed out one way of
| getting ahead of said monopoly of force is addressing
| problems with the status quo before the state takes an
| interest. It didn't happen, and now you will probably get
| some heavy handed intervention. But ignoring this basic point
| to ask why oh why suggests an ignorance of the very nature of
| the society that is and has been constantly regulating you.
|
| If you only happened to notice now you should consider
| yourself a rather lucky specimen in the long line of human
| history, full of those remarking "this makes no sense" as
| they are nonetheless compelled to comply.
| rudhdb773b wrote:
| The fact that lobbyists push the law is in fact very
| meaningful. It means that a minority with power is trying
| to tip the scales in their favor against the otherwised
| unbiased will of the majority.
|
| To extend your analogy, it's not one side complaining after
| a fair match, it's them complaining that refs have been
| paid off.
| mlrtime wrote:
| Lobbyists do not always mean minority. I'm sure it looks
| like that from the outside.
|
| There are all kinds of laws that people don't like, me
| included. With every law there will be some winner/loser
| trade-off (for lack of better word). As OP said, that is
| society.
|
| If the people here were so passionate about it, they
| would help come up with a better solution, not a "f* off"
| comment.
| pear01 wrote:
| There is no such thing as an "unbiased will of the
| majority".
|
| That sort of terminology might have flown back in the
| 18th century with Rousseau and the like speaking of a
| "general will" but in today's era of social science, it
| has about as much force as invoking divinity.
|
| Everyone has bias. The idea of a general will is largely
| fiction and was discredited at the time.
|
| Our system is based on coercion, costs and trade-offs and
| nothing more. That is human history. You may have some
| rights (perhaps a right to privacy, it is debatable) but
| this is really just the three core components dressed up
| in reverse. The freedom of speech for instance is simply
| to codify the idea that the state silencing you is
| intolerable. Intolerable is eventually meaningless unless
| it is backed up by costs and coercion against the state
| which they will seek to avoid.
|
| When the state violates such "rights" flagrantly
| sometimes the people are called to manifest this aspect
| of "intolerable".
|
| That's what a revolution is.
|
| Failing that you need to convince people. And in so doing
| if you aim to find some "unbiased will of the majority"
| you are wasting your time.
|
| You would be better off with a lobbyist. Surely such a
| person would not so readily engage in such fiction
| regarding how democracy actually works, and would thus be
| more effective in achieving your goals.
| kortilla wrote:
| Speak for yourself. This is impacting open source and is
| fundamentally against the open source ethos.
|
| Governments demanding computers enforce age is as dumb as
| governments demanding books, pen, and paper enforce age.
|
| This is unrelated to industry. This is idiots running the
| government.
| dpe82 wrote:
| I'm probably missing something, but when I read the
| California statute I didn't understand it to be anything like
| "computers enforcing age" - more like, when you create an
| account it needs to _ask_ your age, and then provide a system
| API by which apps can ask what bracket the account holder is
| in. This seems better than the current solution of every app
| asking independently?
|
| Again, I'm probably missing something but it strikes me as
| pretty trivial to comply with?
| ball_of_lint wrote:
| The government really shouldn't be telling us how/what we
| can compute at all.
|
| But on this specific point - It's a bellwether. They're
| doing this to lay the groundwork and test the waters for
| compulsory identification and/or age verification. Getting
| MacOS and Windows and Linux and etc to implement this WILL
| be used as evidence that compulsory identity verification
| for computer use is legally workable.
| ball_of_lint wrote:
| And if the implications of that aren't clear - that would
| either be unenforceable or be in effect a government
| rootkit+DRM on every device.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >The government really shouldn't be telling us how/what
| we can compute at all.
|
| You could say the same thing about restaurants. "The
| government really shouldn't be telling us how/what we can
| cook at all."
|
| When you are selling a product to the public, that is
| something that people have decided the government can
| regulate to reduce the harms of such products.
| hellojesus wrote:
| What if you aren't selling a product, like open source
| linux distros?
| labcomputer wrote:
| Last time I checked, health code regulations still apply
| to kitchens serving homeless people for free.
| akersten wrote:
| Being "trivial to comply with" is completely disjunct and
| not at all an argument against "this type of law is
| fundamentally at odds with the liberty and self-
| determination that open source projects require and should
| protect." It's a shot across the bow to open-source, it's
| literally the government telling you what code your
| computer has to run. It is gesturing in the direction of
| existential threat for Free software and I am not
| exaggerating. It's purposefully "trivial" so you don't
| notice or protest too much that this is the first time the
| State is forcing you to include something purely of their
| own disturbed ideation in your creative work.
| gzread wrote:
| Free software is already mandated to do a lot of things,
| like not defraud the user. If you make a bitcoin wallet
| that sends 5% of your money to the developer without
| asking I'm pretty sure you'll be prosecuted, so the
| government is compelling you to ask the user for consent
| to do that.
|
| When you make food you're compelled to write the
| ingredients. We tolerate these because they are obvious
| and trivial, but pedantically, food labelling laws also
| violate the first amendment.
| akersten wrote:
| > Free software is already mandated to do a lot of
| things, like not defraud the user.
|
| Surely you recognize the difference between "you cannot
| go out of your way to do crime" and "your software must
| include this specific feature"??
|
| > When you make food you're compelled to write the
| ingredients.
|
| Well, the point about how this affects open source is
| that under a similar California law, every home kitchen
| would need to be equipped with an electronic transponder
| whose purpose is to announce to the world what ingredient
| bucket you used for tonight's casserole.
| gzread wrote:
| Which part of the California law announces your browsing
| history to the world?
| brabel wrote:
| If that's true, I think the law is fine. There are good
| solutions for anonymous disclosure of information about
| you, the most mature being Verifiable Credentials, which is
| an open standard:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verifiable_credentials
|
| You can disclose just a subset of a credential, and that
| can be a derived value (eg age bracket instead of date of
| birth), and a derived key is used so that its
| cryptographically impossible to track you. I wish more
| people discussed using that, but I suspect that it's a bit
| too secure for their real intentions.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| In general, any proposal to use _government ID_ for "age
| verification" over the internet is going to end in
| someone using it for mass surveillance, and it's probably
| not wrong to suspect that as the intention to begin with.
|
| There is no _benefit_ in doing that because parents
| already know how old their kid is. They don 't need the
| government to certify it to them, and then they can
| configure the kid's device not to display adult content.
|
| Involving government ID is pointless because the parent,
| along with the large majority of the general population,
| _has_ an adult ID, and therefore has the ability to
| configure the kid 's device to display adult content or
| not even in the presence of an ID requirement if that's
| what they want to do. At which point an ID requirement is
| nothing but a footgun to "accidentally" compromise
| everyone's privacy. Unless that was the point.
| gzread wrote:
| The California and Colorado laws don't involve any ID.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| And those are better than the ones that do involve ID,
| which also exist, but not as good as the thing where the
| service tells your device the rating of the content
| instead of the user telling the service their age.
| gzread wrote:
| How would that work when the service has mixed content?
| You'd have to go to kids.facebook.com to get the child-
| friendly version? With a client-sent signal they can just
| filter it, the same way Accept-Language can automatically
| translate the UI.
| hellojesus wrote:
| But why do we need it at the os level? Couldn't a parent
| just set a header in the browser for their kid and be
| done with it?
| labcomputer wrote:
| What happens when the kid installs a different browser?
| hellojesus wrote:
| Agreed. Which is why I think the OS level is dumb. Kids
| can just live boot or launch a vm or keylog their
| parents' account.
|
| If it's windows, they can just live boot into the OS and
| get access to pretty much all the files anyway, if the
| parent didn't encrypt things.
|
| My point is, if the implementation is trivial to bypass,
| why do we need this legislation? Just let the parents use
| the existing tools we have and parent.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Elements that contain adult content are tagged and then
| the user agent doesn't display them.
|
| This also has the extremely useful benefit of making you
| aware that something is being censored, because then it
| has a censorship box in place of the content. Whenever
| censorship is happening it should be flagrantly
| conspicuous rather than invisible.
| dpe82 wrote:
| It doesn't even need to be that complicated. OS asks you
| your birthday at setup time. Stores it. Later, an app
| asks whether the user falls into one of the following
| brackets:
|
| A) under 13 years of age, or B) at least 13 years of age
| and under 16 years of age, or C) at least 16 years of age
| and under 18 years of age or D) at least 18 years of age.
|
| that's it. The OS can decide how it wants to implement
| that, but personally I'd literally just do
| get_age_bracket_enum(now() - get_user_birthday());
|
| The bill is here: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/face
| s/billTextClient.xhtm...
|
| The uproar seems to be extremely overblown.
| gzread wrote:
| I think the uproar comes because the well is already
| poisoned. People are already trained to respond with an
| outburst of anger to any law that mentions the age of the
| user, and will find excuses to rationalize that outburst,
| even when the law isn't that bad.
|
| I mean, "compelled speech"? Really? That's people's
| argument? This is about as bad as the government
| compelling you to write a copyright notice.
| iamnothere wrote:
| Compelled speech _is_ bad and it's something we _don't
| do_ , at all. All kinds of bad things come with compelled
| speech. Mandatory loyalty oaths, erosion of the fifth
| amendment, compelled work to weaken encryption, etc.
|
| The well should be poisoned. The whole idea is poison.
| panny wrote:
| >We, collectively, only have ourselves to blame, and now it's
| too late.
|
| No, "we" really don't. I wrote software. It's free. You're
| welcome to use it, or not. Nobody is forcing my software on
| you. You are not allowed to tell me that the software I wrote,
| for free, and gave to you, for free, needs to have features
| that I don't care about.
|
| You have an LLM now. I'm obsolete now, right? Do it. Build your
| nerfed distro, and make it popular. Oh, yeah... there isn't a
| single solitary disto built by an LLM, is there? Not even one.
| Wow. I wonder why...
| vaylian wrote:
| > The industry had a chance to do something practical, the
| industry chose not to
|
| Wrong. There was no choice. Any type of identification
| technology causes more problems than it solves. The right
| choice is to look for different approaches than identification
| technology for solving the problems. And as the article points
| out, the problems are best tackled with education and not with
| tech.
| Jean-Papoulos wrote:
| > We, collectively, only have ourselves to blame, and now it's
| too late.
|
| Can't believe I'm reading this. I don't want age verification
| at all, whether it's self-imposed or not. I should be free to
| use whatever tools I want however I want.
| ray_v wrote:
| Someone else posted this in the thread, by it pretty much
| sums it up - Vae victis.
|
| We somehow lost the war of freedom of privacy ... or, maybe
| the battle still rages
| charcircuit wrote:
| Democracy is not about what you want. If the majority want
| something you don't, the best you can do is find a
| compromise. There is no option of doing nothing and keep
| computers the same as they have been if the majority want
| change.
| wao0uuno wrote:
| But does the majority want that change? If they want it,
| are they entirely aware of its potential impact on their
| freedom of speech and access to information? Or were they
| conditioned to think it's good for them because well funded
| corporate entities and governments spend money on promoting
| that image? Democracy does not work when majority is stupid
| and uneducated because people like that are easily
| controlled. I wish we were putting as much resources into
| education as we're putting into cheap entertainment and
| ads/marketing.
| mlrtime wrote:
| >But does the majority want that change
|
| This really depends on 1) How you frame the
| problem/solution and 2) what subset of people you ask.
|
| But to answer your question, I could easily see that yes,
| people want a "change" based on how you frame the
| problem.
| gzread wrote:
| The vast majority wants a parental control setting on the
| kid's device, and that's what is being imposed in
| California and Colorado right now.
|
| The vast majority don't want to upload their passports.
| That's what we should be opposing. Standardized parental
| controls set by the device owner are a great alternative
| and not invasive at all.
| Hizonner wrote:
| There are parental control settings on most of the
| devices kids have right now. _Most_ parents don 't use
| them (https://fosi.org/parental-controls-for-online-
| safety-are-und...) . Where's your vast majority?
|
| By the way, that does _not_ imply that they 're
| "underutilized". That part of the article is pure
| opinion.
| labcomputer wrote:
| Err... "Most" is doing some heavy lifting here. 51% of
| parents _do_ use parental controls on their kid 's
| tablets, and 47% on smartphones.
|
| And there's no breakdown by age. Kids don't magically
| become able to handle the uncensored internet the day
| they turn 18.
|
| Did it ever occur to you that parents who don't use
| restrictions maybe have kids that are _almost_ 18? Or
| parents of kids who have shown themselves to be
| responsible? Or that the parents use other methods to
| restrict use (like only allowing supervised use _with_
| the parent for very young children)?
| muyuu wrote:
| that is why democracy ends at property
| iamnothere wrote:
| Well maybe democracy has had its day then, if that's where
| all this leads.
|
| The founders were right to try and enshrine some
| protections against unrestricted democracy in the Bill of
| Rights.
| marssaxman wrote:
| "because we didn't do a stupid and pointless thing, now we are
| being forced to do a stupid and pointless thing, therefore we
| are to blame"
|
| Uh, no.
| shevy-java wrote:
| So this has recently also affected Ubuntu.
|
| One developer began a discussion:
|
| https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2026-March/04...
|
| Their attempts of a "solution" are quite interesting. One other
| user suggested that GUI tools ask for the age of the user.
|
| Well ... I have a very strong opinion here. I have been using
| Linux since over 20 years and I will not ever give any
| information about my personal data to the computer devices I own
| and control. So any GUI asking for this specifically would betray
| me - and I will remove it. (Granted, it is easier to patch out
| the offending betrayal code and recompile the thing; I do this
| with KDE where Nate added the pester-donation daemon. Don't
| complain about this on reddit #kde, he will ban you. KDE needs
| more money! That's the new KDE. I prefer oldschool KDE but I
| digress so back to the topic of age "verification").
|
| The whole discussion about age "verification" appears to be to
| force everyone into giving data to the government. I don't buy
| for a moment that this is about "protecting children". And, even
| IF it were, I could not care any less about the government's
| strategy. Even more so as I am not in the country that decided
| this in the first place, so why would I be forced to comply with
| it when it ends up with GUI tools wanting to sniff my information
| and then give it to others? For similar reasons, one reason I use
| ublock origin is to give as few information to outside entities
| when I browse the web (I am not 100% consistent here, because I
| mostly use ublock origin to re-define the user interface, which
| includes blocking annoying popups and what not; that is the
| primary use case, but to lessen the information my browser gives
| to anyone else, is also a good thing. I fail to see why I would
| want to surrender my private data, unless there is really no
| alternative, e. g. online financial transactions.)
|
| I also don't think we should call this age "verification" law.
| This is very clearly written by a lobbiyst or several lobbyists
| who want to sniff more data off of people. The very underlying
| idea here is wrong - I would not accept Linux to become a spy-
| tool for the government. I am not interested in how a government
| tries to reason about this betrayal - none of those attempts of
| "explanation" apply in my case. It is simply not the job of the
| government to sniff after all people at all times. This would
| normally require a warrant/reasonable suspicion of a crime. Why
| would people surrender their rights here? Why is a government
| sniffing after people suddenly? These are important questions.
| That law suddenly emerging but not in the last +25 years is
| super-suspicious.
| senfiaj wrote:
| I agree this is bullshit. But at least you can lie to the OS
| about your age. Technically it's almost the same as OS asking
| you "Pick a date and a number from 1 to 100 and I'll report it
| to the software / websites. But don't worry, I'll not verify
| you.". If you pick randomly (over age 18 or whatever),
| technically, you don't provide any useful information.
|
| This would be the least of evils (such as ID verification). But
| a bigger problem is that the implementation is very flawed. It
| doesn't appear to be very effective. People, including
| children, can lie. Multiple people can share the same account.
| Also there are many devices that cannot be updated (such as
| embedded). My concern is that these idiots might introduce even
| more extreme laws when they see that it isn't efficient enough.
|
| I hope it will cause so many problems (implementation,
| backslash, etc) that it will be eventually cancelled.
| gzread wrote:
| The whole thing is clearly intended to be optional anyway. If
| your parents want you to have an unrestricted account, they
| can say you're over 18, or they can give you full control
| over the computer. If they want you to have a restricted
| account, they give you a non-root user account with a
| different age bracket.
| verdverm wrote:
| Good words, glad to see more companies taking a principled stance
| on these important matters. That leading quote is great for
| sharing with non-technical friends. We have 365d 23h of non-
| voting time to take direct action to make our world better.
| himata4113 wrote:
| I don't really see a problem where there is a standard api (or
| even syscall!) to rethrieve a persons age bracket and for various
| apps being able to easily implement it. But please make it
| fucking optional.
|
| Make it optional and assume an adult otherwise, it's a good idea
| if it's optional and doesn't have dumb fines, you could have
| fines for not enforcing it / not using the api [porn sites] that
| already exists [and it doesn't work since 1 button is not age
| verification].
|
| I see this as a good way for parents and institutions to set up
| their phones, school laptops etc and would pretty much solve the
| large majority of these issues while having a fraction of the
| invasiveness.
| gzread wrote:
| The law says it must ask for age when creating an account other
| than the first one. So that's mandated. But there's no
| verification of the age you enter, and in fact, it's forbidden
| to verify it. It's really just to give parents the option to
| set up child accounts.
| VLM wrote:
| "The law" There is no "The law" there are multiple levels of
| government implementing multiple solutions all different and
| somewhat incompatible.
|
| Honestly, probably by intention. Its sort of a SLAPP attack
| on the entire world population.
| gzread wrote:
| I'm talking about the one in California and Colorado, which
| is the most recent outrage wave.
| kevincloudsec wrote:
| requiring the OS to broadcast an age bracket to every app and
| website is building a new tracking vector and calling it child
| safety lol
| winrid wrote:
| None of these people actually care about children.
| gzread wrote:
| Is it worse than Accept-Language? It's got less bits of
| entropy.
| Aachen wrote:
| Is that still higher entropy when you already (necessarily)
| have the IP address?
|
| 225.12.3.11 sends two requests, both with accept-language
| nl_BE
|
| 226.4.5.244 sends two requests, one with age bracket 13-15
| and one with bracket 18+
|
| Which group is easier to track people within a (NAT)
| household..
| saltysalt wrote:
| It's sad to see such big brother crap in Linux, which sees like
| the exact opposite of the hacker ethos it was originally built
| upon.
| gzread wrote:
| Mandating the existence of a parental control setting that's
| completely optional to use is hardly Big Brother.
| saltysalt wrote:
| When did we get to vote on this?
| sp1rit wrote:
| I wonder who is behind this sudden push for these age
| verification laws. This wasn't an issue until recently and
| suddenly there are not just laws in California and Colorado, but
| also New York and Brazil.
| merlindru wrote:
| ...and Australia, and New Zealand, and the UK, and Norway, and
| Spain, and France, and the EU
| Aldipower wrote:
| Social media age verification is absolutely not the same as
| age verification at OS login level. Do not mix the things up.
| ycombinator_acc wrote:
| They are initiated by the same people - the government -
| and pursue the same goal - mass surveillance. They should
| 100% be fought against and grouped together.
| ycombinator_acc wrote:
| I got the impression they were kick-started by Anglo countries
| (the Five Eyes, whatever you wanna call them), then gradually
| picked up by the rest.
| irusensei wrote:
| There is a nascent industry of AI backed surveillance now so
| you can be 200% sure a lot of lobbying happened in closed
| rooms.
|
| And then there are the desperate attempts to cover actual
| pedophilia from the people in power. I'll never look at a
| politician or a so called member of the elites the same way
| again.
| globemaster99 wrote:
| So much for freedom and democracy lectured by Americans and
| westerners to the rest of the world. This is just censorship of
| every form of freedom of speech. This got nothing to do with
| children or youth. They will eventually censor and track
| everyone.
| wao0uuno wrote:
| I feel the same way. Looks like online "privacy" and
| "anonymity" will cease to exist within our lifetime. It's
| already starting with those "privacy respecting" solutions like
| zero trust age verification but that will quickly be deemed
| insufficient and because the legal framework will be already
| present it will very quickly and smoothly turn into full blown
| surveillance and censorship. Time to setup I2P on my server and
| donate some bandwidth but I'm sure they'll make that illegal
| too.
| globemaster99 wrote:
| True.Like many other nefarious things British started this
| with child protection act, which got nothing to do with
| children, considering their long history of pedophiles.
| Slowly all the other governments using the same pretext and
| template. Time to use pigeons and own peer to peer
| communication.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Next step coming soon is "well we need a license scan if you
| tell the OS you're over 18". macOS already requires a 6 step
| process to "trust" regular programs not from their app store.
| So this is just end to end control of our machines.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Yes. Soon ISPs will require hardware based remote
| attlestations to prove you haven't modified any software that
| wants to send or receive packets through them.
| Aachen wrote:
| You mean a dedicated license that proves the holder is over
| 18, separate from your identity such that it's not usable for
| tracking or identity theft when the verification platform
| gets hacked?
| gzread wrote:
| If you don't want to be censored just don't check the checkbox
| that says "this device is for a child, please censor adult
| content"? There's no passport check in the CA/CO law, in fact
| it's expressly forbidden.
| nickslaughter02 wrote:
| > _It can get worse. New York's proposed Senate Bill S8102A
| requires adults to prove they're adults to use a computer,
| exercise bike, smart watch, or car if the device is internet
| enabled with app ecosystems. The bill explicitly forbids
| self-reporting and leaves the allowed methods to regulations
| written by the Attorney General._
| pacifika wrote:
| Select your location, if NY etc.
| gzread wrote:
| Interesting that everyone is labelling things not for sale
| in CA/CO but nobody is labelling them not for sale in NY.
| iamnothere wrote:
| I don't think they have processed the NY law yet. It is
| completely incompatible with the open source model. When
| people finally figure it out there will be an uproar.
| 7777332215 wrote:
| Don't see how anyone is gonna make me do anything. Just evade
| anything like this through various means and opt out of things
| that reduce your quality of life (by destroying your freedom and
| making you a slave)
| akersten wrote:
| We should collectively make sure that any PRs trying to land
| these changes are very well reviewed. We wouldn't want any
| security holes to slip by. I think a couple dozen rounds of
| reviews should suffice. I've heard great things about how
| productive AI can be at generating very thorough code quality
| assessments. After all, we should only ship it once it's perfect.
|
| To be more direct - if you're in any editorial position where
| something that smells like this might require your approval,
| please give it the scrutiny it deserves. That is, the same
| scrutiny that a malicious actor submitting a PR that introduces a
| PII-leaking security hole would receive. As an industry we need
| to civil disobedience the fuck out of this.
| cassonmars wrote:
| It's simple. Don't comply. Software engineers, despite not having
| the same requirement of mechanical engineers, should uphold the
| ethical obligations of their craft. This law is harmful. Given
| the requirement of compelled speech, given code has been _proven_
| to be such, Do. Not. Comply.
| chickensong wrote:
| Never considered it! Unless strong encryption is banned, this
| will never work.
|
| P.S. Is your handle a reference to Cats on Mars by Seatbelts?
| Yoko Kanno <3
| cassonmars wrote:
| Yes!
| chickensong wrote:
| Hah nice! I saw your name and immediately heard the song :)
| drnick1 wrote:
| California may be able to target companies like System76, but it
| will be completely powerless against modular and decentralized
| distros like Debian and Arch.
| Aldipower wrote:
| Yeah, living in Europe it simply makes me scratching my head
| how this law could affect me. It won't. No Californian law will
| tell me what I should do.
| muyuu wrote:
| these things are insidious
|
| once vendors are forced to put on hooks to some enforced age
| verification system, it will creep everywhere like cookie
| banners which you cannot escape even in Antarctica
| Aldipower wrote:
| Maybe, I get what you mean. But I think there is still a
| difference between what I install on _my own_ computer and
| opening some _others_ website.
| muyuu wrote:
| i reckon the push will get to the point that us Europeans
| will end up actually installing it because all major OS's
| will enforce it
| drnick1 wrote:
| When it comes to free software, I don't see what prevents
| anyone from patching out such undesired "features." This is
| why free software is more important than ever. Official
| distributors like System76 may have to comply, in CA at
| least, but I won't.
| muyuu wrote:
| technically yes, but if those features have to come, for
| instance, in all kernel distributions, how many people
| would you expect to patch and compile their own kernels
| manually?
|
| let's say no distros would do it because of risk of
| exposure to massive fines, and you'd have to get patches
| from dodgy places because regulators keep stamping them
| out of the mainstream with threats of prosecution
| drnick1 wrote:
| > technically yes, but if those features have to come,
| for instance, in all kernel distributions
|
| It isn't the kernel's role to verify ages. The whole
| issue with FOSS is that it isn't even clear which
| component (of a Linux distribution for example) should be
| responsible for things such as age verification. No
| single part is an "operating system" by itself.
| muyuu wrote:
| > It isn't the kernel's role to verify ages
|
| of course it's not, but this has been already floated
|
| if we stuck to what makes sense, nothing of this would
| have been even proposed - making sense is not something
| legislators are necessarily bound by
|
| and if we're talking of enforceability, plenty of people
| can be targeted and will be targeted if things follow
| this path, it's not like the main developers controlling
| the different systems in Linux - for instance - are
| anonymous
|
| take for instance System76, they're not even remotely in
| charge of the OS their computers run, but they know that
| 1) they may either leave their users with a nerfed
| connection if age signals are implemented at the browser
| protocol level, or at the application level and 2) they
| may be made responsible and liable for every computer
| they sell without those provisions, like it's going to
| start happening in Brazil in a few weeks
|
| plenty of people are possible attack vector for
| governments, and the very threat will cause an effect
|
| does anything of this make sense? no
|
| but it doesn't mean there is no present danger, just
| because your jurisdiction has not issued concrete threats
| yet or because you mean you can tell lawmakers you use
| OSS and therefore their laws don't apply to you
|
| the only thing they need to make "unverified" devices
| illegal is that the mainstream are all already corralled
| into "verified" systems, and you'd be effectively
| marginalised
| LunicLynx wrote:
| It's simple you can't go drinking under age, you can't drive a
| car under age. And the harm that can come from the internet is
| well above this so it makes sense to also ask for id. I agree
| though that it needs a system to protect information. It's not
| about the system being always fail safe it's about the general
| rule that by default what is happening is not legal to protect
| and not put the burden on every parent or family.
|
| ,,But Jonas parents allow him to do that" in reality Jonas
| parents should not have a say in this.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| The harm is well above (even that is arguable), but the
| probability of getting harmed is so much lower it's not even
| comparable.
|
| Alcohol? Yeah one or two too many drinks and you're in the
| hospital getting your stomach vacuumed. Driving? Blink and you
| run over a kid. Internet? You can spend evening and nights over
| there and not be harmed in any way.
|
| We have full generations of kids that can now be studied about
| the effects of the internet, starting with millenials. I won't
| pretend the Internet is a better place now than it was when I
| was a teen, but it appears to me the "dangerous" things are
| more focused and concentrated (at least for kids): social
| networks. It's still a minefield, but with leagues between two
| mines.
|
| Porn has always been _the_ topic touted for children safety,
| because it 's scary and resonates with conservatives and
| religious people. Access to is is roughly the same today than
| it was then, and arguably less dangerous today because the
| dirty stuff is hidden deeper, thus less likely to stumble upon.
|
| But other than porn, the thing that changed the most is social
| networks. Addiction, bullying, etc. Facebook 15 years ago was a
| not serious place. The equivalent today is the best place to
| get roasted by fellow kids and bullied 24/7 while not being
| able to get off the hook. The damage is psychological, which is
| insidious, but not systematic. Not every kid will get bullied,
| not every kid will be addicted to the algorithm(tm), etc.
|
| In the end, education plays a bigger role than simple age
| verification. Stimulate your kids, give them things to do other
| than doomscrolling, and get them on the dark corners of the
| internet to give them curiosity about the world and un-
| sanitized stuff (hacking in all forms, etc).
| gzread wrote:
| I don't think the probability is low. What percentage of
| children are brainrotted by TikTok?
| colinmarc wrote:
| I'm surprised by the complete lack of dissent or even nuance in
| the discussion here. I'm much more ambivalent on this: the
| historical record for prohibition is not good, but instagram and
| the like are uniquely and disastrously harmful and the companies
| pushing them on children are powerful in a way that has no real
| historical precedent. In the balance, anything the reduces the
| power those companies have over our lives (and our politics) has
| to be at least considered. In other words, I don't think this is
| necessarily the right measure - but I'm desperate.
|
| Didn't regulating cigarettes kind of work?
| xyzal wrote:
| Online discourse is sadly doomed. And if not yet, then tomorrow
| surely.
|
| https://arxiv.org/html/2506.06299v4
| jgtrosh wrote:
| To my surprise, this graph [0] shows that even when taking into
| account vaping, it seems that smoking has truly gone down in
| the US.
|
| [0]: https://ecigone.com/featured/vaping-statistics/
| olsondv wrote:
| Sure, age restrictions played a part. But the larger reasons
| are the increased awareness of direct health effects, banning
| it in public spaces, and taxing the hell out of tobacco. I'd
| bet if they restricted app usage in specific locations, that
| alone would break the habit for some people. And imagine if you
| charged them each time they logged on.
| peyton wrote:
| > Didn't regulating cigarettes kind of work?
|
| That's commerce. The regulatory target in the case is speech.
| We don't do that here.
| StingyJelly wrote:
| >instagram and the like are uniquely and disastrously harmful
|
| -to both adults and children. What kind of worked for
| cigarettes was the huge tax so why not create a "mental health
| tax" based on the number of users x some addictiveness score
| and let meta either fix instagram, pay their users a therapy or
| pass the cost to them.
|
| Instead this "protecting children" by giving them "degraded"
| experience will only motivate them to bypass the age
| verification and destroy the statistical evidence of the harm
| those platforms cause.
| sunaookami wrote:
| I'm surprised people still fall for the "think of the
| children!" excuse.
| wink wrote:
| > Didn't regulating cigarettes kind of work?
|
| I am not sure what time or country you are talking about but
| when I grew up (Germany in the 90s) we officially could only
| buy cigarettes from age 16 (or 18?) and 50% of my friends
| smoked. So that did absolutely nothing.
|
| Later (I think, man it's been a while) the vending machines
| needed a driver's license or id to verify the age and guess
| what, as long as you had access to a single person over the age
| of 18 you could still get cigarettes.
|
| Stepping away from the cigarette topic... I think mixing the
| two topics does not make sense.
|
| First one is: Is there stuff on the internet that kids should
| not be exposed to without supervision? I don't have a strong
| opinion, I don't have kids. Probably not, but I am not even
| interested in discussing this
|
| Second one is: Will some stupid laws like the mentioned ones
| help in any way? Maybe a little, probably not really and only
| for kids who don't find a workaround. Will they have
| catastrophic side effects and thus are not worth implementing
| for minimal gain? 100% yes.
| alerighi wrote:
| It's not the job of the operating system to protect children.
| Social media is bad even for adults, to my point of view why
| they don't address the source of the problem, banning what
| Instagram, TikTok, etc. is doing that is bad even for adults,
| and don't make laws that restricts even more what a person can
| do with their personal computer (if this law comes into effect
| it's like saying it would be illegal to run Linux or whatever
| OS that doesn't implement this bullshit)?
|
| Well, surely because the government is full of investors in
| Meta and uses Meta for their propaganda, and possibly because
| the government wants more data to put on their databases that
| is used by ICE and other agencies.
| abc123abc123 wrote:
| Flawed analogy. Cigarettes are physical goods, and regulating
| them does not spread easily to other things.
|
| Everything online is virtual, and implementing surveillance in
| one area, almost always spreads, infecting everything else,
| until we've built 1984.
| mlrtime wrote:
| Most of us are old enough for 'you wouldn't download a car'
| nonsense...
|
| But as adults that are starting to have kids, this "hard
| divide" between physical and virtual starts to break down.
| What I mean is that we can't always use the excuse that we
| can't apply some reasonable law just because an item isn't
| "physical".
| muyuu wrote:
| this is why the vector of attack of "think of the kids" is
| almost always the first when it comes to try to lock down
| the internet in some way
|
| it's "protect the kids" or "counter-terrorism" and nowadays
| also "harmful content" because as the internet is now fully
| mainstream, softer and softer heads start to prevail
| senfiaj wrote:
| But why not force age verification / content restriction on
| Facebook / Instagram / alikes instead? There aren't really that
| many big players, isn't it?
|
| Also, if what the OS does, is requiring to pick some number
| from 0 - 100 and date without doing any verification, everyone
| can lie. It has other flaws like not considering that many
| people can share accounts, some embedded devices with UI can no
| longer receive updates, etc. Honestly, if I thought for 30
| minutes, I could list dozens of such problems. I doubt these
| laws can work efficiently enough.
|
| For now this might sound like the least of evils, but are we
| sure that these idiot politicians won't come up with something
| even more insane after seeing the inefficiency of this?
| gzread wrote:
| How would you impose it on them? Facebook's only way to tell
| your age is for you to upload an ID document and don't we
| want to avoid that? But when a parent buys a device for their
| child, they can just enable the setting that says "this
| device is for a child" and then Facebook can see that
| setting, with no further identity information transmitted.
| That's better privacy, not worse.
| senfiaj wrote:
| This might be plausible to an extend (probably for much
| younger children). If the child can manage to install an OS
| (which is not that difficult nowadays), or is some kind of
| power user, then it will not work well. Also the laws are
| about offline software, how it will be implemented for
| websites (most of the harmful social media is actually
| there)? There are no answers (i guess the web must
| implement some standard, such as http specific header).
| There are so many edge cases that I don't even want to talk
| about.
| muyuu wrote:
| optionality already exists and works very well
|
| you can install very tight parental controls on many devices
|
| but this is not about optionality, this is about forcing the
| mainstream into verification and certification schemes that
| most people won't be realistically able to avoid, it's about
| control and compulsion of the mainstream
| slavik81 wrote:
| > instagram and the like are uniquely and disastrously harmful
|
| Could we perhaps regulate them to require that they be made
| less harmful for everyone?
|
| > anything the reduces the power those companies have over our
| lives (and our politics)
|
| If we're concerned about politics, I presume we're talking
| about the impact on adults, but these age-based restrictions
| are not intended to change anything for adults.
| voxic11 wrote:
| Did regulating cigarettes kind of work? I ask just because I
| don't actually know. I always assumed that the regulations were
| a reflection of the growing society wide distaste of cigarettes
| and not a cause of it. If regulations were enough to change
| peoples attitudes towards something then why did alcohol
| prohibition fail so hard?
| labcomputer wrote:
| I mean, cigarette usage in the US is down _massively_ since
| the US banned cigarette advertising to kids and actually
| started enforcing the ban on cigarette sales to kids.
|
| Meanwhile, after cigarette companies spent some time thinking
| about how to solve the problem of falling sales, "vape"
| (which did not have the same regulations) sales surged first
| in kids, who have continued to use those products into
| adulthood (after they became addicted).
|
| So, I would say "yes" regulating cigarettes not only worked,
| but was a massive public health success.
| kraf wrote:
| Comparing today's internet to the 90s is hardly fair. It has
| become extremely predatory, and most places youth gravitate
| towards are controlled by algorithms with the goal of getting
| them hooked on the platforms to make them available for
| manipulation by the platform's customers.
|
| Of course, there will be stories of smart kids doing amazing
| things with access to vast troves of information, but the average
| story is much sadder.
|
| The EU is working on a type of digital ID that an age-restricted
| platform would ask for, which only gives the platform the age
| information and no further PII.
|
| Companies (not talking about system76) amazingly always find the
| shittyest interpretations of their obligations to make sure to
| destroy the regulations intention as much as they can. The cookie
| popups should have been an option in the browser asking the user
| whether they want to be tracked and platforms were meant to
| respect this flag. Not every site asking individually, not all
| this dark pattern annoyance. It's mind-blowing that that was
| tanked so hard.
| mendyberger wrote:
| > Comparing today's internet to the 90s is hardly fair. It has
| become extremely predatory...
|
| I think you're missing the point they're trying to make. It's
| not that the problem isn't real, it's that the solution won't
| work. Kids will find a way around. They have a lot more free
| time than us.
| gzread wrote:
| If you're geeky enough to install a virtual machine and know
| that will break the restrictions, you're probably mature
| enough to not need them.
|
| Banning pubs from selling to minors doesn't work, but we
| should still do it, right?
| hellojesus wrote:
| Physical is different from digital. Sure, today many kids
| don't know or care about VMs, but they certainly will know
| and care tomorrow when this regulation hits. And that info
| will spread like wildfire all over social and blog posts.
|
| About a week after the policy goes live it won't just be
| the geeks that know, it'll be everyone in the 4th grade.
| deno wrote:
| > The EU is working on a type of digital ID that an age-
| restricted platform would ask for, which only gives the
| platform the age information and no further PII.
|
| Sure, it might start out that way, but once adoption reaches
| anything critical the PII will be required to squash free
| speech as soon as possible. But by then the interaction flow
| will be familiar, hardly anyone will even notice, never mind
| care.
|
| The EU has the best frog boiling experts in the world.
| vladms wrote:
| > ... will be required to squash free speech as soon as
| possible.
|
| Maybe pointing the obvious but things happen if enough people
| care about them or do not care to oppose them.
|
| From my perspective speech became "more free" lately -
| meaning everybody says all kind of incorrect, wrong things
| without fear of retribution even if there are laws against
| some of those, because people just don't care.
|
| So maybe we should also focus on teaching people what is free
| speech, why is it good for them, why they needed, rather than
| worry about some hypothetical mechanism that someone will
| prevent it.
|
| Of course both can be done, but I find it a bit funny that if
| the focus in mostly on not having mechanisms to prevent free
| speech, we might still end up in a situation that there are
| no such mechanisms but on the other hand nobody speaks freely
| because they don't care or only stare at their tiktok.
| deno wrote:
| The whole point is they cannot introduce those laws
| outright for the obvious reasons they have to sneak it in
| covertly in guise of safety.
| gzread wrote:
| By this reasoning we should oppose every law in case it's
| a foothold to sneak in a different law.
|
| The CA/CO parental controls API law is very reasonable.
| It only mandates each OS must have a parental controls
| API, the use of which is up to the parents.
| deno wrote:
| > By this reasoning we should oppose every law in case
| it's a foothold to sneak in a different law.
|
| That has been the successful strategy for e.g. NRA w/
| regard to 2nd amendment and they have been proven correct
| every single time.
| abc123abc123 wrote:
| Yep, the digital wallet will become the authoritarian,
| beating heart of your life. If you don't comply with the EU,
| you can say bye, bye, to your bank account, any online
| interaction, they block your right to travel and so on.
|
| The corona passports showed the way to achieve ultimate
| control of the population, and the EU digital wallet will be
| a permanent corona passport.
|
| The public sheep, in their ignorance, are cheering this on,
| without knowing what will await them. It is our
| responsibility as technologists to fight this, and to educate
| the sheep.
| sham1 wrote:
| One question about this doomsday scenario: "cui bono"? What
| does the EU gain from squashing free speech in your mind?
| deno wrote:
| That's the problem with censorship, isn't it? It's always
| in someone's interest. What speech will be silenced depends
| on who is in power at the time.
|
| If we can't mount a strong defense of free speech on
| principle alone then it's doomed anyway.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| None of this is for what you're describing though, there is no
| reality where such wildly different countries and states in
| different corners of the world all decided coincidentally to
| all do this within 6 months of each other. We know it's not
| "well maybe they saw X country and thought it was a good idea"
| because even percolating the policy would have taken over a
| year.
|
| Protecting kids is just the PR reason, the real goal is
| requiring ID auth for every action taken on a computer. If we
| normalize it for downloading apps or using websites the next
| step is to authorize it for connecting to HTTPS at all and then
| the next step is requiring it to unlock your CPU cores.
|
| If people don't push back on this now there is no world where
| we get out of 2030 without requiring government ID auth to
| install linux on your own computer not connected to the
| internet.
|
| End to end silicon to server auth is absolutely possible and
| someone is working really hard to make it a reality.
| dbdr wrote:
| This law feels like a battle in The Coming War on General
| Computation, as Cory Doctorow put it:
|
| > I can see that there will be programs that run on general
| purpose computers and peripherals that will even freak me out. So
| I can believe that people who advocate for limiting general
| purpose computers will find receptive audience for their
| positions. But just as we saw with the copyright wars, banning
| certain instructions, or protocols, or messages, will be wholly
| ineffective as a means of prevention and remedy; and as we saw in
| the copyright wars, all attempts at controlling PCs will converge
| on rootkits; all attempts at controlling the Internet will
| converge on surveillance and censorship, which is why all this
| stuff matters.
|
| Full talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg
| muyuu wrote:
| > all attempts at controlling the Internet will converge on
| surveillance and censorship, which is why all this stuff
| matters
|
| it really boils down to this sadly, and it should be pretty
| obvious shouldn't it?
|
| i'm finding it befuddling that even technical audiences seem to
| resist connecting those dots, but strong motivated reasoning is
| at play: these are audiences that will often feel it will be
| them who will be in control, and they're also emotionally
| nudged by the idea of child safety
| utopiah wrote:
| On using VMs I suggested something similar earlier
| https://lemmy.ml/post/43994511/24315514 so it's clearly not a
| deep or original ideas. It will be figured out quickly. In fact
| any kid reading that article or those comments is probably
| already researching about this topic and chatting about their
| successes and failures with friends. No way it can hold.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| "Age verification" is such a politician's way to label this. It
| doesn't actually verify your age. What it does do is set the
| groundwork to argue that none of us should use any software on
| any computer that an App Store with Age Verification doesn't
| allow us to.
|
| But there's a bigger issue than just what software you're allowed
| to run on your own computer. What's really insidious is the
| combination of the corporate and government interest. If every
| server tracks how old you are, it's a short step to tracking more
| information. Eventually it's a mandatory collection of metadata
| on everyone that uses a computer (which is every human).
| Something both corporations and governments would love.
|
| You were worried about a national ID? No need. We'll have
| national metadata. Just sign in with your Apple Store/Google
| Store credentials. Don't worry about not having it, you can't use
| a computer without it. Now that we have your national login, the
| government can track everything you do on a computer (as all that
| friendly "telemetry" will be sent to the corporate servers). Hope
| you didn't visit an anti-Republican forum, or you might get an
| unfortunate audit.
| convivialdingo wrote:
| Or anti-Democrat forum? Let's not pretend this isn't a
| California law, or a bipartisan political power grab.
| r2vcap wrote:
| Fxxk off, to all political actors pretending this is about child
| protection. Protecting children is not the job of the OS, the
| device manufacturer, or the internet service provider. It is the
| parent's job. If you cannot supervise, monitor, and discipline
| your child's internet use, that is your failure, not theirs.
|
| They can provide tools, sure. But restricting adults because some
| parents fail at parenting is insane. That is how a totalitarian
| state grows: by demanding the power to monitor and control every
| individual.
|
| If you cannot control your children, that is your fault. And if
| that is the case, you should think twice before having kids.
| mihaic wrote:
| In general, I argue for less state control on anything. But
| your argument seems flawed from its core. If someone is a bad
| parent, should we simply ignore it and let the children turn
| out idiots as well? And the line is often blurry, so that's why
| we designed schools that should compensate even for dumb
| parents.
|
| And, just to be clear on this topic, I think these age
| restriction laws are mostly bullshit, but I'm deeply against
| the concept of putting all the responsabiliy of raising
| children onto the parents.
| therobopsych wrote:
| If not parents then the school or the local council - you
| can't parent from the government down
| merlindru wrote:
| what about children being fed unhealthy things? childhood
| obesity is dangerous and also affects their mental and
| physical health.
|
| let's install cameras in all supermarkets that ensure
| parents cannot buy unhealthy things for their children.
|
| of course, adults can continue to purchase anything they
| want for "themselves". but the facial scanning in
| supermarkets is imperative for child safety!
| array_key_first wrote:
| This is right on the money and really highlights how
| short-sighted these proposals are.
|
| We're perfectly willing to destroy our privacy for things
| that don't matter, but then the stuff that does, we don't
| touch.
|
| Realistically, seeing some boobies on instagram is
| NOTHING compared to childhood obesity. Nothing. We're
| talking lifetime of suffering and early death versus
| boobies.
| mlrtime wrote:
| The government will "parent" as a last resort : the
| criminal justice system.
| r2vcap wrote:
| I assume you live in the free world. Some socialist states in
| history, such as East Germany, pushed child-rearing and early
| education much further into the hands of the state through
| extensive state-run childcare and kindergarten systems. That
| model is gone, and for good reason.
|
| Even with schools in place, the basic responsibility for
| raising children still belongs to the parents. Schools can
| support, educate, and compensate to some extent, but they
| cannot replace parental responsibility.
|
| I also see far too much awful news -- in my country, Korea,
| for example -- about terrible parents harassing school
| teachers because their children are out of control.
| mihaic wrote:
| I was born in a communist country in Eastern Europe, which
| is now crony capitalist. The issue is extremely complex,
| and all I can say in such a short paragraph is that
| ideologically-driven implementations are doomed to fail. It
| doesn't matter if you believe in "free-market", "the
| state", "free-speach", "socialism" or "equality", if you
| put these above the concrete reality of modern parenting,
| and how much harder it's getting compared to previous
| generations.
| muyuu wrote:
| i'm afraid that model is making a strong comeback in the
| so-called free world
| peyton wrote:
| It's compelled speech. A transmission of expression required
| by law. The argument settled in 1791. The First Amendment
| does not permit the government to compel a person's speech
| just because the government believes the expression thereof
| furthers that person's interests.
| gzread wrote:
| It's also a consumer product regulation, of which many
| already exist. The government compels you to speak about
| the ingredients in a food product you manufacture, and we
| don't seem to have a problem with that.
| VLM wrote:
| A better analogy would be regulation of addictive
| activities like gambling and regulation of addictive
| substances like painkillers. Given that the platforms
| being regulated were intentionally engineered to maximize
| addictive potential, this seems a fair and reasonable
| response.
| hellojesus wrote:
| But you can just block the domains on the device or
| router... This law is wholly unnecessary.
| gzread wrote:
| No you can't, because the software industry spent a lot
| of effort encrypting DNS and HTTP so that intermediaries
| can't tamper with or spy on it.
| hellojesus wrote:
| I am a parent. The devices my child uses have root certs
| that allow me to decrypt traffic that must pass through
| my proxy to be relayed to the internet. Voila. Problem
| solved with current tech.
| trashb wrote:
| > we simply ignore it and let the children turn out idiots as
| well
|
| There is not a lot of safeguarding against this in the real
| world tbh. At the very least I think the OS or internet age
| verification is not the place to start improving this.
| gzread wrote:
| There is some. Bars won't serve minors. The standardisation
| of parental controls law (the CA/CO one) is much closer to
| "bars won't serve minors" than it is to "camera drones will
| follow minors around to make sure they don't drink alcohol"
| nottorp wrote:
| > Bars won't serve minors.
|
| Bars also won't display a copy of your ID on the main
| street like digital "think of the children" initiatives
| are likely to.
| gzread wrote:
| Neither does the California/Colorado parental controls
| API law.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| If you get caught with a fake ID they sure as heck do.
| Had many a friend in college with a copy of their ID on
| the wall of shame.
| themafia wrote:
| > should we simply ignore it and let the children turn out
| idiots as well?
|
| Just because you're an idiot at 18 doesn't mean you are one
| for life.
|
| > so that's why we designed schools that should compensate
| even for dumb parents.
|
| Does that actually work?
|
| > against the concept of putting all the responsabiliy of
| raising children onto the parents.
|
| Then how do you feel about parents requiring a license before
| they have a child? If you wish to invite yourself into their
| responsibilities shouldn't you also invite yourself into
| their bedroom first?
| mihaic wrote:
| > If you wish to invite yourself into their
| responsibilities shouldn't you also invite yourself into
| their bedroom first?
|
| You're turning of question of measure (how much should
| society be involved in raising children) into an all or
| nothing debate, which I explicitly want to reject.
|
| > Does that actually work?
|
| Yes, because of mass education almost every adult you meet
| can read and write, something new for the last 100 years.
| Just because a system has (currently huge) faults, doesn't
| mean we should remove the system entirely.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| You make a good point that society may be responsible as
| well, however we are arguing over trying to use technology to
| solve meatland problems and this one never should be
| automated into tech, ever. It's putting burden on artists and
| engineers to solve things they aren't causing or really
| responsible for.
| a456463 wrote:
| Lmao you are a bad parent if you decide to have kids and then
| expect the world to take care of them for you
| zbentley wrote:
| Okay, assuming that's the case for the sake of argument,
| that's still a huge problem right? Kids raised by bad
| parents suffer, which is inhumane. And if you don't care
| about that, they also cause problems or costs for society
| at large (especially if there are a lot of them).
|
| Those are bad outcomes. So is it any wonder that we look
| for policy/regulatory issues to mitigate the harms of bad
| parenting?
| xphos wrote:
| To be fair if the the parent is garbage there isn't anything
| the state today can do to truly prevent the child from being
| corrupted short of taking the child. We ensure that vaccine
| laws are difficult to enforce, we ensure that the child
| cannot have any privacy from the parent codified at school.
| At every stage we gave parents essentially absolute authority
| over there children with exception to maybe physical abuse.
| And I say maybe because even in physically abusive parent, it
| can be difficult for the child to advocate and escape. They
| can ask to be emencipated but the odds are stacked against
| you that you can proof you can support yourself financially.
|
| All this to say is while I think the OP is mean about it they
| but are not wrong. The law argues heavily the parent is
| supreme at least in the US. But this specific law push the
| responsiblity of being the supreme authority off of parents.
| I know you don't like that concept but I think it is very
| easy to argue that any other model is going to be
| unacceptable to a pluraity of parents. Thats not to be
| confused with a parent is responsible for everything there
| child does because thats not true. But the consquence of that
| thinking is that children ultimately have some responsiblity
| in the things they do over the parent, which I think the
| authors of this law would be sweating at such a statement.
|
| Personally I think the biggest issue for children is impulse
| control around social media and to be frank I don't think
| Adults are necessiarly able to deal with the onslaught of
| endless feed short form video content either. I don't think
| our brains are built against it very well. I don't know what
| the solution is but I think what made youtube without shorts
| different from tiktok is the endless scroll nature. The added
| friction actually protected peoples conscious and something
| to add a minimal friction to interactions would actually be
| massively beneficial to society at large
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| this whole thing is part of building a mechanism to restrict
| free speech down the line to cover for a certain "greatest
| ally" of the united states. make no mistake, the "not a
| genocide" over the last two years and the recent "not a war" is
| very much related to this.
| gzread wrote:
| How does mandating every OS to have a parental controls API
| lead to wholesale suppression of speech? Will they mandate it
| to always be set to the most restrictive setting?
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| this isn't "parental controls" this is a mandate to verify
| your age and subsequently identity to an external third
| party. can't you see how this is a slippery slop to
| deannonymizing the internet and being able to restrict
| access for reason that won't be revealed until later?
| gzread wrote:
| Are we talking about the same law? California AB1043?
| mxfh wrote:
| sure, let all retailers sell alcohol to children to test your
| theory.
| tommica wrote:
| Logic does not work, because alcohol in this case is a
| product being purchased - Kids can go to the store and buy
| other things.
|
| So alcohol is more like a gambling website.
| mlrtime wrote:
| It's also illegal to give kids alcohol, they aren't
| purchasing it. Does that match up with a app that is 18+?
| 06867457397658 wrote:
| Sure, let all retails scan your face to buy groceries.
|
| What would the regime do without their useful idiots?
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| Man, it's really great that we can make laws tailored to
| specific circumstances and not treat everything the same, too
| bad you never learned that.
| tyler33 wrote:
| of course it is an excuse for controlling/spy on us, every
| children use and will keep using their parent computer/phone
| newsclues wrote:
| What if we had ISP police?
|
| Cops to track what people did on the internet, checking every
| image to ensure it's not pornographic, or every transaction
| online, to ensure it's not criminal!
|
| Sounds great! Let's just start by rolling out the program to
| target elected officials and their families as a trial. If
| every congressional or senate representative wants to undergo a
| few years of scrutiny to make sure the system works well, maybe
| the people will follow gladly.
| curt15 wrote:
| Welcome to CCP China!
| newsclues wrote:
| Sorry, the point I am trying to make, is bullshit laws
| should be tested on the group of people advocating and
| passing those laws, because maybe they wouldn't like the
| law when it applies to them.
| morissette wrote:
| Definitely started exploring at 8/9 writing Perl and CGI
| egorfine wrote:
| None of the facts he states are unknown or new to the authors of
| the mentioned bills.
| dataflow wrote:
| > A parent that creates a non-admin account on a computer, sets
| the age for a child account they create, and hands the computer
| over is in no different state. The child can install a virtual
| machine, create an account on the virtual machine and set the age
| to 18 or over.
|
| Er, how does a child install a VM from a non-admin account?
|
| > Or the child can simply re-install the OS and not tell their
| parents.
|
| It's gonna be pretty easy to detect when the parent finds
| programs are missing/reset or the adult account they created
| can't log in with their password.
|
| The California law seems entirely tame and sane, whereas the New
| York bill seems pretty heavy-handed and authoritarian. They are
| in no way similar to each other.
| hellojesus wrote:
| The law necessarily exists for parents that aren't tech
| literate, since we already have the ability to monitor and lock
| kids out from adult content.
|
| Do we really think parents will notice that a kid has installed
| a specific executable? The purpose of this law is to allow
| parents to outsource caring out which executables are safe, so
| there is no reason they would check.
|
| Plus a kid can just live boot from a USB if the parent doesn't
| lock the bios, which would give them an ephemeral session to do
| whatever they want without the parent knowing unless caught-in-
| the-act.
| purplehat_ wrote:
| I'm surprised zero-knowledge proofs have not been mentioned. This
| is a technique where (for example) the government signs your
| digital license, then you can present a proof that you are over
| 18 to a site without revealing anything else about yourself.
| ZKPassport exists, Privacy Pass is an implementation being
| standardized by the IETF, and Google is working on a similar
| implementation. Granted, these are not yet widely used, but I'd
| be very interested in hearing HN's thoughts on this.
|
| Let's try to figure out what a good policy solution looks like:
|
| - entities with harmful or adult content must require proof of
| the user being over 18
|
| - entities cannot ask for, store, or process more detailed
| information without explicit business needs (this should be
| phrased in a way that disallows Instagram from asking for your
| birth year, for example)
|
| - entities cannot share this data with other sites, to avoid
| privacy leaks, unless there is an explicit business need (this is
| tricky to get right; someone might try to set up a centralized
| non-anonymous age-verification service, erasing many benefits)
|
| - entities must in general not store or process information about
| the user that is not strictly relevant to their function
|
| - there ought to be different treatment for anonymous users
| (which ideally these protocols will allow, just submit proof of
| work plus a ZKP that you are a human and authorized to access the
| resource) compared to pseudonymous and non-anonymous users, who
| are more at risk of being censored or tracked.
|
| There's some loopholes here, but if the government can enact good
| policy on this I personally think it's feasible. Please share
| your thoughts, if you have a minute to do so.
|
| There's also an interesting political split to note among the
| opposition here. I see a lot of people vehemently against this,
| and as far as I can see this is largely for concerns regarding
| one of 1) privacy abuses, 2) censorship, or 3) restriction of
| general computing. Still, there is a problem with harmful content
| and platforms on the web. (Not just for minors, I don't think we
| should pretend it doesn't harm adults too.) The privacy crowd
| seems to be distinctly different from the computing-freedom
| crowd; the most obvious example is in attitudes towards iOS. As I
| personally generally align more towards what I perceive as the
| privacy-focused side, I'm very interested in what people more
| focused on software freedom think about zero-knowledge proofs as
| a politically workable solution here.
| wao0uuno wrote:
| Sounds cool but do you believe it's really about protecting
| children? Since when do politicians care about this so much? I
| have not heard of any protests or public calls for better child
| protection online. It's really all about control and
| elimination of freedom of speech and information. They want to
| set up a legal framework and get people more comfortable with
| the idea of closed and controlled internet. Then they'll argue
| that age verification alone is ineffective because its too easy
| to circumvent so they'll start rolling out less "private"
| solutions that will benefit them and their sponsors greatly.
| purplehat_ wrote:
| I'm not sure anyone is being this explicitly malicious.
| Parents' groups, child safety organizations, and researchers
| have been at this for years, and while I agree with you that
| the solutions are very misguided, I think it does our own
| priorities a disservice to stick our fingers in our ears with
| regards to their concerns.
|
| Can you give an example of how less private solutions will
| benefit them and their sponsors? I could see big tech /
| adtech and government surveillance benefitting but I don't
| think they're the ones behind this push.
|
| As another example, consider the "small web" community, say
| at Bear Blog, which is a group of technically sophisticated
| people who routinely complain about the harms of traditional
| social media. I doubt most of them would support this
| particular implementation, but they show that there is
| popular support for solving the ills of at least one of the
| targets of this legislation.
|
| So to answer your question, yes, I do see this as an attempt
| to protect people. The restriction of free speech is in my
| opinion a side effect of this legislation opening the way to
| worse-designed laws in the future.
| ibizaman wrote:
| > The challenges we face are neither technical nor legal. The
| only solution is to educate our children about life with digital
| abundance. Throwing them into the deep end when they're 16 or 18
| is too late. It's a wonderful and weird world. Yes, there are
| dark corners. There always will be. We have to teach our children
| what to do when they encounter them and we have to trust them.
|
| This resonates so much with me. I don't want to control my kids.
| I will never be able to protect them from everything. I hope I
| won't be able because I want to die before them. I want them to
| be able to navigate in the world and have all the cognitive tools
| necessary to avoid being fooled. I want to rest in peace knowing
| they can in turn educate their own children. I want to trust them
| and be relieved that I can focus on some tasks of my own without
| needing to constantly worry about them.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| As a resident of New York, I am disturbed to see Democrat
| representatives introduce such horrific bills. I guess I will not
| be voting Democrat again!
| dagss wrote:
| Not commenting on this specific law, but I do believe the premise
| that children should be exposed to everything is wrong, and that
| the overall view on humans in this post is naive.
|
| These days, exposing an immature brain to the raw internet is
| basically just handing the brain and personality over to be
| molded by large corporations and algorithms.
|
| And humans have never been rational, self-contained actors that
| self-educate perfectly when exposed to information, converging on
| an objectively good and constructive worldview. Quite the
| opposite.
|
| Humans develop in relation to one another, increasingly in
| relation to algorithms, and sometimes become messed up, and
| sometimes those mess-ups would have been avoidable had relations
| or exposure been different.
|
| In fact I would say you as a parent is not doing your job if you
| are not trying to make sure a 12 year old isn't pulled into, say,
| an anorexia rabbit hole.
|
| Whether that is best done through making sure exposure doesn't
| happen, or through exposure and education, will depend on the
| child and parent (and society) in question. What worked best for
| a highly rational self-reliant geek teen may simply be a disaster
| for another human. And what worked for an upper class highly
| educated family may not work for a poor family with alcoholized
| parents or working 18 hours a day to make ends meet.
|
| And parents are not perfect -- if all parents were perfect, there
| also would be no alcoholics and drug addicts or poverty or war.
| But people are imperfect, and it's natural to make laws to
| mitigate at least the worst effects of that. (Again, haven't read
| this specific law proposal, but found the worldview of OP a bit
| naive.)
| thunfischtoast wrote:
| > These days, exposing an immature brain to the raw internet is
| basically just handing the brain and personality over to be
| molded by large corporations and algorithms.
|
| You make the case of todays internet being insuitable for young
| children. But has this been different, ever, maybe apart from
| the very first days of the internet? While access through
| phones has reshaped the internet fundamentally, I'd propose
| that it has always been dangerous. When I was 12, a single
| wrong click could destroy your machine, or lead to a physical
| bill being sent to my parents home (which has happened), or
| lead to most disturbing pictures and videos.
|
| So I think it's not the case that we should allow kids
| completeley unsupervised access (like it always has been), but
| it's also naive to think that we can regulate our way out of
| this (on state or household-level, like it always has been).
| dagss wrote:
| I think there is a drastic difference between being once off
| exposed to bad images, and an algorithm making a choice of
| whether to subtly over time expose the Pokemon-interested
| child to racist Pokemon videos vs non-racist Pokemon videos
| on Tiktok. (Or anorexic Pokemon videos, or..)
|
| Amount of time spent and repeated exposure being the key.
|
| The question is really what kind of human is _raised_ ,
| rather than raw exposure as such.
|
| So for that reason things are different IMO than than 20
| years ago.
|
| Yes, of course some people would fall into internet forum
| rabbit holes 20 years ago, and papper-letter-friend-induced
| rabbit holes 100 years ago. But it did help that it was like
| 5% of the population instead of 95% of the population
| spending their time there.
|
| Regarding your last point, I don't necessarily disagree
| (again I didn't check up on this law, I care more about the
| laws in my own country), but I think arguing against the law
| will go better if one does not display naivety when making
| the arguments
|
| Don't say "it will be better if all kids are exposed to
| everything early" (it won't), instead say "the medicine will
| not work and anyway the side-effects are worse than the
| sickness it intends to cure" (if that is the case).
| LinXitoW wrote:
| But the algorithm stuff is bad for everyone, and makes a
| lot of money, so it's obviously never ever going to be part
| of any regulation.
| dagss wrote:
| Australia banned social media under 16, and many other
| countries are looking on variations on this.
|
| In the US, perhaps not...
| labcomputer wrote:
| But adults (who have fully developed brains, unlike
| adolescents) can choose not to engage with the algorithm
| stuff.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| When my generation "accessed the internet", there was a
| massive dial-up sound and the single family PC was in the
| living room, visible to everyone.
|
| Even later when the computer was in my room, I still had to
| go look for the creepy shit, it didn't appear in my email
| inbox.
|
| Kids this age browse the internet through algoritmic apps
| built to maximise engagment in a corner on their bed in their
| room. Parental controls for most apps and operating systems
| are a fucking joke.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Agreed, but isn't this a parental issue? Why aren't parents
| moving back to a "shared pc in the living room" model?
|
| I absolutely would not allow a kid to have an unregulated
| smartphone and then further compound the problem at home by
| allowing them to access it privately and without
| interruption. Device management enrollment is trivial on
| iphones.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Having a smart phone is required for taking part in
| society.
|
| Monitoring said devices is a lot harder, enrolling to
| device manager doesn't let me monitor the content of
| specific apps
| labcomputer wrote:
| This feels like an extremely naive take.
|
| Even as late as the mid-aughts the internet was mostly nerdy
| technical information, real people sincerely discussing
| various topics, and the very worst thing was a little bit of
| (mostly still-image) porn if you were looking for it.
|
| Kids back then weren't targeted by a stream of continuously
| A/B tested algorithmic content intended to tell them what to
| think and shape their brains. Overwhelming evidence exists
| that social media (as it exists today) is bad for the mental
| health of young people (and probably adults, too, but at
| least adults have the presence of mind and lack of social
| pressure to delete Facebook).
| FetusP wrote:
| But, should it be the governments responsibility to
| decide/control how children are raised, and what they are
| exposed to?
|
| Maybe in the future, a governing body will try to age lock
| dissenting opinions with some crafty verbage
| gzread wrote:
| The CA/CO law only requires the option to enable parental
| controls on an account, and as the article points out, can be
| worked around by a sufficiently determined child using
| something like a virtual machine. This is not really the
| government deciding how children should be raised. The parent
| still has the ability to choose to apply the parental
| controls.
|
| It's more like the rule that minors can't buy alcohol in bars
| - parents can still buy alcohol at the supermarket for their
| children, and sufficiently determined children can find some
| other adult to buy it for them.
|
| Probably by the time you know how to install a virtual
| machine, you can handle the unrestricted internet.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| The bigger problem is it sets us on a possible path towards
| completely government-controlled computing devices. The
| fact that so many countries are pursuing ID requirements
| online is somewhat of a canary for this whole OS age check
| thing imo.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| My view is that this must be left entirely to the parents. The
| only time a government should be allowed to interfere is when
| there are child abuse or neglect cases against the parents and
| the children are put under child protective care.
|
| It is in my view crazy and irresponsible to allow the
| government override the parents' decisions about what media
| their children can consume. It is guaranteed that this power
| will be abused.
| gzread wrote:
| The CA/CO law is literally the government writing a law that
| says it shall be left to the parents but the device must give
| the parents the options they need.
| muyuu wrote:
| it says that, but the action of hardening devices
| effectively contradicts what it says
|
| to be charitable, let's say that it "enhances" parental
| controls by taking on some of that parental enforcement at
| the state level
| gzread wrote:
| What action do you mean?
| muyuu wrote:
| the action of forcing any sort of verification or
| certification on devices or operating systems
|
| this is taking the parental control largely into their
| own hands
| gzread wrote:
| This law doesn't force any sort of verification or
| certification, so it's fine then?
| muyuu wrote:
| it is obviously enforcement by proxy, trying to pretend
| otherwise is laughable but then again so is most of the
| shilling supporting this legislation
| gzread wrote:
| What is "enforcement by proxy" and how does it apply to
| this law?
| muyuu wrote:
| it is extremely simple
|
| for instance, the government can effectively ban you from
| saying something they don't want you to say by forcing
| all companies that may provide any substantial platform
| to you to implement their code speech
|
| that way they have enforced a ban on you by proxy
|
| the same way they can verify/certify the id of people
| totally or partially when they go online, by forcing all
| vendors who provide the systems that you may use to go
| online to enforce it for them
|
| and this law absolutely does that
| hellojesus wrote:
| Does it effectively outlaw general computing for minors
| by requiring account holders to set up accounts for
| minors where account holders are defined as being 18+?
|
| Im honestly not sure; but I could see that being the
| result of the law and companies like best buy disallowing
| minors from purchasing hardware with cash for fear of
| liability.
| gzread wrote:
| No, it doesn't.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| So these laws state that device makers need to ensure that
| there is at least one operating system with parental
| controls that the parents can install?
|
| That would be fine for me but AFAIK that's not what these
| laws state.
| tstrimple wrote:
| I've obviously read about how bad adult literacy in the US
| is, but I didn't realize how many "technologists" were
| impacted by it. The law is short and clear and doesn't
| involved attestation or age verification. Yet all these
| "hackers" claim it does just that. The reading
| comprehensions and critical thinking skills seem to match
| the national average.
| hellojesus wrote:
| I think most people here are extrapolating the intent
| behind this law, the triviality with which it can be
| bypassed by minor account holders, and what that means
| for the future. Once this law is in effect, it will be
| ineffectual. Minors that current don't know what VMs are,
| what live booting is, what keyloggers are, etc. will
| learn immediately once blog posts start circulating about
| bypass mechanisms. Parents will then go back to the
| legislature and say the law as-written sucks, and they
| will demand better laws, but the only way to get better
| is to force all devices to authenticate with the isp with
| a gov-issued id/token to prove the account is not a
| minor. But the only way to prevent even further
| workarounds like the OS lying is to force hardware based
| remote attlestation. And that means the death of general
| computing and the death of any anonymity.
| gzread wrote:
| Most laws are ineffectual. Kids can't drink alcohol but
| they still can; theft is illegal but I still got your car
| keys; murder is illegal but people still die. In this
| one, there's no punishment for bypass, just like there's
| no punishment for a kid who gets alcohol. Unlike the
| alcohol law this one doesn't even mandate the use of the
| child protection features - just their existence.
|
| You know the simple fix to your problem is to mark VMs as
| adult only apps, anyway.
| hellojesus wrote:
| But what happens when a nefarious actor fills the void
| and publishes a root-kited VM and marks it as safe for
| children? These restrictions breed black markets that
| usually cause even more harm.
| nicman23 wrote:
| > believe the premise that children should be exposed to
| everything is wrong
|
| imo this is what is wrong with modern parenting. the reality
| does not care about the child's feelings and if it is old
| enough to have a screen with internet unattended it is old
| enough for anything
| gzread wrote:
| I don't understand what you're trying to say in this comment.
| Can you reword it?
| muyuu wrote:
| ok, that is the argument with merit in favour of shielding kids
| from the internet - now let's consider how does it look like
| when the locus of responsibility is governments
|
| it's true that kids are vulnerable to certain forms of content
| on the internet
|
| it's also true that adults are vulnerable to certain forms of
| content on the internet
|
| it's also true that governments cannot police "harmful content"
| on the internet effectively, or even meaningfully, if most
| people can easily surf the internet pseudonymously
|
| it's also very true right now that what's on "social media" is
| very Sybill-vulnerable, and inordenately so right now with the
| advent of LLMs
|
| what do you think the playbook will look like once there is
| some sort of tight OS level system that is enforced across the
| board to certify or verify information about the user?
|
| do you think this level of coordination to push for identifying
| the user at all levels that is happening across the world in a
| matter of weeks is genuine concern for the kids alone?
| eloisant wrote:
| I agree, and I believe too many geeks who are now parents
| (including the author of the blog post) do not realize that the
| computers they grew up with, and in particular the Internet
| they grew up with, is nothing like computers (phones) and the
| Internet kids have access today.
| intrasight wrote:
| The Grimm fairy tales (1819) are full of graphical violence,
| child abuse, anti-semitism, and incest. They are much more
| harmful than anything that I've encountered on the Internet.
| So why are we discussing internet harms instead of book
| harms? Because people are fucking stupid.
|
| And why are we getting concerned about "sharing private
| information with random web sites" when that's not the
| solution being discussed. The solution is a simple handshake:
|
| service: Is the person assigned this device old enough to use
| this service?
|
| idp proxy: yes|no
| a456463 wrote:
| If you are not perfect, then don't have kids then. If you can't
| take care of them and nurture them with the attention that they
| need and rightfully deserve.
| jajuuka wrote:
| I've seen this view applied to things like TikTok and
| Instagram. Especially with the recent lawsuit. But then when to
| comes to addressing it most people seem to flip completely and
| bemoan parenting and internet freedom. It just ends up in a
| circular pattern of "this is awful, but we shouldn't do
| anything about it. These companies are poisoning kids, but any
| attempts to rectify that are infringing on my right to the
| internet." Makes a lot of conversations around this topic feel
| entirely pointless.
| badpenny wrote:
| Remember when it was the parents' responsibility to raise their
| children?
| gzread wrote:
| It still is. The California law insists that parents should be
| given the features they need to raise their children.
| 06867457397658 wrote:
| How did modern humans manage to raise children without state-
| mandated age verification for the last 300k years?
|
| Thank god totalitarian bureaucrats and lobbyists descended
| from the heavens like Prometheus and gave you these tools.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Linux distributions could do a lot of good geo blocking
| California right now.
| senfiaj wrote:
| What if 1/3 of US states and some EU countries joins them? Will
| they block so many users? Also blocking is easier for smaller
| distros, not so much for Valve, Red Hat and Ubuntu.
| defraudbah wrote:
| remember El Mencho, it should have been a title!
| IndySun wrote:
| "Liberty has costs, but it's worth it"
|
| The whole point. Very well worded post. I weep for the all
| digital future.
| moonlion_eth wrote:
| I was enrolled in the united states navy nuclear program at 17.
| we are just making kids dumb with this bullshit
| xtanx wrote:
| Organize and fight the policy. Do not take your frustration out
| on people and companies that just try to adjust to a law. Talk to
| your representatives. Create educational websites similar to
| fightchatcontrol.eu.
| user3939382 wrote:
| At least in the US check out the 2014 Princeton study on
| citizen preferences. Our Democracy is a sham, those mechanisms
| don't actually have any power to change anything.
| xtanx wrote:
| That's why we need to organize extra hard.
| gzread wrote:
| But this is actually a really good policy? It just says every
| OS shall have a UI to turn parental controls on or off, and an
| API to check if they're turned on. That's a good thing. It
| satisfies the reasons people wanted age verification, without
| actually doing age verification.
| nottorp wrote:
| Yes but the next step is forbidding open source OSes because
| they can be modified to lie on this API check.
| gzread wrote:
| The next step after forbidding the serving of alcohol to
| minors is forbidding the serving of alcohol to everyone.
| ed_blackburn wrote:
| This is becoming a wedge issue. It should not be. As an industry,
| we can solve this. As an industry, we have too. If we don't,
| legislators will do it for us. And they'll make a bad job of it.
| And if you petition your local legislator wherever yiu are in the
| world, then that's cool, but if this is solved locally, we will
| see serious fragmentation. As an industry projecting ones
| politics isn't going to make much difference.
| motbus3 wrote:
| If my parents blocked me from doing admin stuff (which was not
| even possible back then) I would certainly not started to code by
| myself when I was a tween
|
| More concerning than that is that it all doesn't seem because
| they care about teenagers and kids.
| b3lvedere wrote:
| I don't really mind age verification, since we do it in real life
| (outside the internet) constantly for products and services that
| are meant for adults, like some-rated movies and alcohol.
|
| I do mind a lot of the data process. I do not want my id,
| personal preferences or any metadata of my self stored anywhere
| ever. And IF by some weird law some process has to store some
| data somewhere of me, i want to have very easy full access to it
| so i can delete it whenever i want. You can keep the process
| itself but anything else has to go.
|
| Yes, i have a passport. Yes, it was verified and validated. No
| you may not know or store the color of my eyes.
|
| I also do not want curious kids to be prosecuted for poking
| around. They should teach them and thank them for finding flaws.
| gzread wrote:
| There's no age verification in this law...
| Traster wrote:
| I'm in two minds about this. I think that by and large We Have A
| Problem. And i don't mean a problem with children on the
| internet. We have a problem with people on the internet. There
| are so many examples of grown adults who have clearly become
| addled.
|
| I live in the UK, I work in London. I can go on X and look at
| what Elon Musk is posting about the UK and as a reasonable person
| I can quite reasonably say he's gone _mental_. The algorithm has
| broken that mans brain. And it 's not just him, a whole slew of
| establishment women lost their absolute minds about the trans
| issue (and Graham Linehan). Mumsnet became a centre for
| radicalization. You know and some one who grew up on the internet
| at quite a sweet spot I'm very comfortable looking at that stuff
| and going "Oh yeah, you guys are being groomed by these
| algorithms and you're defenceless to it".
|
| There's a whole load of "How do we protect the children from
| this", but I don't think there's actually been much a reckoning
| with how grown adults are getting sucked into this vortex. The
| algorithms on the internet clearly have some trap doors that just
| absolutely funnel people into crazy places.
|
| All of which is to say: We have a serious problem that's
| effecting everyone not just kids, and I think we've got almost no
| answers for how to tackle it.
|
| The result is this- poorly thought through sweeping laws that
| aren't solving the problem, and have massive negative side
| effects. I think Jonathon Haidt has a lot to answer for in
| funnelling this complex issue affecting everyone into this
| reactionary "won't someone think of the children!" campaign for
| banning technology for kids.
| gzread wrote:
| The problem is that putting restrictions on adults comes with a
| thousand times more outrage than putting restrictions on kids,
| and look how much outrage there already is about putting
| restrictions on kids at the discretion of their parents. If we
| can't even give parents the option to keep kids away from bad
| stuff, then mandatorily keeping adults away from bad stuff is a
| complete non-starter. They'd probably burn down Parliament.
| nottorp wrote:
| > And i don't mean a problem with children on the internet. We
| have a problem with people on the internet.
|
| Yes. And having a fixed cut off from 'you can't see omg boobs!
| on the internet' to 'you can see snuff porn on the internet'
| won't help.
| txrx0000 wrote:
| Rather than age verification, this is what we should be doing
| instead:
|
| Don't let phone manufacturers lock the bootloader on phones. Let
| the device owner lock it with a password if they decide to.
| Someone will make a child-friendly OS if there is demand. Tech-
| savvy parents should be able to install that on their kid's phone
| and then lock the bootloader.
|
| What about non-tech-savvy parents?
|
| There should be a toggle in the phone's settings to
| enable/disable app installation with a password, like sudo. This
| will let parents control what apps get installed/uninstalled on
| their kid's device.
|
| But what about apps or online services that adults also use?
|
| Apps and online services can add a password-protected toggle in
| their user account settings that enables child mode. Parents can
| take their child's phone, enable it, and set the password.
|
| ----
|
| All it takes is some password-protected toggles. They will work
| better than every remote verification scheme.
|
| The only problem with this solution is that it does not help
| certain governments build their global mass surveillence and
| propaganda apparatus, and tech companies can't collect more of
| your personal info to sell, and they can't make your devices
| obsolete whenever they want.
| gzread wrote:
| Why necessarily with a password - what's wrong with the option
| to say "only allow installation of apps suitable for under
| 13s"?
| txrx0000 wrote:
| The idea is to let parents decide which apps are suitable for
| their child, for each child. Password-gating app installation
| (just like sudo on Linux) is not only easier to implement and
| use, but also much more flexible and powerful than a fixed
| age-based rating system.
|
| It also prevents the legitimization of app store monopolies
| because no centralized authority is needed to create or
| enforce a rating system. And there will always be apps that
| don't comply with a rating system out of privacy concerns (it
| leaks the user's age, which is just an extra data point to
| track you with), and then they'll eventually try to ban non-
| compliant apps from running on the device completely. That's
| what enforcing an age-based standard would take. And even
| then it would still not fulfill its (claimed) purpose that
| well.
|
| Principle-wise, parenting should be the responsibility of
| parents, not governments or corporations. Those large
| organizations have their own agendas which are somewhat
| misaligned with the individual human being.
| Aachen wrote:
| This approach makes sense to me, though I'd expand password to
| be a broader term because people might prefer different
| authentication methods or approving a request to install
| software from their own device or so
| cs02rm0 wrote:
| I admire the attempt to make a logical argument against these
| laws taken at face value, but I can't help think that's giving
| them too much credit.
|
| These laws have spread like wildfire around the world with many
| countries and regions rolling out similar legislation within
| months of each other, despite the stereotypical lethargy of any
| and every legislature. That's not the work of some popular
| uprising of parents clamouring for age verification.
|
| I fear debating the merits of the argument is missing the point;
| they don't care. They don't care about children, they don't care
| about the argument, they just want the control.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Parents keep saying this is untenable and you guys keep telling
| them to just parent harder. I think that dismissing their
| concerns will lead to the most egregious worst of all worlds age
| verification. Never tell people that their problems aren't real.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think all this shit is silly. If I could manage to figure out
| how the internet worked at 12, then so can my son. Or well, a bit
| younger, but it's fine. He has at least one parent to guide him.
| 3A2D50 wrote:
| I think there is an unspoken concern among policy makers about
| how sophisticated AI is becoming. I think they envision a
| scenario of swarms persuasive AI bots controlled by an adversary,
| pushing people to elect bad actors with bad policies. So the main
| objective isn't to protect the children it is to eliminate
| anonymity! At some point these age verification requirements will
| go from answering a simple question to providing your ID. I'll
| add that there is also an aligned interest with companies that
| rely on ad revenue as they don't want to serve ads to bots!
| bill_joy_fanboy wrote:
| As if "policy makers" in the U.S. care about anything other
| than getting re-elected and continuing to deceive and scam the
| public.
| fredgrott wrote:
| I remember idiot lab staff telling me in early 1990s that I could
| not install the free version of Mozilla browser on university lab
| computers....my go to reply was can you effing read the damn
| TOS.....free was in the very first sentence....
| everdrive wrote:
| In addition to System76's thoughtful response here, does anyone
| have a good _personal_ plan for what to do? Possibilities I'm
| thinking about include:
|
| - Switch to a non-compliant distro. (could put me in a dead end
| down the line depending on what happens)
|
| - Find a browser that can block the API access and just use two
| browsers.
|
| - Have an "online accounts" computer and an "old fashioned"
| computer?
|
| - Switch to books and DVDs?
| glitchc wrote:
| It's self attesting. Just set your year of birth to 1970.
| senfiaj wrote:
| But if they see a weird distribution of birth dates, won't
| they come up with even more insane regulations?
| hellojesus wrote:
| Wait until they learn about live booting, VMs, keyloggers,
| etc. The goal of this bill is to set precedent that this
| can be regulated by the gov. Five years down the line they
| will complain it's not working and move to require tpm-
| based remote attlestation to prove the software isn't
| altered in order the authenticate with an isp.
| everdrive wrote:
| I think it depends. The OS provides an API signal --
| presumably that websites can access. So if a site decides
| you're lying, what happens then? For instance, 100% of bots
| and malicious actors will lie, unless they think they can get
| what they need by being a child.
| hellojesus wrote:
| And some adults will lie too, assuming they don't need
| adult content, to avoid being tracked for advertisements,
| if laws exist that prevent ad targetting on some demo, say
| <13 year Olds.
| agentultra wrote:
| What's the plan when hardware manufacturers are legally required
| to add an age verification TPM-like module that only enables
| verified OS's to boot?
|
| I _hope_ things won't go that way but I _do_ think it's likely
| they will.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Individual ownership of networked general purpose computers,
| and the ability to organize dissent they create, are too
| dangerous for many powerful interests. It has always seemed
| inevitable to me that computers will be taken away from us.
| slicktux wrote:
| I wonder how this law affects Gentoo or LFS since one builds the
| OS..?
| markus_zhang wrote:
| The "Age verification" is simply an excuse to add tracking on
| system software. Very soon they are going to do the same to
| hardware too, I guess, so it is going to be very hard to find
| hardware that is truly safe from tampering.
|
| And modern hardware is so complex that it is impossible for
| individuals to build one by their own. We are no longer in the
| 8-bit/16-bit era. And considering the power of AI -- individuals
| pretty much mean nothing to the elites.
|
| I have never thought the Dystopian future to be so close -- I
| always thought it would be X years away. But legislation, the
| lawyers, are definitely very efficient on this kind of things.
| junto wrote:
| I'm tired of the U.S. nanny state with its pilgrim-religious
| historical backdrop of prudishness, infecting everyone outside
| its own borders.
|
| Their ideas are deeply unhealthy for children and worst of all,
| lazily shift the responsibility of parenting from the parents to
| the state.
|
| Many European countries have long had a culture of slowly
| increasingly responsibilities and freedoms to their children
| gradually, letting them slowly and safely test their boundaries.
| At least the proposed EU solution (for identity) tries to prevent
| overreach. The wholesale EU spying to "save the children", which
| seems to be funded by the U.S. is a different topic and we need
| to continue to fight it tooth and nail.
|
| The insidiousness lies with major tech companies and their
| pursuit of eyeballs on screens. The Internet was supposed to be
| something we used to learn, gain knowledge and connect. They took
| the internet over, bastardized it and made deeply addictive apps
| and games to keep you watching ads regardless of age.
|
| These age checks are just for data collection and spying to sell
| the data to the highest bidder, which is likely governments in
| order to control and herd their populations.
|
| The reason for this is easy to understand in the context of AI.
| In the future the only valuable asset will be a data and the
| access to that data.
|
| In the future, any app will be built, replicated, deployed and
| maintained by AI. Apps, websites, especially B2B apps - their
| days are numbered.
|
| If my business needs a billing system tailored to my business in
| the future, I'll describe it and have an AI built and maintain
| it. That is not that far away in relative terms.
|
| Our goal collectively (as technology advocates) is to make sure
| that this consolidation of personal data doesn't happen. If
| personal AI is to be built, then the user should have full
| ownership and away from the spying eyes of groups like Palantir
| and the NSA. They cannot be trusted. The Jews learnt that
| catastrophically in Germany in the 1940's putting their trust in
| a government that became authoritarian and evil.
|
| What is digital will never die and what is digitally given cannot
| be taken back.
| luke727 wrote:
| You should look into what's actually happening in other
| countries before blaming it on "the U.S. nanny state". The rest
| of the Anglosphere makes the United States look like a
| Libertarian utopia. I live in the United Kingdom, and brother -
| this is who they are. I assume Australia, New Zealand, and
| Canada are similar. There are real problems re: "think of the
| children" in the United States, but if you think "the U.S.
| nanny state" is bad then you have no fucking clue how bad
| things could be.
| a456463 wrote:
| Eh nothing what you said takes away from the parent's points
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| >I'm tired of the U.S. nanny state
|
| When you start like this you heavily damage the rest of
| your argument, no matter how valid, if the reader doesn't
| agree with your premise.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| You literally blamed these moves on US religious prudishness,
| and then said that they were only about surveillance. Which is
| it? Just kidding. We all know it's nothing more than
| surveillance and control, and you just have an anti-religious
| axe to grind.
|
| If the US actually gave a flying FUCK about "protecting the
| children," the current administration would be making good on
| Trump's promise to release the Epstein files -- as now ordered
| by a federal law passed by a overwhelming majority of both
| houses of Congress -- and prosecuting everyone involved.
|
| We see what's really going on. We can't do anything about it,
| apparently, but we see.
| muyuu wrote:
| tbf this is not coming from the US only, the push in Europe for
| this sort of legislation is very strong and we will see more of
| this coming soon
| mondainx wrote:
| If this stupid bullshit existed in 1982, He is 100% correct, I
| would have lied to use my Commodore 64 or Sinclair 1000.
| VLM wrote:
| Two meta observations about the comments:
|
| 1) The issue doesn't matter much. Corporate takeover of the
| internet caused severe damage, but overrunning social media with
| LLM generated content is a mortal wound. Roughly the same number
| of humans will be using social media in 2030 as currently use CB
| radio. Remember near a fifth of the population was using CB radio
| at the peak in the late 70s. Its too little, too late, closing
| the barn door after the horses have left is pointless. Like re-
| arranging deck chairs on the titanic after it hit the iceberg.
| Once the advertisers get wise to the scam that nobody is seeing
| their ads except bots, the problem will kind of fix itself. I
| think TPTB want to use "protecting kids from social media" as the
| public face of why social media will crash and burn soon to avoid
| discussion of how LLMs actually killed it, because authoritarians
| love LLMs and they're in charge (although seemingly everyone else
| hates LLMs, so I'm sure this will end well).
|
| 2) Most of the anti commentary reads a lot like addict speak IRL.
| Talk to a drunk about how it would be a great idea not to drink
| or a carb addict about how they should not eat donuts and you'll
| get absolutely rage blasted in return for threatening their
| addiction, which in the case of an addict, is their identity.
| "Well it would be the end of the world if people (me) were not
| drunk and other people (projection of me) will do anything to
| feed their addiction so obviously no effort should be made to
| limit addictions and it won't work anyway because other people
| (me) will even drink mouthwash or homebrew their own moonshine to
| get drunk" etc. Note I'm not completely against the anti's and
| they make some very good points that should be considered, but
| raging like an addict after their drug of choice is threatened is
| a VERY bad look and is not helping their case at all, if anything
| it strengthens the case against the anti's. What the pro's don't
| understand is you can't fix an addiction externally, addicts
| gotta addict and punishing them and making them miserable might
| help the pro's feel superior or at least thankful they're not
| addicted, but it never helped no one. Social media is "an ill of
| society" and should be treated as such including sensible
| regulation, protection of threatened groups, treatment for the
| addicts, and some compassion and acceptance of the addicts either
| returning to the real world or dying in the addicted world.
| a456463 wrote:
| The laws should regulate Meta, Google, Apple, TikTok, Microsoft
| and closed source vendors. On the one hand they want monopoly,
| but the cost of that regulation is now on opensource individual
| people's speech?
| youknownothing wrote:
| > The only solution is to educate our children about life with
| digital abundance.
|
| I stopped reading at this point, as this is utter non-sense. I
| mean, it's a beautiful idea, but any person with more than two
| neurones knows that real-life doesn't work like that. We have law
| enforcement and prisons because, despite our best efforts in
| education, some people do go off to become criminals due to a
| number of factors.
|
| I'm not saying that the present number of laws is adequate, but
| the solution is a different set of laws, not the complete lack of
| them. The idea of "simply educate children and we'll all be fine"
| is utterly moronic.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| I don't think there's a good legalistic solution to this other
| than to delegate the work of finding solutions to a regulator.
| No single law can be broad enough to cover everything. But
| empowering a regulatory body to research problems full time and
| to create solutions is probably the best approach.
| hm-nah wrote:
| Using a dead human's likeness in jest is wack. Encouraging and
| rewarding a young person to perform this twisted act should not
| be normalized.
|
| ---system76 customer
| twodave wrote:
| Why? They're dead. They can't be offended.
| hm-nah wrote:
| Using a deceased human's likeness in jest like this is wack.
| Encouraging and rewarding a young person in this twisted act
| should not be normalized.
|
| ---system76 customer
| nickslaughter02 wrote:
| Petition US Congress: Say no to bad internet bills
|
| https://www.badinternetbills.com/
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| > They know more than I could have ever dreamed at that age.
|
| This is so true.
| jajuuka wrote:
| This just seems like virtue signaling. It's not a plan or
| proposed actions. Just a puff piece about how great things used
| to be. Not sure who is making their opinions based on what
| System76 has to say, but I guess they can now.
| zerotolerance wrote:
| The children are a distraction. They're a secondary
| justification. Don't lose the plot. This law serves only one
| outcome: enablement of further authoritarianism.
| messh wrote:
| "The child can install a virtual machine, create an account on
| the virtual machine and set the age to 18 or over."
|
| No, the vm is for grownups over 18.
| Oleksa_dr wrote:
| I believe it is necessary to implement this at the OS level. This
| has been needed for a long time, because the "goodwill" approach
| never works.
|
| The introduction of age verification is something that was to be
| expected with the growth in the use of the web, rather than
| individual programs. But there are a bunch of ways to get around
| it, which you do, but no one will punish you. This way, you will
| have parental control and transfer it to the website, while
| facilitating control over minors' access to unwanted content. And
| this way, websites do not need to implement their own terrible
| age verification methods. And when people complain that this is a
| problem for parents, this is exactly what will help parents: once
| they set the age in parental controls, programs and websites will
| have to monitor access (following the law, not goodwill).
|
| This way, access can be controlled at the first level, i.e., at
| the OS level. There is a law, and there will be others to help
| improve it. In the same way, you can avoid the use of identifiers
| and, in general, face verification and a bunch of nonsense.
|
| Ultimately, the responsibility lies with parents who did not
| specify the user's age on the device. But there may be "products"
| that ignore information from the OS.
|
| Current parental controls do not solve the problem well, because
| you have to pay for a bunch of questionable products, sacrificing
| privacy. And it still does not protect against outdated
| black/white lists. Therefore, the requirement at the OS level to
| have such control and place responsibility on "products" is an
| excellent solution in my opinion.
|
| And quite an elegant one at that. Without involving any
| government identifiers or anything else.
|
| Combined with the widespread implementation of TPM, this will
| become even more feasible.
| akersten wrote:
| I don't know how you can say this:
|
| > And quite an elegant one at that. Without involving any
| government identifiers or anything else.
|
| and this:
|
| > There is a law, and there will be others to help improve it.
|
| > Combined with the widespread implementation of TPM, this will
| become even more feasible.
|
| Without coming to the obvious conclusion that the next step
| will be even further down the road of tying your every action
| back to a real, verified, trackable identity.
| Aachen wrote:
| In your opinion, who should be in charge of the OS? Can I make
| my own (where you select an age per user upon installing the
| machine and upon creating subsequent users), or must it be
| government-sanctioned such that the age verification is
| watertight?
| teeray wrote:
| > Kids are smart and easily learn how to work around
| restrictions.
|
| Absolutely. I feel like adults frequently mistake kids' lack of
| education for stupidity. Lack of education about something is a
| _temporary_ condition, and kids have ridiculous amounts of time,
| energy, and motivation to quickly become expert about something
| they care about. Particularly in reaction to "you can't do that."
|
| One possibility: These laws forget that 18 year olds have kid
| siblings. The 18 year olds need money and like everyone else,
| enjoy the prospects of easy money. The 18-year-old has a phone
| bill to pay. These are the makings of a black market. Kid sibling
| acts as a broker for the older sibling's services among the kid's
| classmates and collect a commission.
| goldylochness wrote:
| This is a very sensible statement. The legislators are out of
| control, and are severely unfamiliar with anything related to
| technology.
|
| This is 100% about spying and information harvesting from users
| who deserve privacy, and would be better off managing their own
| children without the help of the government.
| kwar13 wrote:
| The good old "child protection" and "anti-terrorism"... I have
| gotten numb to seeing either of these
| lacoolj wrote:
| Hopefully this has a domino affect across the industry and more
| companies do this.
|
| It really is just a parenting issue at its core.
| prmoustache wrote:
| If the problem was really kids safety, we would remove abductors
| and sex predators from the internets. Not kids.
| thighbaugh wrote:
| Since these things can be made into forks with minor difference
| relatively easily, instead of playing along with this tech
| company + creepy government data grab because California says so
|
| So much for privacy I guess, hence pulling out this protecting
| children BS that I saw too many kids at my urban CA highschool
| get stabbed to fall for. The fact these tactics still work, where
| we limit our toothless privacy protections that the firms that
| don't comply the state might eventually sue when someone with
| more money than I presses the Attorney General, but then dial it
| back marketing it as protecting children and people still buy it?
| Absurd these same people work at such bleeding edge tech firms
| but then again LLMs can do that busy work they actually are doing
| better most of the time....
| sedatk wrote:
| > The only solution is to educate our children
|
| That's correct, it's been correct for decades, and parents just
| won't do it, not the majority at least. Either they want the
| state to raise their kids for them, or the task is so complicated
| and costly that they're not willing to do it.
|
| But the harms continue to happen, and we're now left at the mercy
| of tech-illiterate lawmakers.
| xmx98 wrote:
| Schools could teach cybersecurity to all children. Scanning
| faces and real-life IDs will fail to solve crime on the
| internet and will only succeed in destroying our privacy.
| sedatk wrote:
| > Schools could teach cybersecurity to all children
|
| Yes, but is it even possible to make majority of schools use
| a common curriculum in the US?
| melonpan7 wrote:
| I'm out of the loop on this whole debacle but can't OS providers
| just say "Not for use in California" and be done with?
| batat wrote:
| So it's neither "yes" nor "no", but some kind of philosophical
| note somewhere in-between a "Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS Released" and
| "CodeWeavers tests their ARM64 compatibility on System76" that
| isn't even linked to noticeable on the main page.
|
| I mean Wikipedia hung some huge banners to raise awareness, the
| German wiki even had a "blackout" because of "Directive
| 2019/790", there was something similar on Reddit etc. I don't
| expect them to leave the US market or anything like that, but
| also I don't even know what to say, as if everyone has already
| resigned.
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