Discussion

anthk: Read and share "Free Software, Free Society" now.Richard Stallman advised us about it long ago.Thank god Plan9 got relicensed into GPL. 9front might not totally free, but it's a step in case GNU+Linux gets utterly broken.And, yes, please, go try Trisquel (novice users), GUIX (experts) and Hyperbola (experts and protocol purists).Avoid every Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Netflix service with nonfree JS.

mikestorrent: I don't like this whole thing, but compared to what I was fearing would happen, this idea is nowhere near as bad.What I expected was that we'd end up with the OS vendors actually being mandated to really do age verification, and then submitting that using Web Credentials and Secure Attestation so that the far end could trust the whole thing, locking open-source OS's out of the mix and creating more of a walled garden online than we already have. I was guessing it would become a simple checkbox on e.g. Cloudflare - "[ ] allow adult users only" or whatever - and that it would end up with vast swathes of the internet going off limits for anyone not on closed-source systems.Now, it looks like this is just a way for parents to tell the OS "this is a kid account" and have it flow through to websites so they can easily proactively block kids from connecting without having to implement any of that crap. Yes, it's much potentially easier for a child to circumvent; but any kid who can get around that sort of thing from within an OS could probably just wipe/reinstall anyway, so who cares?As a parent whose kids are continually trying to see what trouble they can get into, I appreciate that I will get one more potential weapon in the fight.Can someone tell me whether I am being a fool by actually being a bit relieved it's going this way?

Larrikin: Websites can send down a single header indicating adult content. The device, the parent setup to indicate the users age, can respect that. Legitimate adult websites will not show the content. There is no need for any verification beyond that or it's just government mandated surveillance.

exabrial: Why suddenly are all of the blue states doing this BS? What is going on and what control is this affording the government?

tadfisher: Lobbying from Meta. They do not want to do age-verification themselves (and pay for it).

hypeatei: What are they going to do to enforce this? Take down open source projects that "operate" in Illinois because a user downloaded the software there? Absolute joke and everyone should treat it that way; advanced compliance here means implicit support for the surveillance state.

Slow_Hand: If I’m not mistaken, Meta has been lobbying heavily for all of these age-verification bills lately.It seems their strategy is to externalize their responsibility to verify age themselves, and thus reduce their exposure to liabilities when child protection acts like COPPA are violated.

NotGMan: Yeshttps://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1rsn1tm/it_a...

Nijikokun: Meta is behind a huge amount of it, they have funded the majority of these

tracker1: What do you think comes after this? This is just a first step towards exactly requiring age verification at the OS/Store level... Then comes ever more restrictive and intrusive tracking and eliminating all anonymity as a final goal.Time to start throwing up hobby BBS sites... and I think in this case text mode interfaces over web might be an advantage.

TheChaplain: Curious how OpenBSD or Haiku will comply.

dzink: Meta is lobbying with millions for it.

strongpigeon: People here seem very against this, but I don't really see it. This only require to have a form asking about your age and provide an API to read it, right?Surely I'm missing something? Is the backlash due to fear of a slippery slope?

toomuchtodo: I am very pro social media regulation (with regards to age gating) due to the evidenced harm it causes; with that said, this is an attempt by social media companies to shift liability to keep business as usual/status quo. This is no different than what oil companies have done, cigarette companies, chemical companies who have polluted at scale while knowing the harm, etc.Meta and TikTok (and YouTube shorts to an extent) are the new Sackler family and Purdue pharma. They will hold on to these profit and power engines as long and hard as possible. They will not stop causing the harm unless forced to with regulation.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sackler_familyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic_in_the_United_...https://www.profgalloway.com/addiction-economy/

akdev1l: >keep business as usual/status quo.Umm isn’t that what we want? Or are you suggesting there should be some other legislation in place?

nancyminusone: I don't really see any good arguments in favor of it, so why do it?

Slow_Hand: Really, I’m surprised that for all of the discussions on HN around these individual statewide acts that I see so little discussion of Meta as a primary force pushing them.

hypeatei: Why does it matter specifically that Meta is doing it? This has long been a goal for intelligence apparatus and big tech: get rid of anonymity online to "fight terrorism" and sell ads respectively.Don't get me wrong, it's good to know but it's not earth shattering information.

JumpCrisscross: > Why does it matter specifically that Meta is doing it?Their entire top leadership has shown a multi-year tendency towards psychopathy and lying. Knowing Meta is pushing this bill makes me want to understand why my views and theirs randomly agree as well as carefully read the bill text for any signs Adam Mosseri was within 500 feet of it.

JCattheATM: > my views and theirs randomly agreeThat's probably a sign that you should reevaluate your views.

gruez: >Why does it matter specifically that Meta is doing it? This has long been a goal for intelligence apparatus and big tech: get rid of anonymity online to "fight terrorism" and sell ads respectively.How does getting the OS to do age verification "get rid of anonymity online" or help "sell ads"? Assuming the verification is implemented in a competent way (ie. it's not just providing an id scan for any app to read), it's probably one of the more privacy friendly ways to implement age verification, that's also more secure than an "are you over 18" prompt on every website.

1970-01-01: The "one weird trick" that all government hates? Stop forcing OSes to function with accounts. "User account" is an artifact of UNIX. You don't need an account to start a car, send and email, nor boot an operating system. I know it's hard to grasp, but it's true.

thoughtpalette: Growing up, I vividly remember user accounts being important for our families personas on Windows XP. There's definitely a place for them, but there should be an option to not use one.Unless your specifically calling out accounts that require online registration for the OS. I'm vehemently against that requirement.

Lerc: How should they do it? Surely they don't have a responsibility to do something that nobody knows how to do?There have been numerous cases in history where governments have attempted to legislate the outcome they want without regard to how that might be done or if it was possible in the first place. Obviously it can never deliver the results they want.It would be like passing a law to say every company must operate an office on the moon, and then saying that companies lobbying for an advanced NASA space program is them externalising their responsibility.

tyre: They could require government ID to sign up and an adult sponsor to certify accounts for kids. Plus a limit on how many accounts an adult can sponsor.It would be a mess, but solve the problem. It’s not that we don’t have the technology, we just don’t want to because the friction would decimate user numbers and engagement; it would be much simpler to regulate (e.g. usage limits on minors); and minors are less monetizable, which would lead to lower CPM on ads.

richwater: Purdue sold less than 4% of the prescription opioid pain pills in the U.S. from 2006 to 2012. They were a scapegoat for pill farm doctors and an incredible lack of personal responsibility from prescribers, pharmacists and patients.

jacobgkau: Yeah, the laws in CA, CO, and now IL are essentially just mandating generally available OS's implement a standardized, local parental control system.Detractors will say parents should just install existing parental control software, even though it's existed in its current form for decades and is obviously not effective. And they'll say it should be the parents' responsibility to enforce what their kids are doing with computers, while ignoring the fact that these laws provide tools allowing parents to do just that (the parents are the ones responsible for supervising their kids when they create accounts to ensure they're not lying about their age-- if the kids lie during setup, it's on the parents).Anyone with kids will probably acknowledge that it's much easier supervising your kid once when they first set up an account on a new device than it would be to supervise them 24/7 when they're using the internet. But for some reason, lots of people without kids are in a panic about having to type in any date older than 18 years ago. The arguments I've heard against it are almost all slippery-slope (e.g. "they're gonna do this first, and then add ID requirements next year, because that's what I fear will happen.")

dormento: The parents can already do that. Its called "parenting". The fact that they won't even though there are (non-required!) tools they could be using to do so is baffling to me.> if the kids lie during setup, it's on the parentsPretty much a "Yes, and?" scenario. See above.> The arguments I've heard against it are almost all slippery-slope (e.g. "they're gonna do this first, and then add ID requirements next year, because that's what I fear will happen.")I get where you're going, but precisely this. These things always start slow... then fast. The old adage "first they came for x, then y" is not a joke or an exaggeration. It is pretty much historic observation. I've lived long enough to know that whenever someone invokes the "think of the children" defense, there's always a catch.

LooseMarmoset: > The arguments I've heard against it are almost all slippery-slope (e.g. "they're gonna do this first, and then add ID requirements next year, because that's what I fear will happen.")Because that's exactly what will happen. This is battlespace preparation for the destruction of anonymity on the internet, because politicians find this inconvenient.

glitchc: The law as is written mainly targets social media platforms. For an OS to comply, all it needs to do is provide a field during account creation that records the user's date of birth as supplied by the user. There is no onus on the operator to confirm the veracity of this information, or even record it anywhere other than the local OS install itself. I think we're safe.

prmoustache: For what I understand, OpenBSD could just patch useradd so that the age category is mentionned in the comment field of /etc/passwd or a random text file in /etc.Haiku could just run an automatic dialog asking you if you are minor, in Illinois or California and write a text file with the corresponding age category of said person.These bills do not mandate that todo user cannot modify that information AFAIK.

strongpigeon: > This is an attempt by social media companies to shift liability to keep business as usual/status quo.Do you mind expanding on why that is? Is it because it allows them to say "well the API told us they're adults so we're all good"?

spullara: this is completely insane. we need some kind of constitutional amendment to get rid of all this kind legislation forever.

varispeed: constitutional amendment to criminalise corporate lobbying with severe penalties - including capital punishment and confiscation of entire corporation.

jjtheblunt: it's entirely possible such nonsense is all show, and wouldn't be passed, however.i'm from illinois, worked in california, and no longer live in either. from afar, it seems that whatever california bureaucrats propose, after a short delay, gets proposed by their little sibling bureaucrats in illinois.

dmitrygr: This. IL and MA follow whatever CA does with a few year lag. Considerations of sanity never enter into the discussion.

shit_game: > Can someone tell me whether I am being a fool by actually being a bit relieved it's going this way?You're being a fool by actually being a bit relieved it's going this way.These bills are meant to nudge the overton window[0] of digital politics in the direction of mandating realtime identity verification for all forms of computing. Advertisers want it, governments want it, _bad people and bad governments want it_. By pushing a very small and "weak" legally-required form of user identification on everything under the guise of "saving the kids", all involved parties can point at those who disagree and say "Look, if you disagree you must want to hurt children!" And so the bills pass, and a weak form of identity verification passes and is enforced. Then it'll be shown it doesn't work, and the proposed solution will be to make these identity verification laws more intrusive and more restrictive. Repeat ad-nauseum.0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

LooseMarmoset: You shouldn't be downvoted for this, the problem is exactly as you described.

firtoz: It's kinda convenient because every service needs to ask you for the age now because they can't serve under 13s in a lot of cases. Having it be a simple API would be a decent convenience, no?If you connect it with a permission system where you can choose whether to provide this information (e.g. >13 as a bool or age as an integer or the birthday as a date) that can't be too bad I guess?I haven't read the whole thing of course.

pear01: He doesn't want to have to stand up, turn around and apologize to parents on behalf of an asleep at the wheel Congress again.At some level I don't blame him. It is also a bit strange how in that act alone he showed more accountability than most of the politicians that were questioning him, nevermind most executives. I suppose Josh Hawley wants to be liable for personal lawsuits for his acts of Congress too... people cringe at his "robotic" demeanor but I can't remember the last time someone turned and faced people and apologized like this. Most people asked to do the same (even in front of the same body) never do.https://youtu.be/yUAfRod2xgI

mgfist: It should be externalized to a degree. Facebook shouldn't be the ones verifying age, but there should be a trusted 3rd party service that does that, which just tells facebook "yes this user is old enough to use your service" or "no they're not old enough".It abso-fucking-lutely should not be at the OS level though, for so many reasons. Even the implementation alone would be a nightmare. Do I need to input my ID to use a fridge or toaster oven? Ridiculous.

inkysigma: Except none of these bills (California or the one in question) as currently written require an ID to actually be verified, merely that the user provide an age. This seems intentional as it's seems to solve the user journey where a parent is able to set a reasonable default by simply setting up an associated account age at account creation.I think this is a perfectly reasonable balance as there's now a defined path to do reasonable parenting without being a sysadmin.I've seen the argument that this could lead to actual age verification but I think that's a line that's clearly definable and could be fought separately.

observationist: It's up to parents to parent. It's not up to the government, and Facebook pushing this shit is evil.It's not about protecting children. It's about increasing adtech intrusion, protecting revenue from liability, pushing against anonymity, and for all the various apparatus of power, it's about increasing leverage and control over speech.

strongpigeon: I guess I'm more surprised by the intensity of the backlash this generates here. I agree with you that mandating OS APIs like this doesn't seem necessary, but that alone wouldn't warrant the severe reaction this is getting right?

bloppe: It's considered offensive to the strongly freedom-loving FOSS community, and it's basically legally-required tech debt, which is annoying to all maintainers

pianoben: Or, and hear me out, _maybe our computers shouldn't spy on us in the first place_?

2OEH8eoCRo0: That's exactly how I see it. Verification should be on the social media platforms not your OS.

steviedotboston: and the verification that the OS has to provide is minimal. the OS doesn't need to verify and ID or anything. Probably just a checkbox when you create the account that you're an adult, or child, etc. and then that's provided to the browser. So it effectively becomes meaningless if the goal is to get children off social media.

hypeatei: What if I don't want my computer asking for my age and providing an API to give up that information? Why is the government mandating software devs to add bloat and privacy violating features to operating systems?The slippery slope isn't a fallacy in this case as we've seen the pot slowly come to a boil after 9/11 with various laws like the Patriot Act, FISA, etc. and classified programs within the NSA (and I'm sure all the three letters) which violate the rights of Americans everyday. Now it's a coordinated effort across multiple western countries all of a sudden to introduce laws around your verifying your age. It's clear where this is going.

albertsw: How old is root?

ActorNightly: I actually see the golden lining here>"Operating system provider" means a person or entity that develops, licenses, or controls the operating system software on a computer, mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device.I.e Linux will most likely to be immune, since its not tied to a particular computer.Which just means Linux stay winning. It already made big headway in the video game space, so its prime to take over personal computing too.

bloppe: There are basically 2 possibilities with the outcome of this law: It's rather so full of holes as to be meaningless, or it's so invasive as to force open source projects to try to geofence Illinois (which wouldn't be effective either, but might be the kind of compliance theatre we'll see from maintainers worried about liability).Linux distros always have a "root" user. Does that user have to be asked its age before being usable? What about docker containers, which often come with a non-root user? What about installation media, which is often a perfectly usable OS? It would either have to be so easy to get around this law that most kids could do it easily, or so overzealously enforced as to disrupt the entire cloud industry.

jwitthuhn: Why should an OS demand personal information from its users? It creates an unnecessary risk that the information will be leaked.

toomuchtodo: Personal responsibility isn't a thing from a consumption perspective, it's primarily brain chemistry. See: GLP-1s [1] [2]Let us not blame humans for suboptimal brain chemistry taken advantage of by malicious torment nexus threat actors. Fix the policy, bug fix the human, disempower the threat actors.[1] Why Ozempic Beats Free Will - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hot-thought/202410/w... - October 4th, 2024[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45907422 (additional citations)(think in systems)

JCattheATM: It's the start of a very slippery slope.

naikrovek: Slippery slopes are a logical fallacy. Every single decision moving you down the slope is intentional. No sliding occurs if nothing actively pushes things down the slide.Accordingly, it is never too late to lobby against these things.

nlitened: > Slippery slopes are a logical fallacyHow is this a counter-argument? I often read this, as if there's some international trusted organization of logical thinkers that has approved inclusion of slippery slope to a list of logical fallacies that must never be invoked in a conversation.Every single time five years later it turns out that the slope actually was slippery.

karmakaze: Wouldn't that include using it on any cloud service that let's you pick it?

areoform: Not if you're being pushed down the slope.It's not an accident that this appeared within a month or two of the California one. I would bet good money that there's someone shopping this bill around.If you do a frequency analysis of when these bills are being introduced, you'll notice an odd cluster internationally. Less charitably, they're coordinating / talking / being pushed by someone. More charitably, the "idea" is spreading.It's a very odd idea to spread though. Age "verification" isn't something people are truly passionate about.I suspect that, long-term, this is about surveillance. The powers that be would rather kill the golden genie that's general purpose compute than have teens and radical youth with compute.This is going to get bad.

mattnewton: Like gravity, there is some inexorably force drawing the state towards mass surveillance tools as it makes the job easier. Removing friction that fights against that force is real

clcaev: How will public libraries comply?

hypeatei: You've accepted the overton window shift that age verification is an inevitability and that we need to give up information to the operating system because any other way would violate our privacy! It's naive to see this internationally coordinated effort to "save the children" as anything other than the temperature in the pot being turned up.> implemented in a competent way (ie. it's not just providing an id scan for any app to read)What if there are vulnerabilities? You're inherently introducing more attack surface and providing more data than you would without these laws.

gruez: >You've accepted the overton window shift that age verification is an inevitability and that we need to give up information to the operating system because any other way would violate your privacy! It's naive to see this internationally coordinated effort to "save the children" as anything other than the temperature in the pot being turned up.If you're trying to imply Meta is behind the "overton window shift", that's plainly not the case. The popular sentiment against smartphones and social networks harming kids (thereby necessitating bans/verification) have been boiling over for a while now, eg. "The Anxious Generation, 2024".>What if there are vulnerabilities? You're inherently introducing more attack surface and providing more data than you would without these laws.Probably less likely to cause vulnerabilities than web usb or web bluetooth , both of which gets some pushback here but nowhere as much an API that returns a number.

jeffbee: The argument about the California bill is not that it is a slippery slope, but that it was drafted by people with zero domain knowledge. It applies equally to toaster ovens as well as iPhones.

tokai: All the distros are the providers here. The Linux kernel is not an operating system.

pull_my_finger: It WOULD be nice if it only got used appropriately. But in 2026 its just one more metric to narrow down your profile for advertisers. Wouldn't it be convenient if you could just opt-out of tracking with a convenient API like the literal "do not track" header in browsers? It exists, but none of the people who SHOULD use it pay it any attention except as, ironically, another metric used to track people.Not to mention that computing is a global thing, and in order for this to be useful it would definitely have to be providing more specific information than just a bool. Maybe chats require 13+, but pornography requires 18+. Maybe those ages are different based on location. All advertisers would need to do is ping the various different checks to get your actual or at least very approximate age.This kind of thing is a slippery slope, and its ripe for abuse by doxxers, advertisers and big brother himself. Burn this with fire. I'm totally in agreement with the others that suggest stuff like this should b just get banned from getting introduced and reintroduced constantly trying to sneak it in as a rider or hidden provision. The people DON'T want it.

al_borland: People lie, so there would need to be some kind of proof provided, right? How much data will one need to give up to use a computer? Where/how is that data stored? What else will it be used for? What happens when it’s hacked? How will test systems or servers work? If I want a computer that isn’t linked to the rest of my ecosystem, can I still do that or will age verification require I login with a cloud account?There are so many ways for this to go badly or simply be annoying.I’m a guy in my 40s with no kids. I shouldn’t need to deal with all of this. Let the parents turn on parental controls for their kids; don’t force it on everyone.If Meta needs to find a way to verify age, then that is also their problem. They are trying to make it the world’s problem. I don’t use any Meta products, so again I would question why I need to care about this… why will it become my problem?The slippery slope then comes in addition to all of this.It seems Apple already implemented their age verification API. I got prompted for it when opening the MyChart app a few weeks ago. The API used in that case only sends a Boolean if the user is over 18 or not, this is the best of the bad options. However, they have other APIs to get other data from a digital ID. The user is at the whim of the API the developer chooses to use. They can say no, but then they can’t use the app. I’m not sure how Apple validated my age, as I hadn’t loaded an ID into my wallet, but my Apple account is nearly 18 years old, so that might be good enough? If I were to get a Mac and just want to use a local account, then what happens? Can I not verify my age? Will I be able to use the computer or be locked out of the browser? These are some of the fears I have if they take this too far. Maybe some of them are unfounded, but I guess time will tell.

SoftTalker: It's not all about you.

fredgrott: here is the date I will put out....1 10 0000or even better1 10 -2000This will turn into most useless set of laws ever

starkparker: I think? the most recent version of that post is https://web.archive.org/web/20260314074025/https://www.reddi..., which is "awaiting moderator approval"

Springtime: I've seen skepticism about the veracity of the claims, in part as various sources cited in the git repo pointed to todo files not actual data[1] (in that example was only just hours ago a source file was added, when the project still claims part of the conclusions are based on data said to be contained there).Which has led some to suspect much is LLM generated and not properly human-reviewed, in addition to the very short timeframe from initial self-disclosed start of the research to publishing it online (mere 2-3 days) despite the confident tone the author uses.[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20260317184359/https://lobste.rs...

Aunche: People are making way too big a deal of this IMO. This is basically the OS equivalent of that checkbox you click to enter a porn website that gets exposed to Meta, so they can claim that they did what they all the they could to protect children if they get sued by parents. Any determined kid would figure out a way around this, but I can see it stopping younger and less determined kids, and it's a useful tool for parents.

zardo: Wouldn't a some kind of technical standard proposal be a more sensible way to do this than trying to pass OS laws state by state?

ezfe: Is there a problem with this? Most users are using an iPhone and most iPhones already know the accurate age of their user

fhn: These people are just so clueless. All they will find is that everybody on the internet is an adult.

bink: Kids aren't stupid. They'll just create another account when they're old enough to figure it out. They'll tell their friends how to do it and the rest of us will be stuck with these stupid prompts forever like it's a cookie banner.

1718627440: I mean on a UNIX OS you could make it yet another group the user needs to be part of. Like the group for access to optical media or for changing network credentials. Whether the child gets root access if on the parent, but that is like with anything else. A child can get around this, but it means finding and exploiting a 0-day on the OS. If they are able to pull this of I would congratulate them.

anthk: Meanwhile Epstein and the pedo elite are untouchable and with no surveillance of course.

gruez: >They could require government ID to sign up and an adult sponsor to certify accounts for kids. Plus a limit on how many accounts an adult can sponsor.Requiring all online account creation to go through some government vouching system sounds far worse for privacy than OS doing age verification.

intrasight: OS-based age verification would also have to use a government ID. There is no alternatives to a government ID for such verification.

gruez: >OS-based age verification would also have to use a government ID.Source? Another commenter claims the opposite: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47416653

Lerc: I think the public in general woul be happier with the office on the moon idea than compulsory Government ID requirements to use services.

intrasight: It's only required for services that require it. The states are also regulating which services those are.

TrueDuality: A big chunk of the problem with this kind of legislation for me is that it inherently indicates a failure to govern to me. I disagree with the premise of the solution, but even more so this is trying to legislate a specific engineering solution for our current systems rather than any form of financial, objective guidance, or have reasonably actionable and enforceable consequences.While laws that target engineering decisions are sometimes reasonable, they are always accompanied with specific guidance from a credible academic based institution (e.g. mechanical and civil engineering use private licensing bodies and develop specific curriculum and best practices).The only time this law will ever be enforced is punitively for other crimes against major actors who are extremely limited in number. It is unenforceable for Linux, trivial for Apple, Microsoft, and Google to add to their OS. Presumably easy to spoof, the law describes it as minimal but once again, there isn't a specification so who knows. Websites won't be liable, they're getting a sweetheart deal here.In practice what this law does is absolve abusive platforms an from any responsibility. It adds extra meaningless work and overhead for legitimate adult platforms while opening themselves up to new potential legal challenges, and ultimately doesn't replace the responsibility its removing.This doesn't make children safer. This doesn't make the internet safer. This kind of legislation makes it easier to abuse children online by removing responsibility from platforms that are known to be dangerous to them yet profit from their presence the most.

eecc: I guess the point is: delegate to kernel, then “oh, people with root can bypass with modules? Secure Boot!”

pooooka: LOL. Well said...Seems as if we're on some dystopian track that's eventually going to transform a RealID card into something like a Common Access Card (or worse).

1718627440: The "User account" of the OS are the security contexts. You can say everything should be a single security context, and this is how a lot of people have been operating their MS Windows machines, logging in as admin constantly, but this is a stupid idea and comes with risks. Even when you say the OS can have a second root account, that the user never gets to use, you have two user accounts.

SilverElfin: Every single sponsor of this bill is a Democrat. Why is that? I would think they’re against the type of puritanical moralizing that is behind most age verification bills.

inetknght: > It should be externalized to a degree.Why?We don't externalize age verification when buying alcohol or visiting the strip club. It's on the responsibility of those establishments to verify age.

1shooner: > it is never too late to lobby against these things.Putting aside the real possibility that the ability to lobby against certain things is already actively under attack, it isn't speech alone that is being addressed, it's political and cultural momentum.Would you call it a fallacy that making incremental rather than sudden movement in a specific direction makes it politically easier to accomplish?

SoftTalker: Don't kid yourself, Meta already knows the age of all its users, at least within the broad categories that this bill defines.

thesuitonym: Yes, but they want to show children content that is not appropriate, then claim ignorance.

maxrmk: If a company relies on self reported ages, they don't "know" it well enough to satisfy COPPA. Probably. I'm not a lawyer but I do keep up with the latest in privacy enforcement and I think this is the way things are headed.For the record, I'm against age verification laws. But I think companies are pushing for them because of liabilities they face under other laws, not because they would actually like to have the data.

onlyrealcuzzo: Legally, there's a difference between "knowing" and "accurate enough for loose cannon advertisers".

0xbadcafebee: [delayed]

longislandguido: The most progressive states doing exactly what their constituents elected them to do. I don't understand why everyone is so surprised.

sjsdaiuasgdia: In those in-person contexts, the identification document is still externalized - they're checking a government-issued photo ID in the vast majority of situations.It works for the in-person context because it's a physical object, making it easier to control access to it. A high resolution picture of the same ID is a privacy problem as it can be copied, shared, transferred, etc without the knowledge of the ID holder.

balozi: What recourse would Illinois have against open-source operating systems? Anyone can roll their own Linux distro and share it with whomever they want.

icwtyjj: > What recourse would Illinois (!) have against open-source operating systems?None but them corporations sure do. And with a little cash in the right place I'm sure they can push recourse onto people of power. We really need to end political lobbying one of these days

enoint: I don’t care if it’s part of the user setup, but make it an App Store dotfile. Don’t issue fines to Debian for offering a Docker image without a user setup script.

pstuart: Do we make contractors do age verification on their supplies when building a liquor store or strip club? The OS is a tool used by Meta, just like the utilities and the compute itself.Meta Apps can have age verification but it should be at the point of service, not the supply chain.And even if we were to agree to this, uploading your IDs to an untrusted third party is asking too much.

alistairSH: uploading your IDs to an untrusted third party is asking too much.So have the government do it? They already know who we are and when we were born.

bs7280: Calling everything a logical fallacy, is also a logical fallacy.We have already seen the federal government use facial recognition data to create an app that tells ICE goons who's legal. We should not tolerate the government forcing more data tracking and privacy violations just because you are not "sliding" today.

tt24: Why are we bringing up our pet issues in threads that have nothing to do with themSignal your virtue in the threads that are dedicated to those issues please, we don’t need to bring this up in a thread dedicated to some dumb law

saltyoldman: That's the correct strategy, if anyone sues meta, meta can bring their age verifier into the lawsuit and blame them. It makes sense from a business perspective, insurance perspective. etc...

nemomarx: I don't think "real" age verification with ids is immune to this either. (kids paying an adult to get an id for it or fooling an ai classifier, whatever).Basically unsolveable, so why worry about that edge case? Kids will always get through to some adult content somewhere. A token system will make parents feel better in the meantime.

somethoughts: From a parent's perspective, that's the great part about bubbling it up to the OS user account level.Its trivially easy to see if the user (child) has indeed created multiple OS level user accounts with different permission levels if you want to spot check the computer.You'll see it on first startup and then you can have "a chat". With Guest account access disabled, spawning a new account on a computer takes 2-3 minutes, will send emails and dashboard notices to the parent.Its very much near impossible to verify that the child is not just going to Facebook etc. and using separate accounts and just logging out religiously.That said I wish Apple/Microsoft/Google had more aggressively advertised their Parental Control features for Mac/Windows/ChromeOS as a key differentiator to avoid Ubuntu/Open Source distros from having to implement them.

quincepie: to me, it's both the slippery slope argument and the lack of real reason other than "protecting minors". operating systems were designed to run the program/programs. You can make applications use this API to determine the user age, or you can just...ask the user in the application itself. I also don't see why this is a requirement rather than an option the same way I don't see why having a Microsoft account is required to install windows or access to internet (without the current workarounds) or even those password reset questions and to some extent asking for first and last name. If I want to add those information, let me do that myself or when i use said software, don't make it a hard requirement.The bill itself sort of goes against its "purpose". If the purpose is to make a convenient API for stores to know their user, and avoid showing them certain content then why did the bill state: "If an operator has internal clear and convincing information that a user's age is different than the age indicated by a signal received in accordance with this Section, the operator shall use that information as the primary indicator of the user's age."because many people lie in those forms. Many people on steam will select they were born in 1900, including myself. So how will this API help? the only way for it to be useful is if they later require full verification.

sneak: This is the framework for requiring government ID to use online services, which increasingly power even local computing (thanks to DRM and cloud services).They want to abolish anonymous use of internet services, because anonymous publishing at scale is powerful and dangerous to incumbents when they can’t retaliate with malicious prosecution, police harassment, or assassination.

phicoh: There is a huge attack surface for this. For example, kid manages to buy an old phone. Resets the phone and creates an account. Kid buys something like a Pi 3 manages to get a regular phone to become an access point. Etc. If a laptop is not completely locked down, a kid might boot a live USB stick.

1970-01-01: You're conflating profiles with user accounts. "Admin user" didn't exist until Windows NT. You don't need permission to change your clothes!

anonym29: Blue states: paternalism over your property, liberty for your bodyRed states: paternalism over your body, liberty for your property

gruez: except for during covid, where there was a weird reversal.

anonym29: I don't even know if that was much of a "reversal".Blue states were paternalistic over both your property (business and social gathering shutdowns) and your body (masking, social distancing enforcement), while red states (particularly Texas, Florida) were very laissez-faire for both.What's perplexing about this is that research has generally correlated higher amygdala activity (fear/worry) with political conservatism, and lower amygdala activity with political progressivism, but in this case, the effect seemed almost inverted.

mghackerlady: In that case, I imagine that the response of mask mandates wasn't out of fear but was done do to the obvious benefit in controlling a disaster. The anti-masking movement is also I suspect a fear response. People are afraid of change, especially extremely visible change

favorited: "Progressive states" like Utah, Texas, and Louisiana?https://le.utah.gov/~2025/bills/static/SB0142.htmlhttps://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/html/SB02420S...https://www.legis.la.gov/Legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=1427667

charcircuit: Laws exist that dictate what apps are allowed to do depending on the user's age. This means that in order to follow the law they must collect the user's age. If collecting the user's age is a common requirement of apps it makes sense for the operating system to expose an easy way to do that to make app development easier on that platform.

enoint: No, it makes sense for an App Store to do that. Or, that HTTP headers are set at the device or network proxy.User account creation wizards could just create the dot files for the App Store. These weird laws ban OS.

charcircuit: The issue is that software can be installed from outside of the app store on pretty much every OS. Also if you have multiple app stores it would be confident if they could all get it from the same place.

kevin_thibedeau: That requires trusting a government with a power that is likely to be abused.

strongpigeon: The way I see it (to strongman the bill's position) is that by mandating it at account creation, an adult/parent can ensure that the age is properly set for a minor/child.That being said, I don't think this bill was that well thought out as the implication are far reaching (will I need to enter an age when provisioning a VM?).I mostly see it as a clumsy attempt to provide a mechanism for age-category attestation in a way that is more privacy-friendly than Texas's "upload-your-id" law.

bigbuppo: We got rid of the IDENT protocol a long time ago because it was stupid.

cheschire: And how will you use a library computer?

zuminator: There's a couple of ways that could go down.One way is that you log in under a guest account and the guest account requires you to indicate your age. After your session is over, guest account logs out.Another way is that the library has two sets of computers, ones set for adults, ones set for minors. You need access card to use computer and the librarian will give you the age-appropriate access card.Another way is computers are set for restrictive (child) account by default. If you need adult access you have to ask librarian to unlock it.

bigbuppo: If allowing children access to social media is dangerous, then why aren't they enforcing existing child abuse and child endangerment laws? Throw the parents in prison for failing to control their children.

alistairSH: But they already know my age (and my address, and my SS#, and my income, and a whole bunch of other stuff).

stackedinserter: Too much for Dem's state.

pizzathyme: "so full of holes as to be meaningless"what is the solution then to age gating apps that the public feels should be age gated? (TikTok, Instagram, etc). it seems like every app implementing its own guessing system would have even more holes, right?this is one where I am sympathetic. the moment when someone, with their parent, is setting up a device seems like the best point to check age. right?am I missing something?