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> While there's general agreement that children could be better protected online, the approach called for under AB 2273 would require that covered websites – th

> While there's general agreement that children could be better protected online, the approach called for under AB 2273 would require that covered websites – those that could be used by minors – somehow verify the age of visitors. Despite Newsom's nod to ostensible tech industry support, technology rights advocates dislike the age-checking mandate, claiming it will expand surveillance in the name of privacy. I wonder if that's all visitors or only visitors claiming to be over 18. If they give legal cover to businesses that want to ask for and store government id / confirmed identities of children, that's crazy. I have a Microsoft account where my niece and nephew are kids in my family. It's totally fake names and ages. Why should children require real names with accurate info for birthdays, etc.? Give me decent moderation tools as the family organizer and piss off. You don't need my family tree and DNA to sell me stuff online. > "The bill is so vaguely and broadly written that it will almost certainly lead to widespread use of invasive age verification techniques that subject children (and everyone else) to more surveillance while claiming to protect their privacy," said Fight the Future, in a statement. It almost feels like the big tech companies are behind it. Now they can ask for a copy of your photo ID or passport and blame the government when people get upset. Forbid all data collection for anyone claiming to be under 18 and forbid discrimination against those users if your service targets children. I would really like to see the age data for Roblox users before vs after they gated voice chat behind an age requirement that's provided via the honor system. Pass a blanket law banning all data collection and social graph mapping. I don't care if Facebook and Google go bankrupt or if Microsoft shrinks to half it's current size. That's just more opportunity for people and businesses that don't want to treat the average person like a piece of livestock.

p_l 4y ago
From an overview that was posted on HN few months ago, nobody is happy about this law except for political virtue signaling. On one hand it creates ridiculous requirements on website owners, on the other it effectively mandates surveillance in name of age checking
- amanaplanacanal 4y ago
  > The Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC) Act forbids online service providers that offer service to children from using the personal information of children in a way that's detrimental, from gathering, selling, or storing a child's geo-location, from profiling by default, and from soliciting children to provide their information. If you don't do any of those things you aren't required to do age verification. This is only a problem for those websites that want to do things they shouldn't be doing anyway. What am I missing?
  - p_l 4y ago
    Unless they patched few things out recently, the bill was written so that: a) you had to make complex design reviews to prove that you did everything right for the children - even if your site wasn't targeted at children, because what it amounted to was "can a child access the service" b) The age verification requirements to properly disprove that the accessing party isn't a child were idiotically draconic (thus the surveillance part) And IIRC, just having accounts could lead to "you're gathering data". last moment edit: I found the original posting about it: article: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/08/24/dear-california-law-makers-how-the-hell-can-i-comply-with-your-new-age-appropriate-design-code/ https://www.techdirt.com/2022/08/24/dear-california-law-make... HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32587592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32587592
  - LinuxBender 4y ago
    I interpret that as any site that has access logs, given that IP addresses can be used for geo-location. Quality of geo-location is debatable but I do not wish to debate this in court. Profiling is by design part of most forums and chat servers. Forums ask for age for optional birthday announcements and allow the person to put in whatever personally identifiable information they wish to enter. Anything beyond a mininal chan board or a static blog is going to have information that can be used to profile the visitor. So in this case, does this law clearly define "their information" or does this have vaguely worded wiggle room? I'm not even sure I want to go too far down this rabbit hole. People sometimes use a picture of their kid in their forum avatar.

p_l 4y ago

From an overview that was posted on HN few months ago, nobody is happy about this law except for political virtue signaling. On one hand it creates ridiculous requirements on website owners, on the other it effectively mandates surveillance in name of age checking

amanaplanacanal 4y ago
> The Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC) Act forbids online service providers that offer service to children from using the personal information of children in a way that's detrimental, from gathering, selling, or storing a child's geo-location, from profiling by default, and from soliciting children to provide their information. If you don't do any of those things you aren't required to do age verification. This is only a problem for those websites that want to do things they shouldn't be doing anyway. What am I missing?
- p_l 4y ago
  Unless they patched few things out recently, the bill was written so that: a) you had to make complex design reviews to prove that you did everything right for the children - even if your site wasn't targeted at children, because what it amounted to was "can a child access the service" b) The age verification requirements to properly disprove that the accessing party isn't a child were idiotically draconic (thus the surveillance part) And IIRC, just having accounts could lead to "you're gathering data". last moment edit: I found the original posting about it: article: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/08/24/dear-california-law-makers-how-the-hell-can-i-comply-with-your-new-age-appropriate-design-code/ https://www.techdirt.com/2022/08/24/dear-california-law-make... HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32587592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32587592
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  I interpret that as any site that has access logs, given that IP addresses can be used for geo-location. Quality of geo-location is debatable but I do not wish to debate this in court. Profiling is by design part of most forums and chat servers. Forums ask for age for optional birthday announcements and allow the person to put in whatever personally identifiable information they wish to enter. Anything beyond a mininal chan board or a static blog is going to have information that can be used to profile the visitor. So in this case, does this law clearly define "their information" or does this have vaguely worded wiggle room? I'm not even sure I want to go too far down this rabbit hole. People sometimes use a picture of their kid in their forum avatar.