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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

by 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.

by p_l 4y ago

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.