3 ms·

Just because it's easy doesn't mean it's right. Give legislative busybodies the ability to force this little flag into the OS because it's no big deal, and next

Just because it's easy doesn't mean it's right. Give legislative busybodies the ability to force this little flag into the OS because it's no big deal, and next year they'll say "hey, make sure you only report 18+ if secure boot is enabled" and 5 years later it'll be "hey, you can only report 18+ if one of our Identity Partners has confirmed it." It's the principle of the matter. The State should not be allowed to compel speech (what code you write) in your open source project. It may sound stubborn but if we don't fight it now it will only grow little by "easy feature" little.

raincole 7mo ago
You see a slippery slope and I see a reasonable compromise. It's a wildly popular opinion that we should control which age groups can use social media[0][1][2]. Do you think these polls are astroturfed? If not, it's clear people want some sort of age verification, and I think California's way is the least intrusive. And I know someone is going to say 'then we should regulate social media sites to force them to verify the users' ages...' no god please no. Normalizing cloud-based age verification is far, far worse than AB 1043. If there is a principle to be set that should be: cloud should trust local, not vice versa. [0]: https://yougov.com/articles/51000-support-for-under-16-social-media-ban-soars-to-77-among-australians https://yougov.com/articles/51000-support-for-under-16-socia... [1]: https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/widespread-support-banning-social-media-under-14s-and-acceptance-kids-today-have-it-harder https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/widespread-support-banning-socia... [2]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/gen-z-social-media-ban-youth-poll-b2724122.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/gen-z-social...
- akersten 7mo ago
  People, generally, have no grasp of what they really want or what downstream effects of what they think they want look like. They don't know what it would take to effect that ban. In fact, I would speculate that if the same group were asked "should you, personally, have to scan your ID to visit Facebook," you'd see a meaningful shift in responses. (yes, I know that's not the way this particular CA proposal would be implemented, the point is that people are fickle and polls are not a good guide for lawmaking) I also don't base my principles on the desires of the masses. It's our duty as people who understand the technology to prevent the controversy-de-jour from wagging our dog. I share your feeling that if everyone did it this way and the world promised to stop making bad, privacy-invading ID laws I could grin and bear it. I don't see that happening, thus I am hostile to it in any flavor.
  - raincole 7mo ago
    > They don't know what it would take to effect that ban. Exactly. This is why if there is no some less evil way to appease these stupid people we'll go all the way straight to the evilest way. Stupid and uninformed people do actually vote.
- slopinthebag 7mo ago
  I'm curious what a poll of public opinion would say about certain demographics in 1930's Germany. Does that seem like a good argument for what the government should and shouldn't do? A reasonable compromise? With who? Who here is somehow required to "compromise"?
  - gzread 7mo ago
    You are comparing a "I am over 18" checkbox to Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler. Maybe it's time to think about whether you're overreacting.
TZubiri 7mo ago
"It's the principle of the matter. The State should not be allowed to compel speech (what code you write)" What a stretch man. Is banning nuclear weapons a restriction of free speech because it compels speech (the blueprints and specs engineers write).
- gzread 7mo ago
  It's more like mandating every nuclear weapon must have a prominent safety switch.
lesostep 7mo ago
I want to agree with you, but if it's my system and my browser reporting my bracket, wouldn't it be trivially easy to inject an http-header with the age I want to report? And by "trivially easy" I mean "somebody already posted how-to for windows to stackoverflow"
- fainpul 7mo ago
  The problem is not that it's hard to cheat (it's easy), the problem is it makes you officially a liar and liable for "illegal app use". It might not be a problem for you, but some underage kid, who lied about their age, gets addicted to a game with in-game purchases and gets into financial trouble now has no recourse against the company who made the addicting game.
  - lesostep 7mo ago
    Does this imagined underage kid that right now lies about his age in UI-form have a case because it wasn't on OS level? I genuinely don't know, and it's hard to see what's the differences between those two cases are.
    - fainpul 7mo ago
      I'm not a lawyer, but it's clear that this changes the narrative. If some technical restriction is in place (OS level age statement with apps who enforce it) and the kid circumvents that, it's easy for a company to claim that they did their part and all blame is on the kid. Without that, it's trickier for the company who intentionally created some addictive product to prove that they did enough to protect the kid.
  - gzread 7mo ago
    There's no liability in the law for a child who uses an over-18-signaled account and accesses over-18 content, nor for a parent who gave that account to the child. It's all the parent's decision if the child should be restricted or not.
    - 7mo ago
NonHyloMorph 7mo ago
And the identity partner will probably be a subsidary of palantir lol

raincole 7mo ago

You see a slippery slope and I see a reasonable compromise. It's a wildly popular opinion that we should control which age groups can use social media[0][1][2]. Do you think these polls are astroturfed? If not, it's clear people want some sort of age verification, and I think California's way is the least intrusive. And I know someone is going to say 'then we should regulate social media sites to force them to verify the users' ages...' no god please no. Normalizing cloud-based age verification is far, far worse than AB 1043. If there is a principle to be set that should be: cloud should trust local, not vice versa. [0]: https://yougov.com/articles/51000-support-for-under-16-social-media-ban-soars-to-77-among-australians https://yougov.com/articles/51000-support-for-under-16-socia... [1]: https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/widespread-support-banning-social-media-under-14s-and-acceptance-kids-today-have-it-harder https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/widespread-support-banning-socia... [2]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/gen-z-social-media-ban-youth-poll-b2724122.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/gen-z-social...

akersten 7mo ago
People, generally, have no grasp of what they really want or what downstream effects of what they think they want look like. They don't know what it would take to effect that ban. In fact, I would speculate that if the same group were asked "should you, personally, have to scan your ID to visit Facebook," you'd see a meaningful shift in responses. (yes, I know that's not the way this particular CA proposal would be implemented, the point is that people are fickle and polls are not a good guide for lawmaking) I also don't base my principles on the desires of the masses. It's our duty as people who understand the technology to prevent the controversy-de-jour from wagging our dog. I share your feeling that if everyone did it this way and the world promised to stop making bad, privacy-invading ID laws I could grin and bear it. I don't see that happening, thus I am hostile to it in any flavor.
- raincole 7mo ago
  > They don't know what it would take to effect that ban. Exactly. This is why if there is no some less evil way to appease these stupid people we'll go all the way straight to the evilest way. Stupid and uninformed people do actually vote.
slopinthebag 7mo ago
I'm curious what a poll of public opinion would say about certain demographics in 1930's Germany. Does that seem like a good argument for what the government should and shouldn't do? A reasonable compromise? With who? Who here is somehow required to "compromise"?
- gzread 7mo ago
  You are comparing a "I am over 18" checkbox to Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler. Maybe it's time to think about whether you're overreacting.

TZubiri 7mo ago

"It's the principle of the matter. The State should not be allowed to compel speech (what code you write)" What a stretch man. Is banning nuclear weapons a restriction of free speech because it compels speech (the blueprints and specs engineers write).

gzread 7mo ago
It's more like mandating every nuclear weapon must have a prominent safety switch.

lesostep 7mo ago

I want to agree with you, but if it's my system and my browser reporting my bracket, wouldn't it be trivially easy to inject an http-header with the age I want to report? And by "trivially easy" I mean "somebody already posted how-to for windows to stackoverflow"

fainpul 7mo ago
The problem is not that it's hard to cheat (it's easy), the problem is it makes you officially a liar and liable for "illegal app use". It might not be a problem for you, but some underage kid, who lied about their age, gets addicted to a game with in-game purchases and gets into financial trouble now has no recourse against the company who made the addicting game.
- lesostep 7mo ago
  Does this imagined underage kid that right now lies about his age in UI-form have a case because it wasn't on OS level? I genuinely don't know, and it's hard to see what's the differences between those two cases are.
  - fainpul 7mo ago
    I'm not a lawyer, but it's clear that this changes the narrative. If some technical restriction is in place (OS level age statement with apps who enforce it) and the kid circumvents that, it's easy for a company to claim that they did their part and all blame is on the kid. Without that, it's trickier for the company who intentionally created some addictive product to prove that they did enough to protect the kid.
- gzread 7mo ago
  There's no liability in the law for a child who uses an over-18-signaled account and accesses over-18 content, nor for a parent who gave that account to the child. It's all the parent's decision if the child should be restricted or not.
  - 7mo ago

NonHyloMorph 7mo ago

And the identity partner will probably be a subsidary of palantir lol