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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? Sur

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 7mo ago
I am very pro social media regulation (with regards to age gating) due to the evidenced harm it causes, and which court cases have shown these companies are well aware of internally; 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_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sackler_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic_in_the_United_... https://www.profgalloway.com/addiction-economy/ https://www.profgalloway.com/addiction-economy/
- strongpigeon 7mo ago
  > 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"?
  - steviedotboston 7mo ago
    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.
- richwater 7mo ago
  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.
  - toomuchtodo 7mo ago
    Personal responsibility isn't a thing from a consumption perspective, it's primarily brain chemistry. See: GLP-1s [1] [2] (tldr they patch the brain's reward center against suboptimal reward chasing and demand) 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. Defend and empower the human. My pattern matching in the comment you replied to stands imho, and while it is admittedly imperfect (as you point out), I believe it remains directionally accurate. [1] Why Ozempic Beats Free Will - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hot-thought/202410/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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45907422 (additional citations) (think in systems)
- akdev1l 7mo ago
  >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?
  - toomuchtodo 7mo ago
    Age gating first [1] (no social for under X age), keep tightening the policy ratchet as data and evidence indicates. OODA loop applied to policy [2]. [1] Tracking Efforts To Restrict Or Ban Teens from Social Media Across the Globe - https://www.techpolicy.press/tracking-efforts-to-restrict-or-ban-teens-from-social-media-across-the-globe/ https://www.techpolicy.press/tracking-efforts-to-restrict-or... - February 23rd, 2026 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop
    - akdev1l 7mo ago
      Either they’re doing a slippery slope trying to change the status quo or they’re doing this to keep the status quo Seems you are contradicting yourself
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 7mo ago
  That's exactly how I see it. Verification should be on the social media platforms not your OS.
nancyminusone 7mo ago
I don't really see any good arguments in favor of it, so why do it? There's no reason my OS needs to know anything about me.
- strongpigeon 7mo ago
  I guess I'm more surprised by the intensity of the backlash this generates here. I agree with you that mandating (weak) OS APIs like this the right approach, but that alone wouldn't warrant the severe reaction this is getting right?
  - bloppe 7mo ago
    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
  - tokai 7mo ago
    Seems pretty reasonable to get annoyed at a law that at best will be useless and at worse dangerous, while it will directly dictate features into the tools we all use everyday. All for no gain for anyone but maybe Meta and some other big companies.
    - burnt-resistor 7mo ago
      Exactly. It's the beachhead of corporations upon which they will pry even more mandatory metadata to market to, silence, and control people. Also, not every jurisdiction defines adult and/or legally able to use social media the same way. Parents need to parent at the level 0 social layer than push this off to everything at technical layers and everyone else. It's a moral panic ruse in legislative form for greed and power.
  - akersten 7mo ago
    Code is speech. Open source projects are an exercise in speaking publicly. This law mandates particular speech in your otherwise Free as in freedom code. How are you not outraged? People are missing the above forest for the "oh but it's a tiny little easy API and I don't see any downsides" trees.
jwitthuhn 7mo ago
Why should an OS demand personal information from its users? It creates an unnecessary risk that the information will be leaked.
- charcircuit 7mo ago
  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 7mo ago
    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 7mo ago
      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 convenient if they could all get it from the same place.
      - enoint 7mo ago
        I'm skeptical we should ban all operating systems which permit this without an interactive age check. Shouldn't the free market acolytes be arguing that parents can choose between competitors which offer ever-improving parental controls?
        charcircuit 7mo ago
        I agree with you, but it seems like the free market is moving too slowly in regards to this pain point for parents which is resulting in demand for them to force change through the legal system.
bloppe 7mo ago
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.
- strongpigeon 7mo ago
  > 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. My guess reading the law as linked is that it's much closer to the former than the latter. That being said, you're right that it does bring a bunch of headache alongside with it for little-to-no benefits.
- pizzathyme 7mo ago
  "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?
  - duskdozer 7mo ago
    the solution is to remove the bits of those apps that are harmful to children (and adults): the algorithmic data feed, the infinite scroll, the engagement tactics, the advertising
    - pizzathyme 7mo ago
      but how can you remove adult-only features for children only without knowing the age?
hypeatei 7mo ago
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 verifying your age. It's clear where this is going.
- anthk 7mo ago
  Meanwhile Epstein and the pedo elite are untouchable and with no surveillance of course.
  - tt24 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - cowboylowrez 7mo ago
      being against child abuse is woke too amirite?
      - tt24 7mo ago
        Not sure what you mean by “woke” here
        cowboylowrez 7mo ago
        Its a terrifically rare term that has never before been used before me (there are now copycats on x/twitter), so I can understand why you might be unfamiliar with it. There are so many subcurrents of meaning and subtlety and to truly understand it would require more dimensions than the current sad state of the average mind can comprehend. I would take you on a guided tour of the profound and terrifying truths that the term would reveal unfortunately I pay for internet by the gig and I have to save the rest to ensure my lights stay on. Ask around tho, someone wealthier than me may have used the term although I am uniquely the originator of it, the rich and their AIs have pilfered my IP rights but I think they preserved my original meaning. Try posting on "x.com" the following question: "Can anyone help me understand the term "woke", I have never heard it before"?
al_borland 7mo ago
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 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - al_borland 7mo ago
    I was using myself as an example. Nearly 60% of homes don't have any kids under 18.
sneak 7mo ago
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.
- cptroot 7mo ago
  Please explain how this law (or the CA one for that matter) require government IDs. It is worded specifically to _not_ require ID.
  - burnt-resistor 7mo ago
    "Framework" means "strategy". This bill is more likely than not a tactic in a much longer insidious campaign to erase anonymity to gain power and profit to normalize taking other rights away a little at a time. We've seen this before with the Clipper chip initiative. I feel sad and bad for anyone on the side of token Karen parents / useful idiots, limousine politicians, lobbyists, billionaires, and people okay with surrendering their and other people's rights. I don't want to live in a society with Flock everywhere, dragnet cell phone tracking, social credit, own nothing, an internet license, de-E2EE, transparent walls dwelling, zero privacy, and absolute proof of birth parents and citizenship every time, long lines, in-person only voting.
quincepie 7mo ago
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.
- strongpigeon 7mo ago
  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.
  - quincepie 7mo ago
    I can see the argument of parents or guardians ensuring the device is properly set for their child, but I feel like age is not the right information to use. But I agree, it's definitely not well thought out. I feel like if we assume this is in good faith, and they want to make sure adults can ensure minors don't have access to certain content, why would they use age as the information? This can be solved, or even have been solved by having Parental Control feature like in IOS which provides finer options than what you would get with age. This could OK if this was requiring that any device or operating system have access to parental control in any capacity (either by default or via third party application) and limited for things that would be used by minors so that VMs or other stuff don't have to worry about this. Or, they could mandate products to indicate that the feature exist. That way, a parent can decide what to give their child.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
iamnothere 7mo ago
The government is not allowed to specify what your software you run on your local personal computer or how that software should work. This is a first amendment issue, it’s been defeated before, it will be defeated again. If this were ever upheld, you will immediately have legislation attempting to force OS makers to spy on users, add backdoors, and so on. Edit: also, before the same jackass from the last few discussions on this mentions “muh ADA” again, the ADA has never been shown to apply to an OS in court nor does it mention anything about operating systems.
mihaaly 7mo ago
If it is so simple - that ensures nothing, faked easily - then what's the point wasting efforts on it? Why to complicate things? Why spend time and efforts to do it? And annoy with one more tiny thing on top of the hundrends? Why not just not doing it? Or, in contrary, when it is very reliable, so it can map a very specific real person to a reliable and true birth date, then f off binding myself to a randome computer account that gives it out to whomever is asking it! There is no good in this story.
kmbfjr 7mo ago
The backlash is from Meta trying of assign liabilities of their business practices on people who may not even be users. Yes, this is just the beginning of a huge swath of innocent APIs to identify people on the internet. Meta isn’t going to stop, and neither will governments.
array_key_first 7mo ago
I think the implication is that this law is incredibly bad. I don't mean for privacy, I mean for fulfilling it's purpose. This will prevent approximately zero kids from accessing whatever. What that means is that we will have to amp it up, if we want to achieve it's purpose. So, that's not a slippery slope, that's a prophecy. When we get cryptographically backed identity verification on all computing, that will legitimately be the end of computing as we know it.

toomuchtodo 7mo ago

I am very pro social media regulation (with regards to age gating) due to the evidenced harm it causes, and which court cases have shown these companies are well aware of internally; 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_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sackler_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic_in_the_United_... https://www.profgalloway.com/addiction-economy/ https://www.profgalloway.com/addiction-economy/

strongpigeon 7mo ago
> 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"?
- steviedotboston 7mo ago
  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.
richwater 7mo ago
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.
- toomuchtodo 7mo ago
  Personal responsibility isn't a thing from a consumption perspective, it's primarily brain chemistry. See: GLP-1s [1] [2] (tldr they patch the brain's reward center against suboptimal reward chasing and demand) 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. Defend and empower the human. My pattern matching in the comment you replied to stands imho, and while it is admittedly imperfect (as you point out), I believe it remains directionally accurate. [1] Why Ozempic Beats Free Will - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hot-thought/202410/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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45907422 (additional citations) (think in systems)
akdev1l 7mo ago
>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?
- toomuchtodo 7mo ago
  Age gating first [1] (no social for under X age), keep tightening the policy ratchet as data and evidence indicates. OODA loop applied to policy [2]. [1] Tracking Efforts To Restrict Or Ban Teens from Social Media Across the Globe - https://www.techpolicy.press/tracking-efforts-to-restrict-or-ban-teens-from-social-media-across-the-globe/ https://www.techpolicy.press/tracking-efforts-to-restrict-or... - February 23rd, 2026 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop
  - akdev1l 7mo ago
    Either they’re doing a slippery slope trying to change the status quo or they’re doing this to keep the status quo Seems you are contradicting yourself
2OEH8eoCRo0 7mo ago
That's exactly how I see it. Verification should be on the social media platforms not your OS.

nancyminusone 7mo ago

I don't really see any good arguments in favor of it, so why do it? There's no reason my OS needs to know anything about me.

strongpigeon 7mo ago
I guess I'm more surprised by the intensity of the backlash this generates here. I agree with you that mandating (weak) OS APIs like this the right approach, but that alone wouldn't warrant the severe reaction this is getting right?
- bloppe 7mo ago
  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
- tokai 7mo ago
  Seems pretty reasonable to get annoyed at a law that at best will be useless and at worse dangerous, while it will directly dictate features into the tools we all use everyday. All for no gain for anyone but maybe Meta and some other big companies.
  - burnt-resistor 7mo ago
    Exactly. It's the beachhead of corporations upon which they will pry even more mandatory metadata to market to, silence, and control people. Also, not every jurisdiction defines adult and/or legally able to use social media the same way. Parents need to parent at the level 0 social layer than push this off to everything at technical layers and everyone else. It's a moral panic ruse in legislative form for greed and power.
- akersten 7mo ago
  Code is speech. Open source projects are an exercise in speaking publicly. This law mandates particular speech in your otherwise Free as in freedom code. How are you not outraged? People are missing the above forest for the "oh but it's a tiny little easy API and I don't see any downsides" trees.

jwitthuhn 7mo ago

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

charcircuit 7mo ago
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 7mo ago
  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 7mo ago
    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 convenient if they could all get it from the same place.
    - enoint 7mo ago
      I'm skeptical we should ban all operating systems which permit this without an interactive age check. Shouldn't the free market acolytes be arguing that parents can choose between competitors which offer ever-improving parental controls?
      - charcircuit 7mo ago
        I agree with you, but it seems like the free market is moving too slowly in regards to this pain point for parents which is resulting in demand for them to force change through the legal system.

bloppe 7mo ago

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.

strongpigeon 7mo ago
> 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. My guess reading the law as linked is that it's much closer to the former than the latter. That being said, you're right that it does bring a bunch of headache alongside with it for little-to-no benefits.
pizzathyme 7mo ago
"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?
- duskdozer 7mo ago
  the solution is to remove the bits of those apps that are harmful to children (and adults): the algorithmic data feed, the infinite scroll, the engagement tactics, the advertising
  - pizzathyme 7mo ago
    but how can you remove adult-only features for children only without knowing the age?

hypeatei 7mo ago

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 verifying your age. It's clear where this is going.

anthk 7mo ago
Meanwhile Epstein and the pedo elite are untouchable and with no surveillance of course.
- tt24 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - cowboylowrez 7mo ago
    being against child abuse is woke too amirite?
    - tt24 7mo ago
      Not sure what you mean by “woke” here
      - cowboylowrez 7mo ago
        Its a terrifically rare term that has never before been used before me (there are now copycats on x/twitter), so I can understand why you might be unfamiliar with it. There are so many subcurrents of meaning and subtlety and to truly understand it would require more dimensions than the current sad state of the average mind can comprehend. I would take you on a guided tour of the profound and terrifying truths that the term would reveal unfortunately I pay for internet by the gig and I have to save the rest to ensure my lights stay on. Ask around tho, someone wealthier than me may have used the term although I am uniquely the originator of it, the rich and their AIs have pilfered my IP rights but I think they preserved my original meaning. Try posting on "x.com" the following question: "Can anyone help me understand the term "woke", I have never heard it before"?

al_borland 7mo ago

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 7mo ago
[flagged]
- al_borland 7mo ago
  I was using myself as an example. Nearly 60% of homes don't have any kids under 18.

sneak 7mo ago

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.

cptroot 7mo ago
Please explain how this law (or the CA one for that matter) require government IDs. It is worded specifically to _not_ require ID.
- burnt-resistor 7mo ago
  "Framework" means "strategy". This bill is more likely than not a tactic in a much longer insidious campaign to erase anonymity to gain power and profit to normalize taking other rights away a little at a time. We've seen this before with the Clipper chip initiative. I feel sad and bad for anyone on the side of token Karen parents / useful idiots, limousine politicians, lobbyists, billionaires, and people okay with surrendering their and other people's rights. I don't want to live in a society with Flock everywhere, dragnet cell phone tracking, social credit, own nothing, an internet license, de-E2EE, transparent walls dwelling, zero privacy, and absolute proof of birth parents and citizenship every time, long lines, in-person only voting.

quincepie 7mo ago

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.

strongpigeon 7mo ago
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.
- quincepie 7mo ago
  I can see the argument of parents or guardians ensuring the device is properly set for their child, but I feel like age is not the right information to use. But I agree, it's definitely not well thought out. I feel like if we assume this is in good faith, and they want to make sure adults can ensure minors don't have access to certain content, why would they use age as the information? This can be solved, or even have been solved by having Parental Control feature like in IOS which provides finer options than what you would get with age. This could OK if this was requiring that any device or operating system have access to parental control in any capacity (either by default or via third party application) and limited for things that would be used by minors so that VMs or other stuff don't have to worry about this. Or, they could mandate products to indicate that the feature exist. That way, a parent can decide what to give their child.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

iamnothere 7mo ago

The government is not allowed to specify what your software you run on your local personal computer or how that software should work. This is a first amendment issue, it’s been defeated before, it will be defeated again. If this were ever upheld, you will immediately have legislation attempting to force OS makers to spy on users, add backdoors, and so on. Edit: also, before the same jackass from the last few discussions on this mentions “muh ADA” again, the ADA has never been shown to apply to an OS in court nor does it mention anything about operating systems.

mihaaly 7mo ago

If it is so simple - that ensures nothing, faked easily - then what's the point wasting efforts on it? Why to complicate things? Why spend time and efforts to do it? And annoy with one more tiny thing on top of the hundrends? Why not just not doing it? Or, in contrary, when it is very reliable, so it can map a very specific real person to a reliable and true birth date, then f off binding myself to a randome computer account that gives it out to whomever is asking it! There is no good in this story.

kmbfjr 7mo ago

The backlash is from Meta trying of assign liabilities of their business practices on people who may not even be users. Yes, this is just the beginning of a huge swath of innocent APIs to identify people on the internet. Meta isn’t going to stop, and neither will governments.

array_key_first 7mo ago

I think the implication is that this law is incredibly bad. I don't mean for privacy, I mean for fulfilling it's purpose. This will prevent approximately zero kids from accessing whatever. What that means is that we will have to amp it up, if we want to achieve it's purpose. So, that's not a slippery slope, that's a prophecy. When we get cryptographically backed identity verification on all computing, that will legitimately be the end of computing as we know it.