Why suddenly are all of the blue states doing this BS? What is going on and what control is this affording the government?
See the actors behind this here (Meta is a big one):
https://tboteproject.com/
Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
21–30 of 473 posts
Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
#22this is completely insane. we need some kind of constitutional amendment to get rid of all this kind legislation forever.
[flagged]
> For the record, I don’t care enough about age verification. Whether the law passes or not, I don’t really care.
Sounds like there actually would be some benefit commenting about it on HN.
Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
#23[deleted]
Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
#24If 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.
Yes https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1rsn1tm/it_a...
I think? the most recent version of that post is https://web.archive.org/web/20260314074025/https://www.reddi..., which is "awaiting moderator approval"
Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
#25What is the reasoning behind this exactly? Yeah, I know Meta is behind it, but surely they will throw it out if it is absord, right... right?
Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
#26i look forward to the police showing up and explaining to me how computing is a privilege, not a right
Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1rsn1tm/it_a...
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.
There are probably many more people that would profit off of it on HN.
Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
#28People 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?
Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
> For the record, I don’t care enough about age verification. Whether the law passes or not, I don’t really care. Sounds like there actually would be some benefit commenting about it on HN.
No one who matters uses HN or cares about HN. The handful of us on HN who are in or near a position to affect change are basically here due to habit or $#itposting until we get banned.
So they are right in that sense - commenting on HN is cathartic but ultimately useless.
And the people who matter and are against this also don't use HN because they view this platform as toxic and reactionary.
Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
#30I 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 garde…
> 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.