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Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

ilga.gov

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Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#71

Post by alephnerd »

prophesi wrote: post #54
alephnerd wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICs don't matter. I can fire one and hire 5, and increasingly, the demographics on HN don't align with those who work in those organizations. HN is basically slashdot now.

> and increasingly, the demographics on HN don't align with those who work in those organizations. People have been worried about that on HN for years, but I still see the same culture. There do seem to be more bots and astroturfing, but that's a systemic issue with all social media platforms today.

> People have been worried about that on HN for years, but I still see the same culture...

And that's the crux of the issue - the industry and people have changed, but HN hasn't changed discourse wise and is growing increasingly disconnected demographically speaking.

A large portion of HNers are men in their late 30s to 50s, and no longer located in the Bay Area or NYC.

No one's who matters is having these kinds of conversations on HN - they're meeting IRL with Luma invites or in signal/imessage/discord group chats.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#72

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #32

The "one weird trick" that all government hates? Stop forcing OSes to function with accounts. "User account" is an artifact of UNIX. You don't need an account to start a car, send and email, nor boot an operating system. I know it's hard to grasp, but it's true.

> You don't need an account to start a car, …

Don’t say this too loud please, I don’t honestly think we’re too far from this reality, at least from an “Overton Window” point of view.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#73

Post by edgyquant »

firtoz wrote: post #46

It's kinda convenient because every service needs to ask you for the age now because they can't serve under 13s in a lot of cases. Having it be a simple API would be a decent convenience, no? If you connect it with a permission system where you can choose whether to provide this information (e.g. >13 as a bool or age as an integer or the birthday as a date) that can't be too bad I guess? I haven't read the whole thin…

What if someone else is using the computer/phone/etc?

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#74

Post by mattnewton »

glitchc wrote: post #53

The law as is written mainly targets social media platforms. For an OS to comply, all it needs to do is provide a field during account creation that records the user's date of birth as supplied by the user. There is no onus on the operator to confirm the veracity of this information, or even record it anywhere other than the local OS install itself. I think we're safe.

Seems like a slippery slope. Now the infrastructure is there to ask apple, Google and microsoft to confirm identity with selfies over the internet.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#76

Post by tracker1 »

johnisgood wrote: post #31
tracker1 wrote: post #19

I wonder how this will mix wit federal laws saying you aren't allowed to track users under the age of 13yo? Will this then be forced as a browser API/header passed to every server/request?

Yeah but if so, what does it have to do with the OS itself, i.e. outside the browser?

From articles I've seen, it's mostly Facebook lobbying to "pass the buck" upstream to the OS level to actually inquire... this of course will blead into the OS provided "store" interfaces most likely. And while, likely mostly targeting Apple and Google, MS/Windows and Linux are definitely going to be catching stray bullets. In particular vendors with Linux pre-installed... hence System 76 adding the feature to PopOS. Who knows if/how this will come about in practice or how consistently.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#77

Post by toomuchtodo »

akdev1l wrote: post #63
toomuchtodo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sc…

>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?

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... - February 23rd, 2026

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#78

Post by mgfist »

Slow_Hand wrote: post #7

If 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.

It should be externalized to a degree. Facebook shouldn't be the ones verifying age, but there should be a trusted 3rd party service that does that, which just tells facebook "yes this user is old enough to use your service" or "no they're not old enough".

It abso-fucking-lutely should not be at the OS level though, for so many reasons. Even the implementation alone would be a nightmare. Do I need to input my ID to use a fridge or toaster oven? Ridiculous.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#79

Post by toomuchtodo »

richwater wrote: post #57
toomuchtodo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sc…

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.

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/w... - October 4th, 2024

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45907422 (additional citations)

(think in systems)

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#80

Post by strongpigeon »

nancyminusone wrote: post #62
strongpigeon wrote: post #28

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?

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.

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?
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