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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

#101

Post by jachee »

pianoben wrote: post #88
mgfist wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

Or, and hear me out, _maybe our computers shouldn't spy on us in the first place_?

“Impossible to get a man to understand a thing, when his paycheck depends on his not understanding it.”

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#102

Post by tokai »

strongpigeon wrote: post #80
nancyminusone wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#103

Post by bink »

inkysigma wrote: post #91
mgfist wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

Except none of these bills (California or the one in question) as currently written require an ID to actually be verified, merely that the user provide an age. This seems intentional as it's seems to solve the user journey where a parent is able to set a reasonable default by simply setting up an associated account age at account creation. It's effectively just standardizing parental controls. I think this is a reaso…

Kids aren't stupid. They'll just create another account when they're old enough to figure it out. They'll tell their friends how to do it and the rest of us will be stuck with these stupid prompts forever like it's a cookie banner.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#104

Post by naikrovek »

JCattheATM wrote: post #64
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.

It's the start of a very slippery slope.

Slippery slopes are a logical fallacy. Every single decision moving you down the slope is intentional. No sliding occurs if nothing actively pushes things down the slide.

Accordingly, it is never too late to lobby against these things.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#105

Post by pianoben »

jacobgkau wrote: post #18
mikestorrent wrote: post #3

I 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…

Yeah, the laws in CA, CO, and now IL are essentially just mandating generally available OS's implement a standardized, local parental control system. Detractors will say parents should just install existing parental control software, even though it's existed in its current form for decades and is obviously not effective. And they'll say it should be the parents' responsibility to enforce what their kids are doing wit…

> while ignoring the fact that these laws provide tools allowing parents to do just that

These tools are called "parental controls" and already exist - we don't need laws to compel their production.

...unless, of course, the true aim is to use this as a beachhead for further expansion of privacy-violating requirements.

You write this off as a "slippery-slope" argument, but given that there are already quite a few tools that do what this law aims for, what's the point?

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#106

Post by zardo »

Aunche wrote: post #69
spullara wrote: post #2

this is completely insane. we need some kind of constitutional amendment to get rid of all this kind legislation forever.

People are making way too big a deal of this IMO. This is basically the OS equivalent of that checkbox you click to enter a porn website that gets exposed to Meta, so they can claim that they did what they all the they could to protect children if they get sued by parents. Any determined kid would figure out a way around this, but I can see it stopping younger and less determined kids, and it's a useful tool for pare…

Wouldn't a some kind of technical standard proposal be a more sensible way to do this than trying to pass OS laws state by state?

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#107

Post by Springtime »

starkparker wrote: post #24
NotGMan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

I've seen skepticism about the veracity of the claims, in part as various sources cited in the git repo pointed to todo files not actual data[1] (in that example was only just hours ago a source file was added, when the project still claims part of the conclusions are based on data said to be contained there).

Which has led some to suspect much is LLM generated and not properly human-reviewed, in addition to the very short timeframe from initial self-disclosed start of the research to publishing it online (mere 2-3 days) despite the confident tone the author uses.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20260317184359/https://lobste.rs...

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#109

Post by SoftTalker »

al_borland wrote: post #95
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?

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…

[flagged]

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#110

Post by pull_my_finger »

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…

It WOULD be nice if it only got used appropriately. But in 2026 its just one more metric to narrow down your profile for advertisers. Wouldn't it be convenient if you could just opt-out of tracking with a convenient API like the literal "do not track" header in browsers? It exists, but none of the people who SHOULD use it pay it any attention except as, ironically, another metric used to track people.

Not to mention that computing is a global thing, and in order for this to be useful it would definitely have to be providing more specific information than just a bool. Maybe chats require 13+, but pornography requires 18+. Maybe those ages are different based on location. All advertisers would need to do is ping the various different checks to get your actual or at least very approximate age.

This kind of thing is a slippery slope, and its ripe for abuse by doxxers, advertisers and big brother himself. Burn this with fire. I'm totally in agreement with the others that suggest stuff like this should b just get banned from getting introduced and reintroduced constantly trying to sneak it in as a rider or hidden provision. The people DON'T want it.

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