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Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

ilga.gov

151–160 of 473 posts

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#151
post #78

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 u…

> It should be externalized to a degree.

Why?

We don't externalize age verification when buying alcohol or visiting the strip club. It's on the responsibility of those establishments to verify age.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#153

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.

The "User account" of the OS are the security contexts. You can say everything should be a single security context, and this is how a lot of people have been operating their MS Windows machines, logging in as admin constantly, but this is a stupid idea and comes with risks. Even when you say the OS can have a second root account, that the user never gets to use, you have two user accounts.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#155
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why does it matter specifically that Meta is doing it? This has long been a goal for intelligence apparatus and big tech: get rid of anonymity online to "fight terrorism" and sell ads respectively. How does getting the OS to do age verification "get rid of anonymity online" or help "sell ads"? Assuming the verification is implemented in a competent way (ie. it's not just providing an id scan for any app to read), it…

You've accepted the overton window shift that age verification is an inevitability and that we need to give up information to the operating system because any other way would violate our privacy! It's naive to see this internationally coordinated effort to "save the children" as anything other than the temperature in the pot being turned up. > implemented in a competent way (ie. it's not just providing an id scan for…

I find it odd when people write off policies as using “save the children” or “protect women” as if this isn’t something people are really capable of thinking. You fail to understand why the Overton window has shifted because you fail to understand people really are worried about their children

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#156
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…

> It should be externalized to a degree. Why? We don't externalize age verification when buying alcohol or visiting the strip club. It's on the responsibility of those establishments to verify age.

Do we make contractors do age verification on their supplies when building a liquor store or strip club? The OS is a tool used by Meta, just like the utilities and the compute itself.

Meta Apps can have age verification but it should be at the point of service, not the supply chain.

And even if we were to agree to this, uploading your IDs to an untrusted third party is asking too much.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#157
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've accepted the overton window shift that age verification is an inevitability and that we need to give up information to the operating system because any other way would violate our privacy! It's naive to see this internationally coordinated effort to "save the children" as anything other than the temperature in the pot being turned up. > implemented in a competent way (ie. it's not just providing an id scan for…

>You've accepted the overton window shift that age verification is an inevitability and that we need to give up information to the operating system because any other way would violate your privacy! It's naive to see this internationally coordinated effort to "save the children" as anything other than the temperature in the pot being turned up. If you're trying to imply Meta is behind the "overton window shift", that'…

> If you're trying to imply Meta is behind the "overton window shift", that's plainly not the case

No, I'm saying the exact opposite: Meta is just one player in a campaign from intelligence agencies and other tech companies who want to normalize mandated prompts in your OS that collect information. Right now it's "just a DOB field bro" turns into "well... people can lie with the DOB field, let's just add a ID check step in that dialog" and build on it from there. Of course the pot has been boiling for a while and it's not just Meta looking for regulatory capture.

> Probably less likely to cause vulnerabilities

I don't care about likelihoods, this "feature" inherently introduces more risk and for something I don't even want on my computer. Even a small chance that this can be abused is unacceptable.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#158
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_?

I'm reminded of a video essay I watched about AI once, which took a side tangent into surveillance capitalism:

"Google's data harvesting operation became a load bearing piece of the Internet before the public understood digital privacy. And now we can't get rid of it."

The public has been conditioned to expect web services free at point of use. Legitimately it's hard to monetize things like YouTube without ads, and I get that. But turning our entire ecosystem of tech into a massive surveillance mini-state seems like an astonishingly shitty idea compared to just... finding a way to do advertising that DOESN'T involve 30 shadowy ad companies knowing your resting blood pressure. My otherwise creative and amazing industry seems utterly unwilling to confront this.

Edit: Like, I don't know, am I crazy for thinking that simply because we can target ads this granularity, that it simply must be that? I get that the ad-tech companies do not want to go back to blind-firing ads into the digital ether on the hope that they'll be seen, but that's also plus or minus the entirety of the history of advertising as an industry, with the last 20 or so years being a weird blip where you could show your add to INCREDIBLY specific demographics. And I wouldn't give a shit except the tech permitting those functions seems to be socially corrosive and is requiring even further erosion of already pretty porous user privacy to keep being legally tenable.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Calling everything a logical fallacy, is also a logical fallacy.

We have already seen the federal government use facial recognition data to create an app that tells ICE goons who's legal. We should not tolerate the government forcing more data tracking and privacy violations just because you are not "sliding" today.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It should be externalized to a degree. Why? We don't externalize age verification when buying alcohol or visiting the strip club. It's on the responsibility of those establishments to verify age.

Do we make contractors do age verification on their supplies when building a liquor store or strip club? The OS is a tool used by Meta, just like the utilities and the compute itself. Meta Apps can have age verification but it should be at the point of service, not the supply chain. And even if we were to agree to this, uploading your IDs to an untrusted third party is asking too much.

uploading your IDs to an untrusted third party is asking too much.

So have the government do it? They already know who we are and when we were born.

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