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Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

ilga.gov

161–170 of 473 posts

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#161
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…

I don’t care if it’s part of the user setup, but make it an App Store dotfile. Don’t issue fines to Debian for offering a Docker image without a user setup script.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#162
post #126

What recourse would Illinois have against open-source operating systems? Anyone can roll their own Linux distro and share it with whomever they want.

> What recourse would Illinois (!) have against open-source operating systems?

None but them corporations sure do. And with a little cash in the right place I'm sure they can push recourse onto people of power. We really need to end political lobbying one of these days

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#163
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.

In those in-person contexts, the identification document is still externalized - they're checking a government-issued photo ID in the vast majority of situations.

It works for the in-person context because it's a physical object, making it easier to control access to it. A high resolution picture of the same ID is a privacy problem as it can be copied, shared, transferred, etc without the knowledge of the ID holder.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#165
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.

[deleted]

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#166
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…

[deleted]

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#167
post #136

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.

Is there a problem with this? Most users are using an iPhone and most iPhones already know the accurate age of their user

I’ve heard Android is a more common OS. In any case, if your OS fails to ask a user their age, it’s banned.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#168

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?

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

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.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#169
post #69
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…

It does not stop at the check box. Someone is going to sue Google/Apple when a 13 year old gets on a porn site. Then Google/Apple will introduce "verification" that requires linking your identity to your device, and attesting this to the "operator" (porn site). Then every person using any OS is tracked, on every website and app, all the time, by law. And Linux becomes illegal without it.

This is not a theory. Laws requiring this are going through the state and federal level right now.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#170
post #17

Read and share "Free Software, Free Society" now. Richard Stallman advised us about it long ago. Thank god Plan9 got relicensed into GPL. 9front might not totally free, but it's a step in case GNU+Linux gets utterly broken. And, yes, please, go try Trisquel (novice users), GUIX (experts) and Hyperbola (experts and protocol purists). Avoid every Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Netflix service with nonfree JS.

When I need to use my computer, I'm not thinking about someone else's crusade. I have crusades of my own to fail miserably at and I need all the help I can get from whatever products function best.
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