211–220 of 473 posts
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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.
That requires trusting a government with a power that is likely to be abused.
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I think the public in general woul be happier with the office on the moon idea than compulsory Government ID requirements to use services.
It's only required for services that require it. The states are also regulating which services those are.
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…
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There are basically 2 possibilities with the outcome of this law: It's rather so full of holes as to be meaningless, or it's so invasive as to force open source projects to try to geofence Illinois (which wouldn't be effective either, but might be the kind of compliance theatre we'll see from maintainers worried about liability). Linux distros always have a "root" user. Does that user have to be asked its age before…
"so full of holes as to be meaningless" what is the solution then to age gating apps that the public feels should be age gated? (TikTok, Instagram, etc). it seems like every app implementing its own guessing system would have even more holes, right? this is one where I am sympathetic. the moment when someone, with their parent, is setting up a device seems like the best point to check age. right? am I missing somethi…
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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…
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.
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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…
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"so full of holes as to be meaningless" what is the solution then to age gating apps that the public feels should be age gated? (TikTok, Instagram, etc). it seems like every app implementing its own guessing system would have even more holes, right? this is one where I am sympathetic. the moment when someone, with their parent, is setting up a device seems like the best point to check age. right? am I missing somethi…
the solution is to remove the bits of those apps that are harmful to children (and adults): the algorithmic data feed, the infinite scroll, the engagement tactics, the advertising
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 legally mandates the existence of a required "age" field in user account records, a user interface to populate it during account setup, a mechanism for service providers to read this field, and that providers act as if it has been populated accurately.
As someone who has been the de facto "system administrator" for my family's computer systems since kindergarten, this has to be one of the stupidest policies I've ever seen gain traction.