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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

#251

Post by Dylan16807 »

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_?

So which situation do you want instead of anonymous age verification:

A) 18+ content is behind a pinky swear

B) 18+ content is behind a parental control (what this bill would do)

C) The internet can't have 18+ content anymore

D) Some other system? Please describe it.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#252

Post by davorak »

autoexec wrote: post #248
davorak wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why? I think that main goal would be to keep the ability to have accounts be anonymous or pseudo anonymous. If social mean company has to verify an accounts age themselves they then have to use some for of official government identification and with that any chance of anonymous or pseudo anonymous access.

Facebook has less than zero interest in allowing people to use their platform anonymously. They very much want to know everything about their users including their age and they would never back a law that would stop them from collecting that data. Now that you know that facebook isn't pushing this law to protect anyone's anonymity why do you think they're doing it?

> Now that you know that facebook isn't pushing this law to protect anyone's anonymity why do you think they're doing it?

My comment was not about what I knew/know about facebook or not. I was answering the question of why age verification should be externalized to a degree and in this case externalized means the power stays with the user and parents rather than being in the hands of say facebook/meta.

I was not talking about why facebook/meta would want it or not want it. Large companies want lots of different things. Sometimes it is required to know their motivations to discuss or decide on something. I think it can be detrimental to do that though without discussing/analyzing a topic/idea on its own merits first or at least parallel. My comment was focused on the merits not the motivations or desires of companies like facebook.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#253

Post by Dylan16807 »

pianoben wrote: post #105
jacobgkau wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 too…

Sometimes it's good to standardize things. Existing parental controls are a hot mess and they mostly work by completely blocking sites/apps, not giving them an age category.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#254

Post by autoexec »

SoftTalker wrote: post #121
pianoben wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 too…

Because the tools don't work, and are too fragmentary and burdensome. Would you prefer to inform each movie theater in town which movies your child is permitted to watch? Or just rely on the rating system that applies to most movies and is honored by most theatres? Parents want one setting that says "this is a child" and then expect online platforms to respond appropriately. As we expect and mostly have in the real w…

> Parents want one setting that says "this is a child" and then expect online platforms to respond appropriately.

This law does not do that. It breaks the age of children into several buckets so that platforms, websites, and advertisers can target specific demographics. They won't "respond appropriately" they'll just use this data point as another way to improve how they exploit children online. Now every pedo with a website can tell how old the kid is so they can better adjust their grooming for that age bracket.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#255

Post by JumpCrisscross »

JCattheATM wrote: post #61
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does it matter specifically that Meta is doing it? Their entire top leadership has shown a multi-year tendency towards psychopathy and lying. Knowing Meta is pushing this bill makes me want to understand why my views and theirs randomly agree as well as carefully read the bill text for any signs Adam Mosseri was within 500 feet of it.

[flagged]

> That's probably a sign that you should reevaluate your views

On its own? No. We probably agree on the need to drink water, that doesn’t mean I should now die of thirst.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#256

Post by cess11 »

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.

With all the LLM bots they need a new way to sort out the people from the machines to not lose ad revenue and to help their spook friends.

It's better for them if this "responsibility" rests with another organisation, they don't get blamed as much when the information leaks and it is replaceable.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#257

Post by quincepie »

strongpigeon wrote: post #194
quincepie wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to me, it's both the slippery slope argument and the lack of real reason other than "protecting minors". operating systems were designed to run the program/programs. You can make applications use this API to determine the user age, or you can just...ask the user in the application itself. I also don't see why this is a requirement rather than an option the same way I don't see why having a Microsoft account is requir…

The way I see it (to strongman the bill's position) is that by mandating it at account creation, an adult/parent can ensure that the age is properly set for a minor/child. That being said, I don't think this bill was that well thought out as the implication are far reaching (will I need to enter an age when provisioning a VM?). I mostly see it as a clumsy attempt to provide a mechanism for age-category attestation in…

I can see the argument of parents or guardians ensuring the device is properly set for their child, but I feel like age is not the right information to use. But I agree, it's definitely not well thought out.

I feel like if we assume this is in good faith, and they want to make sure adults can ensure minors don't have access to certain content, why would they use age as the information? This can be solved, or even have been solved by having Parental Control feature like in IOS which provides finer options than what you would get with age.

This could OK if this was requiring that any device or operating system have access to parental control in any capacity (either by default or via third party application) and limited for things that would be used by minors so that VMs or other stuff don't have to worry about this. Or, they could mandate products to indicate that the feature exist. That way, a parent can decide what to give their child.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#258

Post by roenxi »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #251
pianoben wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So which situation do you want instead of anonymous age verification: A) 18+ content is behind a pinky swear B) 18+ content is behind a parental control (what this bill would do) C) The internet can't have 18+ content anymore D) Some other system? Please describe it.

Does "the government doesn't get to decide what people can look at on the internet" count as C or D to you? It is the situation we've been in technically for 20 years now anyway; the world hasn't ended and it generally seems to be pretty workable. The status quo isn't an especially radical one.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#259

Post by ottah »

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's a brute-force solution, for a problem with many simpler and limited solutions. This is being pushed so hard for it's intended side-effects. The goal is not to protect children, and it never has been. The goal is to eliminate anonymity on the internet

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#260

Post by autoexec »

pocksuppet wrote: post #244
autoexec wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not enough for the government to know. Platforms, websites, and advertisers want to know. That's why the law facebook has been pushing for doesn't have a simple "is 18+" flag but instead has a long list of age buckets so that advertisers and platforms can target specific demographics even when they are minors.

Isn't that necessary because different levels of protection will be applied to each bracket?

The law doesn't require any protection levels at all. It just requires your OS to tell every website you visit which bucket your children fall into. Every website and platform can use that information in whatever ways they want, even if it's just to adjust how best to groom a victim or to decide which ads to push at a child. They could also use it to say that a 9 year old can't watch a certain video that a 13 year old can, but that would be entirely their choice.
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