Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

Yeah, I agree with this. I think age-related content moderation is a losing fight and one that will create more contempt for laws, more surveillance, and much more PII surface area that will be exploited.

There are really two "core" issues at play:

1. The prudish nature of US society

2. The fact that we don't have data privacy laws and restrictions on digital surveillance by private companies

> I think this is a sensible compromise. It gives parents more control than before without relying on shady third-party software or without turning every platform into a cop.

It doesn't give parents any control whatsoever. It just forces the OS to tell every website your child goes to how old they are. It doesn't require those websites to hide certain content for certain age groups. It doesn't define what types of content are appropriate for which age groups, it just makes sure that every advertiser bidding on your child's eyes knows what age range they fall into to.

If anything this takes control away from parents because even the cases where a website does their best to restrict content based on which age the OS tells them your kid is, it's the website setting the rules and not the parents. You might think that your 16 year old can read an article about STDs, but if the website your kid visits doesn't think so you as the parent don't get any choice.

With 3rd party software parents are controlling what software is used, they have the ability to decide which kinds of content are appropriate for their children and can be allowed and which types of content should be blocked. They can black/whitelist as they see fit. All of the power is in the parent's hands. This law gives parents one choice only: "Do I honestly tell my OS how old my child is". That's the end of the parent's involvement and the end of their power.

three states passing the same template bill in three months isn't organic legislation

Facebook has always been there for only one reason; for people who don't value privacy.

Nothing less, nothing more.

Most things that are not suitable for children were recognized so long ago that it was decades, centuries, or millennia before anybody living was ever born.

Like porn, when it got on the web it has always been instinctively gatekept as traditionally as possible, and complaints which do arise over the decades are addressed by the websites in ways that measure up to how you expect a company to act. Consistent with the way they truly don't want underage visitors to their websites at all.

Those complaints are now dwarfed by what parents are saying about Facebook in particular.

Facebook, and now Meta, is just not something that previous generations had to deal with, so it didn't get handled in a very adult way as it should have been from the beginning. And it only got worse as it got bigger.

If it wasn't worse for their kids than porn, parents wouldn't be screaming so much louder than ever.

I guess it turns out the combination of fundamentally devaluing privacy across-the-board including minors is the main problem, and then the idea of hooking them early, like cigarette companies would do with as much habit-forming reinforcement as possible, is what leverages the lack of overall privacy through the roof.

What's really needed is bold gatekeeping on Meta's digressions alone, they should be the ones to aggressively keep everyone underage off their site. Like they really mean it, which has not existed before. That's what's been wrong the whole time, the internet was so much better before Facebook came along with their anti-privacy mission, and it got put on steroids.

Reining in Meta alone should be big enough to be noticeable, no-one else has a shred of responsibility by comparison.

Facebook has invested $billions in these underage crowds and they want to know exactly when everyone else on the internet turns a certain age even if they are not on Facebook.

Don't give it to them no matter how much they pay.

It would be the complete opposite of an advanced thinker who wants to respond by compromising more people's privacy across the regular internet, when Meta is the primary source of the problem, and they're who stand to benefit the more privacy is compromised in any way, child or adult.

Like my 19th century grandmother would say, "what's wrong with some people?"

I'm fine with that too as a consumer.

As an "operating system provider," the law as written still requires me to provide an accessible interface for you to indicate your age to the operator.

Should we be asking your age every single time you use a credit card reader or ATM? If not, embedded operating system providers need exceptions to the law in each state that adopts their own non-standardized approach.