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Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

ilga.gov

291–300 of 473 posts

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't kid yourself, Meta already knows the age of all its users, at least within the broad categories that this bill defines.

Yes, but they want to show children content that is not appropriate, then claim ignorance.

To give them the benefit of the doubt you could say they only want to show children content on its own that is fully parent-agreeable.

Meta just wants to do it in the most habit-forming way, that is embedded in a system crafted to mold young behavior into more manipulable consumers.

>Meta already knows the age of all its users

Roger, now they want a government mandate to target everyone else on the internet.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#292
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…

No, because "Operating System Provider" is either too vague, or too imposing on free operating system developers.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#293

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?

If it is so simple - that ensures nothing, faked easily - then what's the point wasting efforts on it? Why to complicate things? Why spend time and efforts to do it? And annoy with one more tiny thing on top of the hundrends? Why not just not doing it?

Or, in contrary, when it is very reliable, so it can map a very specific real person to a reliable and true birth date, then f off binding myself to a randome computer account that gives it out to whomever is asking it!

There is no good in this story.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#294

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.

D) Parenting

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#295
There's something I've never seen a good answer to: why is this being mandated in the OS vs requiring it for apps - or classes of apps? There's plenty of parental controls already available for browsers - after verifying the user's age on startup, why not add a header field that the browser inserts along with AgentID (for example) and call it a day?

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If parents want that solution, then the proper thing is for someone to build that solution and make a fortune selling it, IMO.

"If parents want drug stores to not sell liquor to their kids, then the proper thing is for someone to build that solution and make a fortune selling it, IMO." See how that makes zero sense in the context of a society? Content providers are not incentivized to care about the problem, and will serve any content with ads next to it that they can unless they are forced not to. Ad-hoc solutions attempting to paper over t…

I don't see the incongruity. It's one thing to mandate that retailers not sell alcohol to children, but it's quite another to require that all computers must report on the identities of their users just so that children don't see porn. The proper analogy would be require verification on the part of the porn sellers.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's entirely possible such nonsense is all show, and wouldn't be passed, however. i'm from illinois, worked in california, and no longer live in either. from afar, it seems that whatever california bureaucrats propose, after a short delay, gets proposed by their little sibling bureaucrats in illinois.

This. IL and MA follow whatever CA does with a few year lag. Considerations of sanity never enter into the discussion.

As an Illinoisan, this kind of stuff makes me want to leave and get somewhere sane. Anybody have recommendations? What places don't have this kind of insanity?

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#298
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids aren't stupid. They'll just create another account when they're old enough to figure it out. They'll tell their friends how to do it and the rest of us will be stuck with these stupid prompts forever like it's a cookie banner.

Maybe we can agree that if you're mature enough to hack your own phone, you're mature enough to see a nipple. Why am I rate limited though? Dang must hate this opinion.

It’s because you are a sockpuppet.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#299
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A), which is the status quo. I don't see any other option as realistic. B) makes things worse in several ways, but primarily by stifling innovation. Only large incumbents will have no trouble paying for the measures required to ensure compliance. There's also the cost of enforcement, which will likely have to be borne by the taxpayers. I don't think this is a good thing to spend money on. C) cannot be enforced, and a…

Option A isn't really the status quo. The status quo has a bunch of sites doing invasive checks and other sites region blocking users. > Only large incumbents will have no trouble paying for the measures required to ensure compliance. Oh my gawwwwwd. People trot this out any time any regulation is mentioned. Option B is a single easily accessible age category value. It's simpler than the status quo.

> Option B is […] simpler than the status quo.

This bill FORBIDS platforms from operating in the state unless they provide age verification.

Forbid an OS for operating in Illinois? Sounds insane to me. When I bring my Linux laptop from California, what happens?

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#300
post #5

Why suddenly are all of the blue states doing this BS? What is going on and what control is this affording the government?

A few people have replied saying Meta lobbying, but the bills Meta is known to have lobbied for seem to be the ones that require actual age verification that would tend to increase the amount of personal data Meta gets.

Meta's lobbying spending is cited for states not doing that kind of bill, but that's their total lobbying spending in that state.

These new bills in the style of the California one do not require any actual age verification and don't give any information to sites or apps other than the age range that whoever made the user account on the device entered.

It is essentially just requiring a simple parental control mechanism be provided by the OS which provides a way for parents to set age ranges for the accounts of their children and an API that apps that need to check age can query.

On a Unix or Unix like system this could be as simple as having the command to create a user account ask for age or birthdate and store that somewhere (maybe a new field in /etc/passwd) and then adding a getage() function to the standard library that apps can call to get the age range for the current user.

From the "we want to slurp up everything we can about you" point of view usually associated with Meta it is not obvious why Meta would support this approach.

Age checks can broadly be divided into 3 categories.

1. Done entirely on the local system, with only the result being revealed to the app/site that is asking. Age information comes from the owner/administrator of the system. I.e., the parental control approach.

2. Done using the local system and some external source of age information like your government. Only the result is revealed to the app/site that is asking.

3. Verification is done directly with the site that is asking, or through a third party. You have to supply sensitive documents like your government ID to the site or the third party.

#3 is terrible for privacy and anonymity. The red state laws tend to be in this category.

#2 depends on the details. There may be ways using the timing of the communications between your system and your ID supplier (e.g., your government) and the communications between your system and the site you are proving ID to that could allow the site and the government to get more information that you want them to. There are cryptographic ways to prevent that, especially if the device has a hardware security module. It thus comes down to with #2 that you really need to look at the details.

I'm not sure if any US state is taking this approach. The EU is, with cryptography to make it GDPR compatible and allow anonymous verification. Google and Apple are also working on such systems.

#1 is basically equivalent to the "Are you 18+" dialogs on many adult web sites, except moves to the device and the admin can if they wish prevent non-admin users from lying.

It is not really surprising that blue states are tending more toward #1, especially considering that several of them are among the states that have the strongest state privacy and data protection laws.

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