Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

tomshardware.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 525 posts

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#241

Post by tzs »

jmyeet wrote: post #146

What's depressing to me is just how self-serving all this is. The original bill was AB 1043. Who supported that, breaking with other tech companies? Why Meta of course [1][2]! Meta likes this because it pushes liability onto the OS providers. Guess who doesn't have an OS? Google's support is a little stranger given Android. It seems like AB 1043 also shifted liability to third-party app developers instead of the app…

If Meta is liable for when someone underage uses their service, then Meta is going to require proof of age which almost certainly means giving them copies of things like driver's licenses or passports probably along with video showing that you match the photo.

In jurisdictions taking the California approach Meta does not need to ask for anything like that. Their app just has to ask the OS, which reports the age bracket that was entered when the user account was made on the device, and the OS gets that information from whoever set up the account. The OS trusts whatever is entered at that time. No driver's licenses or passports or face scans or videos are involved.

> As much as libertarians chafe against it, I think we've demonstrated that something has to be done in relation to children online

...and this is pretty much the way to do it with the least impact on privacy and anonymity possible without first building up some high tech cryptographic infrastructure that would likely include hardware requirements that would, at least at first, exclude users who do not have an iOS/iPadOS or Android device that has a secure hardware element.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#242

Post by JumpCrisscross »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #136
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no past generation could stop their kids Past generations absolutely protected their kids from cigarettes and alcohol. A gate doesn’t have to be 100% effective to have net benefits.

If one kid is able to bypass the system it means it's zero percent effective. Same thing with alcohol, and cigarettes. Especially if it means I have to show my ID to buy those things.

> If one kid is able to bypass the system it means it's zero percent effective

No. Like, obviously no. That’s not how effectiveness is ever measured.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#243

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bitwize wrote: post #188
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only parents can decide for their own children Voters are collectively deciding for all of our children. And there are absolutely group dynamics that require cooperation. It’s why rich communities ban phones in classrooms while in poor communities, the one family that tries doing it alone is probably going to be less successful. Again, I’m not saying you’re fundamentally wrong. Just that this debate has been had an…

[flagged]

> Lolberts

Huh?

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#244

Post by tardedmeme »

This is a bad move. California has no age verification law, only an age asking law and all of the reasons it's good to ask if the user is over 18 are still good reasons if the OS is Linux. And the penalty for providing an OS that doesn't ask if you're over 18 is that it's considered a defective product and you can return it for a refund, but open source software is already provided for free with no warranty so who cares. Unless you bought it from Red Hat so this is basically just giving Red Hat impunity to violate this law, for no reason.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#245

Post by tardedmeme »

nodar86 wrote: post #192
farley13 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree - making folks intending to interact with minors comply makes more sense. That said, outside of the merits of this approach, I am dubious of any actual implementation given 2 points. 1) Protecting the youths will always be a leaky bucket. With disadvantaged youths possibly more at risk. Those exposed to non-compliant parents ("cool" parents who are ok with sharing unsuitable content) or lacking strong…

> "cool" parents who are ok with sharing unsuitable content Or simply parents who won’t agree with the government on what is suitable for their children. We already have parental control on all mainstream operating systems, why cannot this simply be the responsibility of the parent as are so many other things regarding what children do, watch, eat etc?

We don't have parental control on any mainstream operating system that actually works. In fact, California just removed the law that said operating systems have to have working parental control.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#246

Post by modeless »

alpinisme wrote: post #9
cortesoft wrote: post #8

As a dad of two younger kids (7 and 10), I have been incredibly frustrated with the way age restrictions are handled across various services. Really, my main complaint comes down to: I completely disagree with what these services choose to restrict for kids and what they allow. They block my kids from doing things I have no problem with them doing and they allow things I would never want my kids to do in 1000 years.…

What tools would you want?

A pure whitelist mode, especially for video apps. Netflix, Disney, etc don't provide this because they want to push their new shows on your kids. YouTube does provide a whitelist mode, which I appreciate. But it's hard to find, poorly implemented, and blocks a lot of great content from being whitelisted. It's very frustrating to come across a great educational YouTube video and have big nanny Google block you from sharing it with your kids.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#247

Post by ziml77 »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #175
smelendez wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels more complicated. Some kids getting access to booze here and there with planning and coordination is different from kids walking into a liquor store or bar whenever they want.

It's literally all or nothing[1]. Either measures are 100 percent effective or they are completely broken and should not exist. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology)

Shit thanks for pointing that out. My door lock isn't 100% effective at stopping thieves, so I guess I can get rid of that annoying thing. Will be nice to never worry about being locked out again!

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#248

Post by rezmason »

tzs wrote: post #241
jmyeet wrote: post #146

What's depressing to me is just how self-serving all this is. The original bill was AB 1043. Who supported that, breaking with other tech companies? Why Meta of course [1][2]! Meta likes this because it pushes liability onto the OS providers. Guess who doesn't have an OS? Google's support is a little stranger given Android. It seems like AB 1043 also shifted liability to third-party app developers instead of the app…

If Meta is liable for when someone underage uses their service, then Meta is going to require proof of age which almost certainly means giving them copies of things like driver's licenses or passports probably along with video showing that you match the photo. In jurisdictions taking the California approach Meta does not need to ask for anything like that. Their app just has to ask the OS, which reports the age brack…

> If Meta is liable for when someone underage uses their service, then Meta is going to require proof of age—

Let's be clear what this means, "Meta is going to require" something. They'll require it to continue to do something, which is namely to be a bad company, running bad services, without pivoting to something else.

Of course, no one requires Meta to continue to be Meta. We'd protect people by requiring companies like Meta to request PII outright, because then the user is explicitly prompted to decide whether using Meta's services is worth surrendering their privacy. And if consumer sentiment and market forces mean anything anymore, that will incentivize Meta to replace their bad services with better ones, ones that don't cause them tricky liability issues.

In other words, forcing operating systems to demand PII from users from the get-go, regardless of the quality of that signal, and to broadcast that to any website, is not, as you put it, "the way to do it with the least impact on privacy and anonymity possible", etc etc. The "way to do it" is to phase out this rotten era of surveillance apparatus disguised as social media companies.

Sorry for being irate, it just feels like so many people these days arrive too quickly (for my taste) at conclusions without testing certain popular assumptions about the inevitability of tech oligarchy.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#249

Post by tzs »

As usual 95+% of people commenting have no idea what is actually in the California law, and so are commenting about things that have nothing to do with it.

Different states, countries, and multi-country organizations that have legislated in this area or are working on legislating in this area have went with many different approaches. These differ in their scope, how age is verified (or even if age is actually verified), what documentation is required (or even if documentation is required), whether they apply to the web or to apps or to both, whether they make anonymous use harder or not, how much if any sensitive information they disclose to the apps/sites that need to check age, whether they could allow government to track your usage, and in other ways.

Most ridiculous are the comments that after saying how bad it is (clearly talking about things not in the California law) then say how it should work and describe something close to the California law.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#250

Post by subarctic »

Wow this is smart politically because the largest group against this age verification bulls*t just so happens to overlap a lot with people who love open source software (technical people who value user freedom)

Of course this also means that the nerds who use linux or lineageos get to win cool points because they can access more adult stuff

Post reply on HN