It is just crazy how much of a tech billionaire centric the US government is, they can come up with Thanos' idea of wiping out 50% of the population and politicians would do it as long as Zuckerberg or anyone else in the techno bubble asked for it.
US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification
121–130 of 369 posts
Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification
#122The breathless fearmongering over an age field on account set up is just completely over-the-top. This is probably the least bad out of all possible ways to implement age checking. The benefit of this is that it can short-circuit support for more onerous age verification. The writing has been on the wall for some time now: the era of completely unrestricted internet is coming to an end. The question is how awful will…
This bill requires actual verification and leaves it up to the politically controlled FTC to determine how this should happen. It’s a disaster.
> The Parents Decide Act solves the self-reported-birthday problem by demanding something verifiable, which in practice means a government ID, a credit card, a biometric scan, or some combination.
> However, Gottheimer has not specified which. The bill does not either. It’s up to the FTC to decide.
Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification
#123the US will kill every third space by any means necessary
their dwindling to irrelevance, like the UK, could not happen faster
Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Identify devices, not people. Distinguishing between child-locked and unlocked devices is something any website should be able to do easily. Adult-only should be a config setting. Vendors shouldn't sell unlocked devices to kids. Then it's up to parents take sure their kids only have locked devices. (Or not, if they're okay with it.)
> Vendors shouldn't sell unlocked devices to kids. This part is neither necessary nor sufficient. Put aside the Orwellian premise of "devices are locked by default". People keep making the analogy to things like cigarettes, but if a kid wants a steady supply of cigarettes then they need a steady supplier. If they want an "unlocked device" they just need money and Craigslist, once. It doesn't matter what you make Walm…
Kids having $20-30 means you're fine with them being unsupervised? Computers and smartphones are incredibly cheap.
In person, we expect stores won't sell cigarettes to kids. We should simply expect companies won't provide age restricted services to kids. The liability and requirements should be on those companies.
Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification
#125People lend phones or computers to kids. The age associated with the user account means absolutely nothing.
Identify devices, not people. Distinguishing between child-locked and unlocked devices is something any website should be able to do easily. Adult-only should be a config setting. Vendors shouldn't sell unlocked devices to kids. Then it's up to parents take sure their kids only have locked devices. (Or not, if they're okay with it.)
[deleted]
Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook. There's a wave of child endangerment lawsuits incoming and they want to head that off at the pass by having governments shift all that liability over to the OS vendors.
Microsoft just force-updated my operating system (despite declining every option and prompt) and the first thing I noticed working differently was it offering, in an OS popup, to "connect" the computer to "Facebook". These people have root access to all our webcams. I don't think we can tolerate these entities to continue to exist.
What can we do about it? The major tech firms have nearly all the power here, including quite obviously full capture of government (not just here but other countries as well).
Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like the authors of these bills, you appear not to understand the technology. Consider AB1043. It mandates that applications check the age of the user each time the application is launched. Think about what that means when you run `make` in a source directory. How many times is the compiler application launched?
Let's try to be a little bit sensible here. Presumably the requirement to check depends on the nature of the application. A completely offline app for example has no use for an age check and thus wouldn't need to read it.
This bill doesn't seem to create a requirement for the application, but e.g. the California one required all applications to check age.
Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Vendors shouldn't sell unlocked devices to kids. This part is neither necessary nor sufficient. Put aside the Orwellian premise of "devices are locked by default". People keep making the analogy to things like cigarettes, but if a kid wants a steady supply of cigarettes then they need a steady supplier. If they want an "unlocked device" they just need money and Craigslist, once. It doesn't matter what you make Walm…
Kids having $20-30 means you're fine with them being unsupervised? Computers and smartphones are incredibly cheap. In person, we expect stores won't sell cigarettes to kids. We should simply expect companies won't provide age restricted services to kids. The liability and requirements should be on those companies.
If they're able to get a burner phone unsupervised then I think they could also pay an adult to do the face scan for them or borrow your ID from your purse to authenticate an account. What level of security would you need to totally prevent that kind of thing? Unless it checks your age every time you log in with biometrics I don't see it.
(Of course adding any level of friction will deter some kids, but needing to get a whole new device other than the one their parents gave them is already a lot of friction, isn't it?)
Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification
#129> The term “operating system” means software that supports the basic functions of a computer, mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device. > The term “operating system provider” means a person that develops, licenses, or controls the operating system on a computer, mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device. So excited to see the GNU vs. Linux debate finally land in court.
Brazil just passed the exact same law, nearly unanimously. Even the wording and definitions are exactly the same. This is scary as hell.
>This is scary as hell.
"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
If it looks like a conspiracy, it's probably one.
Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification
#130The breathless fearmongering over an age field on account set up is just completely over-the-top. This is probably the least bad out of all possible ways to implement age checking. The benefit of this is that it can short-circuit support for more onerous age verification. The writing has been on the wall for some time now: the era of completely unrestricted internet is coming to an end. The question is how awful will…
This bill requires actual verification and leaves it up to the politically controlled FTC to determine how this should happen. It’s a disaster. > The Parents Decide Act solves the self-reported-birthday problem by demanding something verifiable, which in practice means a government ID, a credit card, a biometric scan, or some combination. > However, Gottheimer has not specified which. The bill does not either. It’s u…
The article's analysis doesn't appear to be accurate. From the bill:
(a) Requirements.—An operating system provider, with respect to any operating system of such provider, shall carry out the following:
(1) Require any user of the operating system to provide the date of birth of the user in order to—
(A) set up an account on the operating system; and
(B) use the operating system.
(2) If the relevant user of the operating system is under 18 years of age, require a parent or legal guardian of the user to verify the date of birth of the user.
(3) Develop a system to allow an app developer to access any information as is necessary, collected by the operating system to carry out this section and any regulation promulgated under this section, to verify the date of birth of a user of an app of the app developer.
The only requirement for "verification" is to enter a birthdate on account set up, and underage accounts have the parent "verify" the birthdate. There is certainly some ambiguity in the bill which is not good, but efforts should be towards resolving the ambiguity in favor of a lack of intrusiveness.