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US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

reclaimthenet.org

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Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

#21

Post by progval »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #3
xt00 wrote: post #2

Do we know who is funding this? is this one of these things where Meta doesn't want the responsibility for this, so they are pushing to have the OS have the responsibility or something like that?

It is literally just Meta. https://www.gadgetreview.com/reddit-user-uncovers-who-is-beh... https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_b... https://tboteproject.com/

The investigation you linked to is entirely hallucinated by LLMs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659552 (tboteproject and the "Reddit researcher" are the same person).

They also added this page since I posted that comment: https://web.archive.org/web/20260411112604/https://tboteproj... where they claim their website is "under surveillance" because it got a few thousand requests from Google Cloud et al, most of them to a single page. This really shows how low their standards are.

Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

#22

Post by jmholla »

So this bill creates a commission to ensure that the information cannot be stolen or breached from operating systems, but says nothing about how the applications querying this information must protect or leverage it. I basically requires that any application get to know a user's birthday, as long as it's "necessary". What a fucking joke! I'm so sick and tired of this bullshit.

Direct link to the bill: https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/parents-decide-act-os-age-ver...

Edit: Oh, and the commission gets to make up the rules on how ages should be verified. So, prepare for a whole other level of PII leakage that isn't even captured by the text of the bill.

Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

#23

Post by ronsor »

AnIrishDuck wrote: post #20

[flagged]

The problem is with government mandates.

Apple and Google already ship OSes with comprehensive APIs and parental controls. There's not even any porn on the iOS App Store by policy.

Creating liability for random OS and app developers is absurd, and foreign porn websites aren't going to comply with this anyway.

Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

#25

Post by Random_BSD_Geek »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #13

The 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…

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?

Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

#26

Post by Random_BSD_Geek »

ronsor wrote: post #23
AnIrishDuck wrote: post #20

[flagged]

The problem is with government mandates. Apple and Google already ship OSes with comprehensive APIs and parental controls. There's not even any porn on the iOS App Store by policy. Creating liability for random OS and app developers is absurd, and foreign porn websites aren't going to comply with this anyway.

This.

If your child needs a helmet to use the internet, as the politicians announcing HR8250 seem to think[1], Apple or whomever is free to offer that as a feature. There is no need for this to be legislated, especially when the legislation does not work in open source environments.

[1] Not hyperbole. They said that. It was an analogy, but one that highlights how ignorant of the technology the authors of these bills are.

Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

#27

Post by skybrian »

Dwedit wrote: post #8

People 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.)

Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

#28

Post by gxs »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #15
hackinthebochs wrote: post #13

The 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…

Well, perhaps your mental model of the actual objections to it are incomplete. There are a few problems and I'm curious what you have to say about them. First, "The benefit of this is that it can short-circuit support for more onerous age verification". Do you think that it "can" or that it "will"? Big difference. It could also go the other way, right? Opening the door to a more onerous version? Why do you think that…

This was a great comment, you challenged them but in a reasonable way and with really good questions

I wish public discourse were more this way - if someone is arguing in good faith, actually answering what you asked moves the conversation forward, it’s just on the person to give you a serious answer

Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

#29

Post by progval »

kmeisthax wrote: post #5
xt00 wrote: post #2

Do we know who is funding this? is this one of these things where Meta doesn't want the responsibility for this, so they are pushing to have the OS have the responsibility or something like that?

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.

How does that help Facebook? They already have plenty of signals to guess their users' age, what would they do with an other one? They are not going to ban children anyway.

Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

#30

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

AnIrishDuck wrote: post #20

[flagged]

You wouldn’t drop a toddler in the cbd and expect them to be fine, why would you expect a device to be any different?

You need to be a parent and stop expecting the people around you to do it for you.

Edit: and there are already device level parental controls.

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