If I’m not mistaken, Meta has been lobbying heavily for all of these age-verification bills lately. It seems their strategy is to externalize their responsibility to verify age themselves, and thus reduce their exposure to liabilities when child protection acts like COPPA are violated.
It should be externalized to a degree. Facebook shouldn't be the ones verifying age, but there should be a trusted 3rd party service that does that, which just tells facebook "yes this user is old enough to use your service" or "no they're not old enough". It abso-fucking-lutely should not be at the OS level though, for so many reasons. Even the implementation alone would be a nightmare. Do I need to input my ID to u…
Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
381–390 of 473 posts
Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
So... a pinky swear then, right? I mean, how is the OS going to actually verify the age of the operator? I see how this helps Facebook - if you lie to the OS, and the OS tells Facebook that you're over 18, then it's not Facebook's fault if they provide you an 18+ service. I don't see how this helps anyone else.
It's set by the administrator of the computer, so a parent can set it for their child instead of hoping their child is honest to every single individual site. That's the difference between a parental control and a pinky swear.
The thing this creates is liability on parents, or schools, or anyone who provides computer access to children. And access to PII for bad guys (who can ask your computer for your date of birth in this proposal, right?)
Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A central setting would improve privacy over the way things are right now. What? How? What improvement are you seeing that I'm not? Putting all our PII into one huge repository and then letting corps and govts access it sounds like a dystopian nightmare. This is why we don't like Palantir. What happens if a bad guy steals that data and your identity? They go and look at CSAM using your ID? The police turn up at you…
I don't know what you're talking about, but it's not what this kind of bill is about. This kind of bill is about the OS telling things whether you're: 0-12, 13-15, 16-17, 18+ No databases, no stealable identity, only the barest sliver of 2 bits of PII. As for how it's an improvement, we already have sites asking to see your driver's license or pictures of your face for much worse age verification paradigms. If most o…
And this is the thin edge. Because in a few years there'll be a bill saying something like "too many children are lying about their age online. We need to verify their age" and then we're capturing IDs and storing them somewhere.
Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
> content filters work at schools Maybe they are vastly more sophisticated now but when I was a kid it was a sport for us to break these filters - and pretty easy too It would imo be much easier to effect a culture change so that not every kid needs or gets access to the internet or internet capable devices.
Yes, they are more sophisticated, or at least I'm assuming from how pi-hole and my workplace blocking works. Meaning, it works. But those are not the best solutions, because of blacklisting. There are basically infinite porn websites. So, if you're going to try to block every porn website, you will lose, point blank. So, even considering that, they do quite good. So if we just take the principle and invert it, it wil…
And everything else is Adult Internet, and there are many DNS servers that serve Adult Internet.
You sign your household router up for Kid Internet, and it ignores Adult DNS servers, and only routes according to Kid DNS, is that right?
I can think of about 50 ways around this already, but let's assume we're not talking about anyone with any knowledge of how the internet works. So the entire household is signed up for Kid Internet, and there's no way an adult can view an Adult Internet site from this household, is that right?
Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know what you're talking about, but it's not what this kind of bill is about. This kind of bill is about the OS telling things whether you're: 0-12, 13-15, 16-17, 18+ No databases, no stealable identity, only the barest sliver of 2 bits of PII. As for how it's an improvement, we already have sites asking to see your driver's license or pictures of your face for much worse age verification paradigms. If most o…
How does the OS know that you moved from the "13-15" bracket to the "16-17" bracket without knowing your DoB? And this is the thin edge. Because in a few years there'll be a bill saying something like "too many children are lying about their age online. We need to verify their age" and then we're capturing IDs and storing them somewhere.
The OS has the birth date. Of probably 1-5 people.
> And this is the thin edge. Because in a few years there'll be a bill saying something like "too many children are lying about their age online. We need to verify their age" and then we're capturing IDs and storing them somewhere.
Those things are already happening. I see this kind of mechanism as significantly more of an alternative to privacy invasion than an enabler of privacy invasion.
Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, they are more sophisticated, or at least I'm assuming from how pi-hole and my workplace blocking works. Meaning, it works. But those are not the best solutions, because of blacklisting. There are basically infinite porn websites. So, if you're going to try to block every porn website, you will lose, point blank. So, even considering that, they do quite good. So if we just take the principle and invert it, it wil…
So, you whitelist Kid Internet sites, and you have a DNS server that handles Kid Internet. And everything else is Adult Internet, and there are many DNS servers that serve Adult Internet. You sign your household router up for Kid Internet, and it ignores Adult DNS servers, and only routes according to Kid DNS, is that right? I can think of about 50 ways around this already, but let's assume we're not talking about an…
That sounds an awful lot like this proposal, right? Well yes and no. No because this would actually work. Just letting the iPhone say "im a kid" does fuck all, because all the websites we're targeting with that will just ignore it.
And of course there are ways around this. Wanting a solution with no ways around it is dystopian. But is it a better solution than this? I think yes, it is.
Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's set by the administrator of the computer, so a parent can set it for their child instead of hoping their child is honest to every single individual site. That's the difference between a parental control and a pinky swear.
The thing we want (well, that other people want, I have other views) is that large tech companies are not able to brainwash kids. The thing this creates is liability on parents, or schools, or anyone who provides computer access to children. And access to PII for bad guys (who can ask your computer for your date of birth in this proposal, right?)
That has little connection with this law.
And having no age settings at all is where you'll have the most brainwashing.
> The thing this creates is liability on parents, or schools, or anyone who provides computer access to children. And access to PII for bad guys (who can ask your computer for your date of birth in this proposal, right?)
They're already responsible for controlling that. I think they should have more tools to help.
> And access to PII for bad guys (who can ask your computer for your date of birth in this proposal, right?)
Did you look at the law(s)? They get one of four age ranges.
Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
#388Curious how OpenBSD or Haiku will comply.
Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
#389It'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…
It's a brute-force solution, for a problem with many simpler and limited solutions. This is being pushed so hard for it's intended side-effects. The goal is not to protect children, and it never has been. The goal is to eliminate anonymity on the internet
Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, you whitelist Kid Internet sites, and you have a DNS server that handles Kid Internet. And everything else is Adult Internet, and there are many DNS servers that serve Adult Internet. You sign your household router up for Kid Internet, and it ignores Adult DNS servers, and only routes according to Kid DNS, is that right? I can think of about 50 ways around this already, but let's assume we're not talking about an…
Well most DNS can be done per-device, just like in an IT setting. For example look at iOS. The device controls DNS, so set up little Timmy's iPhone to do Kid DNS. That sounds an awful lot like this proposal, right? Well yes and no. No because this would actually work. Just letting the iPhone say "im a kid" does fuck all, because all the websites we're targeting with that will just ignore it. And of course there are w…
If Little Timmy signs in then OS chooses the Kids DNS, but if Uncle Bob signs in then it chooses the Adult DNS?
As you say, I can see a few ways around this ;)
Again, this feels like it just moves the responsibility for everything onto the parents, without meaningfully giving them any control. If something screws up and Little Timmy gets to see some boobies, who gets blamed? Is it the OS provider, the hardware provider, or the parents? Did the parents actually configure this themselves? If so, who taught them how to do that? Or did they buy the machine pre-configured? So does the vendor take responsibility?