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Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

ilga.gov

391–400 of 473 posts

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> How does the OS know that you moved from the "13-15" bracket to the "16-17" bracket without knowing your DoB? 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…

Requiring the central database is the scary part.

The political establishment used to be able to control what you read, through control of the media. Then 1995 happened and everyone got access to anything they wanted. The establishment have wanted to put that genie back in the bottle ever since. This is part of that effort.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#393
post #2

this is completely insane. we need some kind of constitutional amendment to get rid of all this kind legislation forever.

Unfortunately, a rhetorical knee-jerk response that it needs universal, specific counter legislation for a "permanent fix" is panacea, magical thinking.

The root cause is a corrupt government doing the bidding of a few rich people and other countries. Fixing that will be very difficult but is nonetheless necessary and possible to largely thwart legislators from working against their own ostensible constituency.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that you can't just externalize age verification and expect that data to never be sent to facebook because facebook needs that data to do anything (good or bad). It doesn't matter if your OS broadcasts that your child is 6-9 to facebook or if facebook has to ask the government to tell them that same information, either way, in the end facebook will know that your child is 6-9. The power is then in facebo…

> The point is that you can't just externalize age verification and expect that data to never be sent to facebook facebook and similar social media companies have a ton of ways to get peoples age and or to narrow it down. > either way, in the end facebook will know that your child is 6-9. The main point of the law is not about restricting facebook or similar operator in the laws lanuage from knowing user ages. Though…

> facebook and similar social media companies have a ton of ways to get peoples age and or to narrow it down... May not matter much for facebook or similar, it matters a bunch for any random website/forum/service you might sign up for

You're right about that. There are websites and services that won't have the kind of data needed to identify an individual using the age bracket data, and there are those who could do it anyway or could make some guesses about the ages of users even without having OS gathered age data sent to them. That said, I've seen how bad companies are at making those kinds of assumptions. For example, I've seen youtube's AI age guesser fail completely and mischaracterize viewers ages in both directions.

> Though the does say the age bracket can not be used for anything other than to implement the intent of the law.

I didn't see that anywhere in the text. It does have a section where it says that the age data collected can't be shared with third parties unless they're made a part of the implementation of age-check scheme. There's also this: "All information collected for the purpose of obtaining the verifiable parental consent required under this Section shall not be used for any purpose other than obtaining verifiable parental consent and shall be deleted immediately after an attempt to obtain verifiable parental consent" but it's entirely unclear if age bracket data is considered part of the data collected when "obtaining verifiable parental consent". I suspect that it isn't and this language is intended to protect the data of the adults who will be forced to prove they are the child's parents. In fact they don't define at all what "obtaining verifiable parental consent" should or shouldn't involve.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#395
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are making way too big a deal of this IMO. This is basically the OS equivalent of that checkbox you click to enter a porn website that gets exposed to Meta, so they can claim that they did what they all the they could to protect children if they get sued by parents. Any determined kid would figure out a way around this, but I can see it stopping younger and less determined kids, and it's a useful tool for pare…

Microsoft has already made the installation of Windows a fucking nightmare with MS account requirements. Imagine when they are forcing every new device to not only have 50+ TOPS for Copilot, but also a tiny little internal mass spectrometer autosampler which will prick your finger as you login and analyze blood to carbon date the age of the user.

Install offline, no ms cloud bullshit account required. I just did this with Win 11 enterprise 25h2. Used an activator cmd script at the end that bypassed activation.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does the OS know that you moved from the "13-15" bracket to the "16-17" bracket without knowing your DoB? 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…

Requiring the central database is the scary part. The political establishment used to be able to control what you read, through control of the media. Then 1995 happened and everyone got access to anything they wanted. The establishment have wanted to put that genie back in the bottle ever since. This is part of that effort.

> Requiring the central database is the scary part.

Yes, agreed.

And this type of proposal has no central database, so it removes the scary part.

(Unless you're talking about the local accounts on each computer storing dates of birth for a single household as a "central database" in which case you're being ridiculous and please stop doing that.)

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#397

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.

A. Not even a thought required.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#398
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm more surprised by the intensity of the backlash this generates here. I agree with you that mandating (weak) OS APIs like this the right approach, but that alone wouldn't warrant the severe reaction this is getting right?

Seems pretty reasonable to get annoyed at a law that at best will be useless and at worse dangerous, while it will directly dictate features into the tools we all use everyday. All for no gain for anyone but maybe Meta and some other big companies.

Exactly. It's the beachhead of corporations upon which they will pry even more mandatory metadata to market to, silence, and control people.

Also, not every jurisdiction defines adult and/or legally able to use social media the same way. Parents need to parent at the level 0 social layer than push this off to everything at technical layers and everyone else.

It's a moral panic ruse in legislative form for greed and power.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#399
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the framework for requiring government ID to use online services, which increasingly power even local computing (thanks to DRM and cloud services). They want to abolish anonymous use of internet services, because anonymous publishing at scale is powerful and dangerous to incumbents when they can’t retaliate with malicious prosecution, police harassment, or assassination.

Please explain how this law (or the CA one for that matter) require government IDs. It is worded specifically to _not_ require ID.

"Framework" means "strategy". This bill is more likely than not a tactic in a much longer insidious campaign to erase anonymity to gain power and profit to normalize taking other rights away a little at a time. We've seen this before with the Clipper chip initiative. I feel sad and bad for anyone on the side of token Karen parents / useful idiots, limousine politicians, lobbyists, billionaires, and people okay with surrendering their and other people's rights. I don't want to live in a society with Flock everywhere, dragnet cell phone tracking, social credit, own nothing, an internet license, de-E2EE, transparent walls dwelling, zero privacy, and absolute proof of birth parents and citizenship every time, long lines, in-person only voting.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we make contractors do age verification on their supplies when building a liquor store or strip club? The OS is a tool used by Meta, just like the utilities and the compute itself. Meta Apps can have age verification but it should be at the point of service, not the supply chain. And even if we were to agree to this, uploading your IDs to an untrusted third party is asking too much.

uploading your IDs to an untrusted third party is asking too much. So have the government do it? They already know who we are and when we were born.

And then the government gets official, explicit, intimate knowledge of everything we do online. With our express permission now.
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