Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill • Hacker News Board

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#441

Post by enoint » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 6:19 PM UTC

subscribed wrote: post #273

saintfire wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android doesn't ask your age, Google does for an account. You can use an android phone without a google account. Most people don't but the distinction is important because degoogled android phones will also have to comply.

No, unless the law mandates it. So for example operating system that does not ask this question could simply declare itself "inappropriate"/"illegal" in the jurisdiction. Say, GrapheneOS can explicitly disallow image downloads from Californian IPs and not sell phones with preinstalled GOS there. You don't need to be complaint with the Mongolian law to sell in Burkina Faso. Similarly they don't need to be complaint wi…

This is what Ageless and some apps are deliberating. I wonder if my ToS can protect me as a scientific calculator maintainer; if I mandate that it cannot be installed within jurisdictions that ban or fine maintainers who fail to implement the age checks.

Edit: I have no control over who links to my library.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#442

Post by genthree » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 8:11 PM UTC

ekidd wrote: post #267

Dylan16807 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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), honestly. You might think you can keep 16 year olds from looking at porn, if they want to. You can't. You have never been able to. All you can do is teach them that the law is stupid and pointless, and they should treat rules with contempt. But they'll still be able to look at porn. What you can do is allow the government and private companies to track everyone, everywhere, all the time. And you can create more…

Sixteen year olds? Sure, mysterious Forest Porn and the older brother who'd give you skin mags have always existed. And Cinemax at night, catching the odd frame that somehow gets thought the scrambler. Whatever.

But we can't realize all the supposed glorious promise of all this tech bullcrap for education and free exploration of younger kids if we can't at least come pretty damn close to guaranteeing that an eight-year-old won't stumble on Rotten.com or hardcore porn if an adult isn't looking over their shoulder constantly. And whatever that solution is needs to work for parents who don't have the know-how or time to be sysadmins for their household.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#443

Post by true_religion » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 8:29 PM UTC

panny wrote: post #323

Dylan16807 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Illinois bill is not about 18+ content. It's about controlling who your children can talk to on social media. The OS age check is just a means to that end. The end is blatantly unconstitutional. The bill of rights doesn't mention age limits. Freedom of assosiation applies to kids just as much as it does to adults. If the bill passes, then any racist parent could block all comms from kids of a different color for…

I get what you’re saying but it’s a false premise. In today’s era, racist parents already block their children from even attending school with someone of a different color. Merely blocking comms would be a step before that in severity of control.

Parents have always had the ability (though maybe not explicitly the right to) control their children’s environment for the purposes of teaching personal beliefs. So long as the belief itself wasn’t deemed harmful to the child, society would allow it to continue propagate that way. Racism unfortunately has never been seen as innately harmful. It’s looked down on, yes, but not to the point of making it illegal to enforce in family life.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#444

Post by bergfest » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 9:01 PM UTC

eecc wrote: post #129

mgfist wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I guess the point is: delegate to kernel, then “oh, people with root can bypass with modules? Secure Boot!”

This is exactly what will happen.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#445

Post by pocksuppet » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 10:17 PM UTC

phendrenad2 wrote: post #417

pocksuppet wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes even things that are good for Meta are good for the rest of us. This law, and the one in California, mean that liability is disclaimed as long as the parent selects an age above 18 for the child. It's like a section 230 for age protection. Meta supports this because they won't be liable for wrong age inputs, and we should also support this because it doesn't verify age in any other way.

We should support something that does the minimum to accomplish the goal. As luck would have it, we don't need to do anything because parental controls already exist, and apps like YouTube already have a "kid mode". But for some reason, people are very attached to the idea of getting that number. Your age. It isn't enough to have a boolean isAdult. Oh no, they want to know how old you are, and they want that number t…

Have you used parental controls? They're complete and utter shit. You cut your child off from almost all of the internet, or you may as well not have any controls at all.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#446

Post by marcus_holmes » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 11:51 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #422

mittensc wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the kid boots up linux off a USB stick and makes it all pointless

Overwhelming majority of kids wont. The idea that the average teenager even knows what those words mean is not realistic.

Heard exactly the same thing about VPN use (kids won't know how to set up a VPN). Then Australia age verification kicked in, and VPN use went through the roof [0]

And, of course, the response so far has included similar thoughts as the UK about banning VPNs [1]

[0] https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/media-releases-and-expert-comme...

[1] https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/no-approa...

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#447

Post by array_key_first » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 12:14 AM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #390

array_key_first wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So we're locking a per-user DNS choice in? 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?…

> So we're locking a per-user DNS choice in?

Sure, or per-device, or per-network, or per-organization. It depends on how each particular person wants to implement it.

> As you say, I can see a few ways around this ;)

Yes, notably less than the current proposal. Which, again, will just straight-up not work.

> f something screws up and Little Timmy gets to see some boobies, who gets blamed?

I think this really hit the nail on the head. None of this is about solving problems or helping little Timmy. It's about accountability management.

If we implement the OS syscall, then Meta gets to point their grimey finger at someone else while they continue to fuel genocide in Myanmar.

> 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?

Well, um, both. You can configure your router, sure, or your Linux computer. But I imagine a new iPhone would just come with a checkbox you can check at account creation time. Again, very similar to this proposal, except it works.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#448

Post by mikestorrent » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 12:58 AM UTC

shit_game wrote: post #30

mikestorrent wrote: post #3

I don't like this whole thing, but compared to what I was fearing would happen, this idea is nowhere near as bad. What I expected was that we'd end up with the OS vendors actually being mandated to really do age verification, and then submitting that using Web Credentials and Secure Attestation so that the far end could trust the whole thing, locking open-source OS's out of the mix and creating more of a walled garde…

> Can someone tell me whether I am being a fool by actually being a bit relieved it's going this way? You're being a fool by actually being a bit relieved it's going this way. These bills are meant to nudge the overton window[0] of digital politics in the direction of mandating realtime identity verification for all forms of computing. Advertisers want it, governments want it, _bad people and bad governments want it_…

Well, ok. That is what I was fearing, after all. Perhaps I was anchored into the worse position and now am accepting a slight erosion of rights since it's not the entire thing, all at once... the slippery slope is not always a fallacy, after all.

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#449

Post by mikestorrent » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 12:58 AM UTC

dizhn wrote: post #214

mikestorrent wrote: post #3

I don't like this whole thing, but compared to what I was fearing would happen, this idea is nowhere near as bad. What I expected was that we'd end up with the OS vendors actually being mandated to really do age verification, and then submitting that using Web Credentials and Secure Attestation so that the far end could trust the whole thing, locking open-source OS's out of the mix and creating more of a walled garde…

Next thing you know they'll stamp your ID at the hardware level at point of purchase.

Well, your MAC is already stamped, and is on the outside label of the box sometimes...

Re: Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

#450

Post by mikestorrent » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 1:02 AM UTC

dormento wrote: post #56

jacobgkau wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the laws in CA, CO, and now IL are essentially just mandating generally available OS's implement a standardized, local parental control system. Detractors will say parents should just install existing parental control software, even though it's existed in its current form for decades and is obviously not effective. And they'll say it should be the parents' responsibility to enforce what their kids are doing wit…

The parents can already do that. Its called "parenting". The fact that they won't even though there are (non-required!) tools they could be using to do so is baffling to me. > if the kids lie during setup, it's on the parents Pretty much a "Yes, and?" scenario. See above. > The arguments I've heard against it are almost all slippery-slope (e.g. "they're gonna do this first, and then add ID requirements next year, bec…

> Its called "parenting".

I hear this and it makes me wonder if you have kids. Do you really have the ability to supervise their internet access at all times? Mine are in the next room, I check in on them regularly, but that still results in them being up to no good. Conversations on the topic are a regular thing, losing privileges as a punishment for breaking the rules is happening all the time, but they still always want to push up against the boundaries of what's allowed and what isn't.

And they're not even teenagers yet, with hormones and thirst-traps and whatever else there is to watch out for.

A little bit more control within the house would be useful - I don't want it to come in the form of anything that impacts anyone else, though. I don't need draconian laws, I just need some voluntary, owner-informed device controls that aren't completely trivial for unprivileged users to bypass.