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A new California law says all operating systems need to have age verification

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Re: A new California law says all operating systems need to have age verification

#531

Post by skissane »

SllX wrote: post #517
skissane wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is interesting that this is a mainstream existing thing in the US (at the state level), but more of a fringe proposal in the rest of the English-speaking world. I think the answer may be that the difference in political systems (parliamentary vs presidential) and party systems (less two-party but with greater party discipline) solves many of the problems term limits are intended to solve in completely different wa…

> Maybe a better answer would be for US states to adopt the parliamentary system? Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t think it would change outcomes as much as people would think, but to scope limit this back to California again because electoral law discussions just fucking spiral anytime there’s no geographic constraint, the root of California’s lawmaking problems is that the legislature is both poorly structured and poorly…

A very widespread belief among political scientists is that parliamentary systems are superior to presidential systems in terms of stability and quality of governance. In fact, even the US State Department's own "nation-building" advisors tell other countries not to copy the US system (or at least they did prior to Trump, I'm honestly not sure if the Trump admin is sustaining that line or not)

Presidential systems have had a terrible run if you look at Latin America. The US seemed to be an exception to the rule, but maybe recent events have shown that the US got away with a substandard political system for so long because they had so many other advantages to make up for that, now their other advantages are weakening and the US is slowly converging with Latin America

Re: A new California law says all operating systems need to have age verification

#533

Post by Vicinity9635 »

hliyan wrote: post #471
bmitch3020 wrote: post #290

Reaction 1: how would this even work with embedded systems that have no UI to input this data? Reaction 2: it's open source, make the lawmakers do submit the changes. Reaction 3: how would this ever be enforced? Would they outlaw downloading distributions, or even older versions of distributions? When there's no exchange of money, a law like this is seems like it would be suppression of free speech. Reaction 4: Someo…

Continually surprised by politicians wanting an OS to do what a parent should be doing. Why not just mandate that all devices with access control capabilities implement parental controls, and then mandate that all adults enable controls before handing a device to a minor? For devices that are incapable of user access control, the same rules as a knife, chainsaw or gun apply.

>For devices that are incapable of user access control, the same rules as a knife, chainsaw or gun apply.

Well said. Parental controls are really nothing more than parents are root and kids are mere users. We shouldn't let the state or corporations be the parents, nor is it necessary.

Age verification by governments or corporations isn't a substitute for parenting. And with parenting age verification by governments or corporations isn't necessary.

They're doing this for some other reason than protecting kids, as usual.

Re: A new California law says all operating systems need to have age verification

#535

Post by efreak »

decidu0us9034 wrote: post #411
michaelt wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why does the operating system need to be involved in this? Well, the politicians probably meant to say “Apple, Google, Microsoft, plus maybe Sony and Nintendo” i.e. the companies that already have biometrics, nigh-mandatory user accounts, app stores linked to real identities, parental controls, locked down attested kernels, and so on. If phones had workable parental controls that let parents opt their kid into cens…

The law defines an operating system provider as "a person or entity that develops, licenses, or controls the operating system software on a computer, mobile device, or any other general computing device ." If the intent were to target mobile vendors or app store vendors, I would be fine with it, but that's not the text. Of course it's the case that US lawmakers often write incoherent or extremely onerous legislation…

So are cellphones and game consoles general computing devices? What about servers? Raspberry pi?

Re: A new California law says all operating systems need to have age verification

#536

Post by al_borland »

nlitsme wrote: post #249

I will start making a list for linux then. rm - ok for all ages. grep - 18+, you can obviously use this to search for porn. find - 18+, see grep. reboot - ok for all ages. echo - ok for all ages. cat - 18+, prints the porn you found directly to your terminal. sudo - 18+, obviously. kill - ok for all ages. This is the US, right. ps - 18+, no peeping at other processes.

rm needs to be 18+, kids could use it to cover their tracks.

Re: A new California law says all operating systems need to have age verification

#539

Post by al_borland »

flossposse wrote: post #439

Alcohol is harmful, and you want to prevent minors from obtaining it without parental supervision. Do you pass a law requiring every car to log the age of every occupant in case the driver drives to an establishment that sells alcohol? No, that's stupid. You require the person providing the alcohol to check age only when they are about to hand over the alcohol. Until someone actually attempt to access alcohol, they s…

Letting someone look at a date on an ID to 2 seconds is a lot lower stakes than handing over a scan of your license, face, and who knows what else, to hundreds of companies that will do god knows what with it.

To your point, a user shouldn’t be forced to put in age details just to use an OS. That said, if an OS can send a simple Boolean to an app/site if the user is over 18 or not, I’m guessing more people would rather opt into that system vs handing over extensive details to each and every vendor who asks.

As a person in my 40s, with no kids in my house, I find all of this absurd. Let parents install some nanny software if they want, don’t force it on everyone and use “protecting children” as the scapegoat.

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