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Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

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Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#71

Post by heavyset_go »

txrx0000 wrote: post #69
uyzstvqs wrote: post #51

People need to understand the difference between age indication and age verification . Two very different things. Age indication is a completely private and realistically as-effective alternative to the invasive age verification . Age _indication_ means that when you set up your device or create a user account, you enter a date of birth for the user. The OS then provides a native API to return a user's age bracket (n…

There are two things very very wrong with the California law, which you call "age indication". 1) The parental responsibility is given to the wrong people. You're basically being forced by law to give all apps and websites your child's age on request, and then trusting those online platforms to serve the right content (lol). It should be the other way around. The apps and websites should broadcast the age rating of t…

> For many years, certain tech companies, SIGs, and governments have fought against technologies that could enable real digital parenting, all while claiming to do the opposite and "protecting children". They craft a narrative to convince you that top-down digital surveillance and access-control is for your own good, but it's time we reject that and flip their narrative upside down

The EFF has a good series related to this[1].

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/rep-finke-was-right-ag...

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#72

Post by Ferret7446 »

txrx0000 wrote: post #69
uyzstvqs wrote: post #51

People need to understand the difference between age indication and age verification . Two very different things. Age indication is a completely private and realistically as-effective alternative to the invasive age verification . Age _indication_ means that when you set up your device or create a user account, you enter a date of birth for the user. The OS then provides a native API to return a user's age bracket (n…

There are two things very very wrong with the California law, which you call "age indication". 1) The parental responsibility is given to the wrong people. You're basically being forced by law to give all apps and websites your child's age on request, and then trusting those online platforms to serve the right content (lol). It should be the other way around. The apps and websites should broadcast the age rating of t…

> The apps and websites should broadcast the age rating of their content, and the OS fetches that age rating, and decides whether the content is appropriate by comparing the age rating to the user's age.

How would you make that happen? Many websites would not be subject to your jurisdiction.

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#73

Post by txrx0000 »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #72
txrx0000 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two things very very wrong with the California law, which you call "age indication". 1) The parental responsibility is given to the wrong people. You're basically being forced by law to give all apps and websites your child's age on request, and then trusting those online platforms to serve the right content (lol). It should be the other way around. The apps and websites should broadcast the age rating of t…

> The apps and websites should broadcast the age rating of their content, and the OS fetches that age rating, and decides whether the content is appropriate by comparing the age rating to the user's age. How would you make that happen? Many websites would not be subject to your jurisdiction.

Assume they're 18+ then.

But even that's still not a great solution. I outline a better solution that doesn't require any legal enforcement at all, in the link at the bottom of my original comment.

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#74

Post by cozzyd »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #31
ekr____ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Systems are required to ask the user for their age and just trust whatever they say > > This is the thing they actually get right. It removes the inconvenience, privacy invasion, forced use of corporate verifiers with perverse incentives, etc. Meanwhile if the user is actually a child then their age is set by their parent. Well, maybe. For instance, if a child buys their own device they could set the age to whatev…

> For instance, if a child buys their own device they could set the age to whatever they want. If a child has the money to buy a device without the parent knowing about it then they could just buy a used device that has already been configured with an account or pay a high school senior to set one up on their new device. > Rather, the way it works is that the developer is then assumed to have "actual knowledge" of th…

A minor using python3 isn't allowed to import flask

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#75

Post by ekr____ »

txrx0000 wrote: post #69
uyzstvqs wrote: post #51

People need to understand the difference between age indication and age verification . Two very different things. Age indication is a completely private and realistically as-effective alternative to the invasive age verification . Age _indication_ means that when you set up your device or create a user account, you enter a date of birth for the user. The OS then provides a native API to return a user's age bracket (n…

There are two things very very wrong with the California law, which you call "age indication". 1) The parental responsibility is given to the wrong people. You're basically being forced by law to give all apps and websites your child's age on request, and then trusting those online platforms to serve the right content (lol). It should be the other way around. The apps and websites should broadcast the age rating of t…

> 1) The parental responsibility is given to the wrong people. You're basically being forced by law to give all apps and websites your child's age on request, and then trusting those online platforms to serve the right content (lol). It should be the other way around. The apps and websites should broadcast the age rating of their content, and the OS fetches that age rating, and decides whether the content is appropriate by comparing the age rating to the user's age. The user's age, or age bracket, or any information about the user at all, should not leave the user's computer.

FWIW, this is not quite an accurate description of AB1043, in at least three respects:

1. Apps don't get your exact age, just an age range.

2. Websites don't get your age at all.

3. AB1043 itself doesn't mandate any content restrictions; it just says that the app now has "actual knowledge" of the user's age. That's not to say that there aren't other laws which require age-specific behaviors, but this particular one is pretty thi on this.

In addition, I certainly understand the position that the age range shouldn't leave the computer, but I'm not sure how well that works technically, assuming you want age-based content restrictions. First, a number of the behaviors that age assurance laws want to restrict are hard to implement client side. For example, the NY SAFE For Kids act forbids algorithmic feeds, and for obvious reasons that's a lot easier to do on the server. Second, even if you do have device-side filtering, it's hard to prevent the site/app from learning what age brackets are in place, because they can experimentally provide content with different age markings and see what's accepted and what's blocked. Cooper, Arnao, and I discuss this in some more detail on pp 39--42 of our report on Age Assurance: https://kgi.georgetown.edu/research-and-commentary/age-assur...

I'm not saying that this makes a material difference in how you should feel about AB 1043, just trying to clarify the technical situation.

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#76

Post by ekr____ »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #72
txrx0000 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two things very very wrong with the California law, which you call "age indication". 1) The parental responsibility is given to the wrong people. You're basically being forced by law to give all apps and websites your child's age on request, and then trusting those online platforms to serve the right content (lol). It should be the other way around. The apps and websites should broadcast the age rating of t…

> The apps and websites should broadcast the age rating of their content, and the OS fetches that age rating, and decides whether the content is appropriate by comparing the age rating to the user's age. How would you make that happen? Many websites would not be subject to your jurisdiction.

We're actually seeing this play out right now with the server-based age assurance systems which are already widely deployed and mandated under the UK Online Safety Act and laws in about 25 US States. In many cases, the sites just comply, presumably because they are worried that the regulators have a way to reach them even if they aren't hosted in the relevant jurisdiction. In some cases, however, the sites just ignore the regulations or tell the regulators to pound sand, as 4Chan is doing with UK OfCom: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c624330lg1ko

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#78

Post by txrx0000 »

ekr____ wrote: post #75
txrx0000 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two things very very wrong with the California law, which you call "age indication". 1) The parental responsibility is given to the wrong people. You're basically being forced by law to give all apps and websites your child's age on request, and then trusting those online platforms to serve the right content (lol). It should be the other way around. The apps and websites should broadcast the age rating of t…

> 1) The parental responsibility is given to the wrong people. You're basically being forced by law to give all apps and websites your child's age on request, and then trusting those online platforms to serve the right content (lol). It should be the other way around. The apps and websites should broadcast the age rating of their content, and the OS fetches that age rating, and decides whether the content is appropri…

Thanks for the clarification.

Regarding what to do with algorithmic feeds, instead of forcing platforms like Facebook to be less evil, we should give parents the ability to simply uninstall Facebook, and prevent it from being installed by the child. We could implement a password lock for app installation/updates at the OS-level that can be enabled in the phone's settings, that works like Linux's sudo. Every time you install/uninstall/update an app, it asks for a password. Then parents would be able to choose which apps can run on their child's device.

Notice their strategy: these companies make it hard/impossible for you to uninstall preloaded apps, and they make it hard to develop competing apps and OSes, and they degrade the non-preloaded software UX on purpose, which creates the artificial need to filter the feeds in existing platforms that these companies control. They also monopolize the app store and gatekeep which apps can be listed on it, and which OS APIs non-affliated apps can use. Instead of accepting that and settling with just filtering those existing platforms' feeds, we should have the option to abandon them entirely.

We need the phone hardware companies to open-source their device firmware, drivers, and let the device owner lock/unlock the bootloader with a password, so that we could never have a situation like the current one where OSes come preinstalled with bloat like TikTok or Facebook, and the bootloader is locked so you can't even install a different OS and your phone becomes a brick when they stop providing updates. If we allow software competition, then child protection would have never been a problem in the first place because people would be able to make child-friendly toy apps and toy OSes, and control what apps and OS can run on the hardware they purchased. Parents would have lots of child-friendly choices. This digital parenting problem was manufactured by the same companies trying to sell us a "solution" like this Cali bill or in other cases ID verification, which coincidentally makes it easier for them to track people online.

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#79

Post by ddtaylor »

uyzstvqs wrote: post #51

People need to understand the difference between age indication and age verification . Two very different things. Age indication is a completely private and realistically as-effective alternative to the invasive age verification . Age _indication_ means that when you set up your device or create a user account, you enter a date of birth for the user. The OS then provides a native API to return a user's age bracket (n…

A pointless slippery slope to attempt to stand on that points directly at the Overton Window being drawn around this.

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#80

Post by iririririr »

ekr____ wrote: post #75
txrx0000 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two things very very wrong with the California law, which you call "age indication". 1) The parental responsibility is given to the wrong people. You're basically being forced by law to give all apps and websites your child's age on request, and then trusting those online platforms to serve the right content (lol). It should be the other way around. The apps and websites should broadcast the age rating of t…

> 1) The parental responsibility is given to the wrong people. You're basically being forced by law to give all apps and websites your child's age on request, and then trusting those online platforms to serve the right content (lol). It should be the other way around. The apps and websites should broadcast the age rating of their content, and the OS fetches that age rating, and decides whether the content is appropri…

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