Live data from Hacker News

Illinois just told every operating system to start reporting your kid's age

itsfoss.com

71–80 of 138 posts

Re: Illinois just told every operating system to start reporting your kid's age

#71
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The parents are the ones who should be supervising. Ok. When Alice & Bob come home from school what steps should every parent take to supervise A&B's phone and device usage over the past 48 hours? Internet history, of course - for all the browsers, including those hidden away? But what if the logs are wiped or the second BraveFoxChrome installation isn't obvious? Must every parent have an IT degree? What if the par…

> What if the parents are very good plumbers and car mechanics, should they also be expert in software design and installation? You know who else are not experts in software design and installation? Fossil politicians and slimy bureaucrats. Name one public sector state or local website that isn't utter garbage and a nightmare to use. Go ahead I'll wait. They need to get their sticky donut-eating fingers out of my per…

Gov.uk

Re: Illinois just told every operating system to start reporting your kid's age

#72
post #70
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The parents are the ones who should be supervising. Ok. When Alice & Bob come home from school what steps should every parent take to supervise A&B's phone and device usage over the past 48 hours? Internet history, of course - for all the browsers, including those hidden away? But what if the logs are wiped or the second BraveFoxChrome installation isn't obvious? Must every parent have an IT degree? What if the par…

There should be parental controls that disallows installing apps, so there is no hidden browsers. Google and apple has an entire walled garden infra setup that they are using for control and hoovering up all the user data, the same infra can be uses for this.

Winner winner, chicken dinner.

This, and more - device makers and those upstream of the parents need to make "child safe" phones .. and probably (uh, oh) make them that way by default so that tech savvy types can disengage restrictions (and have that restrictions lifted state glaringly obvious for non tech savvy parents).

The raison d'etre for my above framed question was to highlight that non tech parents can not be expected to IT-child-safe phones and then monitor risks w/out assistance from vendors.

Re: Illinois just told every operating system to start reporting your kid's age

#73
post #34

That's the correct way to do it. Age should be something reported by browser/os/hardware. Something similar to User-Agent. I really hope this will end the whole third party age verification farce.

it's not age verification laws have little to do with protecting anyone, and social media companies are attempting to remove themselves from liability for their dangerous product by pushing for it social media in its current unregulated state is harmful as has been demonstrated repeatedly with (suppressed) studies, and the push for age verification instead of regulation on the actual harmful content age verification…

> the push for age verification instead of regulation on the actual harmful content

_If_ you think there is content grown-ups should be able to see but kids shouldn’t be able to see without their parent’s consent, I don’t see what’s bad about this.

I also think many Americans agree with that _If_.

Re: Illinois just told every operating system to start reporting your kid's age

#74

The breathless fearmongering over an age field on account set up is just completely over-the-top. This is probably the least bad out of all possible ways to implement age checking. The benefit of this is that it can short-circuit support for more onerous age verification. The writing has been on the wall for some time now: the era of completely unrestricted internet is coming to an end. The question is how awful will…

> This is probably the least bad out of all possible ways to implement age checking. Less bad is still bad. Normalizing a gated, state controlled internet is bad.

There's something to be said for realizing which way the winds are blowing and getting ahead of it. The fight against any and all age gating on the internet is already lost. The question is what will the system look like once it comes into being. This is something we have a lot of say over if we just stop being obstinate and start offering solutions. Sticking one's head in the sand will just result in a worse state of affairs in the end.

Re: Illinois just told every operating system to start reporting your kid's age

#76

What's most shocking to me is the willingness to comply on display here and elsewhere. If the state proposes you stick a corncob up your rear, your initial response shouldn't be to ask if they prefer you use a rubber or wooden mallet to achieve compliance.

[deleted]

Re: Illinois just told every operating system to start reporting your kid's age

#77
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the kid's old enough to be hiding their internet history from their parents, they're old enough to have some privacy.

and if they're just old enough to follow instructions from an older cousin, an online predator, or to hand over their phone to a candy waving dubious third party for a "roblox coin hack" ?

How did we get here from OS age reporting? I don't see how age reporting is going to stop any of those 3 things - or indeed any technical set of controls.

If the fear is kids communicating with people, I might suggest giving them a phone and an internet connection is a poor start whatever happens next. They're communication tools. They're going to use them to communicate.

Re: Illinois just told every operating system to start reporting your kid's age

#78
Yeah and it's great. Because it wards off any verification that would actually be intrusive. You just need to add a birth date field to GECOS and you're done. It doesn't have to hold your actual birth date, as there's no penalties for lying. Viewing this as "age verification" is the wrong angle since nothing is verified - it's actually mandating that every OS must have parental controls. Don't think of it as "my birth date" - think of it as "apply parental controls that would be appropriate for someone born on this date".

Actually I'm tempted to think everyone who calls it "age verification" is being deliberately dishonest about what the law is.

Re: Illinois just told every operating system to start reporting your kid's age

#79
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all support age verification No, they all support harvesting your data so they can continue doing what they do best: building shadow profiles and targeting ads. Nothing a signal of an age group tells them more than "send me more ads for XX year-olds". Why do you think it's always a question asked in online surveys?

>> for their ad platforms gives better data > No, they all support harvesting your data so they can continue doing what they do best: building shadow profiles and targeting ads. I think we are agreeing adamantly here?

No, because these laws give them less data. But they also give them less liability which is what they care more about in this instance.

Re: Illinois just told every operating system to start reporting your kid's age

#80
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> for their ad platforms gives better data > No, they all support harvesting your data so they can continue doing what they do best: building shadow profiles and targeting ads. I think we are agreeing adamantly here?

You said that Meta doesn't want to be responsible for age verification - they absolutely do, because that gives them every single user's identity. Forcing it at the OS level is not an attempt to put the responsibility on the OS, it's an attempt to drive a wedge into the OS where Apple can't hide users' identities.

Apple wouldn't give the identity to Facebook, only the age bracket.
Post reply on HN