Hacker News Reader

Comment by idle_zealot | Hacker News Reader

What I'm reading of this law is that it requires OS developers to require users select their age (really their age bracket) when making a user account, and an interface for applications/websites to read that user-provided field. I.e. not age verification, but just a standard way to identify if a user is on a child account. If that understanding is correct, how is this bad at all? It's a way to put to rest people's concerns and pearl-clutching over children accessing adult content without every individual app and service provider contracting with Palantir to scan you and guess your age. Instead they can just read the IsAdult header and call it a day. What's the cost to user-freedom? You have to be presented a Date of Birth field or I Am an Adult / Teen / Child selector when setting up a device... a thing that every operating system impacted by this law already does.

View on HN

Why should it be law? I am a developer in California, and a long time Linux nerd. If I were to release a hobby on my GitHub for fun, without age verification, am I now subject to fines? Imprisonment? Why should their be a legal requirement?

As with any law like this, it should apply to systems made for normal end-users with over some minimum number of users. If your hobby Linux distro picks up a million home users then yeah, you're responsible for making it suitable for purpose for as long as you're distributing it. It's the same with accessibility requirements, safety requirements, labor laws, etc.

If California starts knocking on the door of random distros and hobby OSes designed for power users or servers with 2000 average monthly downloads then I'll go to bat defending them.

Though to re-iterate, I'm pretty sure the requirements here are for asking a user to set an age, not to do age verification, so if you did want to comply it would mean adding a Date field to your setup flow and then wiring that up to applications that ask for it.

It's not enough to just accept the age signal:

> (3) (A) Except as provided in subparagraph (B), a developer shall treat a signal received pursuant to this title as the primary indicator of a user’s age range for purposes of determining the user’s age.

> (B) If a developer has internal clear and convincing information that a user’s age is different than the age indicated by a signal received pursuant to this title, the developer shall use that information as the primary indicator of the user’s age.

Developers are still liable if they have reason to believe someone is underage, even if the age signal says otherwise.

The only way to truly minimize that liability is forcing users to scan their faces and IDs, that is why age verification systems are already implemented that way.

Thanks for actually reading the law for me! Yeah, that's pretty bad. I'm totally on board for requiring a common interface for platforms to indicate and check for self-reported age, but legally requiring operating systems to doubt and override user settings is unambiguously anti-user and authoritarian.

I think it’s meant for the case where a child is using an adult’s user account but maybe their own account within that

eg: you let your child use your laptop for a bit to play Roblox. The child logs into the Roblox account which has their real age. As per the law Roblox is required to use their inner age signal instead of the OS provided one.

I suppose it could also go the opposite way: if your steam account is 18 years old by itself then probably we can treat you like a grown up and ignore the OS provided signal.

I guess the latter form would be quite rare for anyone to implement.

How is this good at all for a free society? You are basically making a "what about the children?" argument. its the parent job to protect their children. why should anyone suffer this b.s.?

How is it bad for a free society?

not to be flippant, i am answering your question with the seriousness it deserves:

it is because any government regulation over user identifiers in an operating system (and left to grow and fester according to political wont) will chill free speech (code, data) and assembly (the ability to share code and data with others unsupervised).

That's nice but doesn't actually answer the question that I asked, which is how this (i.e. requiring local user accounts to specify an age range on creation) is bad for a free society.

Simply stating something you apparently see as self-evidently true in the abstract doesn't really make much of a point. Especially when said something is unironically just "but the slippery slope!"

since you’re lost (now I’m being flippant to match your tone):

age is an identifier as part of a ‘digital fingerprint’. a fingerprint is used to track you. your fingerprints are attached to the things you criticize online. you must temper your criticisms. end of story.

your ‘o noes another slippery slope arg’ falls flat on its ass when you look outside at what your government is patently and evidently doing. you paying any attention to the anthropic ‘mass surveillance’ canary? how about the ice app? threats to legally prosecute protesters of ice? no? god, you really need to be led to water huh.

maybe look up how the persona company aggregates data for the government and get back to me as to whether you think that has a chilling effect on speech and assembly (when droves of people are leaving discord)

ah maybe too “abstract” for you. How about this:

a/s/l? :3 don’t worry, im just a dev, i won’t bite. unless of course, you disagree with me o3o

All the better to do targeted advertisments and underdeveloped minds!

This is exactly the sort of infrastructure that would make it super easy to pass a law banning tracking and advertising to minors. Once every platform can trivially detect when they should turn off the ads there's no reasonable counter-argument about privacy or feasibility.

Fine by me... instantly setting my age to whatever it is that disallows all ads ;)

Have we banned advertising tk minors on tv shows aimed at minirs? Are barbie/action hero/etc commercial showing kids having fun with barbies on channels whose primary demo is children no longer a thing?

Technology has never been tge limiting factor. Politicak will is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com