The bill is a bad idea. Of course big tech likes it, more id equals higher value data they can scrape. When (if?) it arrives it'll be two seconds before some places on the web will need more to be sure the person who set up the entire phone or app is actually not under age, thus the person setting it up will have to provide id ... the bill is a anonyphobes wet dream come true.
Think: verify age without giving any other information. I've seen compelling stories against it, but the zero knowledge proof aspect is a fun thing to look in to.
This bill is a strictly better version of the age gating initiatives that have been passed in other states and countries like the UK and Australia. If age gating is inevitable, and it seems as though it is, this is the least bad way to do it — enforcing the onus on device manufacturers, who can do verification one time and then throw away the information.
The bill doesn’t actually require any real age verification... it just asks people to provide a (any) birthdate for the purposes of categorizing their access by age bracket. It doesn’t say anything about the information having to be accurate, and gives no penalties if you lie.
I'm still against age verification in general, but I don't think this particular bill warrants the massive outrage similarly being made lately about more serious age verification laws, as it does not require any facilities for actually verifying, well, anything.
The MPAA's argument against this bill is a complete joke:
>MPA urged state lawmakers to reject Wicks’ bill this week in a letter, obtained by POLITICO, claiming device-based age checks may sow confusion; for example, if parents and kids had separate Netflix profiles under one account that’s logged in on multiple devices.
To the point where I'm asking if someone needs some token opposition to frame this obvious bill a political win?
This bill seems reasonable according to the article? It allows the device to state the user is underage and the site must act accordingly rather than gating users to a site and must prove their age. But then again “the road to hell is paved with good intentions" so no clue how it’ll play out in reality.
This seems... not terrible? The typical counter-argument to any "think of the children!" hand-wringing is that parents should instead install parental controls or generally monitor what their own kids are up to. Having a standardized way to actually do that, without getting into the weirdness of third-party content controls (which are themselves a privacy/security nightmare), is not an awful idea. It's also limited to installed applications, so doesn't break the web.
This is basically just going to require all smartphones to have a "don't let this device download rated-M apps" mode. There's no actual data being provided - and the bill explicitly says so; it just wants a box to enter a birth date or age, not link it to an actual ID. I'm not clear on how you stop the kid from just flipping the switch back to the other mode; maybe the big manufacturers would have a lock such that changing the user's birthdate when they're a minor requires approval from a parent's linked account?
That said, on things like this I'm never certain whether to consider it a win that a reasonable step was taken instead of an extreme step, or to be worried that it's the first toe in the door that will lead to insanity.
Technofeudal Big Mother is here to deanonymize you and steal your personal identifiers to sell to data brokers because "Think Of The Children™!" Fuck age verification with 240 VAC.
So the proposal is that parents just input the age on their kid's device, and apps pull the age range to limit content.
Thats actually reasonable. Does not personally identify anyone, can be opted out of as easily as those "i am over 18" buttons. The only freedom being lost is by minors to their parents, which is already how things work. I like this
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 33.4 ms ] threadYou can have age gating or you can have privacy. Same as you can have porn filtering or you can have privacy.
Think: verify age without giving any other information. I've seen compelling stories against it, but the zero knowledge proof aspect is a fun thing to look in to.
https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/opening-up-ze...
I'm still against age verification in general, but I don't think this particular bill warrants the massive outrage similarly being made lately about more serious age verification laws, as it does not require any facilities for actually verifying, well, anything.
https://trackbill.com/bill/california-assembly-bill-1043-age...
>MPA urged state lawmakers to reject Wicks’ bill this week in a letter, obtained by POLITICO, claiming device-based age checks may sow confusion; for example, if parents and kids had separate Netflix profiles under one account that’s logged in on multiple devices.
To the point where I'm asking if someone needs some token opposition to frame this obvious bill a political win?
This seems... not terrible? The typical counter-argument to any "think of the children!" hand-wringing is that parents should instead install parental controls or generally monitor what their own kids are up to. Having a standardized way to actually do that, without getting into the weirdness of third-party content controls (which are themselves a privacy/security nightmare), is not an awful idea. It's also limited to installed applications, so doesn't break the web.
This is basically just going to require all smartphones to have a "don't let this device download rated-M apps" mode. There's no actual data being provided - and the bill explicitly says so; it just wants a box to enter a birth date or age, not link it to an actual ID. I'm not clear on how you stop the kid from just flipping the switch back to the other mode; maybe the big manufacturers would have a lock such that changing the user's birthdate when they're a minor requires approval from a parent's linked account?
That said, on things like this I'm never certain whether to consider it a win that a reasonable step was taken instead of an extreme step, or to be worried that it's the first toe in the door that will lead to insanity.
Thats actually reasonable. Does not personally identify anyone, can be opted out of as easily as those "i am over 18" buttons. The only freedom being lost is by minors to their parents, which is already how things work. I like this