This is censorship; it is like saying you can't eat a steak because a baby can't chew it. They will try to ban Linux or fine Linux developers unless it reports the user's age.
From reading the article, it sounds like an enforced standardisation? Like, asking for account age bracket and then having a standard API to ask for it would be easy, right? Just write it to a root owned `~/.age-bracket` for each user or something (obviously something better).
It's a feature many apps implement in all kinds of ways already, especially games and social media stuff, so this, in theory, just makes it easier and consistent?
I'm against leaking our kids ages, and all the privacy and other concerns as much as anyone, but are we just getting overly angry too quickly on this one?
Background: Meta/Facebook, Google and Apple all support age verification. It gives them legal cover and for their ad platforms gives better data.
But Meta/FB have been strongly lobbying to make it required at the OS level, so they aren't responsible for it, whereas Google and Apple both want it to be an application responsibility.
I think the CA version of this ended up with a carve-out for open source? I can't recall the details.
Are they expecting parents to be held responsible when their kid gets given a laptop and doesn't put in the right age? Or is it just a best effort thing that "parents who want to" can opt in to and which mostly serves as a shield for online platforms who wave the "but age API said" flag whenever something sketch happens?
Seeing as this is Illinois we're talking about, it's probably less about protecting kids and more about extorting punitive fines from tech companies for non-compliance.
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.
> 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.
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 the new normal be? Legislation like this is a win all around, a complete nothingburger. We should be celebrating it, not fighting it tooth and nail.
That and there was basically zero uproar on HN for any of the 20+ red states requiring 3rd party ID verification and or face scanning for access to adult content. But when blue states try to implement something far less privacy invasive, that parents can opt into, people lose their minds.
At the end of the day, it is my job as a parent to steer my kids out of harm’s way, be it the alley where they will find the local dealer, the park where people are injecting at night, or not stuffing their faces with sugar, or social media.
The “Bob and Alice are technically illiterate” defence doesn’t hold. I’m gun illiterate but I wouldn’t buy one for my kids.
Do I feel bad for the kid that killed himself doing something stupid he say at TikTok? Yes. Do I feel bad the for parents that gave a phone with TikTok to an unsupervised 11 year old? Not really.
I wonder how vim will handle age brackets. Send all text to a LLM on the cloud in real time and refuse to show keystrokes with unsafe content? And censor unsafe text read from disk?
Age verification is human verification at the time when the internet is getting very smart and dangerous bots. At least that's my optimistic view of this kind of paradigm shift!
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.
Curious how the various Linux distros and *BSD will handle this.
I expect the Corporate distros (RHEL, SUSE, Ubuntu) will be happy to get that personal info from its users. The other US based distros, maybe ban its use in Illinois ?
I expect one BSD OS will ignore it completely because they are outside of US jurisdiction. Not sure what the others can do. Of the others, one does have a decent amount of cash, the other ones are just squeaking by. So who knows what will happen with those.
It's time to create a library: `lib-deny-age-verifiers'. Start putting it into every open-source package. Modify the license to prohibit removing this library from the package.
exactly what is the definition of an "OS" and how many of them might there be, then.
or, does Illinois know what a fork is?
and can people just add "not legal for use in illinois" somewhere and go back to devoting 99.9999999999999 % of there attention to things other than Illinois?
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 26.7 ms ] threadIt's a feature many apps implement in all kinds of ways already, especially games and social media stuff, so this, in theory, just makes it easier and consistent?
I'm against leaking our kids ages, and all the privacy and other concerns as much as anyone, but are we just getting overly angry too quickly on this one?
I get that it's a slippery slope too.
I'm hoping there's nuance, but I'm surprised the article didn't go deeper on this too. ARP? ICMP? DHCP?
I can't actually load the bill to read it ATM.
But Meta/FB have been strongly lobbying to make it required at the OS level, so they aren't responsible for it, whereas Google and Apple both want it to be an application responsibility.
I think the CA version of this ended up with a carve-out for open source? I can't recall the details.
I really hope this will end the whole third party age verification farce.
> violations can cost up to $50,000 each
I hear slot machine noises.
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.
Judging by the willingness to bend over shown here and on posts like "Everything You Do Is Being Recorded " https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49230477
you'd think the average HNer prefers it done by hand, with a repeating wavelike motion.
https://dailycitizen.focusonthefamily.com/pornography-age-ve...
The “Bob and Alice are technically illiterate” defence doesn’t hold. I’m gun illiterate but I wouldn’t buy one for my kids.
Do I feel bad for the kid that killed himself doing something stupid he say at TikTok? Yes. Do I feel bad the for parents that gave a phone with TikTok to an unsupervised 11 year old? Not really.
Parents must take responsibility.
/s
Actually I'm tempted to think everyone who calls it "age verification" is being deliberately dishonest about what the law is.
I expect the Corporate distros (RHEL, SUSE, Ubuntu) will be happy to get that personal info from its users. The other US based distros, maybe ban its use in Illinois ?
I expect one BSD OS will ignore it completely because they are outside of US jurisdiction. Not sure what the others can do. Of the others, one does have a decent amount of cash, the other ones are just squeaking by. So who knows what will happen with those.
I think you haven't understood what open source means.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_pi_bill