Since people aren’t reading the article and the headline is misleading. The law requires:
- The OS ask the user their date of birth on account creation (kinda like the Steam date of birth prompts)
- The OS provide an API that returns which of four age brackets the user fits in
- Companies notified by the OS that the user is under age may be liable
It was explicitly written by the authors not to mandate ID or facial recognition checks. You can lie about your date of birth. This basically creates a standard set of parental controls for parents configuring kids devices.
I think that this might actually help with the whole discord facial recognition issue in places other than the UK by allowing them to offload the issue to parents setting up devices rather than collecting kids biometrics.
No matter how hard they try, you can’t legislate parenting.
Even if they could enforce it which I highly doubt, this law is clearly a “Fuck you and your free software”.
Like if a “too young” user have the skills to update the OS to change or even remove the age verification, who will be responsible? Yeah I don’t know either, but both will be bad.
No biggie. I got ready for this in minutes after hearing about it.
#!/usr/bin/env fish read -P "Are you old enough? (yes/no) " input if test "$input" = "yes" -o "$input" = "Yes" echo "Proceeding..." else echo "You are not old enough. Exiting." exit 1 end… What? … Why are you all looking at me like that?
That would be a completely unworkable law since devices may not even have internet connectivity, or a user interface. And even if they did, it would have a chilling effect on software development in California.
This is a whole new level for system level fingerprinting
You guys are asking the wrong questions.
How is Linux going to do this? There’s no server for the os to send the information to report the age of its users, no way of forcing its user base to comply and no single person or entity to fine, arrest or otherwise force into compliance.
They made a law they cannot enforce.
Our president is fucking children, and you’re telling me I gotta verify my date of birth to run Linux, in the name of “Protecting the Children”?
Get the fuck outta here.
Is this only for Californians? Only Americans? Or everywhere?
No doubt in response to Europe making its choice for software open source. Expect targeted attacks on FOSS to increase
It’s just a simple DoB input, which can be local afaik
How the hell are they going to enforce this?
microslop and or palintir stink all over this, mroe than likely its the latter.
My birthday is 01.01.0001
01.01.1970
The law does not require photo ID uploads or facial recognition, with users instead simply self-reporting their age, setting AB 1043 apart from similar laws passed in Texas and Utah that require “commercially reasonable” verification methods, such as government-issued ID checks.
What even is the point of this then? To make shitty parents feel better?
The point of it is actually the exact opposite. With this law the parent would set the age of their child. And if they decide to lie and their child is affected then they could be fined.
The other thing it does is if a platform decides to ignore the age range of a user and it affects a child then they could be fined. But as long as they do best effort then it really only affects the parents.
It also prevent platforms from requesting additional ID verification unless they have confidence that the age bracket of that user is incorrect.
The ONLY way this is even remotely OK is if the OS is set to 18+ all other age verification laws are satisfied and I don’t have to provide even more intrusive information to random companies.
There is absolutely no reason for an OS to know a users age. At this point it is certain that they can escalate this into including gender or even race.
The children or even the teens have no meaning in this law - they are simply used as sugarcoating for the cyanide pill that’s aimed at the populace.
I agree until this law there was no reason for my os to know my age. This law creates that reason.
Any law can be bad if we take into account the imagined future possibilities. Should we outlaw electricity because it might be used in some way to make nukes?
If lawmakers try to issue further requirements for ID or facial scans then we can fight that. But until then there is nothing in this law that affects me outside of needing to enter a number less than 2005 when I setup my OS.
If you don’t have any kids then you literally can’t be fined under this law.
Should we outlaw electricity because it might be used in some way to make nukes?
No, because there are lots of good uses for electricity. What is the good use of this bill?
It prevents apps from asking for additional ID verification. I’d rather my os ask me for a number I am able to lie about than to have to send my ID to 30 different apps and data aggregators.
Many people say that we should put more responsibility on the parents for what their kids are allowed to do online. This law does that.
If your code is installed on a general purpose computing device that is provided to a child, you can be fined.
If you provide code to the general public without requesting an age signal from the receiver’s OS, you can be fined.
The attorney general of California might consider the JavaScript in your web page to be “content”. They might consider it to be an “application”. There is no clear distinction. If you request an age signal before providing content, you can be fined. If you fail to request an age signal before providing an application, you can be fined.
The more I read about this law, the less I think it will actually go into effect. It’s going to face a whole series of injunctions. The lawyers are going to bill thousands of hours, but the whole thing is going to be scrapped.
It’s so next year when they expand the requirements the infrastructure is already in place.
Moving towards removing anonymity on the internet.
IRL Community is dead in america, They know the only thing we have left to band together on against their Nazi regime is the internet. This is why they are trying to destroy anonymity.
Soon it will be “Linux is for criminals” (like they said with graphene).
Yup. Replacing cash with digital transactions and eliminating anonymity online.
Yep!! All their plan, laid out clear as day. But you’re the crazy person if you bring that up among normies!
Sell data. profile people more accurately.
