Federal Bill Would Bring OS-Level Age Verification to the Entire U.S.
4 months ago by Sahwa to c/technology
Remember folks, age verification is personal identity verification.
💯 don’t call it age verification - that’s just what the unmasked scooby-doo villain is still hiding behind.
Well they could do it the right way where, for example, you go to your city hall to get a certificate of age where they check your ID. Then some cryptography happens so you only enter a public key from that certificate on a website or OS to verify your age.
The website or OS doesn’t check your ID. City hall doesn’t know your browsing history.
But I’m not fooling myself, that’s not the point of such a law.
no implementation of personal ID for internet access will ever be "correct."
incorrect.
That's not true. It's simple if all you actually want is age verification.
You go in to the government building and show your ID. Seeing you are 18 or older you get to go to another room where they don't check your ID, just give you a token saying the one holding it is over 18. Make the token like a FIDO key where you have a pin you set yourself.
There is an air gap between the validation and the token creation so there is no way to go from token to ID. You make the key use a pin so we consider it to be once usable by one person.
The issue is not about the technology. The issue is that we all know this has nothing to do with kids getting on porn sites.
You make the key use a pin so we consider it to be once usable by one person.
Now you have trusted the user not to provide the PIN to another, and the implementation is no longer correct. You'd at least need to use biometrics to tie the key to the person.
Would these tokens be unique per website visit? Are they generated by the user or the government?
"Key questions remain unanswered, such as the definition of “operating system provider,” the type of verification required, the focus on major commercial platforms, and the potential scope beyond them."
I guarantee this bill is unenforceable. Cars, phones, traffic lights all have have computers with operating systems. All modern tech has an operating system of some sort. Also how do you even verify age? If my laptop is offline can I just not use it because it can't confirm my id? What about tech that never goes online but has an OS, like a calculator? I can't believe microsoft and apple are not lobbying against this. Who becomes liable if an "underage" person is accidentally given access or if access is denied to an "of age" person. I can just imagine an emt frantically looking for their driver's license so they can use the computerized defibrillator.
Microsoft and Apple. The internet will only allow OSs from large American corporations.
I'd like to see the rest of the world say "fuck it" and carry on as before, leaving the Americans to censor themselves. But governments around the world are suddenly rushing to implement very similar terrible laws. It smells very coordinated.
Meta is funding a lot of the lobbyists pushing for age verification laws. Uncoincidentally, Meta both owns a stake in a company providing identity verification as a service, and serves to benefit from not having to moderate its own platforms.
Citizens United, folks. Because nothing says "freedom of speech" like collusion, bribery, and conflicts of interest!
And meta had a pretty big chance of just getting banned from being used by minors in places around the world, so it might not work out as hoped.
Yeah, governments all over are trying to implement the same shit, and I agree it's coordinated. Many governments are also looking seriously at stepping back from reliance on US big tech firms though. Not that homegrown oppression and surveillance is any better.
But you KNOW the masses will comply because they're told so. They don't want to break the law...
It's like Secure Boot, but without any of those pesky self-signing workarounds.
It feels like a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington display would solve this.
Just bring everything that has an operating system in it into the room. Cars, boats, planes, construction equipment, tractors, factories, knock off game consoles, literally every server on the internet.
Show them the ridiculousness of this and maybe we’ll get dragged out by police and charged with contempt of congress
Don't give them even better ideas. To you it sounds ridiculous, to them it sounds like "we can ban people we don't like from using modern technology by invalidating their age verification"
Go ahead and ban the people who are literally running the infrastructure they’re using
Will the sysadmins in Congress need to verify their age to use a server?
Will the sysadmins in Congress need to verify their age to use a server?
Yes. Yes, they will.
If my laptop is offline can I just not use it because it can't confirm my id?
Yes. The powers at be will stop at nothing to take more, and more, and more power away from you. This is human nature.
The problem comes when a public school's IT department is deciding whether to go with a FOSS option, or a commercial OS. As the IT team has full control over the FOSS OS, the school will be held liable as the OS provider. They will select a commercial OS to avoid liability under these idiot laws.
What is this argument? You and I both know they want this age verification at the OS level for personal computing devices: phones, tablets and computers, maybe watches.
Is this really what’s going to kill this law? Semantics?
Yeah actually. A lot of laws get shitcanned into irrelevance due to being worded like shit on everything from the local to federal levels. That's not even getting into conflicts with pre-existing well worded laws or the constitution as a whole.
If it's worded badly enough it may even just be thrown out on first test due to being vague and too widely applicable. Just for example I drive a 2001 Toyota Tacoma it has an operating system because it's got an ECU, how the actual fuck would that interact with this law? Obviously the corporate answer is to force me to get a new car but the actual practical answer is that that isn't viable, so it's more likely the courts just gut an entire section of the law with one case. Keep up the gutting and sooner or later it'll end up defunct.
Rules being implemented and enforced by actual pedophiles
*Ruling class rapists.
Pedophile class
You can't open your fridge for beer until you verify your age.
Drink verification can...catch 22
Why does a fridge need to connect to the Internet? Or a toaster? Why does my toothbrush need Bluetooth?
Well now you have to provide ID to use any of those.
This is just another form of control and a potential verified data stream for governments/corporations/marketers.
How can you prove that internet traffic is a human and not a bot? ID verification.
How can you generate more user data? Force them to provide ID for every device that is connected.
Want to control piracy? Easy with OS level ID requirements.
No no, tell me more about the smart toaster actually...
Can it warm up a jelly donut and play Maroon 5? lol
Like everything on shodan basically? FFS
Okay, what is this bill actually saying?
That soon, you won't even be able to own most computers without registering it under a government ID?
Because that's fucking nuts.
Make guns connect to the internet and watch what happens then.
Your ammo is running low.
Would you like to subscribe to the Silver Ammo Monthly Supply plan?
Click here to watch an ad for one free bullet.
Amazon guns
Or track them if they are stolen
Old Mans War
If only there were more support for reticulum.
The way things are going both with the hardware market and government over reach it won't be long until all we can own are thin clients that rent hardware from virtual servers. In less than 10 years we won't own our PCs and will have absolutely no privacy or anonymity online.
Palantir really wants it's fucking database.
All because Petey truly believes that there are demons living in the United States.
No the sad truth is that Peter Theil is, in fact, human. A human that we are all capable of becoming.
You just have to make a billion bad decisions to get where he is now.
Tim Apple as well
they need more summoning salts (full minor soul crystals)
He is right, demons live in US. They are in various Federal, State, Local and Corporate functions. For example current Federal government are all demons (pretty much) and all of ICE employees. Demon here is "spirit or lesser humanity" or simly said Inhuman individuals.
I keep seeing comments like this, and I just need to say, no Palantir doesn't have any database. It's a completely evil company that makes and sells surveillance software to governments and companies. Then the governments and companies have these terrible databases that they manage with the Palantir software.
Palantir themselves don't do any spying or data collecting. They sell tools so that others can do that. They absolutely take the blame, but I want people to understand what's actually happening.
They're too busy throwing bricks at Sam Altman's house 😂
Can't hurt
Hahahahahahahaha
Those violence inciting comments always read to me like "Hey, reply to me so you can be put on a watchlist"
You access the Internet through a network owned by a corporation under the jurisdiction of a government, your ISP knows who you are and so your government knows who you are.
Both of our Lemmy instances are hosted by Hetzner, in Finland and Germany. Both instance's connections are proxied through Cloudflare, an American tech company.
Any one of these entities has the ability to track you to at least an ISP and potentially down to the nearest street intersection if you're using fiber/cable. And that ISP will have records linking your IP lease information to your identity, or at least the credit card/billing information that you provided.
The kind of people who would be putting you on a watchlist are not the kind of people who will be thrown off by simply changing usernames on social media.
Patience, probably.
Last I checked most of the instances had waiting lists and some sort of written answer application
squints at your username
Hit a nerve there lol
I'm having a hard time understanding how this is going to keep kids safe.
The same way the next laws will keep kids safe. When you leave your front door, you will have to drop your pants so the TSA can check your asshole. It's necessary. You know. To keep kids safe.
/s
🤦♂️🤷♂️
Assprints are as unique as irises or fingerprints, and are bigger.
Reposted to death, but in case anyone new hasn't seen Smart Pipe yet:
This is about protecting the entrenched players in the OS games; Microsoft, Google and Apple. The likely end play for all this is the erosion of personal computing so they can rent (and therefore control) all the compute available to you, so you don’t get uppity and think of running your own AI, which they believe will be as integral to everyday life as the internet is today.
Why would corporate billionaires and pedophile politicians want to keep kids safe? This has nothing to do with that.
I don't even understand safe from what? Seeing titties? That is not bad and needs to be part of any growing up human, we've been all thru this, and we clearly see what happens to people who don't/were banned from normal childhood. All sorts of freaks.
It helps the rich oligarchs track their child harem and broodmares and make sure nobody is infringing on their "rights" to treat people as property.
You will be sent to die for Israel 🤣
🎶Your government is run by pedophiles! 🎶
There's already being work done to add an optional age-attestation in systemd.
And note that none of the laws proposed so far are actually verifying age, they're only requiring someone to enter it. That's attestation, not verification. Verification will be the next tightening of the screw.
They reverted the change and the Dev who made merge request got death threats.
Maybe not. I heard it online.
Now do you see why I don't trust government?
Because it does things like this. And it's not just our US government doing it. The entire world is getting more and more authoritarian.
Government seeks power. Always. Which is why it must always be restrained.
I trust the government, in that a government elected by a moderately intelligent population won’t be doing this fuckshit.
The biggest problem is that human beings are, by and large, far too stupid. As one guy put it, too many fully-grown adults are falling for obvious games of Peek-a-boo. There are billions of people so stupid that there are birds with greater levels of intelligence and problem solving skills.
We could have a wonderful world with a government that genuinely works for the people but instead half of us are voting our lives away just to spite already-disadvantaged minorities and the other half is voting for centrists because they’re too scared of even moderately progressive politicians. And the whole time polls show us as generally quite left-leaning, even the “conservatives” but we aren’t clever enough to see the tribalism right in front of us.
Governments are representing their people, that’s the problem, and there’s also no solution that doesn’t itself devolve into authoritarianism almost immediately. The only thing I’m genuinely holding out for is that the leaded-fuel-poisoning theory is real and we all smarten the fuck up ASAP. Reality is screaming at us to figure it the fuck out.
Be kind to others, the game is rigged against them. Propaganda has never been stronger and its everywhere.
No, we're long past the point where not being able to think critically about the shit we're fed is acceptable. Misinformation has been rampant for decades. Anyone still swallowing it deserves all the criticism coming their way. People still buy into Trump's bullshit for fucks sake. Fuck em.
The propaganda is lazy and obvious. I will not demand that many of them being hanged in the street but I will not sit here and act as though they aren’t immensely fucking stupid for falling for this crap. They can’t even be consistent enough in their own messaging to claim that the wool has been pulled over their eyes.
Oh no! Veritasium, that was a good one for basic physics stuff as far as i could tell.
palintir, meta, google are all behind it. it serves 2 purposes; silencing dissidents and TRACKING women/potential mothers as brood mares.
It's time to start neutering the tech bros.
Flaying and salting
- identifying new blood boys for Thiel
how to stay young and probably prey on them, probably learned from another rich AH bryan johnson who is trying to stay young buy sucking the blood of his son, and doing "pseudoscience" on himself with questionable scientists about longevity.
one of thiel's partner while married is a young male model, i get its a thing for older gay guys who are rich.
Fact check: TRUE
Don't worry, with all these data centers going up, they'll have enough hardware power to track the rest of us, too, not just the women.
Going up in flames?
And pushes the onus of implementation onto others.
unrelated but I just want to say theres like 4 separate comments using the word "TrumpID" to describe this age verification, and i think this would be a great way to mock it just like how conservatives called the aca "ObamaCare"
well neither did Obama personally write the affordable care act, but here we are
You misunderstand, TrumpID is the company that will soon be created that will be the mandatory provider for all OS to use (and pay licence fees to).
That's it! Get the guillotines!
Has Bipartisan support too. The corporations want this, and both of our parties listen to them first and us a distant second. Catering to corporate wants is about the only thing the two parties can agree on. It's probably going to pass, even if I hope it doesn't. Buckle up my friends...
I doubt this will have any major effect, the vast majority of people don't care. They are much better at ruining themselves.
Ugh, this is so disgusting! They desperately want control over things they should never have! I've shared my opinion will all three of my representatives.
Kudos on paying them some attention!
Does AIPAC pay them more?
I'm arguing with a local rep who passed a bill in my state for age verification. Only one that'd respond to me. Also signs bills to support Israel.
this is the way
Youth rights and children rights should not be forgotten. These rights are the most impacted here, which fundamentally causes them to succeed in the eradication of privacy rights.
@throws_lemy @Janx This is gonna kill the internet, and then free speech in general is going to fall alongside it.
It's also gonna kill device ownership as you will no longer own your device under this law.
The end game is everyone accessing info through a state intranet like NK has, through government-issued thin clients, where only the state decides what you can and can't say and what data you can have access to.
Yup, from the party of pedophiles
They want you know they are grooming real children
It’s sponsored by one Republican and one Democrat.
Sponsored it one thing, agenda is another. Conservatives want to control your porn access... this is mostly a right agenda.
Both are the party of the pedophile. Let's not kid ourselves, Republicans and Dems have been separated only by livery.
Since all TV’s are smart TV’s with an OS this means age verification to watch TV? I think that’s a message that will resonate with the average consumer on what is wrong with this bill
Imagine the government remote-locking your fridge because they found out you voted wrong.
Since all TV’s are smart TV’s with an OS this means age verification to watch TV?
Lollll
Meta, etc pushing this so that they don’t have to.
They want this because it entrenches them yet further. More of this kind of regulations makes it more difficult for newcomers to comply with everything.
Also I'm sure they'd love to be the one to hover up all of your data.
Man, if they don't have all my data by now, they're doing something wrong.
I’m so sick of this depraved pedophile oligarch Mossad shit
Fuck everything's my about this.
You think fascists are still going to allow voting?
That can't be true. We all know trump can't count. He's bankrupted THREE casinos! HOW THE FUCK CAN HE NOT MANAGE A CASINO, BUT CAN RIG AN AMERICAN ELECTION???
Successful fascists do, and yes. Don't fall into this fallacy and act early, instead of too late.
I think so. Legitimate? No.
We gonna go back to BBS with pixel titties
Was starting to think I was the only one who didn't know wtf Meshtastic is lol
lololololol
I told a 30 yr old if this bs comes to Canada I'll just drop all internet connections. He asked what the hell I would do without internet, I replied "Hey, I grew up in the 80s, I'll just go back to the way I lived before the internet. Read books, listen to music, and use the library I have." He looked like I simply said I was gonna cut off my hand
Beautiful
YOU can stop being online, maybe.
We're queer, and furry, and therian, and plural. We do not have community in dirtspace/so-called "real life" (online is just as real).
Some people need the internet to survive.
-- Frost
The smart doorlock my dad install now needs an age verification now?
Don't worry, if it all goes as planned it will even have a gender or even race verification; for your protection.
Please explain who this is! At the federal or state level? I don't know enough
Ohhh, well... Yikes. I think they hop on board without truly understanding what they're signing up for. OR worse yet, they understand and are OK with it.
Either way it's a problem.
If politicians are writing tech bills to deliberately undermine freedom: fire them.
If they're writing bad tech policy because they're not consulting the "good guys" first, such as the FSF, EFF, or OSI: also fire them.
Would this bill ban the use of all operating systems released before it became law? That seems unlikely.
So then how about OSs released before it became law, with patches released afterwards? That also seems unlikely.
So then how about my computer's current OS, which is a heavily patched version of a little hobby OS called Linux, originally released in 1991?
"But that's unenforceable", some will claim.
And to that, let me remind us all of a little-known concept called cryptographic attestation. If that doesn't ring any bells, then the term "secure boot" should.
Once this shit passes into law, that's the next step. Operating system vendors have their private keys to sign attestation tokens saying "John Johnson is an adult" and you're only getting one if you verify your government ID. When you go to a website, your browser sends your signed token to the website and then the website checks if it's a valid token signed by Microsoft, Apple, or Google.
But Linux?, you may be wondering. No. No Linux. Kiss it good-bye. Your bank will "require" identity attestation for "extra security", and your bank doesn't give a fuck about Linux. Your bank will check against whatever list of public keys they want to trust, and it ain't going to include anything not backed by a global megacorporation.
It's already the case that banks don't allow their apps to be used on rooted phones. I can imagine a similar possibility for desktop computers. A dreadful possibility, but a possibility nonetheless.
Better yet not 1 single piece of unapproved software can run anymore. These inconvenient pieces of software that are allowing people to do all sorts of dodgy things can be removed from circulation.
I mean I get where you're going with this, but I still don't see how this effects Linux. Oh no I can't access reddit without a government ID...cool I don't use it anyway?
And if Lemmy or whatever else requires one then oh well, I'll find the dozen or so forums that don't care then
It won't at first. If more essential websites start to unnecessarily adopt it, it will start to lock Linux users out of being able to access the services necessary to exist in modern society.
Imagine if you need age/identity verification to:
- Do banking
- Make online purchases
- File your taxes
- Book a doctor's appointment
- Apply for a job
theoretically if it's just web servers and apps enforcing this, then techies can move on from the web to something like gemini or gopher and adapt it to their needs.
Also, it's not like websites based in non-USA countries are going to give a shit about this law
About that last sentence; the same crap is creeping in Europe at the very least. There was another press release about the eu commission iirc welcoming a similar decision in spirit. Just not implemented at OS level but web-side.
Not sure or Asia and Africa are feeling about this but unfortunately USA is not alone. which in my opinion gives credits to the various theories that it’s being pushed by gafam.
And the First.
Totally unenforceable. You going to prevent people from downloading open-source, noncompliant Linux from Asia or Europe? Good luck.
Ill throw my data on an offshore vps, load my lappy up with a dummy normal looking win 11 install, and drive my ass across to Canada if it keeps getting worse.
Fuck that.
You think our morons won't get around to this as well?
You guys lag behind in this sorta shit, I'll have time to figure out somewhere else safe in the meantime.
I'm not living in a place that will likely punish me for the type of medicine i take and also restricts my access to get it outside of the system.
You going to prevent people from downloading open-source, noncompliant Linux from Asia or Europe?
That's the real plan, I suspect.
Hopefully it works out where it just Kodak-Nokia's the entire Microsoft share of the digital economy rather than gradually enforcing government ID checks for all future PC sales.
Totally unenforceable
I'd like to add, while it might be totally unenforceable, it provides a much more higher attack surface for the general populace allowing the authorities to abuse the system even further.
Well then they'll know where all the children are.....so they can go find and rape them.
It's kind of nuts how people talk about US politicians now the same way we began collectively talking about catholic priests 10 years ago.
I hope the pejorative sticks.
10 years ago? I can remember going to catholic school when I was 5, and my dads friends joking that the priest was going to get me, and rape me. I had no idea what that meant at the time, but that was the 1980s.
Even in the 70s, if you went to Catholic school in a very Catholic city, or had a number of friends that did, whether male or female, you knew. The only ones keeping quiet about it were the press and the church itself.
No, don't. Everyone should leave.
You guys managed to fuck up your own country so badly, we sure as hell don't want the same for our countries.
Good luck with that.
Linus is American 🤕😭
He's a dual citizen. He was onboard with banning Russian Linux maintainers for attacking Ukraine so they can't sabotage the kernel.
He is however very quite on USA doing the same shit and more. 🤔
Let's see if he is consistent on stopping this aggression.
Yeah I'm not gonna pretend to be a lawyer but I'm curious how it all works with GPL and all that. It's open source software. Can't a citizen from another country without these laws or something just fork there kernel and not comply with the law and state that they don't need to follow US laws because they're not American?
I feel like OS age verification is similar to when they started asking for zip codes at checkout (U.S.). At first it was seen as weird and brushed off as harmless, but now they shamelessly ask for your email and phone number and get annoyed when you say no.
Obviously everyone here hates this, but I'm gonna offer another perspective here and prepare for the down votes I guess.
There is a very good argument for OS level age 'tracking' as a means of creating a cohesive environment for software and websites to operate without having to implement individual age verification. The biggest actual issue here is how the OS determines what the user's age is. If this is implemented similar to what California has done, the OS would simply ask for the user's age at setup, and store that value, which can then be reported to programs and websites as needed. This would allow parents to setup a device for the child and not have to separately implement parental controls on every individual conceivable program, which are often easily circumvented. This would undermine any individual website's attempts to use age verification as an excuse to collect government ID data, and the security risks inherent to that.
There's no need to put any kind of validation onto this, it should simply be self-reported.
Now admittedly I don't trust our government to implement this in any kind of reasonable way so I definitely understand and respect the outrage, but I guess I'm just trying to find some positive aspect of how this might be implemented.
Wholeheartedly disagree. OS level age verification only removes the responsibility to protect users from the software developer and shifts it to the OS makers. Meta and OpenAI want this so bad so they don’t have to protect their users and their users children. Meta created the software the has lead to hundreds, if not thousands, of child suicide and they don’t want to be held accountable. AI companies have allowed the proliferation of CSAM, copyright infringement, and straight up theft of intellectual property, and want to push that off to OS as the responsible party. Google and Apple don’t fight it because they have extraordinarily deep pockets and already have the infrastructures in place in their app stores to accommodate this tomfoolery. This is also another avenue for increased surveillance at the deepest level of your digital life that is already extremely compromised. If we want parents to have more controls, then mandate easy to use parent controls for OS’s, apps, and web apps. Legislate mandating firewalls and routers have easy to use parental controls for internet settings. Pay people living wages and work them less hours so they can learn to use those things. Don’t add spyware into the OS. “Take off your tin hat dude.” How do you think they’ll verify age at the OS level? It will have to have an api that can be used to obtain the age verified information. Who’s responsive for reviewing all that PII? Where does that go? Who retains that information and for how long? What encryption technology is mandated to protect it from breach? Nah, man, no thanks.
Legislate mandating firewalls and routers have easy to use parental controls for internet settings.
Sorry but no. That would drive up the cost of all firewalls and routers, for no real reason, except that the manufacturers can because the government says they have to. And most firewalls that offer content filtering need some sort of a subscription to keep the filters up-to-date.
Never mind the fact that a router's job isn't content filtering (it's routing).
Todays parents grew up exposed to the internet. If we don't know how to protect our own kids and teach them how to safely use the internet, then we are hopeless as a generation.
Btw, Cloudflare WARP is free for a small number of users and has a pretty decent web filter built in. It's far from easy to use, but it's free and effective. I use it on my 9yo's Fedora laptop, and as long as he can't sudo, he can't turn it off. And if he even tries to sudo, he will be reminded that he's not in the sudoers file, and this incident WILL be reported.
Don’t get me wrong, I was not advocating. I was pointing out directed ways to actually “protect” kids that would be a lot less likely to really be surveillance. I don’t think any of that should happen.
I mean, it very easily could be. A service like WARP, they can decrypt the traffic, if you allow them to (it is off by default). The warp client will add the certificate to the trust-store, and the traffic will get decrypted on Cloudflare's end.
For my kid, I kept deep-inspection off. If he figures out how to get past DNS and SNI inspections, he deserves to see a boob or two.
Well that's just nonsensical. The only obligation it removes for software developers is the need to obtain (and justification for storing) personally identifying information on its users. Websites and apps would still be responsible for moderating their content and only serving appropriate content to underage users. It wouldn't do anything whatsoever to remove accountability for Meta.
That’s also just a minorities to the data intrusion and surveillance this is really building. Data is king, and adding age and other demographics obtained at the OS level to more sell more targeted adds to manipulate people. The same data bend used to target political opponents by governments. But it’s cool. It’s for the safety of the kids!!!
Companies are already required to ask if their users are kids because, among other reasons, there are laws against creating ad profiles for kids, and companies have been sued for doing this even accidentally. The California law just changes how they're required to check if they're a kid from asking them at account creation to asking the OS at account creation, where the parents have set the age for them when the OS account was created. It gives the company checking if they're a kid no more information than they had before. I agree with Havoc8154@mander.xyz that this is totally reasonable.
This particular federal bill, on the other hand seems closer to the Florida bill in that it requires some form of age verification instead of just accepting what the parents enter when creating the OS account. That is unreasonable. Complain to your representative, and we'll see how it gets amended.
Let’s just say meta delivers some problematic content that traumatizes a kid and really upsets parents. This content was on the 12-year-olds Chromebook. The kid, then setting up the laptop with his parents had his age in there appropriately, and Met used theAPI to obtain it to prevent adult content delivery. However, kid is tech savvy, creates a secondary accounts, says they are 45. Maybe uses parents ID or something to do it. They then get the adult content. Parents file suit. Meta lawyers: Our API works as designed, and we can be held liable when the OS API says the person is 45 and not 12. Case dismissed. Profit.
But okay, definitely nonsensical.
How is that any different from what happens today? Kid makes fake account - gets adult content - Meta shrugs and says they did what they could. Of course there would be ways it can be circumvented, this would change nothing about that situation except shift the responsibility of correctly inputting the users age onto the user, which is where it should be. I'd much rather have that scenario than one where meta is forcing all users to upload government IDs; Using that excuse to harvest and store even more data than necessary.
This is steel-manning an argument for a feature no one wants which is most likely the thin end of the wedge for increased surveillance and censorship.
This is just how it starts so they can trick well meaning developers into making websites and platforms which make use of this verification while it is still self-ID, but when the laws become more demanding and require connecting your user account to your real-world identity, it'll already be too late, all of your online activity can be tied back to you.
When I make this argument, people like to call it a slippery slope, but the fact is that there are so many nations cracking down on free, unmonitored access to the internet, with social media restrictions, platforms like Discord requiring you to provide identification, and so on.
All for this, all of that risk, all for a feature that adds very little value to the computing experience of anyone.
This isn't why those pushing for want it. It isn't about the kids safety but harvesting more information so they can tie all the other tracking data they have to a individual. its alway think of the children but lets make some money while we are at it.
Wrong. There are things that belong at the application level and others that belong in user space. Fundamentally it doesn’t make sense for any sort of mandate.
TF should I have to put my age or any other personal information into my pihole or any other system I’m running.
Absolutely not, age data is biometric data. It can and will be used to fingerprint you.
I still have an issue with that. It's like having a public facing UUID. "Man these 'users' all born at the same time seem to have similar habitats.
You're not thinking ahead. Think about the people who aren't even part of the discussion today. Will they know not to answer truthfully?
The death threats were shitty, I agree. But they were at least partially fueled by the fact that we have lawmakers trying to make it illegal to use an operating system that doesn't ask for your age. If that systemd change was introduced in a different time, I doubt people would have even noticed or cared.
Not trying to excuse the death threats, because again, that's shitty, there's no reason to do that. I think it's important to understand the context and nuance around all that though.
I'll appreciate that it's hard to be a devil's advocate on an argument and provide a nuanced take. But I will say the points made on the Ageless Linux website demonstrate why that's an issue, primarily around how you're teaching kids from their first time on the internet to lie. It really doesn't matter whether this happens through a drivers' license pic or a DOB selector.
Their argument is entirely based on the assumption that the child can change their DOB on the device at any time. That's trivially easy to avoid with a simple admin password requirement. If this was implemented in any competent way (granted, that is a lot to expect of legislators) the DOB would not be able to be changed once the device/user account is setup, or would require an administrator password which obviously shouldn't be given to the child.
But they turn around and say this is good and how things should work:
This app lets you chat with people on the internet. If you're a kid: ask an adult before chatting online.
Yeah, the kid that's willing to change their device settings is definitely going to go check in with Mom before they access something they know they shouldn't be on. That's just an unbelievably bad argument.
In the normal case where a moderate/low-tech mom buys a child an iPad, there is no step at which they're likely to recognize it has an "admin setup", or configure a password. They unwrap their christmas gift, and they're likely the one to figure it out.
I can easily picture this discussion in a household strangled for time.
"Mom! I tried to use that new tablet, but it wouldn't work!"
"Okay...sweetie, I'm running late for my shift, what's the problem?"
"It says I'm...that I must be 18 or older to akkept the terms-"
"Did you give it your age?"
"My birthday? Yeah. Does it give you like presents on your birthday?"
"Put in...put in 1980 for the year. It's fine. I gotta go. Love you."
"Really? Okay. ...Hey, it worked! I can play Fortnite now!-
slam
"Huh. What's HotChat...?"
Versus this: (What the website proposes)
"Mom? Is it okay if I chat with people on the internet?"
"Chat with who? You mean like your friends? Is Derek from school on there?"
"Well there's this thing that came installed on the tablet. It says I can chat with people on the internet. But I should ask first."
"Let me see. ...Sweetie, this doesn't look like something that's for you. We don't know if the people you're talking to are strangers, or even dangerous people."
"Ohhh."
"I can...I gotta go, but I'll try to find you some apps that will let you chat with kids from school. Okay?"
"Aw. Okay. I can still play Fortnite though, right?"
"I...yeah. Fortnite is fine. Don't put anything on there without talking to me, you promise?"
"I promise."
The site even backs this up: That open communication about dangers, rather than hard, automatic restrictions tends to lead to healthier upbringing from kids. Setting up fully automated barriers just leads to creative workarounds, since ultimately, adults and businesses will demand convenience - and kids will find ways to get access to it too.
So scenario one has a parent who is paying no attention to their child's questions, but in scenario 2 they're suddenly attentive and totally in tune with what their child is doing?
Look, you can't fix everything for everyone, but a simple explanation for first time setup of a device is not difficult, especially if it was implemented as a national movement (law or otherwise). Absentee parents are still gonna absentee, but it would be a tool that parents who give a shit could really benefit from.
There is a very good argument for OS level age ‘tracking’ as a means of creating a cohesive environment for software and websites to operate without having to implement individual age verification. The biggest actual issue here is how the OS determines what the user’s age is.
I agree with you on this. I wouldn't mind if there was a mechanism on browsers which would send 'child/teen/adult' (or whatever they'd be called) data to websites in request headers since they already report a ton of stuff to the server anyways. It would be trivial for adult sites to check one header and limit access based on that. But the setting needs to be local only, so that parents could easily set restricted accounts for their kids. The point where user age must be validated via any 3rd party it's no longer about parental controls and the whole thing becomes a surveillance tool.
Also the limits should be agreed somehow on at least somewhat global basis so that it's only used for porn/gore/horror and other stuff like that. Things like sexual education, religious topics (likely both pro- and against-), medical stuff and things like that should be left out of the filtering. But as with practically every 'think of the children'-thing proposed for the internet it's got nothing to do with children nor used only for that.
The biggest damned issue i have with the "child / teen / adult" markers is they would literally serve up minors to predators.
Malicious sites already use browser markers to tailor exploits, now they can scoop up the kiddies with ease. A 14 year old browsing substack is currently just another random user. But put in OS level markers and now they're spotlighted.
That's the irony. It would make kids more fucking readily ltargetted.
That is a problem, I agree. But I still feel like it would be beneficial if there was some standard on HTTP or other protocols which could limit user access based on PG-rating instead of everyone developing their own approach. It could also be something like robots.txt, but for PG-rating, where client would do the verification.
And, as I already mentioned, that should be strictly local only setting and only for parental/guardian controlling what minors can and can't do with their devices.
See I would be fine with this. A user input. Cannot be modified after installation. The parent installs the OS, the kid is locked down. Easy.
I'd suggest it would need to be per-user. Family computers are a lot less common nowadays, but are still a thing
Maybe not family computers so much any more, but shared devices, absolutely.
It still needs to be per user, per app. If I hand my phone to my kid or my niece, I don't need them looking up or accidentally seeing adult content because the apps don't ask anymore.
If the apps stop asking the user, and instead just query the OS, there's no longer any connection to the current user. So porn sites, for example, or any app that might have adult-only content, would still have to ask. In which case - what's the point of the OS age requirement? This is in no way more secure than the apps or websites just asking the user.
What about servers? I have several devices in my house that serve content to the rest of the house or provide other services. Would they need my birthday, even though my kids use the services? What about gaming consoles, or TVs? IoT devices? Does my thermostat, garage door opener, living room lamp, or washing machine need my birthdate?
This whole thing is truly a slippery slope that hasn't been thought through, at least on its face. Unless, of course, the whole point of this legislation has nothing to do with "protecting children".
When these guys say "think of the children!", it's usually with their hands down their own pants.
[ redacted ]
Does this apply to Mestashtics?
Meshtashtic-net, anyone?
I wonder what the "Lib-Right" would say about this lmao
Without the document text, who knows. But I would not consider it a stretch for a court challenge to interpret "operating system" as "any software that allows a person to interact with computing or electronic hardware". Which would blanket cover all embedded devices.
LMAO at the engineers having to verify their age on systems controls
"You figure out what was wrong with PLC7 yet?"
"Nah, TrumpCard ID systems are down, can't log in."
"Cool, guess the city is going without running water tonight."
Meshtastic does not have the bandwidth to replace the internet. It handles message just fine, but the amount of data you'd need to send for even a quarter of what the current internet can provide would feel like trying to surf the modern internet on a 56k modem.
yet
Maybe we could get some open-source routers and kernel patches going to implement this instead: https://bill.herrin.us/network/ipxl.html
It's what should've been done instead of IPv6 -- well, maybe it's a bit of a non-sequitur for the current problem, but it would create a different internet that maybe could be routed around the age-verified one if that comes to pass.
What about kids toys with some chip in it? My car probably has 30 chips and OSes in it, am i supposed to age verify those OSes? What about servers that run databases and other things, am i supposed to register those? thos is all so fucking stupid. god i hate fascists.
ERROR: YOUR PACEMAKER HAS CRASHED, PLEASE PRESENT YOUR ID TO VERIFY THAT YOU...
checks notes
... actually need a pacemaker and not just some kid... why need ID? cuz... something something counterterrorism and protect children...
It doesn't apply to anything open source because it can't be enforced.
Waiting for half of the fediverse to excuse devs complying in advance again.
The ONLY way I could remotely support age verification is if it was anonymized from the individual, similar to how companies like Mullvad do their VPN or with prepaid gift cards etc
You get a card that has a PIN behind a scratch-off section. You can buy the card for cash or order online, but there's nothing tying the buyer to the card.
Age verification can be similar where you go to a registered location, provide valid ID and like $5 to get a scratch off card. The code on the card just validates "user is 18+" but otherwise has no ties back to their actual identity.
If a site wants to do an age check, it can validate the card PIN or on phone potentially scan a 3d barcode behind the scratch-off. Maybe some hash check could be involved to avoid the need for a centralized provider.
The German ID card has that functionality. Date of birth is saved on the chip card and you can identify yourself via NFC reader and the open source ID app. You can see what information is transmitted before sending it. In the case of age verification, it would only be "underage yes/no". It's not perfect but pretty good from a privacy standpoint.
Like... "This"
My computer, regardless of the OS that it runs, should do my bidding and only my bidding.
If I want to enable or disable something, that should be my prerogative.
I commented in a similar thread and I'll restate it here:
I do support parental controls being an option, and will use the whole Free-Market thing and choose to use an OS that has parental controls for my children -- but I am also happy to see my children evade my restrictions with their knowledge and skills. And, more specifically, these need to be OPT-IN. As a parent, I can create an account and identify it as supervised or give it an age range, and that's all cool. What isn't cool is making me Verify* MY age range in order to create an account on a device I own.
*especially verification that involves giving up my privacy, such as face scan, government ID or similar PII. We used to have laws protecting this data. I've helped build whole systems to ensure that only trained admins had rights to access customer PII.
H.R. 8250 is an attack on freedom to use... everything... It's so vague, and doesn't even describe it's terms the way the California bill does. A Missile developed by Lockheed Martin has an Operating System and I'm certain that if I had one in my hands I could make it run DOOM, thus making it a 'General Purpose Computing Device'.
... Maybe those Doom-on-fridge/toaster people were on to something. Samsung, LG, etc need to quickly evaluate their fucking toasters to ensure they can't run DOOM, or ensure they can verify a user's age before enabling toasting.
I also (dis)like how section 2.A.5.i will require the commission to describe how every operating system will verify a parent or legal guardian's age's within 6 months and then have an effective date of a year. Has anyone involved with writing this bill done software development?! Sure, this sounds simple on paper, but I have a 30+ year plan to actually implement it; because I'm a volunteer open source dev working on my OS in my free time without pay.
Anyone looking at this and thinking it's a good idea, take a moment to think about this: Who has resources to dedicate whole teams to implementing this privacy invasion? It's the big players like Microslop, Apple, Google, and a handful of Enterprise-grade Linux/Unix providers. Anyone else could face financial ruin for distributing their home-grown OS experiment if it gets enough attention and that will prevent new distros or operating systems from being developed, leading to effectively regulatory capture by the existing players. That's not going to end well.
I mean, for the most part yes. I'm not even so much concerned about my kids viewing porn, more so than somebody else will make nasty deepfakes of them and post online etc, so age verification won't fix that.
I could see it help with discriminating between people at their "own damn computers" and bots or misinformation/psyops campaigns run out of certain foreign countries though (assuming any ID also ties back to parent country).
I would support a simple toggle, a content safe mode and an unrestricted mode, selectable at the OS level through a parental controls option. Then have sites flag all "objectionable" or not safe for work material. The restricted mode would not even download such content.
Done, more power to parents, and smart kids, while not destroying the internet to block content that conservatives don't like. Which is what all of these laws are based on.
You can kinda already do that with parental controls on kids' devices and many routers, as well as services provided by ISP's. In Canada there's also a free national DNS provider that has a tier the filters out known malicious and/or adult sites at the DNS level depending on which hosts you point at.
Never forget who is behind this https://youtu.be/Yd7j_u-wPoM
Quit trying to make it happen
Everyone will also be automatically registered to vote Republican.
Regulate the social networks instead
Thats the day I leave windows for good.
They can't do anything about Linux. Someone will just fork a copy that doesn't have that.
They can make it illegal to sell certain types of hardware to consumers that allows you to install your own operating system. Of course, there is still virtualization. You can run Linux in a web browser nowadays (badly, but if there was a reason to improve it I'm sure it would be done)
Illegal won't stop me. Pirating is also illegal. And that ban is working out soo well.
@DFX4509B @BlackPenguins say that to PGP
For all those that truly believe this is no big deal, and honestly believe it’s about kids, and think all the commenters in here are silly or tin hat wearers… go read this:
https://lemmy.ml/post/46083470
Short version: US based company providing age verification has US Govt. surveillance within their stack that adds you to all kinds of potential lists, among other concerns. It also serves as a huge honeypot of data just waiting to be breached, and it will be breached.
For those in the back not paying attention: THIS IS NOT ABOUT KID SAFETY, IT’S ABOUT TRACKING YOU AND YOUR KIDS!
One vengeance for all.
Your username freaked me out even though I'm sober lol
I like having my identity stolen
Thank goodness its politicians trying to make this rule. And there is no way in hell we would ever create a way to circumvent it in a completely legal way by default.
I posted an idea over here about a week ago, I think it might actually meet the legal requirements without any OS changes for Linux/BSD/POSIX UNIX type OSes.
It says could not resolve URL.
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There's NOTHING Safer than having the Epstein Class KNOW where Kids are and WHEN they're Home Alone!
-US Politicians!
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