No way this is enforceable
Did you guys know I was born January 1st 1901?
Holy shit.
Are we twins? I, too, was born on the first day of January in the year 1901!
Yeah… no
Age verification is stupid. I wonder if anyone thought of using a captcha. Require users to solve an appropriately complex problem before they use systems that require a certain amount of intelligence.
Would be fun to embed empathy quizzes for access to social media 😄
This is religious repression of TempleOS
Land of the Free, amiright‽
I understand why people are upset, but isn’t the operating system asking the user for age and then that age being used to get through service age gated the better path forward?
I would much rather be able to tell my computer I’m an adult and be able to go to an adult site and have it use that instead of the adult site having to handle the load of age verification. If the age is set per-user, kid profiles and parent profiles can both work to limit content for kids without impacting what the parents see. Hell, even just not having to click through those stupid steam prompts every time I look at a game with an m rating or whatever would be awesome. Especially since my account is over 18yo on its own…
The best analogy I’ve heard for this, to help understand why it’s a ‘null’ {i need a better word here} topic was said as… "Parents to be doing the parenting, versus, a government doing the parenting and unbeknownst apples it to everyone ". And it is speaking of widely available tools that are already available such as parental controls in routers, devices, etc.
The analogy discounts “little hackers” or minors that intentionally will break laws to get what they want; in which then no “age verification” service (made by anyone) will work in practice.
Everyone not in California: mutes California
Are children not allowed to use computers now?
They are! But…
So people can just “install OS somewhere else and bring the system to California”. Like mock location. What would be their take on this regarding to people who visit California and have their OS driven things with them.
Despite signing it, Newsom issued a statement urging the legislature to amend the law before its effective date, citing concerns from streaming services and game developers about “complexities such as multi-user accounts shared by a family member and user profiles utilized across multiple devices.”
Then why the fuck did you sign it if it wasn’t ready and needed amendments? Is this what you’re going to do as president too?
Rhetorical, of course. Note how he doesn’t say he disagrees with the bill, just that it needed to consider family devices.
If this is who wins the primary, we are done. We’re basically already done, for sure, but him winning the primary would be the final nail in the coffin.
You know, bankroll the bribe money, settle the details out later. Politics 101
Yup. This. I’m in California and this is not even a topic. This is not even in the local news. It’s as quiet as: the bullet train project, the gigantic water pipeline for the south project, the drought solution, the power grid solutions, etc. But, boy, the amounts of money that it blew thru.
So now when I spin up a VM at my sysadmin job I have to tell the server I’m an adult? Does anyone actually know what the fuck we are doing here? What an absolute clown show.
This is what happens when boomers never die and stay in office for a lifetime. They don’t understand technology but are allowed to make the laws that govern their use.
Nha boomers are not the cause for this shit. Smart ass marketeers and tech bro pushing for more precise target identification and thus more reach for them are to blame. And those I stumble upon are definitely on the younger side.
When can just change the laws when they leave
Wut?
Many people here are going off on wild tangents over this. You should just read the law, it’s only a couple thousand words of quite plain English.
Many here have taken completely incorrect assumptions from the title. This law is for developers, not users.
Summary:
- Requires OS devs ask for DOB, age, or both at account creation time.
- Requires an API that allows app store devs to request this age data for the account. At minimum this API must signal that the account is a member of one of these categories: ‘user under 13, user over 13 and under 16, user is over 16 and under 18, user is over 18’.
- Explicitly bars OS devs from sending more data than explicitly necessary to meet 1 (hint: photo ID, facial recognition).
- Explicitly bars app devs recieving the data from requesting more data from the OS nor the App store.
- Bars app stores from using the data for any other reason and specifically calls out anticompetitive practices.
- Bars app store and OS devs from sharing this data with any third party for any other reason than to comply with this law.
- Has injunctions and civil penalties of $2500 (max per user) affected by negligent violations (eg a child account is served adult content), and $7500 (max per user) affected by intentional violations.
The only problem I have with this is that it should only apply to commercial software (app stores and OS). Libre/FOS software should not have to police ages on their app stores, due to their far reduced budgets (often zero), developer time, and the nature of the software being generally anti-centralized and anti-surveillance-capitalism. Though I’d be fine with it for FOSS software distributed via commercial app stores, as long as they gave a longer lead time to implement (EG a couple of years).
Im not sure I understand your point about this law being for developers not users.
The fines may only be applied to operating system developers for failing to implement these systems… but having those systems at all still drastically impacts end users in a negative way.
The only problem have with this is that it should only apply to commercial software (app stores and 0S). Libre/FOS software should not have to police ages on their app stores,
It’s a bit like saying the only problem with the Titanic is the water inside.
The law is bad, whether it can be worse or not is just tangential. But still, this law as is applies to computers, phones… And nas, some routers, watches, advance calculators… As they all have OS and can install apps. As per app stores, guess what, thats the GNOME app store, but also flatpak, jellyfin (can install apps as plugins), pip, docker, git… And what about plain executables? Githut should ask for your age too to download artifacts?
Porn started with only age verification by the user as a prompt, and we see where that is going now.
Does that mean if minor need to use computer to write essay as homework in Libre Office they couldn’t, cause age verification?
No, because LibreOffice would accept the under-13 age category.
How will this affect embedded os like freertos or vxworks? There are lightbulbs that have operating systems these days, am I going to have to show ID to turn on my light?
My guess would be these OS’s just wont do it and stop doing business in that state.
Lucky for you, you can just download them anyway.
My guess is also that these lawmakers dont care nor considered other OS’s than Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android.
As those are not general purpose computing devices, and additionally have no app store - no, and no.
From the law text:
© “Application” means a software application that may be run or directed by a user on a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device that can access a covered application store or download an application.
cool, then neither is my desktop pc. i get all my software on 5 1/4" floppies.
The quote is that it can download an application though
it can’t.
try to disprove me.
For everyone trying to figure out how this would be enforced, it’s not about being proactively enforced. (and data collection is 99% of it)
It’s about adding a double-tap “Well, these people also violated our age verification law, so they have to pay a fine,” added to any incident where it’s convenient to add this in. If a minor sends another minor a snap that would trigger CP laws, and one of the phones isn’t age verified correctly, fine to the parents and hands up in the air “We tried!” A minor is involved in torrenting movies? “Look, kids using illegal OS! Fine to the parents!”
This is how laws work across a lot of corrupt developing countries. There’s laws for everything, but they only get applied selectively as authorities find they fit the situation. It’s hard to actually be 100% above board and do everything legally because of a few little things meant to be impossible to actually do bureaucratically. So in every situation, any set of authorities start in with the endemic leverage of “Well, we have suspicion of you selling ketamine out of your apartment. Did you do age verification on your laptop? No? Then we can seize that as a crime and see what’s on there. OR you can give up your supplier.”
Simple solution. From now on Linux distros should ship with a big message “NOT FOR USE IN CALIFORNIA”.
You want to force age verification? No server in all of California will run. Period.
Yeah… It says just that in the article. You did read the article, right? I mean you didn’t just read the title and then rush in here to make a comment?
Holy shit you can click those?
Where, pray tell? Out of curiosity I went there to check it out, and the “article” is just 3 paragraphs that just barely expand on the title. Maybe uBlock is triggering some invisible paywall there for me?
Keep scrolling there is more, mine has a odd empty ad break too
I did scroll down all the way to the comments section, and nothing.
Disabled uBlock, and sure enough, more of the article showed up.
How people farm internet points is serious business
“My name is Microsoft, and I approved this message.”
“We’re every datacenter in Canada e Mexico and we collectively and politely agreed it’s a good move as well.”
Microsoft’s own servers run Linux. An in-house build IIRC named Azure Linux.
Ah, the Glock solution.
