What I’m really confused about is how are we going to confirm at account creation that the age is correct? Or that the person using the computer is who the account is for?

The issue with “children” local accounts (assuming they ever remained 100% local anyway) is that for it to be effective, you would have to control who install the OS for it to be effective.

I have been managing my own OS install since I was a teen, so I could have just created an adult account for me. But, okay, you could say that you could just regularly check your child hasn’t reinstalled the machine.

Well, see, they could just install a Virtual Machine. There is plenty of Virtual Machine software out there, and then we’re back at whoever installs it being responsible for filling in that information. And Virtual Machines are very useful for a bunch of things: from running software not made for your hardware (see Android emulators, WSL), to being safer around dodgy software.

You could counter that by not letting them install things with your permissions… but there are portable versions of software that people make for a bunch of reasons which don’t recall an installation. And I am not talking about hypotheticals: back when I was in school people would carry portable versions of games in USB sticks to copy around school machines so they could play video games during IT class.

Never mind that it means that whenever they want to install something, they will poke you about it, and now you’re on the hook for reviewing that. Which you should already be doing because you care about what your child does and they don’t have the years of experience to not break their OS.

But if you are doing that, why not use proper parental control software that let’s you have much finer-grained control over what they can see or not online, along with other controls around how much time they can spend on the machine and a few nicer things?

Because parents are responsible for stuff their off-spring does and the government should not be needed to do that.
At the very most, provide tools to help parents (e.g. on device filtering etc. or require companies to provide APIs to facilitate the same goal)

Other than that: Fuck off of my phone.

My calculator doesn’t need to know how old anyone is. Nor does my refrigerator. I suppose a case could be made for a router if you are all onboard for age gating everything privacy and freedom be damned. An OS isn’t just Mac or Windows… the CA law is just so so dumb as written that I have zero faith in anything from Silicon valley.

Just because one option is better than another, doesn’t mean it’s good.

OS level age check applies to everyone, not just children. Some legislations require strong age checking, which means you need to send some identification to some service. You won’t be able to know how the information is handled, for how long it’s stored and for what purposes it’s used beside age checking. And because this applies to everyone, and is required to be able to use your computer, everything you do with your computer and phone is tied to your user account, and as such to you as an individual and identifiable human being.

Some of these legislations uses age ranges, and the OS is required to inform applications, and such, whether the user is, for example, below 13 years old, or 13 to 16 years old, etc. Consider this simple scenario: Some user uses some application, and the OS reports the user’s age as below 13. The user uses the same app the next day, but now the OS reports the user’s age as 13 to 16 years old. Can you figure out the user’s exact birthday and age? If that application is part of some kind of larger network of advertisers and whatnots, they will now forever know the user’s exact age without the OS reporting anything else.

These can also be used to make some software illegal, especially free and open source software. If you can replace Windows with Linux, Photoshop with Gimp, etc. it hurts the bottom line of those companies. Those companies can’t prevent you from using the open source alternative, but it would be in their interest if those pieces of software becomes illegal to use and distribute. If age checking functionality is added to some open source software, the age checking can simply be removed by the user. You only need to correctly form the age checking law and that entire software is now illegal, and must be removed from the internet.

While the intention of these laws might to be to protect children, they cause too much harm for little good. The age checking can be circumvented in some situations, meaning the children aren’t protected. And the entire thing is a huge privacy mess (data leaks, etc.) for every single computer user.

because its designed to feed surveillance data to Palintir, which allows governments all over the west to monitor any dissident movements, or relatives of “dissidents” against right wing governments. dont know of any computer system requiring your ID/ or birthday, you can always fake a birthday.

right now the biggest threat to conservative governments is anyone “left” of them.

Because they don’t care about your age. They want to tie you to your ID, so everything you say and do online can be tracked and tied to you as a person.

Meanwhile the leader of one of their countries has raped women and teenagers and even a couple of children, but they don’t do anything about it. But you can be jailed for decades for seeing a picture or video of it. But the actual act? They don’t care about that. (I’m saying you can be jailed for simply seeing CSAM online, but if you’re a billionaire actually doing the things, you won’t be tried for the actual CSA being recorded.)

So as you can see, it’s not your age, but your identity.

Most people think the Nazis only locked up Jews. Some realise they also locked up minorities. Historians know it was also anyone who disagreed with them. Anyone who spoke out against them. Anyone who wouldn’t wear the armband. And they’re afraid history will repeat. And they’re right to be afraid.

Well, the problem is less setting up the birthdate and more whether the birthdate needs to be verified.

Plenty of OSs already query for a birthdate, particularly on gaming devices. And yes, they will provide age-based protections already.

The question is, does the parent/account creator need to enter an accurate birthdate or not, and how does the system know?

If they don’t, then whatever, it’s the same self-declaration we already have all over the Internet. No biggie. Everybody was born in 1901 and we’re all chill about it. It still makes for an absurd situation where you HAVE to have a personal profile for every user on every computer, which a ton of computers aren’t expecting, so it’s still dumb on top of being useless, but it’s a solvable problem.

If they do, then you know have one of the biggest cryptographic and data management challenges in computing history. How do you have every single device across the entire planet interface with every single piece of software and server to authenticate a piece of personal data and safely store it so you don’t have to constantly re-check? It’s insane. Plus it removes a parent’s ability to enable their children to engage with content at whatever speed they see fit. And there are potentially different regulations in different areas, where both the server and user location may change the required behavior, so the whole thing is an absolute mess from the concept up.

let’s follow the argument this is to protect children: why does is seem like a good idea to let everybody on the internet know what age your child is?

so if it is not to protect the children, what else could it be?

Wrong technical solution to a made up problem.

Governments have commissioned enough studies to know that education, training, and parental controls filtering content at the receiving end are more effective & less infringing of civil rights than laws imposing restrictions & penalties on website operators to comply with online age verification. Laws could instead allocate resources to promote the former in a major way, setup independent evaluations reporting the effectiveness of child protection technologies to the public, promote standards & the development of better standards in the industry. Laws of the latter kind simply aren’t needed & also suffer technical defects.

The most fatal technical defect is they lack enforceability on websites outside their jurisdiction. They’re limited to HTTP (or successor). They practically rule out dynamic content (chat, fora) for minors unless that content is dynamically prescreened. Parental control filters lack all these defects, and they don’t adversely impact privacy, fundamental rights, and law enforcement.

Governments know better & choose worse, because it’s not about promoting the public good, it’s about imposing control.

most homes don’t run their computers in multi-user mode. Even when they do most kids will learn the admin password because parents don’t select good passwords.

Kids are not stupid. Even if some are, there are many kids in school and so any bypass will spread kid to kid fast. For each of the following reread this paraghraph to remind yourself all kids will know this.

kids can install linux /bsd on a raspberry pi or old/cheap computer - this is something I want to encourage. that of course means they are root and can claim whatever age. They can likewise do it in a vm.

if there is any security flaw kids can use it to change their age.

many programs will not check when they should. Kids will install/use these instead. this is a likely exploit vector of actors (in foriegn counties) that target kids - release a new program that does what the kids wants while also doing what they want. (Websites have done bitcoin in javascript while you read them)

who will check? onlyfans probably will, but small web sites spring up all the time, and they won’t bother - many are already illegal (either copyright or illegal content).

Meanwhile many programs that we want kids to use won’t bother to check. why would things autocad check - they target professionals but kids can use them and may even have to.

the above is not a complete list!

Age is useful for ‘buy cigerettes’ that is illegal for kids in some way.

However most of what parents care about isn’t automatically bad and I know plenty of panents who are frusterated because we can’t controll things how we need to without being a helicopter parent (bad). Playing video games is fine in moderation - AFTER YOUR HOMEWORK IS DONE - but we don’t get an easy way to enforce that. My teens are old enough to stay home alone and do homework - but they will not do their homework when they can do something else (this problem has been around since school)

my kids phones have parental controls that I turn on. However they lack a way to enforce homework vs play vs sleep time. There is likely more, this is just what frusterated me yesterday. some things are not gated - my kids have got up at 3am, and connected their school device (under school control not me) to their phone hotspot (turned on who knows when - I can’t block that at all) to play a game that the school will block next week when they figure out it is one kids are playing but they shouldn’t.

people are proposing age verification because they have no idea what else they can do and are frusterated at how bad things are.

Lots of people are about to be born on 01-01-1900. I guess 01-01-2000 works now though. Man, I’m old.

As others have said

It has nothing to do with age checking, protecting the children, or security. NOTHING.

There is a difference between providing the capability, and requiring that capability.

Under this law, something as simple as sharing a Google Drive could make you an “app store” under this law.

These laws are specifically designed to be broadly interpreted. We have no idea just how widely the nets will be cast, either tomorrow, or 10 years from now. It is prudent to assume the absolute worst case.

But between setting up the birthdate when creating my children’s local account on their computers, and having to send a copy of their ID to every platform under the sun, I’d easily chose the former.

This is how they move the goalpost. They changed the argument.

You currently can just create a local account - period. It’s yours. No tracking. No personal info.

But now you’re accepting that you’re willing to give a third party information, even just a little.

The next argument is: “If giving your age is okay, why not your home address?”

This is what police do to fish information out of you.

I’d even agree to a simple protocol (HTTP X-Over-18 / X-Over-21 headers?) to that.

In a era where privacy conscious people don’t even connect their TV to the internet… This is okay to you?

You went from “Why do they want my information?”

To

“I’m not concerned with sharing my age. But how should we do it?”

And that itself is the root issue.