this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
479 points (97.1% liked)
Technology
82132 readers
4270 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
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.
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.