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California's age verification law is proving controversial — here's what you need to know, and why some Linux distros are in the firing line (www.techradar.com)

submitted 2 days ago by Sunshine@piefed.ca to c/technology@piefed.social

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[–] hobovision@mander.xyz 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm tired of arguing with people who don't understand what the California law is trying to do so I'm going to try making this copy-pastable.

That's not how it would work. It's a local setting in the OS.
It's actually a pretty good idea in theory to have a standardized way of communicating age category signals to websites and programs from the OS level. Device admin can set a user for their child and they won't then be able to lie to say they're older, eg to access 18+ content or buy mature games on steam.
A California law is NOT the way to implement this, but the industry didn't self regulate so this is what you get. The solution is not to yell about California but to work to find a privacy respecting method to meet this so that worse laws aren't passed. The California law is really not bad in what it requires, but future laws could be.

[–] apparia@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Thanks, honestly I had not actually read the bill before coming here to shitpost, and it seems like yeah it's more well-intentioned than people are giving it credit for.

I still have serious reservations about the broadness, vagueness, and premise that mandatory age signals are a good idea at all -- it's a lateral move at best; weakly attempting to kerb the most overtly predatory parts of the whole "age verification" movement, without opposing the idea itself.

But you're right, it's not the blatant data-vacuuming law that I think some people imagine it to be.