Governor Newsom signs bills to further strengthen California’s leadership in protecting children online | Governor of California
www.gov.ca.gov
  • hobovision@mander.xyz
    0·
    1 month ago

    Please update your title to remove the misinformation about the bill, specifically calling it “OS-level ID verification” is not even close. It’s not got anything to do with personally identifying information or any actual verification of age information.

    It’s actually an incredibly privacy conscious method of doing what it is trying to do, which is to allow parents to set up a child’s account with their age information on a device and have that age bracket information passed to websites and applications. That way, it makes it harder for a child to bypass age-restrictions, but without requiring dangerous age verification methods such as ID or face scans.

  • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    1 month ago

    Read the link yall

    The bill requires:

    • OSes to take user birthday during account creation
    • this info is binned into categories (<13, 13-16, 16-18, >18)
    • the category info must be made available to basically all software
    • software is supposed to use this data to age gate content but is not allowed to send this data to 3rd parties

    What this bill does not do:

    • Your full birthday is specifically not to be sent to every application
    • OSes are not being asked to check your id it doesn’t say the OS should do anything to verify the birthday, just that it should record it
    • There isn’t anything to prevent you from entering 1/1/2000 instead of your real birthday

    Honestly this doesn’t seem that bad to me. If anything it’s a little pointless. This style of age verification is basically universally already used. I guess you could read this as forcing OSes to have parental controls.

    I do think there is a bit of a privacy issue in this information being shared with every program, but they attempt to minimize this using the binning (so ironically it really only hurts the privacy of teenagers since for adults it will just say >18), and this information is supposed to not be shared with 3rd parties (but we all know Facebook and Google are going to do whatever they can this info, pushing the limits of that part of the law, or just waiting to be sued and paying the fine when it happens).

    I honestly think most Linux distros will just implement it.

    • floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      1·
      1 month ago

      Most dystopian “child safety” bill. Let’s not legitimize the claim that these laws are made to protect children while having privacy-invading side effects - they are privacy-invading laws disguised as child protection, while failing to have any real impact on children’s online safety and wellbeing

    • cassandrafatigue@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      0·
      1 month ago

      I’m not sure anything this repressive is implemented anywhere in the world.

      Edit: wait this is the other half of the thing everywhere else is doing that would make this nightmare shit.

      • ICCrawler@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 month ago

        The only thing that I can think of is how China regulates it’s online gaming.

        What is China’s Age Verification System?

        China’s Age Verification System or 游戏适龄提示 in Chinese, is a government-mandated infrastructure that restricts minors’ access to online games and digital platforms. In China, all users must undergo “Real Name Verification” (实名认证) before accessing gaming services, enabling platforms to enforce age-appropriate restrictions automatically.

        The system is overseen by the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA) and integrates with national databases to verify user identities in real-time.

        https://appinchina.co/blog/the-complete-guide-to-chinas-age-verification-system/

        The move to do this was largely in part thanks to complaints of parents in regards to their kids’ habits with gacha games. For anyone interested, what I posted was a small excerpt from the link, there’s a lot more info on it there.

          • ICCrawler@lemmy.world
            01·
            1 month ago

            It is similar, not the same. Some other key differences to consider are that while the US one is at the OS level, it’s just asking you to provide an age that isn’t linked to your ID or anything. It’s just like when a website asks your age, you can absolutely lie about it. But now it’s being done on the OS account, not the website.

            Whereas, yeah, it is just for games in China, but it is absolutely being run against the person’s ID in a national database. Some games even require facial recognition. So it’s on a whole other level of verification and tracking.