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Comment by hackinthebochs | Hacker News Reader

The breathless fearmongering over an age field on account set up is just completely over-the-top. This is probably the least bad out of all possible ways to implement age checking. The benefit of this is that it can short-circuit support for more onerous age verification. The writing has been on the wall for some time now: the era of completely unrestricted internet is coming to an end. The question is how awful will the new normal be? Legislation like this is a win all around, a complete nothingburger. We should be celebrating it, not fighting it tooth and nail.

The tech crowds utter derangement over this minor mandate is truly a sight to behold.

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Like the authors of these bills, you appear not to understand the technology.

Consider AB1043. It mandates that applications check the age of the user each time the application is launched.

Think about what that means when you run `make` in a source directory. How many times is the compiler application launched?

Let's try to be a little bit sensible here. Presumably the requirement to check depends on the nature of the application. A completely offline app for example has no use for an age check and thus wouldn't need to read it.

This bill doesn't seem to create a requirement for the application, but e.g. the California one required all applications to check age.

The sensible thing is to abandon these bills.

AB1043 is short; you can read it for yourself: https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB1043/id/3273385

``` (b) (1) A developer shall request a signal with respect to a particular user from an operating system provider or a covered application store when the application is downloaded and launched. ```

That should be read as "when the application is (downloaded and launched)".

If it were meant as "when the application is downloaded and every time the application is launched" it would probably have been written as "when the application is downloaded or launched".

Also, there would be no point in mentioning downloads if that was a separate check because the app developer cannot request the signal upon download because their app is not running then.

The most reasonable conclusion is that the app must check the first time it is launched.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticipatory_obedience

This needs to be simply fought because it's a measure that is supposed to fight the reluctance of the society, not actual problem. For the actual problem it's ineffective. This will be met by surprise once it's fully implemented and new, worse measures will be proposed. Hence, it needs to be cut off as early as possible to spare everyone the trouble.

This bill requires actual verification and leaves it up to the politically controlled FTC to determine how this should happen. It’s a disaster.

> The Parents Decide Act solves the self-reported-birthday problem by demanding something verifiable, which in practice means a government ID, a credit card, a biometric scan, or some combination.

> However, Gottheimer has not specified which. The bill does not either. It’s up to the FTC to decide.

The article's analysis doesn't appear to be accurate. From the bill:

(a) Requirements.—An operating system provider, with respect to any operating system of such provider, shall carry out the following:

(1) Require any user of the operating system to provide the date of birth of the user in order to—

(A) set up an account on the operating system; and

(B) use the operating system.

(2) If the relevant user of the operating system is under 18 years of age, require a parent or legal guardian of the user to verify the date of birth of the user.

(3) Develop a system to allow an app developer to access any information as is necessary, collected by the operating system to carry out this section and any regulation promulgated under this section, to verify the date of birth of a user of an app of the app developer.

The only requirement for "verification" is to enter a birthdate on account set up, and underage accounts have the parent "verify" the birthdate. There is certainly some ambiguity in the bill which is not good, but efforts should be towards resolving the ambiguity in favor of a lack of intrusiveness.

Verification is explicitly required.

(d) Regulations.—

(1) IN GENERAL.—Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Commission shall promulgate, under section 553 of title 5, United States Code, regulations to carry out this section, including regulations relating to the following:

(A) How an operating system provider can—

(i) verify the date of birth of a parent or legal guardian described in subsection (a)(2); and

(ii) carry out the requirements described in subsection (a) with respect to an operating system of such provider that may be shared by individuals of varying ages.

(B) Data protection standards related to how an operating system provider shall ensure a date of birth collected by the operating system provider from a user, or the parent or legal guardian of the user, to carry out this section and any regulation promulgated under this section—

(i) is collected in a secure manner to maintain the privacy of the user or the parent or legal guardian of the user; and

(ii) is not stolen or breached.

Fair point. Leaving the nature of verification open ended is not good and should be part of the legislation.

Very well hidden. Ugh. So close to a really good solution but ofc there is always a rider somewhere.

No, derangement is declaring "The writing has been on the wall for some time now: the era of completely unrestricted internet is coming to an end." without fighting it at all and just mindlessly accepting it because you were told it was going to happen.

It should be really easy to get your bank account information then. You're just going to give it to me, right? What is this? You're fighting me tooth and nail instead of celebrating giving me your banking info?

It's derangement to jump from an adult/not-adult bit to bank account information.

Well, perhaps your mental model of the actual objections to it are incomplete. There are a few problems and I'm curious what you have to say about them. First, "The benefit of this is that it can short-circuit support for more onerous age verification". Do you think that it "can" or that it "will"? Big difference. It could also go the other way, right? Opening the door to a more onerous version? Why do you think that isn't worth considering? Secondly, "This is probably the least bad out of all possible ways to implement age checking". What about parental controls that exist already? Someone seriously tried to tell me last time that parental controls "suck", but that's irrelevant, they don't have to suck, and in fact anything can suck. That's just happenstance. So, assuming parental controls were correctly implemented, why do you think this is "least bad" including parental controls? Thirdly, this "age verification" doesn't actually verify anything, because underage people can just choose "adult" anyway. What do you have to say to that? In that case, parental controls actually give you more power, and make this new age check completely obsolete. Thoughts? Lastly, maybe you're not from the USA, but we have a concept of "free speech" which includes the idea that people cannot be "compelled" to certain speech. If people were required to add a "sign here to confirm you're an adult" in every romance novel, that would be fine right? It's also a nothingburger, right? But then, you've compelled people to put something in every published book. Actually, that's a bad analogy. We should say that ALL BOOKS require this signature field on the first page. After all, we don't know what kinds of expletives and horrible things people might have written in the margins of the book (assuming it's being sold second-hand). That would be okay with you, right? Nothingburger? But it compels people to write something, and that's a door most legal scholars know not to open.

> The writing has been on the wall for some time now: the era of completely unrestricted internet is coming to an end.

And books..? And the newspaper? What if a child reads about a horrible murder in the newspaper that keeps them up at night? What if the government outlaws books and newspapers because they can contain bad things? We'd better add a "adult/ not adult" checkbox to the first page to "short-circuit support for more onerous age verification".

This was a great comment, you challenged them but in a reasonable way and with really good questions

I wish public discourse were more this way - if someone is arguing in good faith, actually answering what you asked moves the conversation forward, it’s just on the person to give you a serious answer

This is brilliant. I haven't even thought about some of the questions you ask. Thank you.

This is the most elegant and polite refutation of age verification I've ever seen

>It could also go the other way, right? Opening the door to a more onerous version?

I don't see a plausible scenario where the implementation of this mandate makes further mandates more easy to get passed. An age field and an API to access it is as trivial as it gets. More onerous age checking is not something that is an extension to or somehow made more easy given the pre-existence of the age field. No argument against more onerous checking is undermined or rendered less severe due to an age field already existing. There is no slippery slope here.

>So, assuming parental controls were correctly implemented, why do you think this is "least bad" including parental controls?

There is already a pretty significant market for parental controls, so presumably if their quality were a limiting factor in their adoption the market would have responded already. Parents simply aren't interested enough or savvy enough to apply them. Parental controls also just intrinsically suck for a lot of reasons. They are either mostly ineffective or wildly intrusive, like giving total access to children's communications and internet activity to external companies.

>Thirdly, this "age verification" doesn't actually verify anything, because underage people can just choose "adult" anyway. What do you have to say to that?

Presumably an adult is involved in purchasing devices and setting up accounts for their young children. Putting an age of account holder field into the account set up workflow seems pretty effective. It's not 100%, but it doesn't need to be for it to be a major improvement over the status quo. The lack of verification is a feature of this mandate, not a bug.

>we have a concept of "free speech" which includes the idea that people cannot be "compelled" to certain speech. If people were required to add a "sign here to confirm you're an adult" in every romance novel, that would be fine right?

As those pushing this kind of legislation are fond of pointing out, we have age checks for buying alcohol or purchasing adult magazines in shops. Presumably these don't run afoul of the first amendment. This idea that we can't or shouldn't mandate age checking in some form to access content deemed inappropriate to children is just a losing argument. Again, the writing is on the wall here.

>No argument against more onerous checking is undermined or rendered less severe due to an age field already existing

From your point of view.

What I can tell you is that there are definitely people who will argue that this is, by the fact of being written into law, now the spirit of the law.

Then these people will argue that the spirit of the law is being broken, and the implementation needs to be better and tighter. Not that it needs to be repealed! Because clearly this is something that was wanted. And to many, many people, this will be sufficient argument not to complain about further measures.

At this point anything that makes computers less usable is a good thing, time we go back to the real world. It was extremely unpleasant while it lasted.

You are probably mixing up this bill with the California law, which its title kind of suggests it would be similar to but it isn't really.

least bad way to implement age checking is just asking user

An completely ineffective age check is not an age check.

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