The US-wide operating system age verification bill we covered recently, the Parents Decide Act, now actually has the bill published to read.
  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    351·
    12 days ago

    The bill H. R. 8250 actually seems somewhat reasonable, especially compared to some other state-specific bills that we’ve seen.

    No.

    Software code is free speech and the government should not be able to regulate what the people do in software code in such a way.

  • Melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    8·
    12 days ago

    This is bizarre. Why would they force people under 18 to verify their birth date, but if you’re over 18 you can just enter your birth date with no verification?

    Usually you only care about verifying the age of people over 18. What’s this law trying to accomplish by only verifying children?

    • pinball_wizard@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      11 days ago

      This is bizarre.

      It’s a path to knowing who everyone is, online.

      Knowing who everyone is online is a path to accidental falls from third story windows for people who advocate for taxing billionaires.

      • Melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        1·
        11 days ago

        Except as written, it’s only a path to knowing who all children are, not the adults who are usually the ones advocating for taxing billionaires. Sure, they might change the law, but that doesn’t make starting it this way any less bizarre. I don’t understand what reason there would be to make it harder to make a child account than an adult account by only IDing children.

        • pinball_wizard@lemmy.zipEnglish
          2·
          10 days ago

          Every middle aged person was once a younger person. It could stop at children, but I don’t think that’s their plan.

  • Petter1@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    5·
    12 days ago

    I understand it like you have to force the user to input a date, but I see no requirement that this date has to be verified by the OS to be correct?

    And if a user enters a date less than 18 years ago, another account with a date more than 18 years ago has to verify that date

    So, what stops a user who is not 18 just enter an older date?

    Each app just uses the date set in OS as verification, which honestly is better than each app having to ask for the date individually…

    Don’t understand me wrong, I don’t like age verification at all, I would prefer a bill that forces the possibility to flag a user as “kid” and allow/deny categories like social media, payments, adult content, ads etc.
    Like an extension of the admin/user setup we already have

    And force websites and apps to respect headers/parameters like “denyCat=adult,social,payments,ads”

    • a4ng3l@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      12 days ago

      See you highlight the issue yourself ; forcing the websites to expose data allowing an initial set of restrictions. Once those are in place extending them beyond the initial « doing the parent’s job » scope is trivial. The infrastructure will be available to block any content.

      Once those headers become mandatory to deliver content the days to http freedom are over.

      Eventually the system will enforce the correctness of such headers in a way that piracy will be added. Then assisted death and lgbtq topics; I saw propositions along those lines already.

      I remember one of those discussions involving European isps representative ; who is to decide on those tags and which to block? Why would 16 yo not being able to discuss a topic or reach out for help on sensitive topics? At what age are they individually mature enough for those topics ?

  • Bloomcole@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    11 days ago

    They sure know how to pick the names.
    I remember the Freedom act.
    Without knowing anything about this I’m going to boldly assume it probably means the opposite of parents deciding