alt Hacker NewsCounterpoint to peeps on this thread:
* This approach is the _most consistent_ with retaining anonymity on the internet, while actually helping parents with their issues. If any age-relevant gatekeeping needs to be made on the internet at all, this is the one I find acceptable.
* this is because the act very specifically does NOT require age _verification_ ie using third-parties to verify whether the claimed age is correct. Rather, it is piggybacking on the baked-in assumption, that parents will set up the device for their kids, indicating on first install what the age/DoB is, then handing over the device -a setting which can, presumably, only be modified with parental consent
* yes, there are edge cases, esp in OSS, and yes, it would be nice to iron those out -but the risk = probability x impact calculus on this is very very low.
* If retaining anonymity on the internet is of value to you, don't let the perfect be the enemy of good enough.
Replies
It's the software developers, it's the government's, it's anyone's responsibility but mine to parent my kids!
If they can get what they want from this, they will not stop after they get it. Even if the authors of the law want it to stop here, their successors will not, and will build upon this to erode privacy. When governments can change the deal effectively unilaterally, as is the case, you cannot make a deal with them that they cannot change, and you will have already surrendered the strongest argument against the next "deal" they want to unilaterally impose. Do not treat this as a deal to prevent further erosion, that is not what this is, treat this as an attack and attempt to advance against privacy and anonymity. Treating it as anything else is absolute gullibility.
So if it's an application that runs within the os that the parent enables and does not collect or send any personal info that sounds reasonable. But if has to be embedded into the OS that's going to present problems I can only imagine.
> while actually helping parents with their issues.
> that parents will set up the device for their kids
Are the devices parents are currently setting up lacking these controls? Is there no third party software which can achieve this?
Then why is it a crime with an associated fine for me to provide an OS which does not have one? How have I failed to "help parents with their issues?"
I understand where you’re coming from, but I respectfully disagree with some of the points you made:
* It’s ambiguous how your proposed parental setup and control process would work for anything other than walled gardens like Apple’s ecosystem. On an OS like Debian, does that mean a child can’t have the root password in case they use to it change the age? Does that mean we need a second password that needs to be entered in addition to the root password to change the age? Will Arduinos and similar devices also need to be age gated?
* Those edge cases might seem small, but read broadly they would require substantial, invasive, and perhaps even impossible changes to how FOSS works. If the law isn’t changed and FOSS doesn’t adapt, this basically means the entire space will exist in a legal gray area where an overzealous prosecutor could easily kill everything.
* This is not a matter of “perfect vs good enough”, this is a major slippery slope to go down. Also, this doesn’t mean age _verification_ will simply go away.