alt Hacker News1. I don’t see how that’s better in any real way. You can infer the exact same information as querying the range and it makes dynamic behavior based on age range (ex. access to age restricted chat rooms as an obvious example) completely impossible.
2. Is it meaningfully more identifying than User-Agent? There’s dozens of other datapoints for uniquely identifying a user. If we get a few high profile lawsuits because advertising companies knowingly showed harmful ads to children, I’d consider it a win. Age is not that interesting of a data point.
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> I don’t see how that’s better in any real way.
It's so much better. In the one case, the OS is leaking age information (even if just an age range) to every service it talks to. In the other case, the OS isn't telling anyone anything, and is just responding to the age rating that the app/service advertises.
1. Depends on how it's implemented. It won't identify you to individual platforms if the OS filters on a per-app or per-website basis. And yeah, there would be no dynamic behavior based on age, as that would enable tracking based on age. I don't think any kind of API is the ideal solution though, it's just better than the malicious one being mandated in the Cali bill. Instead of an API, it's simpler and more effective to just have an app installation lock (like sudo on Linux) and a firewall for website blocking with a nice UI in the phone's settings, locked behind a password/pin.
2. Other data points like User-Agent are not required by law, and browsers already spoof user agent by default. I agree that there are other data points we need to address, but the problem in this specific case is the slippery slope of legally-mandated data points. And I don't think winning high profile lawsuits is a real "win", it just exposes problem which we already know in this case. Keep in mind those people can get away with the Epstein files.
I wouldn’t focus on whether it’s “identifying” but whether it’s revealing. Young teenagers are a very high-value target for advertisers. They are very impressionable, and they provide a proxy for advertisers for their parents’ money. So this law essentially makes it mandatory to share that information with advertisers. And also by proxy, predators.