It doesn't even need to be that complicated. OS asks you your birthday at setup time. Stores it. Later, an app asks whether the user falls into one of the following brackets:

A) under 13 years of age, or B) at least 13 years of age and under 16 years of age, or C) at least 16 years of age and under 18 years of age or D) at least 18 years of age.

that's it. The OS can decide how it wants to implement that, but personally I'd literally just do get_age_bracket_enum(now() - get_user_birthday());

The bill is here: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

The uproar seems to be extremely overblown.

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gzread 15 hours ago | parent [-]

I think the uproar comes because the well is already poisoned. People are already trained to respond with an outburst of anger to any law that mentions the age of the user, and will find excuses to rationalize that outburst, even when the law isn't that bad.

I mean, "compelled speech"? Really? That's people's argument? This is about as bad as the government compelling you to write a copyright notice.

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iamnothere 12 hours ago | parent [-]

Compelled speech is bad and it’s something we don’t do, at all. All kinds of bad things come with compelled speech. Mandatory loyalty oaths, erosion of the fifth amendment, compelled work to weaken encryption, etc.

The well should be poisoned. The whole idea is poison.

	▲	gzread 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Do you oppose mandatory food nutrition and ingredients labelling?