> not good that these bills are setting the expectation that speech can be compelled

How is this different from any disclosure, signage or notice requirement?

compelled speech, freedom of speech, association, etc all died with Goldwater. It's over bubba, the government is just thinking up new ways to use it.

Meta has recently been successfully sued for harming children. They are naturally pursuing the easiest path to remove themselves from liability. If you don't trust an age signal that a user chooses on their own at during os setup that can legally only be used for age verification purposes, then you're certainly not going to trust whatever age verification method Facebook will use as an alternative.

[citation requested]

sure they can, but they would have to justify that change, and we have a better argument to oppose such a change. better than had they never added an exemption in the first place.

This is the "lesser evil" trick politicians use to silence the opposition.

Also not a lawyer, but from what I understand typically open source license restrictions are on redistribution - there's nothing preventing you from modifying something for personal use in more or less whatever way you want.

Engage with your kids. Don't give them personal devices until they're a bit older. Monitor their usage properly with your own senses, not with "parental controls". Talk to them about what they do.

If they're minded to bypass all that then they're going to bypass any technical block you put on anyway.

The workable alternative is no bill. These age surveillance bills are designed specifically to indemnify service providers (and, specifically, Facebook) when they inevitably try to harm your child, on the basis of "well the phone OS said he's over 18 so we can do whatever we want to him".

solution to what exactly?

Imagine: Websites over a certain number of users must publish content-suitability tags. Preinstalled operating systems over a certain marketshare must include software that can filter on said content-suitability tags, which can be enabled during the initial setup process. When parental controls are enabled, websites without tags "fail closed" and don't display. The open web continues to exist, and the long tails of sites, operating systems, and devices stay completely unaffected.

The bill under discussion is being pushed by Facebook purely to absolve themselves of liability. The information flow is completely backwards. Its design actually removes control from parents (websites are responsible for making the decision, so whether a given site is suitable for your kid is made by corporate attorneys), and puts assumed liability on parents (eg "you're negligent for letting your kid access a browser that doesn't broadcast their age").

(I'm a parent but thankfully not yet at the stage where I have to navigate this issue)