In the sense that a website could just ask your OS if you are over a certain age and that age was self declared? That seems fine to me, but why can't the websites just ask me for my self declared age?

That's how things used to be and that makes more sense in my opinion because an OS isn't the thing displaying content. It just run whatever it is told to run.

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hackinthebochs 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

>but why can't the websites just ask me for my self declared age?

Because children just click through the age gate when it suits them. With this legislation, a parent that purchases the device and creates an account for the child can set the age once and take the decision out of the kids hands. It's a huge improvement without any significant privacy issues. I can't fathom why the tech crowd is having a collective aneurism over this.

>OS isn't the thing displaying content

But the account on the OS is the right place for the single source of truth of properties of the current user.

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genewitch 2 days ago | parent [-]

I hope i can find this comment in a few years.

Also children can "come upon" devices, so this is still completely pointless unless there's a way to ban devices that don't have this ability. and the only way to do that is to ban devices that cannot verify the user's age. since a device can't really verify an ID, some third party (ideally meta, but also the government works) needs to verify id and age, write something to the secure enclave of the device, and now that's stuck with the verified age set.

If "just let someone report the age" worked, pornhub wouldn't be blocked in TX.

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hackinthebochs 2 days ago | parent [-]

>Also children can "come upon" devices

Yes, this mechanism isn't perfect, but is a substantial improvement over the status quo.

>and now that's stuck with the verified age set.

This inference is nonsensical.

>If "just let someone report the age" worked, pornhub wouldn't be blocked in TX.

Also nonsense

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genewitch 2 days ago | parent [-]

How do you propose that a child's device will remember their age in a "legally distinct" way for the life of the device? You ought understand what i am asking here, as it directly follows what i said before. You have a child, somehow the device knows how old the child is. An adult sets it? great. What if the device wasn't set up by a responsible adult?

You don't foresee a black market of "no-age-audit" devices? How do you prevent that? Well, one way is to use the secure enclave and write the birthday in it so that it cannot be tampered with. How is that written? who writes it? Who verifies the ID?

TX passed a law stating that adult sites like pornhub must verify age. I hope you understand what "verify" means in this context. It isn't "i promise i am over 21 or 18 or whatever" - because if that worked, TX lawmakers wouldn't have made the law say "verify" https://journals.law.unc.edu/firstamendmentlawreview/screeni...

In the future, casual dismissals are viewed negatively.

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hackinthebochs 2 days ago | parent [-]

I really don't know where you're coming from. You seem to be imagining that the law requires some kind of cryptographically validated age attestation. The law requires nothing of the sort. It's just an age field associated with the account. There are many ways to get around it, none of which the law demands protection against. It's simply a standardized way for parents to ensure a modicum of reasonably effective age-discrimination for online services.

There are no secure enclaves, no verification, and certainly no black markets. I really don't know where you are getting any of this from.

>TX passed a law stating that adult sites like pornhub must verify age.

Yes, when states are left to their own devices to come up with laws, some of them will be more onerous than others. But I don't know what you think you can infer from this. Casual dismissal was warranted.

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hdgvhicv 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The computer owner can set the age, not the user.

I am root on my computers. My 11 year old isn’t root on my computers.

	▲	prmoustache 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Most kids are and this law won't change that.
	▲	genewitch 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> My 11 year old isn’t root that you know of. when you were 11 could you get root? I could. I got expelled from a highschool for getting "root" on a DOS machine by holding down the shift key (at 13). All it takes is one moment of weakness from a parent or not blocking the kid's view of the keyboard, or the kid getting an app that figures out possible passwords from keyboard sounds (it'll be here someday), or any manner of other things, like you forgetting to close your session. 11 year olds aren't stupid. also there's nearly weekly exploits that get your root on a linux machine, so unless you're blocking arbitrary code downloads, which means you're going to have to whitelist sites you allow your kid to visit, which means they're probably just going to get that stuff elsewhere, as is customary. Again, 11 year olds aren't stupid. any one of them could tell another "here's a script that gets root" and spread it around school. If it became a thing. I just had a vision of linux being outlawed because it's too insecure