Comment by bluGill
3 months ago
Remember the first post that started this "require adults to secure the device before letting minors near them?" - if I have to secure all devices that means I can't let my kids out of my reach since they might find a device someplace. Raspberry pi's are cheap, you can dumpster dive old, but working devices. There is free wifi all over.
In short the original post was subtly but very opposed to those very laws you are looking at.
Mind you there is nothing about OS level age verification that stops any of the above - which is why I'm against it.
Right, my comment wasn't intended to be an argument against your points; quite the opposite, I was pointing out that many people see the value in letting kids be independent. Really, the context was that I had assumed the pull quote to be referring to over-protective parents and their ilk (the "this" in the first sentence) and I just wanted to show that some people have more sense, though I can see how it's not clear what I was getting at. Disallowing your kids from going outside for fear of potential danger is logically equivalent to disallowing them from using the internet for the same fear.
But now I wonder: I doubt the law would actually consider that you let your kids outside and thereby gave them access to the unsecured device they found in a dumpster. From what I understand of the CA law, you would not be the "operating system provider" in that context, because you do not develop, license, nor control the operating system. I think, at that point, a prosecutor would probably be looking at neglect (if they really want to go after the parent) as the most viable charge, which would be protected by the independent kid laws.
Still, to your point, that doesn't mean the OS law in question will be effective at what it's meant to do, so I similarly do not see a reason to support it. (One could assume "what it's meant to do" is remove liability from social media service providers, but that's not the ostensible reason even if it is the likely reason; regardless, I also wouldn't necessarily see that as a reason to support it.)