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Comment by Dylan16807

5 days ago

I don't know what you're talking about, but it's not what this kind of bill is about.

This kind of bill is about the OS telling things whether you're: 0-12, 13-15, 16-17, 18+

No databases, no stealable identity, only the barest sliver of 2 bits of PII.

As for how it's an improvement, we already have sites asking to see your driver's license or pictures of your face for much worse age verification paradigms. If most of those changed to a local age setting, privacy would go up.

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Dylan16807

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marcus_holmes  5 days ago

How does the OS know that you moved from the "13-15" bracket to the "16-17" bracket without knowing your DoB?

And this is the thin edge. Because in a few years there'll be a bill saying something like "too many children are lying about their age online. We need to verify their age" and then we're capturing IDs and storing them somewhere.

  • ThatPlayer  5 days ago

    > How does the OS know that you moved from the "13-15" bracket to the "16-17" bracket without knowing your DoB?

    No one says it has to be automatic. The OS could require the parent to manually update it.

    • godelski  4 days ago 

        > The OS could require the parent to manually update it.

      How is their age verified?

      At some point one of two things is required:

        1) A promise that the user is a certain age
    - Which puts us exactly where we are
  2) Official identification is used to verify age
    - Which creates a PII nightmare

      That's it. There's only those two options. You may not believe #2 is going to be a privacy nightmare but we're already seeing it happen with Discord/OpenAI/LinkedIn and everyone else that uses Persona[1]. They aren't doing the minimal security things and already aren't doing what they claimed (processed on device, then deleted). This "hack" couldn't happen if that was true

      [0] https://cybernews.com/privacy/persona-leak-exposes-global-su...

      [1] https://withpersona.com/customers

      8 replies →

  • Dylan16807  5 days ago

    > How does the OS know that you moved from the "13-15" bracket to the "16-17" bracket without knowing your DoB?

    The OS has the birth date. Of probably 1-5 people.

    > And this is the thin edge. Because in a few years there'll be a bill saying something like "too many children are lying about their age online. We need to verify their age" and then we're capturing IDs and storing them somewhere.

    Those things are already happening. I see this kind of mechanism as significantly more of an alternative to privacy invasion than an enabler of privacy invasion.

    • marcus_holmes  5 days ago

      Requiring the central database is the scary part.

      The political establishment used to be able to control what you read, through control of the media. Then 1995 happened and everyone got access to anything they wanted. The establishment have wanted to put that genie back in the bottle ever since. This is part of that effort.

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