Mastodawn

RE: https://mastodon.social/@sarahjamielewis/116161459299855467

Something I want to make clear:

The "age verification" bit of the CA/CO laws are not the bit I care about i.e. a law that requires an operating systems to implement some kind of parental control feature is...whatever.

The bits I care about are the obligations on developers to call APIs and then that invocation being taken as evidence of knowledge.

Specifically, I think a -legal- requirement to:

- make any kind of call is an attack on speech
- know a users age (bracket) is a privacy violation

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David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)Mar 5

@sarahjamielewis

My reading of the law was that this is bad wording and was not the intent. The rest of it reads is if it means to say that if age verification is required for other legal purposes then you must use this 2-bit signal unless you already have some other information that you know is more accurate.

It should be easy to fix, it’s a shame they went through a load of revisions without fixing it (I didn’t look at the text of the old drafts, the error may have been introduced in editing).

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trystimuli

@david_chisnall @sarahjamielewis so like, this law defines anybody who controls the operating system on a computer (so, practically everyone who has a computer) as a “operating system provider” and requires them to provide this user interface on account setup and API to application developers, if technically available.

that is, if you are a parent and you run an operating system that can’t do this on your computers in california in 2027 and your child uses them, the state can fine you $7500 because you could have been running an operating system that could (and then compel you to run that). (except they hopefully can’t, because compelled speech).

when a law is written this badly you can’t assume good intent.