I’ll just copy my comment from a similar bill in colorado, I will leave the link to the colorado bill in, but here is the california bill as well if you want to read it yourself.
The title is very misleading. This is the actual bill that they are trying to pass. The link already includes a summary, so I will just give you an even simpler explanation and some practical examples why this is actually really neat.
First of all, this is not age verification. No IDs have to be submitted, no selfies or videos will be submitted to any age estimation AIs, so put your pitchforks away (for now, until they decide to expand the bill to include these measures as well, then it’s time to burn it down). The name of the bill already tells you what it is: Age Attestation. Aka what every piece of software already does before it shows you explicit content.
With the bill in place, every “operating system provider” has to ask you for your age or date of birth during OS setup, which will then be made available to other software via an API. So instead of having to fill in your date of birth or checking “Are you 18+/21+?” boxes, software will use the new API to check instead, saving you the trouble of doing it manually every time for every application that is not made for all ages.
What makes it even better is that the OS does not have to provide your actual age or birth date, the bill has a minimum requirement of just disclosing age-bracket data. So it could work just like age ratings, which also rely on age groups rather than specific years. Also, the bill explicitly forbids asking for more than your age, sharing more than that via the new API and using the entered age data for anything else than the described purpose, like sending it to a server for tracking purposes.
And finally, as mentioned in the beginning, no IDs or anything else as it is with age verification necessary. You can still lie, just enter 1.1.2000 or whatever you want. Nothing changes, except that you will only have to do it once every time you reinstall/reset your OS or buy a new device.
Thanks for putting this here. Kinda getting sick of people that only read the headlines or have only seen the Lunduke journal video that has so many clear inaccuracies.
The laws aren’t perfect but they do have some nice protections for the users as you mention.
The only thing that I think is missing is that developers are restricted from collecting additional information but the OS providers are not, at least as far as I understand from reading the California law. At the very least, they still have the restriction on using the information in other places or sending it to third parties.
I posted this in another thread but I’ll repeat it here. I think it is shortsighted that some linux distros are taking the kneejerk reaction of leaving/banning California residents. We need to band together and figure out a solution.
I’ll just copy my comment from a similar bill in colorado, I will leave the link to the colorado bill in, but here is the california bill as well if you want to read it yourself.
Thanks for putting this here. Kinda getting sick of people that only read the headlines or have only seen the Lunduke journal video that has so many clear inaccuracies.
The laws aren’t perfect but they do have some nice protections for the users as you mention.
The only thing that I think is missing is that developers are restricted from collecting additional information but the OS providers are not, at least as far as I understand from reading the California law. At the very least, they still have the restriction on using the information in other places or sending it to third parties.
I posted this in another thread but I’ll repeat it here. I think it is shortsighted that some linux distros are taking the kneejerk reaction of leaving/banning California residents. We need to band together and figure out a solution.