Remember all the ruckus with various US states introducing operating-system level age verification laws? Colorado and California thankfully exempt open source.
  • infinitesunrise@slrpnk.netEnglish
    1 hour

    I mean how would they not exempt FOSS, short of individually policing the software installed on every individual personal system or instituting new hardware requirements and making the use of non-compliant hardware criminal?

    • ohshit604@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      34 minutes

      short of individually policing the software installed on every individual personal system or instituting new hardware requirements and making the use of non-compliant hardware criminal?

      Quit giving them ideas!

    • CommanderCloon@lemmy.ml
      8 minutes

      afaik it’s straight up the opposite for the california law. I didn’t read it myself, but from what I read online about it, they require a boolean “adult/minor” and forbid any other data collection related to age

    • ISOmorph@feddit.org
      2 hours

      Yes please! The sooner we normalize that, the sooner these threads will stop being about people explaining idea nr. 26637372 how to implement parental controls. It’s not about protecting children! That’s just the marketing slogan!

  • Matty_r@programming.dev
    6 hours

    Thats great. I do fear that it’ll still pretty much be a requirement if they continue to force age verification through websites etc.

    • ardrak@lemmy.world
      5 hours

      I still think it should be the other way around. It should be a setting on the device/OS that an adult could tik and lock with a password or something that would mark the user or the device as a minor.

      It would be an easy thing for a parent to do and to everyone implement, and I doubt anyone would get angry over that.

      • obvs@lemmy.world
        2 hours

        You’re right. It’s INCREDIBLY simple.

        And I’m saying this as a systems engineer. I do this for a living.

        I would go a step beyond and just make it a mandatory screen as part of setup:

        Will this account mainly be used by an adult, by a teenager, or by a child?

        I think the “teenager” would allow a little more granularity in parental control, but the “teenager” would legally be treated as a minor.

        And you mandate that browser manufacturers be able to read that as part of the account information, but not forced to provide it to websites.

        And you mandate that websites be forced to put in place restrictions that prevent adult websites from being provided to children or to computers that don’t identify the user as an adult or as a child.

        Restricting on the computer manufacturers’ ends is the wrong way to do it. Restrict on the websites’ end.

      • Matty_r@programming.dev
        4 hours

        The way the iPad has it seems OK, where you can disallow apps, websites and set time limits.