We don't want kids downloading bad stuff.

Then parents should keep an eye on their kids. Or just don't give them full on access to the computer.

I hate that politicians keep trying to invent technology to do a parents job.

You know it's a bad idea because it's literally what Mark Zuckerberg suggested in court the other day.

How will they know no one else is using the device? Kids use their parents devices and tablets *all the time.

It's a backdoor to a national digital ID scheme.

The war on general purpose computing.

holy fuck. the stupidity. it hurts.

Before I go full tin foil hat on this theory, I want to know how they plan on making it so the signal is sent client side without the client being able to fake the signal.

Like, this sounds like something that any type of OS that allows you to install a program will be able to bypass quite easily either by always sending the adult signal or never sending the adult signal

Like reading the bill, they explicitly forbid any type of personally identifying information being transferred. It sounds like it's just a DOB check and if you say you are > 13 or whatever age they have it as it sends a signal.

I'm happy it isn't allowed to send PII but like at the same time, I feel like just having websites put an age check prompt up does the same thing

Go ahead. My OS belongs to me. It does what I say. If you want it to tell you I'm an adult, it will.

Next they’ll want you to have a license to program (without AI)

A-ha. All for the sake of children. Guess what makes my butt hurt: there are still people who buy this. And many of them

Just laugh and move on. It’s not going to happen.

These people have no idea what they’re talking about. They think that the developers of four hundred Linux distros, FreeDOS, Haiku, *nix, the BSDs, are even going to bother trying. Then you have industrial boxen running obsolete operating systems, routers, all the network devices that run the internet.

EDIT: and then every application that runs on every platform also needs to be updated. Like that’s going to happen.

If they really cared about the children, they would just physically cut the cables at the Colorado border. That’s the only way that any sort of access control can be enforced.

Ignorant parents unwilling to monitor their kids or utilize already available tools to aid in preventing access to inappropriate material want devs to do so for them, ushering in a surveillance state.

seriously. I don't want to have to go back to recompiling kernels.

This is just so dumb and the fact that it's coming from Democrats feeds right into the rage-bait winger types like Lunduke.

I want the plot twist here to be that they're just trying to tank Windows and MacOS because they're big Linux fans

"Let's follow in Texas' footsteps except go even further" - Colorado and California Dem Lawmakers

Even if this WERE a good idea, which it is NOT, it should be OPT-IN for RESTRICTION set by the PARENTS. OS level PARENTAL CONTROLS are stupid but REASONABLE.

There is just no way that anyone with a technical background signed off on this idea.

Where's the vote blue people

There should be no need for this to exist. The internet has been around for long enough without age verification that it doesn't need to be added now.

That being said, this is the lesser of the two evils, I think. If your age data exists at the device-level and can send an authorization to a service that says "This user is an adult" without needing to send them any additional identification, that would be better than needing to trust some nebulous cloud service with identifiable information tying your personal identity to your online habits.

It'd actually be cool if I could verify age with one service and receive an anonymous auth token and create a pin or password, then just use those everywhere to verify age.

Or put it in my password manager and auto fill the BS on request.

All without sharing any private or identifying info with the service.

Currently I either just don't use web services that require age verification, or I use a VPN to bypass them.