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AB-1043 “Age verification signals: software applications and online services.”
Text https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043
Other info https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043
California AB 1043 signed. Mandatory os-level, device-level, app store, and even developer-required age verification for all computing devices.
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He can go fuck himself. “Dems are the good guys!!!” Fuck off. This isnt about protecting kids. Its about tracking, profiling and data collection. No doubt to sell to 3rd parties. Fuck all these cunts who push this shit.
There’s no fighting 21st century fascism without breaking this law.
This is so much more effectively evil than ehat the trump admin has been doing holy shit.
This might genuinely be world leading evil.
I didn’t see this one coming.
I am very very angry.
If the trump admin kills this piece of shit in public, I will report to the death camps as my civic duty.
._. what does that even mean
Gavin is as slimey as his hair.
While I oppose this with every inch of my being I do look forward to seeing some super tongue in cheek implementations in Linux intros.
export $AGE
Linux dev sitting there like: well, my work is done.
This is probably the most dystopian child safety bill so far.
I’m not sure anything this repressive is implemented anywhere in the world.
Edit: wait this is the other half of the thing everywhere else is doing that would make this nightmare shit.
The only thing that I can think of is how China regulates it’s online gaming.
What is China’s Age Verification System?
China’s Age Verification System or 游戏适龄提示 in Chinese, is a government-mandated infrastructure that restricts minors’ access to online games and digital platforms. In China, all users must undergo “Real Name Verification” (实名认证) before accessing gaming services, enabling platforms to enforce age-appropriate restrictions automatically.
The system is overseen by the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA) and integrates with national databases to verify user identities in real-time.
https://appinchina.co/blog/the-complete-guide-to-chinas-age-verification-system/
The move to do this was largely in part thanks to complaints of parents in regards to their kids’ habits with gacha games. For anyone interested, what I posted was a small excerpt from the link, there’s a lot more info on it there.
Fuck that. If Debian includes that, I’ll just rip it out myself.
It’ll be
systemd-agecheck, good luck.
And I thought he was the good guy. Fuck everything about this. Dick “we must protect our children”. From what?
From the government not being able to mine their parents data of course… Its the number one thing that turns kids to drugs, dont you know?
(b) If an application last updated with updates on or after January 1, 2026, was downloaded to a device before January 1, 2027, and the developer has not requested a signal with respect to the user of the device on which the application was downloaded, the developer shall request a signal from a covered application store with respect to that user before July 1, 2027.
(f) “Developer” means a person that owns, maintains, or controls an application.
1798.503. (a) A person that violates this title shall be subject to an injunction and liable for a civil penalty of not more than two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500) per affected child for each negligent violation
So a developer of a FOSS application that gets installed on a device on California via a 3rd party app store (maybe F-droid) must have implemented a query to the OS for this data. Even if the app does not actually provide any inappropriate content or actually any content.
Nor does it matter if he is involved in the distribution of the app to California, a FOSS app redistributed via a 3rd party (F-droid maybe) would make the developer subject to this.
As a developer who can’t control who distributes their software, I would simply change my license to exclude residents of California until this blows over, just to avoid the fine.
According to (f), the user is officially the developer of a FOSS application:
- The user is the owner of the binary. (Although with copyright restrictions)
- The user often maintains the application by installing updates. (In FOSS applications updates are rarely forced)
- The user controls the application, as FOSS gives users control.
In some cases (such as the Arch User Repository or the Gentoo distribution), the developer does not even give the user an application but merely source code. The user creates the application.
AUR works with binaries too, it creates an arch compatible package but that can be from source or massaging an existing package designed for a different distro (like .deb).
Read the link yall
The bill requires:
- OSes to take user birthday during account creation
- this info is binned into categories (<13, 13-16, 16-18, >18)
- the category info must be made available to basically all software
- software is supposed to use this data to age gate content but is not allowed to send this data to 3rd parties
What this bill does not do:
- Your full birthday is specifically not to be sent to every application
- OSes are not being asked to check your id it doesn’t say the OS should do anything to verify the birthday, just that it should record it
- There isn’t anything to prevent you from entering 1/1/2000 instead of your real birthday
Honestly this doesn’t seem that bad to me. If anything it’s a little pointless. This style of age verification is basically universally already used. I guess you could read this as forcing OSes to have parental controls.
I do think there is a bit of a privacy issue in this information being shared with every program, but they attempt to minimize this using the binning (so ironically it really only hurts the privacy of teenagers since for adults it will just say >18), and this information is supposed to not be shared with 3rd parties (but we all know Facebook and Google are going to do whatever they can this info, pushing the limits of that part of the law, or just waiting to be sued and paying the fine when it happens).
I honestly think most Linux distros will just implement it.
Yeah, no
First off, this is just another step, and if you believe it’s the last one then I have a nice bridge to sell you
Secondly, this won’t work in practice. Software is being developed all ove the world by single nerds to scientists to little kids, to small software companies to huge software multinationals with hundreds of thousands of developers.
99.9% of the world doesn’t have these rules and won’t give a shit about what California wants. Do you believe that the app developed by some random kid in a random country will start checking age just because newsom wants it? Ok Boomer.
And IF this system allows you to put in whatever date, then what’s the point, beyond some security theater?
This bill is absolute horse shit and won’t go anywhere because this is not how the world works. This will likely end with citizens in California having a really really tiny amount of software available to them legally
First off, this is just another step, and if you believe it’s the last one then I have a nice bridge to sell you
Slippery slope fallacy. This law is basically just asking for a more unified and organized version of how we already check for age verification (which is every individual app or website asking for your birthday). If there was anything more than that I’d agree with you. I do agree that it’s annoying this is coming in the form of a law instead of an addition from Apple that they use in marketing that gets others to follow suit. I think that would have been a healthier way for this sort of organization to happen.
That being said, I do agree with you that the potential “next step” of asking the OS to verify your age would be an issue.
Do you believe that the app developed by some random kid in a random country will start checking age just because newsom wants it?
They already have to select what age range the app is for when they submit it to Apple or Google, and it’s Apple or Google that will have to make changes to comply with this law. If they aren’t distributing through an “app store” there is nothing the 3rd party developer needs to do or worry about according tot his law. However, I am curious how this will end up being applied to command line tools and package managers.
And IF this system allows you to put in whatever date, then what’s the point, beyond some security theater?
I agree, except it could be a form of parental controls. One thing I really don’t like about this law is I think the parents should decide what content is appropriate for their child, rather than the App Store. But not having any validation both puts the control back in the parents hands to some extent, while also making sure the law stops short of becoming a serious privacy and security issue.
This bill is absolute horse shit and won’t go anywhere because this is not how the world works. This will likely end with citizens in California having a really really tiny amount of software available to them legally
Considering most of the biggest software companies in the world have offices in or are based out California, that’s simply not true. Apple, Google, and Microsoft will all comply, regardless of how reasonable the rules are. At best they would fight it in court.
I doubt anyone is planning to sue open source OS developers over this, but honestly the changes it asks for are pretty small, so I expect most linux distros will follow suit anyway.
Ofc I don’t think there is anything California could do to enforce this on FOSS software in any practical way, if it came to that.
No and if you dont see the problem, get a fucking mirror.
Even with binning, it doesn’t prevent the date from being learned. All an application would have to do is ask for the bin every day. On the day it changes you learned their birthday. It only works for <18s, but isn’t that specifically who they’re saying they’re trying to protect?
Yeah this is a real issue.
The smallest window for binning is 2 years and you would need another identifier to compare it against for any meaningful data gathering. If the law also provides penalties for gathering that type of telemetry on minors then it should be solid.
If it does that, sure. It would create penalties at least.
You wouldn’t need another identifier though. On your 16th birthday, for example, your age range changes from <16 to >16. If the application checked every day and recorded it, then they would then know your birthday. The bins are larger, but switching bins is by the day. It doesn’t matter how large the bins are at that point.
It’s still pretty bad and senseless. We all know how antis, nazis and conservationists are: you given them an inch, they’ll try to bite your entire arm off, not to mention leaving an infection behind.
We use 1/1/1970, the Unix epoch.
Wild! I am exactly the same age as the Unix Epoch.
Are you serious?! Mad jealous as I missed it by a year.
As a parent, I reckon a voluntary system like this (if I understand correctly) could be very handy. I could create a child account and automatically get age gated content for it.
And when said child is smart enough to circumvent the system, then they deserve whatever content they manage to get their hands on. I’d be so proud.
But I’m sure capitalism would find a way to abuse and misuse the system for gains.
Would Linux be required to though since it’s free open source software? Windows I can see because it’s a product, but Linux isn’t.
I think any used in an official capacity (think enterprise facing software like Redhat), might, but for anything not used at a company level would be both impossible to enforce and unlikely to be audited.
sounds sane to me, and like something that should be done.
Please update your title to remove the misinformation about the bill, specifically calling it “OS-level ID verification” is not even close. It’s not got anything to do with personally identifying information or any actual verification of age information.
It’s actually an incredibly privacy conscious method of doing what it is trying to do, which is to allow parents to set up a child’s account with their age information on a device and have that age bracket information passed to websites and applications. That way, it makes it harder for a child to bypass age-restrictions, but without requiring dangerous age verification methods such as ID or face scans.
If you want parental controls, you can have them.
If you want parental controls with root, you can have those too.
They exist currently.
I think the mods should change the titel and post, this is misleading on purpose.
You just know that when a bill is titled “Protect the little children from eternal suffering bill”, it’s gonna contain some real fucked up anti-privacy nonsense in it.
That or terrorism
All laws are terrorism. That’s not special.
We’ve seen some truly horrific and tragic examples of young people harmed by unregulated tech, and we won’t stand by while companies continue without necessary limits and accountability.
So it’s individuals that will get the limits and accountability while privacy companies will get off with slaps on the wrist when they inevitably have data breaches. Really tired of this double speak bullshit.
Good luck enforcing that on Linux.
That’s probably the point.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft and Google lobbied for this to prevent open source from encroaching on their terf
Likely yes, though it won’t matter to me. I’ll recompile from suitably modified source code if it comes to that.
They might try to stop Linux from booting at all with locked bootloaders.
That would be the point at which things - expensive, crucial things - would start catching on fire for reasons that has nothing to do with anything I might be doing.
Like what? I believe you but I’m interested in the implications of this bill
reinstalling OS is fairly easy. I expect utlities to “correct age error”.
There’s precedent that source code is protected speech, so maybe Gentoo is about to become a lot more popular.
And who doesn’t enjoy using 90% of their system resources to compile the 10% remainder all the time?
You can compile while doing other things.
Any recent (AMD) cpu will handle it just fine.
Even most games struggle to utilize many threads.
Gentoo is also amazingly easy to use.
The bigger distros will probably do it, especially any that have an organization to fund their development.
That have funding from American organizations, or are an American organization themselves. Possibly even Californian only.
Et tu, California with Democratic majority in both chambers? Fucking disgraceful.
Well, we as a state voted to ban flavored tobacco products when like 10 kids were getting popcorn lung from black market THC oil carts.
And selling tobacco to minors here is highly illegal, as it should be. So I never understood why we banned flavored tobacco, when the kids were getting issues from black market THC carts, which they also shouldn’t have been sold/using.
Not even getting into how the law didn’t stop flavored alcohol, we can still buy bubblegum flavored vodka here.
So even in the 2nd most Democrat leaning state, we still push for the dumbest laws. This was a state wide vote, not something the Senate/Assembly voted on.
Flavored tobacco used to only target minorities so it was OK. There are documentaries about this showing how much more flavored tobacco was advertised in lower socio-economic areas.
Once children started vaping the CA govt stepped in.
If you oppose the ban I have to assume because you don’t know where to get menthol cigs anymore. I live in Oakland and can still find Newports. I quite smoking them over 25 years ago but know more than one place that sells them.
edit - this thread is about age verification. not sure why you think tobacco bans are remotely close.
I can report here that my fellow cigarette smokers in Illinois are still happy to be puffing their cancer sticks because flavored nicotine vapes are worse, and cause popcorn lung, so I should just keep smoking cigs.
Dumbest laws are pushed because we have the dumbest peoples.
LOL lib thinks the fascist-lite party cares for the plebs
A lib (liberal or libertarian leftist) as opposed to what? A non-liberal, ie, authoritarian leftist?I don’t think authoritarians have credible claims on this matter or anything worthwhile.
obviously US liberals.
The fascist-lite party voters who imagine themselves to be left/progressiveyou’re so obviously american… fucking compulsive liar liberal poseur.
“obviously” right.
50% of my comments are shitting on that cancer country.
And deservedly, what a collection of morons.
Proven once again by you
US liberals are mostly social liberals & progressives. They include liberal/libertarian leftists from the political map.
Are you claiming liberal leftism? Then welcome to the club.
I do not care for your explanation.
The politically illiterate US population uses every term and definition wrong.
Also they are relative and progressive there means nothing since the overton window is so narrow it only goes from fascist to center-right.
You can say or claim what you want, all I’ve heard from so-called US ‘liberals’ was nearly as horrible and right-wing as the rest.
Only different in their pet peeves like LGTB, etc…I think “liberal” is the opposite of “authoritarian” and “left” is the opposite of “right”. America has never really done left wing and the liberals are more lib centre than lib left, whilst the conservatives are auth right. American “centrists” are loony right wing by European standards. Tankies are auth left, so find liberals annoyingly non-left and annoyingly non-auth, which is why they have so much to say against dems, whilst the gop is to a tankie at least auth even if they’re annoyingly right wing.
I will never understand why tankies act like the last 50 years of Russian history including the complete overthrow of communism never happened. It’s like they kept the worst bits of the soviet approach, threw out all the good bits and added the worst excesses of uncontrolled capitalism instead.
As a lib left, I find much to disagree with in all those places, but most strongly with the auth right like trump, putin and their chums.
I’m very very disappointed with UK Labour trying to fix the housing crisis by deregulating to “free up” the housing industry to remove the housing shortage. It’s like trying to fix an active alcoholic by giving them the keys to the liquor cabinet. You’ll only fix the housing crisis with a massive program of council house building. Anything else is papering over the cracks. You’ll only fix the NHS by bringing social care under the same funding roof and investing massively.
China gets some things right like massive public investment and very long term planning, but other things wrong like authoritarianism. I’m amused that Trump thought he could outsmart a civilization that’s been doing diplomacy for thousands of years and has largely (but definitely not exclusively) been a meriticracy for a very long time.
Some of the Scandinavian democracies have been the best run countries for a long long time.
Anyway, I’m sure you’ll find plenty to hate on there.
The Moral Majority, which championed efforts to get “Explicit Lyrics” labels on records, among oþer censorious legislation, was headed by þe wife of þe Democratic US VP.
Democrats have þeir own issues; þey’re just not as egregious as Republican troubles. We’re still a nation of Puritans and parents who refuse to be accountable for raising þeir own children.
