Comment on Oh No! Now A Federal Bill Wants OS-Level Age Verification for Everyone in the USA

• t3rmit3@beehaw.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  State-level bills have heretofore only required OSes to ask a user if they are of majority age. A federal bill is likely (based on the groups backing and who proposed it) to require OSes to validate (i.e. have users prove, not just assert) their ages.

  Depending on what mechanisms are mandated, and who they target punishment at, it could lock 99% of users (who are not willing or capable to use means to bypass this) into tying all their actions online to a government-run database.

  It’s not enough that means to bypass it exist; the government shouldn’t be able to mandate this kind of control, and shouldn’t be propagating the expectation that this behavior and level of control is normal or acceptable.

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  • Mothra@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I guess what I’m asking for is an ELI5 of the mechanisms involved, which I figured were understood from the comments.

    I already understand that not everyone can bypass something like this, in fact it’s likely I couldn’t either. We also agree that nobody should in the first place. I see anonymity as a right

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• IllNess@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  This bill, if passed, will force operating systems to verify the age of the user. This means the verification uses a government issued ID.

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  • Mothra@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It’s the mechanism apparently being impossible to be cheated on what I don’t understand. Or maybe I’m just hopelessly confused.

    I should have replied under the post instead of under your comment, but it was your comment the one triggering the oh wait what moment for me, sorry. Don’t feel like you have to give me an answer if I’m not making any sense

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    • IllNess@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      No worries man.

      This is just a guess but with open source operating systems, it can and will probably be bypassed. I’m sure people will make forks without verification.

      With closed source, probably not the most updated ones.

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• AntiBullyRanger@ani.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Nazis want total control of all systems, so they created this bait law to make your use of computers illegal.

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