Senate Bill 26-051 reflects that pattern. The bill does not directly regulate individual websites that publish adult or otherwise restricted content. Instead, it shifts responsibility to operating system providers and app distribution infrastructure.
Under the bill, an operating system provider would be required to collect a user’s date of birth or age information when an account is established. The provider would then generate an age bracket signal and make that signal available to developers through an application programming interface when an app is downloaded or accessed through a covered application store.
App developers, in turn, would be required to request and use that age bracket signal.
Rather than mandating that every website perform its own age verification check, the bill attempts to embed age attestation within the operating system account layer and have that classification flow through app store ecosystems.
The measure represents the latest iteration in a series of Colorado efforts that have struggled to balance child safety, privacy, feasibility and constitutional limits.
This is getting ridiculous.
Linux is the only reasonable choice anymore.
Linux won’t be legal in Colorado if they pass this. You’ll need an account with some age-policing, ID-reporting corporation to be able to use a computing device.
How do they imagine they could enforce this though? Presumably quite selectively, based on the user’s political leanings.
Are they going to check people’s PCs at the state borders as they move in then?
What is in the actual bill? I haven’t read any of this but if it was just a year of birth box at local signup then this could actually be pretty good. A sort of halfway between local only parental controls & age-policing, ID-reporting corporations.
The courts should strike it down, I don’t have faith they will side with the constitution, but it’s clearly unconstititional and beyond the authority of the state as well, in the realm of interstate commerce which is explicitly given to the feds, whom can’t be trusted either obviously.
But the 1st amendment is clearly invalidating this, forcing people to identify themselves to groups that will record everything they say or do and sell it to everyone, including the government, that will chill speech, and groups will punish people for their speech.
Too bad scotus is all in on punishing people for speech though.
I don’t think it will be cut and dry on state vs federal, although if we follow trends it will get shutdown because the feds love abusing the commerce and elastic clause. And I’m not overly familiar with the Colorado constitution, but the actual text isn’t actually that invasive, it makes no requirements on data collection, it only requires for it to be obtained somehow, which could be self reporting ala parental controls, it only requires that once the data is obtained that they must provide an age bracket and only and age bracket to services that request it and only services that request it.
The very act of forcing it to be collected chills freedom of speech. Leaving it undefined how it’s done should make the law more likely to get overturned not less.
Knowing your age was collected, and is stored somewhere, connected to your computer, and that everything done on that computer can then be connected back to that positive ID, chills speech, as much as they might try to betray the bill of rights with this mealy mouthed attempt to surrender us to Tech.
I dunno, the language suggests to me it can be worked around. It states age verification to make the OS account. Linux doesn’t require accounts. This seems to target Microsoft and Apple account creation (since you won’t be able to use the OS without one) and of course Google will implement account requirements on Android
Not really, the microsoft asshole that coded systemd wants chips on hardware for linux just like 10/11. He’s going to help fuck linux the same way they fucked windows.
You might need help. If you’re unwilling to seek help, then at least learn to code and, you know, read the code.
Systemd is so much easier to use, absolutely was not a mistake.
Under the bill, an operating system provider would be required to collect a user’s date of birth or age information when an account is established.
It’s so fucking obvious the people who wrote this have no idea other operating systems than iOS, Windows and Android exist.
What are you on about? If they get 95% of the population with this it’s still a huge win for them.
I think it is notable that it never makes assumptions about the verification method, so it could just be a simple parental control system. Granted I have no doubts that the corpos will take this as requiring Id, but the bill itself makes no such requirements.
I fully expect this to become a move to hamper linux, or any non-windows desktop usage, because “we can’t trust a user who has full access to their OS” or some other bullshit.
“OPERATING SYSTEM PROVIDER” MEANS A PERSON THAT DEVELOPS, LICENSES, OR CONTROLS THE OPERATING SYSTEM SOFTWARE ON A DEVICE.
great, for my devices then, that would be me
AFAIK, only adults can sign up for internet access, so a minor watching porn on the internet is the same as said minor watching their parents’ adult DVDs or drinking alcohol their parents purchased. It’s already illegal for adults to give minors access to these things, so what’s next? Alcohol bottles that only open and DVDs / Bluerays that only play if you can provide an ID and prove your age every time?
its not about limiting children’s access to porn and other stuff, it never was.
DON’T give them ideas!
Age verification is identity verification.
It’s already laughably easy to parent these days. Parental controls are on every device and require so little effort. You dont even have to pay that much attentjo - the software literally analyzes use and reports notification. It’s so stupidly easy and still people can’t do it. Literally ask any of supporters of this what parental control system they use and most are dumbfounded and just change the topic.
It’s never about protecting kids.
Eh… I agree that age checks are dumb, but have you ever tried parental controls on most phones these days? They are all complete shit.
What? The software is incredible these days. It literally detects dangers and warns you. Check out Bark which is only 14$/mo but even Google family does a lot of that for free
I’m sorry, but paying a third party subscription for a janky solution isn’t “incredible”.
Last I looked the kid just needed to learn how to vpn and it was over. Granted that was a few years ago. But I’ve not seen a software solution that there wasn’t a way around. Unless you get something like a Gab phone for them.
If the child ignores the parents and uses hacks to bypass parenting controls then no parenting control will ever help. It’s a tool and it must be based on existing parenting foundation not replace parenting.
If a child receives a smartphone the very minimum parents must do is establish trust in the social contract between the two parties: “I give you a phone and use a privacy respecting parental control if you agree to not mess with it and keep me in the loop”. If this simple base cannot be established then all parental control is moot and we failed already.
It’s really not that hard. I used to think these magement and conflict parts are the hard parts of parenting but it’s really not, the hard part is how much time/energy kids eat up to the point where it’s easy to be lazy and not pursue management solutions which are really simple.
From what I’ve seen on iOS it seems pretty tied down. You can set times when they can use specific apps, choose if they can edit contacts, have contact with people not in their contacts, make it so they can’t change their passcode, make it so they can’t log out of their account so they can’t bypass it, set up ask to buy or w.e and make it so they can’t install apps without your permission or get approvals sent to you for purchasing things. You can review all their screen times for individual apps without even picking up their device… And modify it from your device.
The only real bypass would be to factory reset the phone using a computer, but to get passed the activation lock they would need the password, and you could simply put the trust phone number as the parents number, thus the phone would be a brick and the parent would be notified when they attempted(and failed) to log back into the phone.
Now instead of asking to verify age, make the parents input the age bracket and you reinvented parental controls. The correct way to protect children.
Holy fuck this is bad
Only for privacy and anonymity, companies like Google and Microsoft will do fabulously however. Who donates to him I wonder.
Colorodo democrats have always been lousy. Here they are following texas and montana and tennessee, locking down the internet with dishonest arguments. No one in reality thinks this is about protecting kids, and it’s not the state’s place to do so, it’s the parents, it’s a violation of the 1st amendment to make adults expose their identities to people recording everything they do online and using it against them, and selling it to the government.
We need to repeal these bills, and we need a popular open source of model legislation to counter-act ALEC, that writes these bills and state lawmakers just fill in the blanks, after the united corporations give them a plausible excuse to and pay them off
It is the donors influencing all of them. Corrupt fucks
I actually disagree, because hardware-level verification is basically the most privacy-conscious method of accurately verifying a user’s age. Rather than fighting age verification entirely, I think it’s more productive to start assuming users are under 18 until proven otherwise… Age verification is inevitable, (if you don’t like it, tor is always an option), so we should at least figure out secure and private ways of doing so. Rather than resisting it outright, present them with secure and safe ways to do it. The internet is a dark place full of a lot of creeps, and services like Roblox have proven that they will enthusiastically become nesting grounds for predators unless they’re forced to add safeguards.
Sure, it’s easy to say “just monitor your kids” but no parent can be present 24/7. And in fact, oftentimes parents end up using screen time so they can do other things like chores, without needing to watch their kid. So the “just watch your kids” argument is diametrically opposed to the reality of why parents tend to rely on screens. Sometimes you just need 15 minutes to wash the dishes, without a kid demanding your constant attention. Even I, a child-free person, can understand that. And it becomes increasingly difficult to monitor them as they grow into teens and (reasonably) start expecting their own privacy.
I’ve been saying for a while now that we need to shift to hardware verification. Your device (or for shared devices like desktops, your user account) verifies your age once. And then it doesn’t need to do so again. All of the various sites and apps can simply ask your device “hey, is this user over {age}?” And the device responds with a simple true/false. You’re not needing to give your PII to every single site you visit, and the device isn’t needing to report back to the government every time an age verification check happens. It’s all done locally. The handshake could even be cryptographically secured, to prevent tech-savvy kids from MITM’ing the age check. And then protecting kids online is as simple as not age-verifying their device (and protecting your own password on shared devices). Hell, devices like cell phones could even have the age bracket set by the parent directly, since the phone would be on the parent’s phone bill. Similarly, parents could create child accounts on their shared devices, so kids can access age-appropriate content. It won’t stop kids from getting a prepaid phone, but it’ll at least prevent them from easily verifying that phone.
And it’s also the most elegant for the user experience. As far as the adult user is concerned, they never even see an “are you over 18” verification when they visit a porn site. They simply get access to the site. And kids simply get redirected back to Google’s home page (or more realistically, a page on the porn site saying “hey you failed the age check. If you’re over 18, be sure you do that with your device before trying again, because this is the only page you’ll be able to access until then. Or if you’re under 18, click here to return to where you were before” explanation) as soon as the age check fails.
Hardware age verification is basically the best of every world. You don’t rely on a third-party service to verify your PII (which will inevitably leak it, like Discord did). You don’t need to verify with every single individual site and service. The government doesn’t get a record of every site that asks for verification. And kids are automatically prevented from stumbling across adult content.
I agree that Colorado democrats are typically the “if we cozy up to the right they might stop being mean to us” candidates. I think this bill is a poor implementation, but it’s at least done under the right premise. If we could force hardware manufacturers and/or OSes to support native age verification, it would solve a lot of the current issues that we have.
You make some good points. If what you say is true, then most countries and states won’t adopt this style of verification because compromising everyone is the point. But they could probably set it up so it does compromise everyone at the hardware level.
Is it unrealistic to expect no age checks? We’ve lived through an entire internet without age checks, why is it different now? There aren’t more creeps, the only thing that’s different is our politicians feel emboldened to surrender us to tech. To use age checks as a trojan horse, to get AI behind the walls, to make us all social scores to be used secretly against us.
So I don’t see it as inevitable at all, especially not in the US, with the first amendment. Not in blue states, Colorodo is the only blue state doing any of this as far as I’ve heard either. Because they are conservative sell outs.
So I am on the side or rejecting age checks, and calling them out for what they are, surrendering us to tech for total surveillance, and replacing every politician that has supported it.
We’ve lived through an entire internet without age checks, why is it different now? There aren’t more creeps
I think the big difference is ease of access. For millennials growing up, accessing the internet basically required being at the family desktop in the middle of the living room. Phones weren’t connected to the internet, and cell phones weren’t even common yet.
And kids still got groomed, even when their only access to the internet was in a shared family space. And that began to get more prevalent as devices became smarter and more portable. Now, any 8 year old can get groomed in their own bedroom, while simply playing a video game.
It’s not more common at all, we are being played by the media for this very purpose, and there is no reason we should let them win, there’s no reason they should win, they are using dishonest arguments and a majority agree with us in an honest conversation. Let’s’ call them on their bullshit and stop them, then we can keep your less worse option for when something has to be done, and keep it to show how compromising us is the reason, as they refuse the methods that wouldn’t compromise us.
Account is created? Who said were making accounts for our operating systems
deleted by creator
Moving the responsibility to anyone but the parents.
But who will verify the parents’ age?
The IRS.
Just think: Without legislation like this, kids will be able to see people having sex! Thus, ending their lives. Not so different from staring into the eyes of Medusa!
The amount of children exposed to sex that have died—or suffered worse consequences like early onset conservatism—may have been zero so far but the dangers are clear! We must skip right over parental involvement in child rearing and go straight to the source of the problem: Computers.
Computers have been giving everyone access to too much information for too long! We must restrict it! The first step is to get an implementation that actually works to censor information—to save the children (wink wink)—then later, we will have the tools necessary to censor whatever we want!
When glorious dictator decides that information about trans-genic mice must be erased from the Internet, we shall have the power to do so!
We must protect little Billy from seeing tits, so he can keep laser focus on preparing for the next school shooting.
Hear, hear. When I was young my friends and I wanted to see the naked boobies but because the internet had not been invented we just couldn’t. It was impossible! Its not the kind of thing you find lying around!
Definitely not in ziplock bags hidden in the nearest forest to the school, put there by your older brother…
I would argue that early and excessive exposure to very misogynistic porn can be damaging to a child in that it can reinforce that misogyny and bad sexual patterns/ideas.
I would also argue that it is the job of the parent or guardian of said child to make sure the information they get online (or anywhere for that matter) is age-appropriate, and not the job of the state.
These are clearly laws that are either not well thought through or (probably more likely) intentionally limiting of every citizen’s privacy. I don’t think that even if the porn or bullying or whatever problem was as bad as they say it is that this would even be justified.
When my kids were young, but old enough that they may inadvertently stumble upon porn, I told them the truth. The truth that so few explain to their children. The truth that many adults don’t understand and many more completely forget.
Porn is fake.
It’s not real. The sounds? Acting. The breasts? Those are fake too. The perfect skin? Makeup (or airbrush).
Even “amateur” porn is fake! As soon as someone agrees to be filmed having sex it ceases to be real.
Also, let me get this straight: Your greatest fear from children being exposed to porn is they might begin to accept mysogyny‽ As in, you think porn is the most likely place kids will be exposed to it and somehow just nod their heads‽ “Oh wow, that’s totally sexist! But they’re having sex so it must be OK. I’ll try to be like that!” (Child nods head).
Or perhaps you think kids will be viewing so much porn—specifically, the mysogynistic kind—that it will somehow carve mysogyny into their minds?
This is so much like the beliefs of conservatives that try to ban books that mention LGBTQ people. Stop and think for a moment: How much porn did you view as a kid? How did that impact your life?
I seriously doubt it changed much. Unless, of course, you were reading Playboy for the articles.
The reasoning in Australia is not about sex but cyber bullying. It’s a big problem and certainly more difficult to refute than kids watching porn.
How the fuck does age gating prevent cyber bullying? That’s not an age issue, it’s an asshole issue.
Oh wait, because it’s not about age at all but identifying individuals who think differently when the regime. Whichever regime that is.
Yes! Because cyber bullying can only happen on platforms that are designed specifically for adults. By banning children from social networks, we will have completely eliminated the problem and totally not at all created much worse problems like potentially leaking the identities of millions of people and destroying the entire concept of privacy.
(Nods head vigorously)
For fuck’s sake.
What are parental controls?
Every single one of these places except for maybe fucking discord already had parental controls. Fucking Roblox had pretty good parental controls. Why did none of this laws just say “hey this has to be obvious to setup if the account age is set under this limit” if ot was about protecting kids? Because its not about protecting kids.
At this point, it’s probably cheaper and more effective to have proper sex education in schools…
At which age? And how?
Any age, really. You can introduce the topic gradually through learning about biology. Pollination of plants, for example. Or bird mating rituals. At primary school, we had an egg incubator where we could watch the live growth of a chicken fetus. Make it clinical and normal rather than this forbidden mysterious thing.
High schoolers should definitely be taught about safe sex and disease prevention. Also, consent and how to deal with unwanted attention, or even what to do after rape, dealing with shame etc. Heck, talk about masturbation and how it effects the body and mind.
It all needs to be laid out on the table so, in the future, these kids grow up into well informed adults and we can forget about data harvesting for surveillance.
