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Arizona Bill Requires Age Verification for All Apps

https://reclaimthenet.org/arizona-bill-would-require-id-checks-to-use-a-weather-app
70•bilsbie•1h ago

Comments

mothballed•1h ago
You don't need an ID of any sort to conceal carry a gun in AZ, but you need one for an app?
ranger_danger•1h ago
Only if the bill is voted on, approved and signed into law, which I would bet top dollar will never happen.
paxys•1h ago
The 2nd amendment is the only constitutionally-guaranteed right these days. And that too only if you have the correct political views.
malfist•1h ago
See Pretti
thinkingtoilet•55m ago
Can children buy guns in AZ? Look, I don't have an opinion here one way or the other, this almost certainly won't pass, but please at least try to argue in good faith.
mothballed•53m ago
Adults can buy a gun with no ID, no problem in AZ, fully legal. If you prefer that comparison, to an adult being carded to buy an app. I do feel I was making a good faith comment here.

--------- re: below due to throttling ---------------

>Adults can sell each other property with no ID and without the state getting involved, who knew.

Yes and it's legal. Should be for apps too. Headline says all apps.

--------------------------------------

>Is it legal to sell a gun to a child in Arizona? Or do you responsible for age verification? You continue to argue in bad faith.

It is legal to sell a gun to an adult in AZ without carding them and without doing "age verification" as described in the article. In comparison, this bill appears to make it illegal to sell an app to an adult without doing "age verification" as they've described. My comparison here is in good faith.

15155•50m ago
Adults can sell each other property with no ID and without the state getting involved, who knew.

If you mean at a store, a regulated vendor, you are incorrect.

thinkingtoilet•20m ago
Is it legal to sell a gun to a child in Arizona? Or do you responsible for age verification? You continue to argue in bad faith.
herf•1h ago
The days you move between categories can establish your birthdate, which is a lot of bits if you are doing this on an individual level (basically it's a great start at a supercookie).
PoisedProto•1h ago
This state fucking reeks.
advisedwang•1h ago
In my ideal world a law would:

1. Require device manufacturers to allow the device owner (which covers parents of minors' devices) to set policy for the device, including allow/blocklist for apps and sites, and allow/blocklists for content categories.

2. Require browsers to respect the device's policy for site allow/blocklist

3. Require browsers to set a certain header for allow/blocklist of content categories

4. Require websites to respect that header.

No need for age verification, no need for the government to decide what is/isn't allowed and for free you allow gamblers to prevent gambling content being shown to them etc.

---

This AZ law is frustrating because by targeting the app store it's actually taking a step towards my vision... but in a way that multiplies the harm of age verification instead of diminishing it.

varispeed•51m ago
But how corrupt politicians will make money having such reasonable policies?
autoexec•40m ago
The goal of these laws isn't to protect children, they just want to further surveillance and control of the population. While there are better ways to handle the "think of the children" concerns being invoked to justify these kinds of laws none of them would satisfy the legislators pushing them.
munk-a•35m ago
The problem is that we'd all blocklist advertisers and then they'd all cry. It's like how most mobile distros don't allow you to control relative app volume - if it might hurt ad bucks it can't be allowed.
advisedwang•29m ago
Good point. I originally thought this would just be content categories. Maybe that's all that's plausible.
drakythe•21m ago
All the people with money would lobby against content categories because then large mixed category sites like Reddit or Twitter would have to either separate their app, or have the ability to send additional content headers based on content tags per piece of content.

Legally, since pornography still doesn't have a true definition in the US, someone would have to define the categories as well, and then the hundred million free speech fights would begin.

Your vision is the correct one, in my opinion, "adult content" headers would be an easy lift for web technology. But the ad agencies and information agencies (often the same) are spending all of the money to make sure nothing like that happens.

handedness•25m ago
You say that like it's a bad thing.
LoganDark•21m ago
Remember: Advertisers cry with money.
jonhohle•16m ago
They’ve proven themselves to be bad actors with no moral compass. No different than street drug dealers, casinos, traffickers, or any other predatory industry. They should’ve regulated as such.

I don’t have any problem with old-timey “Dishsoap Brand Dishsoap sponsored this content. They want you to know that a dish isn’t clean unless it’s Dishsoap clean!” Type ads. Much beyond that should no longer be tolerated.

munk-a•19m ago
Heck no - I own a Samsung purely to continue to have access to Sound Assistant (to enable individual app volume control without rooting my device).

I just want everyone to be clear on why it isn't happening.

This is also the same reason why early versions of Android had incredibly fine-grained permission controls that was stripped out... can't have users blocking inter-app marketing key coordination after all.

b00ty4breakfast•15m ago
The ad industry underwrites the consumer tech market. That's why you can buy a SmartTV for like 100 bucks (or whatever, I haven't bought a tv in like 10 years knock-on-wood).
tamimio•26m ago
Who said it’s about children?! It’s about mass surveillance and building the proper infrastructure using your tax money, both digitally and legally to expand it later with ease. They start usually in a “test bed” states (like Arizona) or countries (like Australia) and evaluate, before fully implementing it.
gjsman-1000•25m ago
> Require browsers to respect the device's policy for site allow/blocklist

But then HN would still riot, because you would need to require all apps to be approved by a central authority (no unauthorized browsers) OR you need to lock down browser engines to those that respect the list somehow (maybe by killing JIT, limiting network connections).

I've learned long ago, as have politicians, there is zero solution that makes tech people happy... so move forward anyway, they'll always complain, you'll always complain, there is no tolerable solution but the status quo, which is also untenable.

iamnothere•20m ago
Funny that you understand what the problem would be, then you still insist that the authoritarian approach is the correct one. I’m sure people like you would gladly goose step into a 100% locked down surveillance hellscape, but the rest of us will keep working to ensure that this future never happens.
ipsi•18m ago
The biggest issue is, of course, (4) - how do you plan on enforcing that for sites that don't run out of your country of residence? Implicitly restrict access to only those sites in said country?
thewebguyd•13m ago
You don't enforce that, the owner (or the owner's parents, etc) of the device set that policy. MDMs can all already do this, there just needs to be a more user-friendly/consumer focused MDM to allow parents to control their kids devices. Just have it warn "Out of country sites may not follow your device policy, do you want to block them (Y/n)?"
traverseda•8m ago
Same way the US enforces any internet foreign policy. Make the credit card companies cut them off,make advertisers cut them off. US controls most of the ways they could make money.
thewebguyd•11m ago
It's not implemented like that because the true goal of these laws has nothing to do with protecting children or age verification, and instead have everything to do with completely eliminating anonymity/pseudo-anonymity online.

They want to ID everyone, and have all user generated content attributed to a known, identified individual.

nephihaha•59m ago
Who do they think they are? The UK?
Glyptodon•56m ago
One thing to keep in mind is that every session has crazy proposals in AZ. (Not clear how many of them get anywhere.)
autoexec•33m ago
It's good to take note of who exactly is pushing (and/or being bribed to push) the crazy. In the case of this monstrosity you can thank:

    Rep. Michael Way [R]
    Rep. Leo Biasiucci [R]
    Rep. Selina Bliss [R]
    Rep. Michael Carbone [R]
    Rep. Neal Carter [R]
    Rep. Lupe Diaz [R]
    Rep. Lisa Fink [R]
    Rep. Matt Gress [R]
    Rep. Chris Lopez [R]
    Rep. David Marshall [R]
    Rep. Quang Nguyen [R]
    Rep. James Taylor [R]
t1234s•45m ago
This is a bait-and-switch that will be used to roll in an internet ID for all people. I believe this is why M$ is trying to force people to log in to their local machines with a microsoft account.
tabs_or_spaces•35m ago
What would be interesting to know is which age verification services are popular these days?
gigel82•31m ago
It's clear these "age verification" bills will just keep coming and it's a losing battle to try and oppose each individually.

Instead (or rather in addition to) activism we should go at it from the other end and request the introduction of a verifiably independent authority and zero knowledge protocol that will deliver a cryptographically secure boolean bit (isOver18) with no way to correlate from either end the ID or which website the bit is used for.

The alternative is IDs get collected by all these horrendous privacy fiends and sold / leaked / monetized across the board, which sounds like a dystopian nightmare.

iamnothere•6m ago
I would propose a variant of RFC 3514, where adult-related packets have a specified bit in the IP header. Simpler and you can filter it at the firewall.
agentifysh•7m ago
Curious, what is driving this "you need permission to use the internet" bills suddenly ?

Really miss the old internet.

giraffe_lady•4m ago
It's right wing censorship plain and simple. Unfashionable to state this.

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