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1•runrunlobster•35m ago•2 comments
Open in hackernews

Illinois Just Passed a Law That Puts Linux on the Hook for Age Verification

https://linuxstans.com/illinois-hb5511-operating-system-age-verification/
90•speckx•1h ago

Comments

LPisGood•33m ago
What does that mean, practically? The person who installed linux on that particular device is liable?

>no algorithmic feeds for minors by default

Any choice of what content to display is an algorithm. Maybe they want a simple or easily explainable algorithm?

stevenalowe•28m ago
"Illinois now requires operating system providers, open source projects included, to build age verification by 2028"

however

"nothing in the bill has teeth against someone with no business presence in Illinois"

gh02t•11m ago
Companies like Red Hat/IBM operate in Illinois and for better or worse have controlling interests in Linux and across open source projects pretty broadly. Wouldn't they be forced to include the capability in their products, which then percolate out to everyone just by network effects?
FuckButtons•6m ago
finally the die hard systemd haters will have an actually valid point.
monocasa•28m ago
That part hasn't really been decided since it's a regulatory question.

Basically the bill defines

> "Operating system provider" means a commercial or non-profit entity that controls the Internet-enabled device's operating system, including the design, programming, or supply of operating systems for the Internet-enabled devices.

Which is an extremely broad definition that could be interpreted in a whole bunch of ways.

koutakun•23m ago
Presumably this means no targeting the user's preferences and just showing everything by newest/most liked.
harvey9•23m ago
They want an explanation of what an algorithm is. The world is full of people using words they don't understand and sometimes of them work in legislatures.
duped•20m ago
The text of the bill is here: https://ilga.gov/Legislation/BillStatus/FullText?GAID=18&Doc.... There's about 3.5 pages of text defining this.

The relevant text doesn't call it an "algorithmic feed" for what it's worth. They define an "addictive" feed and it's essentially any kind of personalized recommendation.

> "Addictive feed" means a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, or a portion thereof, in which multiple pieces of media generated or shared by users of a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, either concurrently or sequentially, are recommended, selected, or prioritized for display to a user based, in whole or in part, on information associated with the user or the user's device, unless any of the following conditions are met.

kube-system•3m ago
It seems that it mostly bans behavior-based personalization that is opaque to the user. It seems to allow for several types of personalization where the user has agency.
kube-system•15m ago
> Any choice of what content to display is an algorithm. Maybe they want a simple or easily explainable algorithm?

That's a paraphrasing of what law says. The law is more clearly defined:

> "Addictive feed" means a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, or a portion thereof, in which multiple pieces of media generated or shared by users of a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, either concurrently or sequentially, are recommended, selected, or prioritized for display to a user based, in whole or in part, on information associated with the user or the user's device, unless any of the following conditions are met: (1) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is based on information that is not persistently associated with the user's device and does not concern the user's previous interactions with media generated or shared by other users; (2) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is based on data controlled by user-selected privacy or accessibility settings or technical information concerning the user's device; (3) the user expressly and unambiguously requested the specific media, media by the author, creator, or poster of media the user has subscribed to, or media shared by users to a page or group the user has subscribed to, provided that the media is not recommended, selected, or prioritized for display based, in whole or in part, on other information that is not permissible under this definition; (4) the user expressly and unambiguously requested the specific media by a specific author, creator, or poster of media the user has subscribed to, or media shared by users to a page or group the user has subscribed to as described by paragraph (3), be blocked, prioritized, or deprioritized for display, provided that the media is not recommended, selected, or prioritized based, in whole or in part, on other information associated with the user or the user's device that is not permissible under this definition; (5) the media is direct and private communication between users; (6) the media is recommended, selected, or prioritized only in response to a specific search inquiry by the user; (7) the media that is recommended, selected, or prioritized for display is exclusively next in a preexisting sequence from the same author, creator, poster, or source; or (8) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is necessary to comply with the provisions of this Act. "Addictive social media platform" means a covered platform that offers users or provides users with an addictive feed as a part of the service provided by that website, online service, online application, or mobile application.

Marsymars•13m ago
> Any choice of what content to display is an algorithm.

You could argue about the language and the meaning of "algorithm", but for practical purposes I'd consider a manually-curated feed to be non-algorithmic.

delecti•10m ago
> Any choice of what content to display is an algorithm. Maybe they want a simple or easily explainable algorithm?

Phrases can have meanings beyond just a naive combination of the words in them. And indeed "algorithmic feed" in the bill means what what we all understand that term to mean when we aren't paralyzed by pedantry.

> Under the law, [...] these users will only be shown content they request or search for or that is posted by a creator or friend they follow.

You may disagree with the motivation behind the bill, but you do the discussion a disservice to assume the people writing it are incompetent enough to not define their terms.

spullara•4m ago
Algorithmic feeds are just search algorithms based on what the user is asking to see with their behavior.
nacozarina•32m ago
as Linus would say, that is a userland issue, not a Linux issue
wormius•30m ago
as Stallman would say, that is a userland issue not a GNU/Linux issue ;P
guerrilla•27m ago
Incorrect. GNU/Linux includes userland while Linux doesn't.
ux266478•15m ago
However, unlike GNU plus Linux plus systemd plus FreeDesktop.org, it does not constitute a usable Operating System for a Desktop computer per se. Merely having a notion of userland isn't sufficient! Is age verification to be placed within the coreutils? I think not! Hyperfocusing on putting the API in systemd should be sufficient....

Pay no heed to anyone saying anything different, regulators!

tomrod•32m ago
I'm surprised we're not seeing heaps of lawsuits here. Age verification in general violates privacy.
NavinF•28m ago
lawsuits for what? AFAIK you have no right to privacy in this sense
monocasa•20m ago
Legislating that all complex computing devices must give out your birthday (technically a "signal" of which bucket you're in, but sites are absolutely going to keep track of which bucket you where in, keep asking, and see when it changes).

It's constitutional case law that there's an implicit right to privacy in the constitution. I don't see a law that you must wear a band with your birthday out in public passing muster based on that. I don't see why existing in cyberspace changes the inherent privacy question, and in fact makes it more meaningful given ease of automation.

kelseyfrog•28m ago
> I'm surprised we're not seeing heaps of lawsuits here.

Why do you think that is?

cogman10•28m ago
You don't have a right to privacy. It should be covered under the 9th amendment, but the supreme court generally just ignores that amendment.
2OEH8eoCRo0•31m ago
So that includes Android? What about the Unix of iOS?

You can also thank big tech for this because they'll do anything to not verify age on their platforms they want to push it onto devices and OSes.

badgersnake•31m ago
It’s bonkers that 50 states all decide to make their own set of rules for this. Maybe talk to each other?
guerrilla•25m ago
Fuck that. Competition and diversity is way better. Anyine who fucks up can just change their laws later.
SoftTalker•22m ago
It's a feature that states can (mostly) decide for themselves what laws they want to live under.
thrownaway561•31m ago
I don't understand how you are actually going to be able to enforce this when Linux is not "owned" by a single company.

Also how is that fine going to work if you don't have any children?

roundabout-host•30m ago
Does it even ask for verification? If not, the problem with it is that it seems to require the OS provider (not the local installation) to store the age.
warkdarrior•28m ago
No, no verification. From the post:

> "Nothing in the bill requires a passport scan or a face scan at setup. It’s self-declared, the same way most apps ask your birthday today, just centralized once at the OS level instead of repeated app by app."

cptroot•29m ago
Declaration, not verification
wartywhoa23•29m ago
One doesn't make Linus disappear for some time and then arrive apologizing for stubborness and embracing the imposed CoC just for the heck of it.
engzaanin•28m ago
The interesting part here is enforcement. Linux isn't controlled by a single vendor, so I'm not sure who the law would actually target.
edwinjm•18m ago
A Linux distribution is
twothreeone•7m ago
So presumably the next step is they move their servers out of the US and then DA's target the Linux Foundation directly (e.g., coerce the kernel to take a change by some Meta engineers that "attests" a device when said option is compiled in, then force it as default on.. so in Debian you'd get an "Illinois"-kernel variant).

At which point the only move is to relocate the foundation to another country, which will then of course be hit by tariffs and sanctions.

kube-system•27m ago
The law: https://www.ilga.gov/documents/legislation/publicacts/104/10...
Aurornis•26m ago
Not that I'm condoning it, but this law requires self-declaration, not verification. It might sound pedantic but the practical difference is huge.

Self-declaration means that the system asks the user to declare if they are a minor. Nothing is verified.

Age verification typically means a system which checks ID or has other enforcement measures to try to verify age.

weaksauce•24m ago
that is the start of a lot of bills like this... they really only ever increase in scope and invasiveness.
bryanlarsen•12m ago
On the contrary in my experience once a legislature passes a bill to "fix" a particular problem they consider it fixed and don't update it for at least 20 years.
paimapi•8m ago
it depends on whether or not there's someone who sees it as a crusade (rare), sees it as a way to get political clout (very common) and/or is getting a lot of lobbying money (extremely common [1]). see, for eg, the anti-trans bills that are being passed

this is the same rhetorical and political strategy, that there are 'dangerous' people who will exploit your children so please vote for me, the person who cares the most about children and will go after the 'dangerous' people

[1] https://themarkup.org/privacy/2021/04/15/big-tech-is-pushing...

skinfaxi•21m ago
dvrp•24m ago
“You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.”
bnjms•24m ago
So in red states porn is being used, and in blue states TikTok and Instagram are being used. Is anyone tracking who is behind the concerted efforts here? For example, which organizations, executives, lobbyists and politicians are valid and responsible parties?
skinfaxi•19m ago
This seems to have more information. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_b...
twothreeone•14m ago
TL;DR: They claim it's Meta (which yeah it would make a lot of sense).
progval•10m ago
The Reddit post you linked to was hallucinated by Claude, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659552

Their website (now offline) also added this page since I posted that comment: https://web.archive.org/web/20260411112604/https://tboteproj... where they claim their website is under "surveillance" because it got a few thousand requests from Google Cloud et al, most of them to a single page. This shows how low their standards are.

thewebguyd•15m ago
Meta is one of the biggest ones pushing for this, because they don't want to be accountable so these types of laws pass the buck onto the delivery platforms (Apple, Google, other OSes)

Meta is then funding/lobbying alongside a bunch of other conservative groups like Heritage Action, and the digital childhood alliance (also made up of a ton of other conservative lobbying groups)

largehotcoffee•24m ago
Unpopular opinion, but this is objectively better than having to upload your ID to every random website that requires an age check (if that's what the end result is).
izzydata•20m ago
In the sense that a website could just ask your OS if you are over a certain age and that age was self declared? That seems fine to me, but why can't the websites just ask me for my self declared age?

That's how things used to be and that makes more sense in my opinion because an OS isn't the thing displaying content. It just run whatever it is told to run.

tripleee•19m ago
Dystopian nightmares are built from tiny "oh, that's not too bad, just a little step further. Not much different from what we already have"
skinfaxi•16m ago
It started with showing ID at airports and now we have to take off our shoes. Slippery slope is the actual modus operandi of government.
AnimalMuppet•10m ago
That argument might work better if just recently we no longer have to take off our shoes.
robgibbons•12m ago
You can personally avoid those websites, if you philosophically disagree with those terms. Good luck avoiding the operating system.
HoldOnAMinute•23m ago
Backdoor way to get data centers out of your state.
InitialLastName•21m ago
Since TFA can't be bothered, here's the text of the actual bill: https://my.ilga.gov/Legislation/BillStatus/FullText?GAID=18&...
shevy-java•17m ago
I predicted this would happen. Others also predicted this would happen.

I think now even the last person realises that this has nothing to do with age "verification". They simply hate us for our freedom. And it is clearly a move coordinated by private business here; their lobbyists are acting. This is also why it is the same law essentially in so many different countries at the same time. It is quite fascinating to watch, actually. People used to say "conspiracy nut!" - well, the facts are too clear now. That's no longer a conspiracy.

kej•12m ago
I feel like all of these laws are being designed backwards. Content providers, like MPAA films, should have to identify what sort of content they are providing. Then I can give my kids a device configured to allow some or all of that at my discretion.

Requiring my kids' devices to advertise their age (or their age "bucket", as if that was a meaningful difference) to protect them is not doing me or my kids any favors.

nickff•5m ago
Having the ability to identify who is watching or saying what on the internet would be immensely useful to the government; the justifications are really meaningless.

Anti-money-laundering is a comparable field, as all the AML regulations and laws are ineffective at identifying money launderers, but they're wonderful for verifying (auditing and prosecuting) tax compliance.

Bender•10m ago
These laws still do not sit well with me. This is just going to create endless lawsuits. In my opinion the safer choice would be to avoid doing anything with current teens, that's just a non starter. Instead think of sliding windows of time and sandbox small children on a child account that if all goes well will one day be a teen and then an adult. They will thank you when they are an adult for looking out for them when they were too young to consent to the data leaked by these laws.

- For small children set an RTA header (previous discussions) [1] for any URL that may potentially contain content not appropriate for small children. Give site operators 1 year to implement this. Not counting QA and change control this takes minutes.

- Require app and device vendors to create a properly sand-boxed child account. Pen test it but it does not have to be perfect. This is for small children and default installed applications. If the child visits a URL that contains the RTA header then trigger parental controls. It is entirely up to the parent when that child is ready for mature content. How is this enforced? Same way as any other parenting issue. If there is an incident that involves law enforcement, then social services can investigate and determine if negligence was occurring. When the child is mentally mature enough to deal with all the crap that is the internet their account is converted to an adult account. If the parent is giving the child an adult account before they are ready then the parent(s) go to mandatory parental training.

- Set the laws to be active for any small child that would be under 13 as of the year 2034. Presto! One need not try to confine teens. When these small children are teens they will either be used to the sandbox account or the parent may have converted the account to adult.

As a side note all public and private schools should be legislated to have classes on dealing with all the crap the internet has to offer. Bullies, Cry-bullies, Trolls, Groomers, Scammers, Devious companies, Astroturfers, Gas Lighters, Propagandists and so on.

[1] - https://nochan.net/b/Internet-Crap/20230829-Think-Of-The-Chi...

JumpCrisscross•9m ago
Just make it a liability for social media companies. Let them figure it out. This is how we age gate everything else.
afspear•10m ago
Is being concerned that this article is obviously AI slop matter anymore?
corsendonk•10m ago
It's none of your business. Go pound sand.
mutagenysis•9m ago
Lets check how that state votes. "Solid Democrat". Yep.
WalterGR•9m ago
2 days ago, 123 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49228350
Think of it like a foot in the door.
shevy-java•17m ago
I don't see the argument here. You can easily adjust the law to force verification.

You seem to assume that "this is now final, nothing will change after that". Why would you assume this to be the case?

xboxnolifes•14m ago
The slope is only slippery if the change in question makes it easier for future changes to be bad. Otherwise you're only arguing for no changes to ever be made. Does this law make forced verification easier than if this law didn't exist?
zamadatix•11m ago
Seems so - it builds in the verification infrastructure requirement, making it dead simple to change whether it is opt in or opt out at any time.

It's actually pretty hard not to have a change be part of a slippery slope. It requires including blocks for further behavior as any subset implementation is hard to sell as not being a slippery slope path otherwise.

3form•11m ago
Potentially. The existence of the law exemplifies the idea the law is there to protect someone; all you need then to upgrade it is to argue that the current method is insufficient protection. Spirit of the law has been established - letter of the law will follow.
MrJohz•5m ago
But they could also just implement verification now, which many governments are trying to do. The idea that you shouldn't let a government do one thing because they might do another thing is flawed if they could already do the other thing.

The danger of a slippery slope comes when one change enables the next change - for example, a law mandating certain kinds of data collection enables a future decision to discriminate or control based on the collected data. But in this case, no data is being collected, there's no step happening here that enables a more dangerous later step.

If anything, I'd argue this makes it harder to implement more invasive measures later, because rather than arguing that some form of age control is necessary, Illinois will specifically need to argue that age verification is necessary over the existing anonymous system. That's harder than saying "there is no protection for children right now, age verification is the only way forward".

mosura•14m ago
It is a technical ratchet. Once you accept part of the implementation it will never be undone, more will be added.
AnimalMuppet•13m ago
Stronger: Once you accept their right to ask, then you open the door to their right to a truthful answer, and thus to a verified answer.
singpolyma3•11m ago
Literally a slippery slope argument
manphone•10m ago
Only if it was not something they constantly already do.
eterm•9m ago
Sometimes when you see your opponents getting out a ramp and a barrel of lube, you can call it a slippery slope.
boredatoms•9m ago
Slippery slope actually works though.

Makes no sense to treat it like some unwelcome argument

unethical_ban•6m ago
"Slippery slope" is a term like "conspiracy theory". Tarnished by overuse, often misapplied, but they absolutely exist.
guywithahat•15m ago
I used to run a parental controls startup and after talking to lots of parents, I can tell you this sentiment is shared among most parents. Parents on both sides of the isle think they're going to keep their teenagers off the internet forever, I had parents look me straight in the face and say their child wouldn't be allowed online until she was 16.

Parents aren't interested in the nuance of good and bad guys, they see the internet, think it's too much trouble to keep around, and want it blocked. I suspect politicians are just mimicking this sentiment after talking to thousands of parents

fsniper•7m ago
Perhaps they shouldn't be allowed to school until 16? School and other kids can expose theirs to many detrimental things.
shevy-java•14m ago
You raise an interesting point in the first sentence. It might be that age sniffing could actually violate the US constitution.

As for lobbyists: I think we can probably determine the key lobbyists, e. g. if we map the data and names. And ideally also the money given to them. Ultimately they are faceless though, because corruption is easily exchangeable. The issue here is systemic though. The US "democracy" no longer exists due to that corruption. It is not rule by the people but rule by bribery.

regularfry•11m ago
Making a stupid idea more convenient does not make it less stupid.
derkades•7m ago
Instead of the client sending the user's age to the server, why not make the server send a minimum age to the client? The client is welcome to block content without disclosing personal information to the server. This is as secure as sending an unverified age to the servet.