Illinois Mandates OS-Level Age Checks for Kids
Illinois Just Told Every Operating System to Start Reporting Your Kid's Age
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed HB5511, the Children's Online Social Media Safety Act, requiring device makers, OS providers, and app stores to implement age verification by 2028. Apps must request age brackets via API and enforce safety defaults for minors, with fines up to $50,000 per violation. Unlike Colorado and California, Illinois' law lacks an open-source exemption, drawing criticism from the Linux community.
Well, folks, we sure are getting close to someone's wet dream of having a dystopian hellscape where people don't have control over their computers, food, or water.
- nl
Background: Meta/Facebook, Google and Apple all support age verification. It gives them legal cover and for their ad platforms gives better data.
But Meta/FB have been strongly lobbying to make it required at the OS level, so they aren't responsible for it, whereas Google and Apple both want it to be an application responsibility.
I think the CA version of this ended up with a carve-out for open source? I can't recall the details.
- isdononthephone
What's most shocking to me is the willingness to comply on display here and elsewhere.
If the state proposes you stick a corncob up your rear, your initial response shouldn't be to ask if they prefer you use a rubber or wooden mallet to achieve compliance.
- deckiedan
From reading the article, it sounds like an enforced standardisation? Like, asking for account age bracket and then having a standard API to ask for it would be easy, right? Just write it to a root owned `~/.age-bracket` for each user or something (obviously something better).
It's a feature many apps implement in all kinds of ways already, especially games and social media stuff, so this, in theory, just makes it easier and consistent?
I'm against leaking our kids ages, and all the privacy and other concerns as much as anyone, but are we just getting overly angry too quickly on this one?
I get that it's a slippery slope too.
- rendaw
> The law also stipulates that all transmitted digital signals have to be encrypted.
I'm hoping there's nuance, but I'm surprised the article didn't go deeper on this too. ARP? ICMP? DHCP?
I can't actually load the bill to read it ATM.
- jmclnx
Curious how the various Linux distros and *BSD will handle this.
I expect the Corporate distros (RHEL, SUSE, Ubuntu) will be happy to get that personal info from its users. The other US based distros, maybe ban its use in Illinois ?
I expect one BSD OS will ignore it completely because they are outside of US jurisdiction. Not sure what the others can do. Of the others, one does have a decent amount of cash, the other ones are just squeaking by. So who knows what will happen with those.
- prmoustache
Wouldn't it have the opposite effect as intended? Making kids easier to target and undermine their safety?
- raincole
That's the correct way to do it. Age should be something reported by browser/os/hardware. Something similar to User-Agent.
I really hope this will end the whole third party age verification farce.
- Glyptodon
Are they expecting parents to be held responsible when their kid gets given a laptop and doesn't put in the right age? Or is it just a best effort thing that "parents who want to" can opt in to and which mostly serves as a shield for online platforms who wave the "but age API said" flag whenever something sketch happens?