Parental supervision required [LWN.net]

Parental supervision required

Posted Mar 11, 2026 21:50 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: Parental supervision required by rgmoore
Parent article: California's Digital Age Assurance Act and Linux distributions

I would have no issue is this were an optional feature of an OS. Then parents who want it could buy devices that support it (or enable it under settings), set up their kids' accounts, and all would be well. I wouldn't even mind if the law said something like "vendors that do not provide parental controls must prominently advertise that fact" or something.

Mandating age-bracket signals for every OS and every app? Uh... no. Just no.

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Parental supervision required

Posted Mar 12, 2026 2:47 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (1 responses)

> I would have no issue is this were an optional feature of an OS.

Of course this will always be "optional" somewhat because it will be at the very possible easy to defeat.

Android parental control is pretty hard to defeat today, but nothing stops a kid from buying a cheap used phone and setting it up from scratch while lying about their age. Yet parental control is still very useful because not every kid wants to go that far. As a parent you cannot be constantly watching over your kids' shoulder; that's what parental control is for.

Parental supervision required

Posted Mar 12, 2026 14:16 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Of course this will always be "optional" somewhat because it will be at the very possible easy to defeat.

The law does not make it optional and it imposes substantial fines on developers who don't include it. I know it will be effectively optional for end-users, but as a developer, I don't relish being on the hook for the fines if I don't include this in my software.