Not such a bad idea [LWN.net]

Not such a bad idea

Posted Mar 13, 2026 9:08 UTC (Fri) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183)
In reply to: Not such a bad idea by farnz
Parent article: California's Digital Age Assurance Act and Linux distributions

If you squint a bit (read "OS" as "Android or iOS or TVOS" and "application" as "app from app store") then you could imagine that this is what they actually intended. They just didn't realise that the terms "operating system" and "application" mean something different to technical people than it does to the general public. It probably didn't occur to them that the services they are accessing are provided by systems that are also running an operating system with applications.

Android already provides an OS level API for determining if the current user is over 18, and apps can use that. Parental controls on devices is very common. Microsoft accounts also track this, it's just that on desktops its usage much less consistent.

I'm generally fairly optimistic about people's intentions. But I would expect a legislative process to do a better job of ensuring the texts are sane rather than expecting courts to fix them up later.

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Not such a bad idea

Posted Mar 13, 2026 9:35 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

The bit that's missing to convince me that it's just poorly drafted, and not intent, is protections for apps or sites that obey the law.

As written, it says that the developer can be penalised for not respecting this signal, but not that the developer is protected from consequences if they rely on this signal, but it's wrong. Indeed, it goes in the opposite direction - if the developer ought to know that the signal is wrong, they can be in trouble for relying on the signal over outside knowledge.

This is the worst possible outcome, IMO. It means that support for the signal is all stick, no carrot - not least because if you happen to know the signal is wrong, you can be penalised because you refused to let an adult access your service on the basis that the signal said they were under 13, and penalised because you let a child access your service on the basis that the signal said they were over 18.