Headline is wrong, and you didn't read the article. There is no verification requirement. You are a bad HN poster and should feel bad.
All this does is require the user to select a non-verified age bracket on first boot. You can lie, just like porn sites today. I thought HNers wanted parents to govern their children's use of technology with these kinds of mechanisms.
> There's an obvious theme with lawmakers in California—they pass laws to regulate things they have zero clue about, add them to their achievement page, cheer for themselves, and declare, "There! I've made the world a better place."
There's an obvious theme with HN posters about politics—they make cheap drive-by comments about regulations they have zero clue about, based on articles they haven't actually read, cheer for themselves, and declare, "There! I've shown why I'm smarter than all these politics people."
> All this does is require the user to select a non-verified age bracket on first boot.
This is the age verification requirement which you rudely and incorrectly said doesn't exist. Nothing is done with the data (for now) but age is in fact verified on the assumption that the user doesn't lie.
Instead of lengthy condescending missives about the behavior of other users, you should instead write "I'm sorry for being negative and bringing down the quality of discussion."
Selecting an age choice from a drop down is in no way verification.
The original post was low effort flame baiting. There's an argument to be made that it should be ignored, but it's hard to say.
If it must be ignored, then it exists. The bill proposes age verification. You may think the measures employed are weak or trivial, and I would agree, but the bill proposes age verification.
You seem to be operating with an unreasonably weak definition of "verification". What this bill is requiring is that app stores or operating systems ask for age information. Verification would mean doing something to verify the accuracy of the information provided, not merely receiving a response to the question. "Age verification" is not a synonym for "having age-based restrictions".
The bill attempts to move age related signals from sending a scan of your passport to facebook to your own operating system attesting something.
Why do I keep proposing things but they fail to exist and I can't ignore my failures?
Ah we should be happy about a bad law because it's enforcement mechanism is weak? That's twice-bad: undermines the strength and meaning of Law, and aligns Law with the bad.
When the law and it's execution are undermined and weak, it becomes the cudgel of fickle changing power, i.e. it is applied selectively and it means nothing to people except when they are being beat in the head with it, at which point they only regret having been caught, successfully undermining the social and political fabric of a nation.
Having a bad law with a weak enforcement mechanism isn't quite the thing to be boasting about you seem to think it is.