The law as is written mainly targets social media platforms. For an OS to comply, all it needs to do is provide a field during account creation that records the user's date of birth as supplied by the user. There is no onus on the operator to confirm the veracity of this information, or even record it anywhere other than the local OS install itself. I think we're safe.
It's the start of a very slippery slope.
https://theintercept.com/2026/03/17/government-surveillance-...
Slippery slopes are a logical fallacy. Every single decision moving you down the slope is intentional. No sliding occurs if nothing actively pushes things down the slide.
Accordingly, it is never too late to lobby against these things.
Not if you're being pushed down the slope.
It's not an accident that this appeared within a month or two of the California one. I would bet good money that there's someone shopping this bill around.
If you do a frequency analysis of when these bills are being introduced, you'll notice an odd cluster internationally. Less charitably, they're coordinating / talking / being pushed by someone. More charitably, the "idea" is spreading.
It's a very odd idea to spread though. Age "verification" isn't something people are truly passionate about.
I suspect that, long-term, this is about surveillance. The powers that be would rather kill the golden genie that's general purpose compute than have teens and radical youth with compute.
This is going to get bad.
What you have overlooked is that this type of bill is being introduced in states that have the strongest data protection and privacy laws, such as California and Colorado, and now Illinois.
This is happening after several other states have introduced age verification laws that actually require age verification which typically involves uploading your identity documents to each website that is required to verify your age.
Apply Occam's razor. Which do you think is more likely?
1. These states that have a record of concern for privacy are now introducing an age verification law that relies entirely on the age that the administrator enters when configuring a user account in order to give a push down a slippery slope toward their nefarious secret goal...even though it would be a complete waste of time since as the examples from numerous other states shows it is not hard to pass a law that starts with making people upload their ID documents to any social media they want to use.
2. These states that have a record of concern for privacy are doing age verification in the way that many privacy advocates said it should be done when they were objecting to those bills in those other states that required uploading ID documents, because those states do not want to go down the slippery slop that those other state approaches risk going down. Namely, through parental controls on the devices that children use that put the parents in control and leave the government out of it (other than requiring that such controls be included with the OS).
> Slippery slopes are a logical fallacy
How is this a counter-argument? I often read this, as if there's some international trusted organization of logical thinkers that has approved inclusion of slippery slope to a list of logical fallacies that must never be invoked in a conversation.
Every single time five years later it turns out that the slope actually was slippery.
Everyone who rants about slippery slopes being a fallacy also loves the boiling frog analogy (which technically might be a bit closer to what they're going for).
I don't think their comment was meant as a counter-argument.
I read it as a call to action: things only go down the slope if they're pushed that way, so now is the time to try and prevent said push.
The problem with slippery slope is that every step can be defended as reasonable, but the overall result can't. Pointing out that something is means saying, I can't refute that single step and you know that, but I still am against it, because it is crucial to an harmful outcome that I really don't want. It argues against a policy by putting it into context.
Like gravity, there is some inexorably force drawing the state towards mass surveillance tools as it makes the job easier. Removing friction that fights against that force is real
> it is never too late to lobby against these things.
Putting aside the real possibility that the ability to lobby against certain things is already actively under attack, it isn't speech alone that is being addressed, it's political and cultural momentum.
Would you call it a fallacy that making incremental rather than sudden movement in a specific direction makes it politically easier to accomplish?
Calling everything a logical fallacy, is also a logical fallacy.
We have already seen the federal government use facial recognition data to create an app that tells ICE goons who's legal. We should not tolerate the government forcing more data tracking and privacy violations just because you are not "sliding" today.
> Slippery slopes are a logical fallacy. Every single decision moving you down the slope is intentional.
This poem should be updated for modern sensibilities:
First they came for the Communists
And I was like fuck those Commies
Because I was not a Communist
ditto
ditto
ditto
Then they came for me
And what the fuck bro this is totally not what I voted for
Several issues, one OS developers will likely use this to fully identify all users. Apple, Google and Microsoft would rather have legal identities tied to all activity, and this is an easy pretext.
Second, there's no certainty about how courts might interpret compliance. If the intent of the law is to positively identify minors, a user editable field may not be interpreted as sufficient to comply. We don't know what the safe level of identification will be outside of trying the law in court. Who wants to be on the bad side of that?
But you're effectively asking a third party application, running in a browser no less (i already understand that a browser exposes WAY too much os level information), to query the OS for age information.
Couldn't the OS just opt out of social media? I wouldn't mind promising that I won't engage in social media online.
Seems like a slippery slope. Now the infrastructure is there to ask apple, Google and microsoft to confirm identity with selfies over the internet.
That infrastructure is literally already there. It's done and live in some areas.
And how will you use a library computer?
There's a couple of ways that could go down.
One way is that you log in under a guest account and the guest account requires you to indicate your age. After your session is over, guest account logs out.
Another way is that the library has two sets of computers, ones set for adults, ones set for minors. You need access card to use computer and the librarian will give you the age-appropriate access card.
Another way is computers are set for restrictive (child) account by default. If you need adult access you have to ask librarian to unlock it.
It's been a while but as a 12 year old I completely broke the library system, installed cracked Starcraft, and refroze DeepFreeze afterwards.
Not to counteract your point, just as an anecdote I like remembering.