It's kinda convenient because every service needs to ask you for the age now because they can't serve under 13s in a lot of cases. Having it be a simple API would be a decent convenience, no?
If you connect it with a permission system where you can choose whether to provide this information (e.g. >13 as a bool or age as an integer or the birthday as a date) that can't be too bad I guess?
It WOULD be nice if it only got used appropriately. But in 2026 its just one more metric to narrow down your profile for advertisers. Wouldn't it be convenient if you could just opt-out of tracking with a convenient API like the literal "do not track" header in browsers? It exists, but none of the people who SHOULD use it pay it any attention except as, ironically, another metric used to track people.
Not to mention that computing is a global thing, and in order for this to be useful it would definitely have to be providing more specific information than just a bool. Maybe chats require 13+, but pornography requires 18+. Maybe those ages are different based on location. All advertisers would need to do is ping the various different checks to get your actual or at least very approximate age.
This kind of thing is a slippery slope, and its ripe for abuse by doxxers, advertisers and big brother himself. Burn this with fire. I'm totally in agreement with the others that suggest stuff like this should b just get banned from getting introduced and reintroduced constantly trying to sneak it in as a rider or hidden provision. The people DON'T want it.
It's a brute-force solution, for a problem with many simpler and limited solutions. This is being pushed so hard for it's intended side-effects. The goal is not to protect children, and it never has been. The goal is to eliminate anonymity on the internet
what's account creation on an esp32 running micropython? or an arduino? what happens when the law is expanded to require biometric enforcement of what the user reports?
Also, I don't want my OS to report my age range to every website I visit anyway.
It's forcing all OSs to do something that only a few should be doing. The correct way to do this is for the interested parties to form an association that does four things.
1. Creates a protocol with desired signals (country and a variable list of whatever others i.e. age,state) that clients (including browsers) CAN choose to use and forward.
2. Create an api OSs CAN implement to inform clients of those signals and if they can be overidden in the client. (Possibly even create an OS or service to run on OSs that implements it, parents can choose to install specific OS or service)
3. A open source server for governments to specify common classes of content and what to do when a specific SIGNAL (from the protocol in 1) is recieved (Serve content to SIGNAL group/serve content to everyone/never serve content). And what to do if content isn't in a class it recognizes(Serve content/not serve content). Association could also be extend it's duties to coordinate a list of types of content.
4. Maintain an authoritative list of servers by country so that those hosting services can reach the servers hosted in 3. So that webservers can visit those servers to find what they can serve if they wish to apply the law for that jurisdiction.
Horrible because it does codify less freedom and censorship. The advantages are that for a jurisdiction liability can fall on the right actor.
If you run a website/app you worry only if your in a jurisdiction that mandates you use the protocol and can easily geoblock crazy countries by using that signal and choose if a jurisdiction you want to deal with is worth the effort of coding for or whether you want to ignore that countries laws.
If you are a user you can choose to install the API or use an OS that implements it or an OS that spoofs it with only the liability of your jurisdiction. If you are a parent you can use an OS(or install a service) to implement it on your kids accounts.
If your an OS developer you can add functionality if desired/appropriate.
If you are a country you can specify what signals you use/require and can specify required signals (i.e. US may request the State signal so it can decide if it needs other signals to evaluate whether to serve "Social Media" content (i.e. age in the case of state=california)).
Not perfect but actually keeps punishment/enforcement to appropriate jurisdiction and means you can actually gracefully avoid liability for sites in broken jurisdictions rather than either kowtowing or being in breach. Also means it can be implemented in client if you don't want it on your OS or want the convenience of not being asked age without the ridiculous other stuff.
Would it be able to distinguish between violent or not? Would it be suffering or not? What exactly does it get in terms of signals? Does it even, "experience" anything? Is it even an "it"?
Your "violent or not" point is really interesting. Without a world model that includes a model of violence, whether that's instinctual or learned, it would not distinguish DOOM and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chex_Quest
Just because it’s legal and allowed doesn’t mean it’s not off putting.
Personally, I have no issue with them making their own internal fork, but then blogging about their thing without contributing it back leaves a little bad taste. If it’s so good, then contribute it back, since they benefited from the volunteers.
You can't have it both ways. As a library author choose MIT to encourage commercial usage because companies are afraid of GPL, but then complain that companies are actually using it in a MIT license way without contributing back.
You don’t have to agree that it’s off-putting, but if you’re “struggling to understand why” that demonstrates a serious lack of empathy and awareness of social dynamics.
> If they didn't violate the licence agreement then I'm struggling to understand why it's off putting
What? Who cares about the license agreement? Lawyers and bureaucrats maybe. The real issue with _any_ software project is whether it is meant to be a step toward a more livable and peaceful world or not. Sure, some people make guided missile software to murder people for profit, but that's just obviously antisocial behavior, regardless of how well it complies with license agreements.
If you put up a sign on your house saying "businesses, feel free to come use my driveway for whatever you want" and McDonald's sets up a restaurant there then you won't have much sympathy from me.
Well sure, maybe in this case the driveway owner hasn't been slighted, as they consented to the use, but that doesn't mean that suddenly some other person critiquing Mickey D's for factory farming and using prison-slave labor to make uniforms is misguided. You can't just say, "Well, I'm struggling to see why it's off-putting for McDonald's to use that driveway for their slavery-poison-food operation".
I checked mine, and it's still got family news, and some friends etc. There were 1-2 items of slop but not that bad...
I was more surprised by how I didn't even realise or hear about one of my cousins getting pregnant, another cousin of mine getting married, and another one passing away. I have been living abroad for 18 years though so fair enough but still feels a little bit odd.
yeah, so many software engineers are not verify "ai search results". Hey people, llm generated search results aren't reliable, might well have hallucinations. You have to verify anything they say.
My favourite was a search result based ai digest suggesting that during storms large cargo ships could survive for days until eventually 'disappearing'; Perplexed (intended), I followed the citation, the source actually said that the storms themselves would persist for days until disappearing.
That would be illegal. I doubt Shopify are to blame here, it's more likely one of the gazillion plugins that every shop uses was the vector. Either way, it's highly likely the shop owner is the data controller, from a legal perspective.
(Scenario: E-Mail address A with shop A, address B with shop B, then received a newsletter I did not subscribe to [already illegal] from shop B to address A. Only common data point: PayPal account.)
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