There's a major difference in who imposes the age gate. The parent, for their own children, or the website, for all children and adults. (In some cases, both types are wrong to use.)
The California Digital Age Assurance Act forces operating systems to collect age info. Adults cannot choose to withold both their own age info and the age info of their children. Older children in abusive parental situations cannot both get their own (standard) devices and withold their age info. I oppose such an implementation because a more privacy-respecting implementation is available: the government could mandate that operating systems provide device owners with an option to reveal their age info or their children's age info.
Anyway, TFA is not about any particular act. TFA is about the attitudes that lead toward both privacy-harming government-mandated age gates and toward privacy-harming or education-harming voluntary/informally-pressured age gates.
It seems what would be more productive would be for sites to publish metadata about the nature of the content. Then the access method could decide whether, or which of it to show.
Analogy: parent seeing that a movie is R rated and not letting their kid see it.
Age verification means that the content origin still has to rate its material for age suitability, and match that to the user. Asking them to do just one out of these two things is easier.
Doesn't work, what if both are on the same page such as a home feed? Analogy: the theater shows both R and PG movies, so a forcefield prevents kids entering the building on days where an R movie is shown at any time in any theater that day.
Digital "theaters" do not have the same limitations as physical theaters. The metadata can mark the page as R but include an additional indication that a PG filtered version of the page is available, via a different URL or a website setting that uses a cookie.
If the website doesn't want to make a filtered version than the metadata can mark the page as R with an additional indication that PG content is present on the page. The parent can manually select the PG content or someone will make parental controls that can automatically select or (like an ad blocker) filter for only the PG content.
You're right in that, setting aside future laws which might build off of the California Digital Age Assurance Act, the text of the law is compatible with privacy because adults or children can lie about the age info, perhaps with no legal consequences for doing so.
I was wrong to say:
Adults cannot choose to withold both their own age info and the age info of their children. Older children in abusive parental situations cannot both get their own (standard) devices and withold their age info.
I fix both sentences by adding to the end of each one "unless they lie about the age info".
The other parts of my previous comment remain unchanged so far:
The California Digital Age Assurance Act forces operating systems to collect age info.
[...]
I oppose such an implementation because a more privacy-respecting implementation is available: the government could mandate that operating systems provide device owners with an option to reveal their age info or their children's age info.
Are the proponents of the California Digital Age Assurance Act satisfied with the law despite the elephant-shaped "they can select any age they want to" loophole? If not, then the spirit of the law does not respect privacy. If yes, I would still oppose the law. I want both the text and spirit of the law to respect privacy, not merely be compatible with privacy. An illustrative example: even if there were a technology or magic that literally prevented law enforcement from searching a house without a warrant, I would still want the legal system to have a law (in the constitution, specifically) recognizing a right to have one's house not be searched by the government without a warrant.
Comments
There's a major difference in who imposes the age gate. The parent, for their own children, or the website, for all children and adults. (In some cases, both types are wrong to use.)
The Digital Age Assurance Act is about parents age-gating their own children.
The California Digital Age Assurance Act forces operating systems to collect age info. Adults cannot choose to withold both their own age info and the age info of their children. Older children in abusive parental situations cannot both get their own (standard) devices and withold their age info. I oppose such an implementation because a more privacy-respecting implementation is available: the government could mandate that operating systems provide device owners with an option to reveal their age info or their children's age info.
Anyway, TFA is not about any particular act. TFA is about the attitudes that lead toward both privacy-harming government-mandated age gates and toward privacy-harming or education-harming voluntary/informally-pressured age gates.
It seems what would be more productive would be for sites to publish metadata about the nature of the content. Then the access method could decide whether, or which of it to show.
Analogy: parent seeing that a movie is R rated and not letting their kid see it.
Age verification means that the content origin still has to rate its material for age suitability, and match that to the user. Asking them to do just one out of these two things is easier.
Doesn't work, what if both are on the same page such as a home feed? Analogy: the theater shows both R and PG movies, so a forcefield prevents kids entering the building on days where an R movie is shown at any time in any theater that day.
Digital "theaters" do not have the same limitations as physical theaters. The metadata can mark the page as R but include an additional indication that a PG filtered version of the page is available, via a different URL or a website setting that uses a cookie.
If the website doesn't want to make a filtered version than the metadata can mark the page as R with an additional indication that PG content is present on the page. The parent can manually select the PG content or someone will make parental controls that can automatically select or (like an ad blocker) filter for only the PG content.
Yes they can, actually, they can select any age they want to.
You're right in that, setting aside future laws which might build off of the California Digital Age Assurance Act, the text of the law is compatible with privacy because adults or children can lie about the age info, perhaps with no legal consequences for doing so.
I was wrong to say:
I fix both sentences by adding to the end of each one "unless they lie about the age info".
The other parts of my previous comment remain unchanged so far:
[...]
Are the proponents of the California Digital Age Assurance Act satisfied with the law despite the elephant-shaped "they can select any age they want to" loophole? If not, then the spirit of the law does not respect privacy. If yes, I would still oppose the law. I want both the text and spirit of the law to respect privacy, not merely be compatible with privacy. An illustrative example: even if there were a technology or magic that literally prevented law enforcement from searching a house without a warrant, I would still want the legal system to have a law (in the constitution, specifically) recognizing a right to have one's house not be searched by the government without a warrant.