So, OS-level age-gating is going federal, which will effectively kill your rights to device ownership and what’s left of free speech and expression.
Enjoy your free speech while you still have it because this is a clear attempt to erase that right.
SOPA never died, it just went into hiding until time to reemerge, and now’s that time, this is basically SOPA in a save the kids trenchcoat.
Probably in the sense that you are basically at the mercy of a company that can shut you off of you computer, phone or (depending how far this goes) car.
Ok but isn’t it already the case anyway? How would age verification make it easier?
This is absolutely not the case, and has historically never BEEN the case.
Think of your computer like an old CD player. If you own the player and the CDs you can play them. Forever. NOBODY else gets a say. You can’t be stopped. That’s what ownership MEANS. It means YOURS. Not right now - not a license - not until you don’t get a security update - not “as long as you don’t try to play CDs we don’t like on it”… it means until either you or it physically DIE.
This is how EVERY SINGLE THING you own should be, and every single instance where that is NOT the case is one where something has been stolen from you - every bit as much as if I walked into your house, picked it up, and walked out with it. If my taking something from your house and walking out pisses you off, so should this. I have no idea how to make “I have paid money for something to then have it taken away from me” more anger inducing than it should already be.
It is not always the case today. For instance you can now use Linux on your computer with a local account called myaccount, not tied to your identity in any way. That, by the way, used to be the case with Windows too, until Microsoft killed local accounts not too long ago.
In an age-verification world, if a Linux distro wants to do age verification, you would have to connect to a third party that can certify your age somehow; I haven’t read enough on this to know for sure, but I can’t think of a way to do it without telling that third party who you are, uploading your id or similar privacy-unfriendly things.
Now, that third party has acquired a power on your ability to use your device that they don’t have today.
Then your OS will have to store your age (and hopefully only that) and share it with any of the installed apps that need to verify it, which opens its own can of worms