FR version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.
Advertisement
Advertisement
⚡ Community Insights
Discussion Sentiment
50% Positive
Analyzed from 1711 words in the discussion.
Trending Topics
#open#age#source#more#user#free#data#repository#verification#application
Discussion (67 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
(b) "COVERED APPLICATION" DOES NOT INCLUDE:
(I) A SOFTWARE APPLICATION THAT DOES NOT PROCESS USERS' PERSONAL DATA; OR
(II) AN APPLICATION FROM A FREE, PUBLICLY AVAILABLE CODE REPOSITORY.
As someone that relies on third-party clients to get usable interfaces, if this gets widely adopted it would be great news. It would end the cat-and-mouse game from companies trying to force users onto first-party clients.
Does that mean I need to download the Android apk from a git repository? Would a clever lawyer be able to argue that the release section on GitHub is outside the repository and therefore not fulfilling this clause?
Would F-Droid still not be exempt because it is structured like a store and offers pre-built binaries?
It's also naive to believe that a fraction of open source in a companies pipeline would give them a free pass for everything.
On the other hand, I do appreciate that a possible unintended consequence of the out provided by (5)(b)(I) could be that PII (along with user generated content in general) becomes similarly radioactive to if the US had passed a GDPR equivalent. Either that or it's used as a justification for every single online service to require government ID in order to interact with it "because liability". Unfortunately I assume the latter is somewhat more likely at this point.
Also is it defined precisely what it means to "process users' personal data"?
Call your representatives. There is overwhelming demand for age gating social media (based on, honestly, good evidence). This will be implemented based on who calls in. If the status quo of technical people being hopelessly nihilistic continues, it will be written in the stupidest ways possible.
Can't say I agree. Notice that the proposed legislation isn't specific to social media. Rather it's explicitly advanced in support of Colorado's data privacy laws as they apply to minors.
There's evidence of lots of different issues, a few age related but most not. Adults certainly aren't immune to adversarial algorithms and dark patterns and the practical need for privacy isn't limited to children. It's more that we only seem to be able to achieve broad consensus to add additional regulations where it concerns children.
Nah. Can’t stop the money. Let make brain destroying scams and ad spam legal as long as you’re over 18.
"It's only for porn sites" to "its only for social media" to "its doesn't include open source projects" to "its only when you need an internet connection".
Edit: It looks like these laws will be enforced by app stores primarily, because they have more significant liability. I'm guessing they won't take the effort to provide exemptions to jurisdictions with the open source carveout unless it is common.
A colleague is hosting a virtual session on these and other similar bills around the world in two days https://maintainermonth.github.com/schedule/2026-05-22-age-a...
Or, now slightly out of date, read https://github.blog/news-insights/policy-news-and-insights/w... Added: I had not scrolled far enough on the front page, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48214215 is on this blog.
You have to add a couple fields or so to whatever gathers user info at account creation time. Personally I would find that non-trivial because nowadays those are usually GUIs and I haven't done any GUI stuff in ages. People who current write GUI apps for current OSes would have no problem.
Then you need to use that data in a way that lets you provide an API for apps to check the age bracket of the current user.
That part is easy, although some people will no doubt make it way more complicated than it needs to be (probably making it part of systemd or something ridiculous like that).
What I would do is create a file in some standardized location for each age bracket. These files would be protect so that ordinary users cannot open them for reading. When an account is set up, an access control list entry would be added to the appropriate files that allows that user to open the file for reading.
The API for apps to check if the user is in an age range they allow is to simply use the normal file access API to try to open the age bracket files corresponding to the age ranges they are checking for.
Whoever is behind this needs to be exposed, tarred, and feathered.
Meta's well know campaign was actually to make the app stores (and maybe OSes) responsible for age verification, not apps.
Google and Apple campaigned to make apps responsible for it.
Names matter. We saw ChatControl 1.0 get defeated, it probably didn't hurt that the name implied censorship.
Annoyed by the age gating, or feel it to be commercially burdensome? Open your source, and poof, no more mandate!
Just trying to build and maintain a cool thing, and share it with the world? Never mind the compliance burden.
(https://www.therage.co/tag/tornado-cash/)
I feel like age verification is important online - a copy of the real world. Check my ID before I go in the pub.
It feels like it's jumped all the way to positive-ID. Not just "of age" but become you are "First Last".
It's possible (right?) to assert age and is-human attributes w/o knowing which specific human at what specific age I am online?