That's what you want, but you may not get it.
What you might get instead is:
- no service unless you "prove" you're over 18
- privacy-invasive age proof
- no service at all if you're in CA
And, the user experience will be restricted (no commenting, video uploads, and who knows what "safe" means).
There are several web forums I’ve visited that allow anonymous accounts to be created and allow commenting. They are well-moderated. Some were also very niche and run by like one person. Making a law like this is a one-way street that could potentially destroy that capability, some of the best parts of the web.
> It is virtually impossible to identify and segment your user base and apply the bill's protections to only those you can 100% confirm are under 18.
Doing this might be(come) possible by completely destroying anonymous web browsing.
How? Idk and it wasn't mentioned, but you could imagine Credit card checking, Electronic IDs, post-ident maybe backed into the browser for a one-click identification.
Though it's all a hypothetical on unwanted side-effects. I don't think it too concerning as people value random websites less than their personal data and I'd expect websites using the "everyone is a child" approach to have the advantage.
That's debatable. People would balk at the friction and invasiveness of typing in their cc details on every search result, but an automatic tool integrated into a browser could see wide adoption. Virtually everyone just accepts whatever privacy policy and cookie notice is blocking the content on random websites.
No more firing up incognito mode to view some YouTube video you’d rather not feed your algorithm. No more browsing the ‘other side’ on twitter privately. No googling for information about embarrassing rashes without Google and webmd knowing exactly who you are.
This is not cool.
I agree with you on principal and don’t mean to sound dismissive but they’re all doing this already.
When I’m trying to look at anything on Twitter it shortly launches a full screen thing demanding I login (I refuse to sign up).
YouTube requires sign-in for age restricted content.
Google, most annoyingly, makes me complete several captchas for using incognito+private relay
Instagram won’t open in safari with incognito+private relay; I have a throwaway account for just looking at the odd link someone sends me in a meme group-chat; I have to use another browser.
I often have to replace “www.whatever.reddit” to “old.reddit” on my phone to be able to see an “age restricted” post, most of the time they aren’t anything a kid shouldn’t be see either, not sure how they’re determining that.
Presumably the author is assuming that websites would prefer to offer no functionality at all to age-unverified visitors than to offer the child experience. In such a world, every website would presumably require you to login (to prove your age) before offering even basic functionality.
With such a system, private/incognito browsing would be obsolete.
I mean, 1. if respecting user privacy means you actually have to shut your doors, well... bye. The web is probably a better place without such a site. And, 2. that's almost never the case. As soon as the regulation takes effect, companies all of a sudden find ways to comply and go about their business making money. It's all knee-jerk complaining.
I hope your comment was just being sarcastic.
which website doesn't? I can only imagine the high quality discussions that such a site encourages.
Says who? You just made up a random scenario.
In theory anonymous and instantaneous commenting is an ideal of free speech. In practice it repeatably seems to just become wasteland.
It's kinda the same reason the site is accessible in Germany/UK/whatever despite violating every hate speech law in there jurisdiction
Privacy already doesn't exist online. And discussion and commenting (anonymous or otherwise) have been absolute net negatives for "free and open" society.
Many of us don't want to be treated like children, much less have the government mandate that we treat everyone has children. We already have a mechanism for protecting children and filtering what they are exposed to, this mechanism is called parents. If this mechanism is broken, then we should work on ways to fix the mechanism instead of deciding that we will simply treat everyone as children and absolve parents from their parental responsibilities.
I suspect this will be used for selective political censorship.
The truth is that there is no such dichotomy. Ads do not need tracking/"personalization", and if tracking/data collection were made illegal, there would be no commercial advantage for the scummiest "ad tech" company.
(I'm not commenting on the California legislation, but just generally in response to parent)
Further, business do not want to be in charge of validating PII information, nor do they want to place roadblocks to casual users. The darn cookies and GDPR popups are already annoying enough. Are we trying to make the web unusable?
This is just insanity, and will lead to a bunch of ecommerce businesses and website companies leaving CA. ie, no one will comply unless they have absolutely zero other choices.
the majority of the bill is restrictions on collecting personal information in general
I'm not sure most ecommerce sites would meet the criteria as something marketed and targeted at children
I agree that 'likely visited by children' is nebulous but this seems to be heavily aimed at live streaming/recording services(twitch, tiktok .. etc), large public social forums (discord) and things like youtube kids
Making a person/business predict someone's age over the internet is just absurd... and fallible... so you will have verify identity.
I see your point, but smacking down a state for having different principles is a violation of the principles of federalism. If federalism means anything, it includes the freedom for a state to make its own experiments in democracy as long as they don't cross enumerated federal powers.
If this bill treats people from different states differently then it is vulnerable to the commerce clause, but that isn't clearly the case.
California regulation has affected people outside of the state since long before the internet. If that's enough to toss out federalist principles and to handcuff a state beyond constitutional justification, then federalism is quite weak.
Your argument seems to be that federalism should be ignored here in order to protect the integrity of federalism. I'm not understanding how that works.
BTW, I very much disagree with California's direction here. I moved out of the state after growing up and living there for 37 years because of this kind of policy making. But as a federalist I value their independence more than their correctness.
Quite the opposite. This is exactly the definition of federalism.
Here the key question regarding interstate commerce should be about who must comply with this law (if it becomes law). California wants it to be "businesses" with a "nexus" in California, but that seems like rather expansive. But finding a more limited way to specify "California businesses" that isn't also de-fanged is very difficult in today's world.
Still, now, suppose that Texas or Florida had conflicting laws? Then what?
A business that provides an online service, product, or feature likely to be accessed by children.
"Child" or "children," unless otherwise specified, means a consumer or consumers who is are under 18 years of age.
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
(4) “Likely to be accessed by children” means it is reasonable to expect, based on the following indicators, that the online service, product, or feature would be accessed by children:
(A) The online service, product, or feature is directed to children as defined by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (15 U.S.C. Sec. 6501 et seq.).
(B) The online service, product, or feature is determined, based on competent and reliable evidence regarding audience composition, to be routinely accessed by a significant number of children.
(C) An online service, product, or feature with advertisements marketed to children.
(D) An online service, product, or feature that is substantially similar or the same as an online service, product, or feature subject to subparagraph (B).
(E) An online service, product, or feature that has design elements that are known to be of interest to children, including, but not limited to, games, cartoons, music, and celebrities who appeal to children.
(F) A significant amount of the audience of the online service, product, or feature is determined, based on internal company research, to be children.
None-the-less, the above applies to all websites unless you want to chance being a test case (and no one does). Child is defined as anyone from 0-18 years old, which is an incredibly broad category.
Ever once talk about music on your blog? Talk about food? Cars? Games? Math? School? Clothing? Programming? TV Shows? Upcoming movies? Flying airplanes?
All of these things are of interest to folks 18 and under too... you don't have to have a blog about Blue's Clues to fall under this deliberately vague, ultra-wide net.
Don't get me wrong, this looks like a garbage law and I truly hope every California resident is writing or calling their elected representatives to complain about it in specific and excruciating detail, but acting like every nerd's low traffic weblog is putting them at risk of civil action from the State of California strikes me as somewhat hyperbolic and misleading.
(C) An online service, product, or feature with advertisements marketed to children.
(D) An online service, product, or feature that is substantially similar or the same as an online service, product, or feature subject to subparagraph (B).
(E) An online service, product, or feature that has design elements that are known to be of interest to children, including, but not limited to, games, cartoons, music, and celebrities who appeal to children.
Take a look at Michael Dominick's SE blog: https://dominickm.com/
The home page alone violates all of the above.
Lastly, "Business" is not defined here, which is odd since these consumer protection laws always define explicitly who they apply to.
I have extensive experience with P65 and ADA compliance - so vague laws like this one really scare me. The only saving grace here is there is no Citizen Enforcement provision - ie. the AG has to bring suit. Which also means voluntary compliance will be low until the AG makes an example of a few unlucky website operators...
So if you write an extremely technical blog that happens to include a cartoon avatar, is your blog directed at children? Example: everything on this blog https://gankra.github.io/blah/deinitialize-me-maybe/
If you're defining "child" to mean 5 year olds, I completely agree. But I'm almost certain that there are 17 year olds out there who are world-class Rust programmers who are reading that blog.
"Sorry kid. We're deleting your question and banning you."
Kids are curious. They go places to see what's there. Kids visit your blog, whether you intend for them to or not. (They may not come back for a second visit, but a number have come for a first...)
Also, to be clear, I'm not trying to be pedantic or split hairs here, I'm trying to explain my own actual thought process in reading the law and considering my own risk/exposure. As I mentioned in a reply to a sibling comment, this law looks genuinely awful, but I'm not going to lose any sleep over the likelihood of getting sued by the state of California for a personal website where I mainly make a half-assed effort to write about the nerdiest shit possible (i.e. computer programming and board games that are best played with the aid of a spreadsheet).
This seems stupidly vague.
If people/businesses have to guess at what's compliant, then they will often choose the most restrictive form of compliance out of an abundance of legal caution.
Deliberately vague...
Isn't providing a server you can access "providing a service"?
This law doesn't appear to cover content, just what information you are supposed to collect about your users.
The author is right that:
1. Every single website and app regardless of whether it is specifically built for kids or not is covered by this bill, and
2. It is virtually impossible to identify and segment your user base and apply the bill's protections to only those you can 100% confirm are under 18.
So, the likely outcome is that this bill becomes an enhanced CCPA and something businesses have to generally comply with for every user.
Looking at the actual contents of the bill though, my response to that is – great! I do want to be treated like a child online. I want sites to present terms of service in a language I can understand. I want them to set my account's privacy settings to the highest offered by default. I want apps to remove dark patterns that get me to spend money. I don't want them to store my data unless using it to provide a service. I want them to tell me up front if my browsing is being monitored by someone else. I want actual consequences if a company decides to leak all my personal data. (All of these are provisions that will be enforced).
The author is critical of the bill as a whole but I don't see any argument against any of the individual provisions. I also don't get where the "eliminate anonymous web browsing" in the title comes from. If anything it will make it less likely for sites to track you.