Senate Bill 26-051 reflects that pattern. The bill does not directly regulate individual websites that publish adult or otherwise restricted content. Instead, it shifts responsibility to operating system providers and app distribution infrastructure.
Under the bill, an operating system provider would be required to collect a user’s date of birth or age information when an account is established. The provider would then generate an age bracket signal and make that signal available to developers through an application programming interface when an app is downloaded or accessed through a covered application store.
App developers, in turn, would be required to request and use that age bracket signal.
Rather than mandating that every website perform its own age verification check, the bill attempts to embed age attestation within the operating system account layer and have that classification flow through app store ecosystems.
The measure represents the latest iteration in a series of Colorado efforts that have struggled to balance child safety, privacy, feasibility and constitutional limits.
Just think: Without legislation like this, kids will be able to see people having sex! Thus, ending their lives. Not so different from staring into the eyes of Medusa!
The amount of children exposed to sex that have died—or suffered worse consequences like early onset conservatism—may have been zero so far but the dangers are clear! We must skip right over parental involvement in child rearing and go straight to the source of the problem: Computers.
Computers have been giving everyone access to too much information for too long! We must restrict it! The first step is to get an implementation that actually works to censor information—to save the children (wink wink)—then later, we will have the tools necessary to censor whatever we want!
When glorious dictator decides that information about trans-genic mice must be erased from the Internet, we shall have the power to do so!
I would argue that early and excessive exposure to very misogynistic porn can be damaging to a child in that it can reinforce that misogyny and bad sexual patterns/ideas.
I would also argue that it is the job of the parent or guardian of said child to make sure the information they get online (or anywhere for that matter) is age-appropriate, and not the job of the state.
These are clearly laws that are either not well thought through or (probably more likely) intentionally limiting of every citizen’s privacy. I don’t think that even if the porn or bullying or whatever problem was as bad as they say it is that this would even be justified.
When my kids were young, but old enough that they may inadvertently stumble upon porn, I told them the truth. The truth that so few explain to their children. The truth that many adults don’t understand and many more completely forget.
Porn is fake.
It’s not real. The sounds? Acting. The breasts? Those are fake too. The perfect skin? Makeup (or airbrush).
Even “amateur” porn is fake! As soon as someone agrees to be filmed having sex it ceases to be real.
Also, let me get this straight: Your greatest fear from children being exposed to porn is they might begin to accept mysogyny‽ As in, you think porn is the most likely place kids will be exposed to it and somehow just nod their heads‽ “Oh wow, that’s totally sexist! But they’re having sex so it must be OK. I’ll try to be like that!” (Child nods head).
Or perhaps you think kids will be viewing so much porn—specifically, the mysogynistic kind—that it will somehow carve mysogyny into their minds?
This is so much like the beliefs of conservatives that try to ban books that mention LGBTQ people. Stop and think for a moment: How much porn did you view as a kid? How did that impact your life?
I seriously doubt it changed much. Unless, of course, you were reading Playboy for the articles.
We must protect little Billy from seeing tits, so he can keep laser focus on preparing for the next school shooting.
Hear, hear. When I was young my friends and I wanted to see the naked boobies but because the internet had not been invented we just couldn’t. It was impossible! Its not the kind of thing you find lying around!
Definitely not in ziplock bags hidden in the nearest forest to the school, put there by your older brother…
The reasoning in Australia is not about sex but cyber bullying. It’s a big problem and certainly more difficult to refute than kids watching porn.
Yes! Because cyber bullying can only happen on platforms that are designed specifically for adults. By banning children from social networks, we will have completely eliminated the problem and totally not at all created much worse problems like potentially leaking the identities of millions of people and destroying the entire concept of privacy.
(Nods head vigorously)
https://theforestscout.com/40129/in-our-opinion/how-a-childrens-game-turned-into-an-outlet-for-bullying/
How the fuck does age gating prevent cyber bullying? That’s not an age issue, it’s an asshole issue.
Oh wait, because it’s not about age at all but identifying individuals who think differently when the regime. Whichever regime that is.
Like those cases where the cyberbullying was coming from the children’s own fucking parents.
Protecting parent’s rights to abuse their kids is a common, if unstated, goal of laws like this.