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.
No shit, I was one of those people. I just don’t ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity, being out of touch, and not thinking through long-term political consequences. Once again, the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act was largely in response to white nationalist home-grown terrorism, which not having squashed that in the 90s is literally part of why we have the problems we have to day with a white nationalist government. Still didn’t make it great, but I have a lot more sympathy for its origins in that era.
Unfortunately, if left unchecked, an incompetent ally is just as destructive as a malicious adversary. If you are from Colorado and take issue with this legislation you should contact your representatives and let them know that they are being idiotic since that is the only meaningful difference between the two. Overall, we can continue giving the dems a pass because they are the lesser of the evils, or we can attempt to use what little political capital we have to make them realise their errors.
Exactly. That was essentially my point regarding those who supported the PATRIOT Act and the creation of the DHS which both have been widely abused since their inception (although thankfully the PATRIOT Act was finally sunseted). That it’s important to help the politicians who think they’re helping but are actually creating a more dangerous environment understand why what they’re proposing is dangerous rather than to cynically reject all government as bad and to give up entirely. Thank you for stating it more clearly than I did.