this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
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I really don't understand what the value they see in putting age checks on operating systems. Like where is this coming from? Who whispered in their ear that OS age checks are something that need to be done?
From what I can tell, the 'age' part is misdirection. They want to restrict computer use to the "good" people, to make it "safer".
Using age restrictions first allows legislation to be passed "for the children" using the idea of potential harm to theoretical children. However, in practice, legislators expect the implementation of the age check to be capable of checking anything else they want to about your identity, as a prerequisite for access. Probably using a combination of face scans and ID scans.
This is just the slippery slope argument.
The California law does not require verification. Only attestation.
California, as of today, does not require any kind of verification to install an OS (how it's always been).
This law gets passed, now they require "attestation".
A year or two from now, they're gonna push for for actual age verification.
A year or two after that, the government will make a new law saying that your drivers license is no longer a valid form of identification, they're gonna need a retina scan or some other form of "bio" identification.
Next thing you know, you'll be pressing your dick imprint on your PC's automated Cock-Scanner-v4 encryption tray that pops out of your laptop like a cd-rom drive every time you need to check your email.
Slippery slope, indeed.
Can you provide any sources for these? Maybe a california legislator saying they plan to do this? Or a proposed law? Otherwise it is just the slippery slope fallacy. While that doesn't disprove what you said it does not provide a valid argument for it either.
no, i cant provide any sources because that's just what i'm assuming will happen. don't get me wrong, it is totally fair to ask for hard evidence of these claims, and the fact is, right now, that doesn't exist.
but just based on my past experience with how the government likes to do things and hypothetically putting myself in their shoes, that's my, we'll call it "hypothesis", on what's gonna happen. my belief is that, at the end of the day, the government and big tech want to collect as much information about the public as they possibly can, and this is the order of operations that they are going to take to achieve that.
What do you think their intentions are, and why?
The intentions for the law?
This ia a quote directly from the author of the bill link for reference.
Now of course the obvious question many people might ask is "are they being truthful?" But that is a question that people will have to answer for themselves.
Yes that is a large part of what I meant by what are their intentions. If you can reasonably conclude that their that their intended goal will probably involve progressively restricting this area of legislation (whether through implications from their statements or the possibility of them not being truthful), then it is not a slippery slope fallacy.
Are you pre or post 9/11? It is very obvious that the slope is slippery.
Non-fallacious forms can also exist. It is fairly obvious that it is warranted in authoritarian regimes to expect progression (regression?).