Item — HN Reader

They do not mandate what x is, but they do mandate that you must say a specific age in any Internet-capable OS, and that age must be communicated to any software asking for it. Either comply with the law and utter an age, or you're breaking the law if you communicate online without such an utterance. It is using compelled speech to threaten your right to all digital speech.

There are cases where compelled speech is considered constitutional, but surely not when it's used to threaten the primary way people communicate.

And contrary to your claim, COPPA does not legally require service providers to ask every user how old they are, nor are users obligated to reply. Age questions are just how service providers chose to implement it. And I don't think COPPA is a good example of a law working as intended.

1 comments

> Either comply with the law and utter an age, or you're breaking the law if you communicate online without such an utterance.

Not you. The OS distributor breaks the law if they don't give you this ability.

> And contrary to your claim, COPPA does not legally require service providers to ask every user how old they are, nor are users obligated to reply

It requires service providers to ask if you are under 13 if they collect any personal information, including email address. Users are required to respond in the negative in order to use these services without them getting permission from an adult.

> I don't think COPPA is a good example of a law working as intended.

The question is whether it is a First Amendment violation. In the almost three decades since it was proposed, it hasn't been challenged. No serious person thinks AB 1043 is a First Amendment violation either.

I disagree with your understanding of COPPA, but I'm not going to repeatedly argue over the precise boundries of COPPA because that's not the point. COPPA is not a First Amendment violation as I understood it, nor is California's AB 1043. The latter is still very bad, just not to the point of being unconstitutional (but it's close). AB 1043 would violate the First Amendment just like the Illinois one if it didn't add a last-minute open-source OS exemption.

> Not you. The OS distributor breaks the law if they don't give you this ability.

Ok, but that's a technicality and it doesn't change the fact that your entire ability to see/hear/say anything online is being gatekept by a legally-compelled utterance.

> The latter is still very bad

You have yet to give any harms.

> your entire ability to see/hear/say anything online is being gatekept by a legally-compelled utterance.

And? If there is no First Amendment violation, what is the problem with that? There are already many de facto compelled utterances required to communicate with other devices on the Internet.

The part of my comment that you quoted is exactly the reason why the Illinois law is a First Amendment violation, and why the California one is borderline. And as far as I'm aware, there are no other legally compelled utterances that bar ordinary citizens from all online communications at the moment. There are only instances where speech is compelled in a more local manner, and often not by law.

> And as far as I'm aware, there are no other legally compelled utterances that bar ordinary citizens from all online communications at the moment.

It does not bar all online communications. The law simply says the OS must provide some way for the account to have a set age and provide it to services that need that information. If a service doesn't need that information, there is no compelled utterance. COPPA and GDPR both require compelled utterances online for certain services as well.

Good luck finding a lawyer to take your case.