alt Hacker NewsNo.
I do not want an "API" in my OS to reveal information about me. I do not want this to operate without my consent. I do not want to be limited from accessing certain sites because I refuse to implement this.
No age verification at the OS level. If Meta needs to verify ages for their _profitable_ business, that's entirely _their_ problem. Get your hands off my equipment.
It's not OS age verification. You put in an age. It does not check whether it's real. It does not ask for an ID. That will get provided to app stores and probably browsers. It should be possible to spoof, too.
The primary use case of this, in my mind, is so that a parent can give their kid a PC and set an age on the user account, and that will result in them being unable to access a variety of content. Same thing for phones.
You are already being limited from accessing certain sites, because those sites are going to ask you to provide an ID. This is an alternative. It frees sites from having to request an ID to verify ages, because the age signal from the OS is legally sufficient. If I'm remembering what I read, it actually bars them from trying to determine your age in other ways.
edit: also, the signal passed from OS to software isn't even your age, it's one of four age groups. three under-age groups, and one adult group. It's not even meaningfully de-anonymizing!