Okay you are ready to take a stand for freedom!
You are going to use an OS that isn’t going to bend the knee and comply with age verification laws. I solute you, comrade!
Here are the likely consequences of your choice:
The Feds aren’t coming after you. You aren’t going to be out on a watch list.
What will likely happen is that if you try to log into your Facebook account you will get a message that says “Your Operating System is not currently supported. Your user experience will be limited to Groups labeled “Everyone”.”
That’s basically it. Your personal user experience will be limited to “kid friendly” areas of the Internet. (Same with apps and games.)
That’s the real driver of these laws. Facebook and other app producers know that the days where they can just shrug off child predators using their products is coming to and end. Regardless of your opinion on age verification is as a solution, child predators are a real world problem and it’s not just the parents fault. The platforms have some responsibility too.
Which is exactly what Facebook and the others specifically don’t want -responsibility for their own platforms. That’s why they are pushing for these laws that off load their responsibility onto the OS makers. Then they can just say “Oh, we don’t have any responsibility for this child being abused in our platform. We asked the OS what the user’s age was and the OS reported 18+. What else could we have done?”
So, that’s the consequence if you choose to use an OS that refuses to comply. You’ll just be relegated to the kid friendly version of website, games, and applications.
(On the other hand, if your OS chooses to falsely report to a website or an app an age for a child that is abused, then the OS should also be held responsible. But at that point you can go ahead and blame the parents too for letting their child use an OS that isn’t safe for them to use.)
I don’t think that COPPA says that companies can’t collect data on kids l at all. Just that there are limitations on how they can use that data while the kids are still kids. When the kids grow up then the previously collected data is fair game. (Why the do you think Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, etc. are so willing to invest in “for Kids” products?)
And, we’ll probably disagree on this, but I generally think that people and companies that provide a service are responsible for that service. That includes the Boy Scouts, the Catholic Church, and Lemmy hosts. And everyone in between. (Including parents, but the responsibility is no only on them alone.)
What should Lemmy hosts have to do, out of interest?
We aren’t talking about publishing side groups like Youtube, FB, etc. We’re talking about advertisers like DV360 or Tradedesk (the largest ad firms). COPPA has vastly decreased value on the demand side. And user data isn’t stored for 20+ years expecting to capitalize on it. After several weeks that data becomes stale and useless. In the 11 years I’ve worked in adtech engineering, I can confirm that how you think this works vs how this actually works is not the same thing.
And what you are talking about for responsibility is part of the Section 230 amendments being made to force liability on hosts for the “sake of the children”. These amendments have nothing to do with children though. They have to do with opening hosts up to liability in defamation suits raised against them to force silence of political critics (this has been WELL documented).