California’s Expanding Age-Gating Laws Threaten Online Privacy and Anonymity
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California, often at the forefront of digital policy, is currently navigating a complex legislative landscape concerning online age verification. While ostensibly aimed at protecting younger users, recent laws and proposed amendments are raising significant concerns about the erosion of online privacy, anonymity, and free speech for all internet users. The state’s initial foray into mandatory age-gating, Assembly Bill (AB) 1043, set the stage for a system that many digital rights advocates warned would have far-reaching negative consequences. Now, a subsequent bill, AB 1856, intended as a “cleanup” measure, has paradoxically expanded the scope of these age-bracketing requirements, drawing even more services and users into a potentially problematic data collection framework.
The Genesis of Age-Gating: AB 1043
Last year, California enacted AB 1043, a law that mandated the creation of age-bracketing systems by operating system providers and app stores. This legislation required these entities to segment users based on their age, a move that immediately sparked widespread alarm among privacy advocates and the open-source community. The core issue with AB 1043 was its inherent design: by requiring age segmentation, it created an indirect but powerful pressure on online services to collect and verify users’ ages. This approach, critics argued, was a recipe for censorship, establishing unnecessary and potentially unconstitutional barriers to accessing lawful online content. Furthermore, it posed a direct threat to the fundamental right to anonymity online and incentivized the collection of vast amounts of sensitive user data, creating attractive targets for malicious actors [1].
The compliance burdens imposed by AB 1043 were particularly severe for the open-source ecosystem, which underpins a significant portion of the modern internet. Open-source developers, often operating with limited resources and relying on collaborative, decentralized models, faced an “existential threat” from the mandate to implement complex age-gating systems. The very nature of open-source software, designed for free distribution, modification, and use, clashed fundamentally with the requirements of an age-bracketing regime that demands user data collection and management [1].
AB 1856: A Cleanup Bill That Expanded the Problem
Recognizing some of the significant flaws and public outcry surrounding AB 1043, California lawmakers introduced AB 1856 this year. This bill was presented as a “cleanup” measure, ostensibly designed to address the unique and serious harms identified in the original legislation, particularly its impact on open-source operating systems. However, instead of merely refining AB 1043, the amendments proposed by AB 1856 went much
Sources
- [1] One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: CA's AB 1856 Exempts Open Source But Expands Age-Gating (www.eff.org)
- [2] Age Verification is a Privacy Nightmare (www.eff.org)
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