One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: CA's AB 1856 Exempts Open Source But Expands Age-Gating

After public outrage, California lawmakers are moving closer to exempting open source operating systems from the sweeping age-bracketing regime mandated by last year’s Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043). Nonetheless, the current bill still jeopardizes internet users’ speech, privacy, and security. While the open source exemption, if passed, would improve the law, the remaining amendments proposed by AB 1856 would require all web browsers and websites to request and collect users’ ages. This is an expansion of last year's AB 1043's age-bracketing system that compounds its constitutional harms to users’ speech, privacy, and security. As AB 1856 moves on to the Senate, EFF will continue fighting for amendments that reduce those harms. AB 1856 Extends AB 1043’s Age-Gating Regime Last year, California passed AB 1043, which requires all operating systems and app stores to create age-bracketing systems that segment users based on their ages. As we’ve written, that regime is a recipe for censorship: it creates unnecessary and unconstitutional barriers to accessing lawful online speech, threatens our right to anonymity, and pressures online services to collect troves of valuable and sensitive user data. On top of that, A.B. 1043’s wide-sweeping compliance burdens impose disproportionate harms on the open source ecosystem that underpins much of the modern web.  Given these flaws, lawmakers introduced AB 1856