One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: CA's AB 1856 Exempts Open Source But Expands Age-Gating
Original reporting by Electronic Frontier Foundation
California lawmakers are once again navigating the complex and contentious terrain of online age verification, grappling with public outcry over last year’s Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043). This sweeping legislation originally mandated age-bracketing systems for operating systems and app stores, drawing significant fire for creating unnecessary barriers to lawful online speech, threatening user privacy and anonymity, and imposing immense burdens on the open source community. This year, AB 1856 emerged as a supposed "clean-up" bill, promising to rectify some of these pressing issues.
Open Source Relief
AB 1856 has delivered a meaningful improvement: a crucial exemption for open source operating systems from AB 1043's age-gating mandates. This hard-won victory, achieved after intense advocacy from developers, significantly reduces the existential threat many open source projects faced. This partial win demonstrates lawmakers' responsiveness to community concerns. However, this progress is tempered by a worrying expansion. Instead of simply narrowing AB 1043, AB 1856 dramatically broadens its reach, extending age-bracketing requirements to all web browsers and websites. This move compounds the original constitutional harms to user speech, privacy, and security, creating a near-ubiquitous age-gating framework that could force invasive data collection across the internet. As AB 1856 moves to the Senate, the fight continues to reduce these profound new risks.
California’s legislative journey with AB 1856 presents a complex picture of competing priorities. While the hard-won exemption for open-source operating systems marks a crucial victory for a foundational part of the internet ecosystem, it also underscores the enduring challenge posed by the broader age-gating framework. The bill, even in its amended form, represents a significant expansion of the state’s digital age assurance mandate, extending its reach to virtually all web browsers and websites. As AB 1856 now advances to the Senate, organizations like EFF remain steadfast in their opposition, advocating for a significant narrowing of its scope to protect fundamental user rights against mandated data collection and speech restrictions.
The Broader Landscape
The implications of California’s Digital Age Assurance Act, and AB 1856’s expansion, extend far beyond the state’s borders. By mandating age-bracketing across a vast swathe of the internet, this legislation risks establishing a dangerous precedent that could fundamentally alter the digital landscape. It normalizes an internet environment where routine age-gating becomes standard practice, potentially leading to more invasive identity verification methods. This paradigm shift would erode online anonymity, spur widespread collection of sensitive personal data—creating honey pots for malicious actors—and construct an infrastructure easily exploited for censorship, impacting users and developers nationwide. The ongoing legislative struggle in California thus highlights a pivotal moment in the fight to preserve an open, private, and secure internet for all. The ultimate outcome will inevitably influence future policy debates across other states and potentially at the federal level, shaping digital rights and online freedom for years to come.