AB-1043 Makes No Sense

So today, I spent some time researching California's new law, AB-1043.

It's not the most absurd idea I've ever seen, but it's up there. The "user" gives a birthday, the "os" provides an API to allow the "app store" to read the "age bracket" of the user (under 13, under 16, under 18, over 18). Then, you might ask, what?

Nothing. No provision for why we're doing any of this. Am I to block access to certain apps in the store? Which, by what definition? Don't know.

What's an "app store"? There are plenty of things like code repositories (pipy, cpan, etc etc); are those to ID the age of a developer? Don't know.

What's a "user"? Agentic AI installs software, do I need to know how old that is? Headless servers comprise the internet and are maintained by teams. Which admin's age do I use? Don't know.

What's an "os"? Does that include transitional state things like VMs used for training that are instantiated on the fly? How's about a Docker container? Don't know.

Folks, this needs to be something we consider very carefully. Legislation in ignorance is unacceptable. We cannot allow law makers to decide how the world works, when they do not in fact know themselves.

Had the framers spent even ten seconds of brain matter, they could have introduced very easy alternatives. For example, "Any system which does not respond to the API should be considered under 13." That's all you need to make all of this pain go away, but that'd mean spelling out where all of this is headed. I don't believe that they know.