How about they spend their time revamping parental controls instead? The age gate stuff is clear about user data collection and nothing else.
Because they don’t give a single fuck about the kids, unless they’re pedos fucking kids, then they give all the fucks.
The Epstein class wants to know who the minors are on the internet.
Exactly. Age control is obviously needed I am so glad I’m not a kid that has to navigate the social algorithms of our time.
That said this is obviously a law being pushed by the technofascist companies like meta and their goal is always more power, in this case more data. It’s crazy how many law makers just do what they are told. they are doing the same with trying to lock down 3Dprinters.
More local control in operating systems as well as parental controls in platforms like YouTube where they could have full control to turn off the algorithm, maybe even a browser api where you need admin to enable adult mode. But based on everything I’ve seem from companies like google and meta they don’t care in the slightest about the children as long as they make their bag
How about the government focus on taking rights away from people who have actually harmed kids, like I don’t know, maybe a giant pedophile ring in plain sight? Instead the focus on taking rights from everyone because someone, sometime, in the future harm a child.
its not even about “protecting the innocent” is about snooping on potential dissidents/ threats to the status quo of the govt.
The whole digital footprint thing is really having me dawn a tinfoil hat. I was doing Uber a few days ago, and listening to Pandora. I spoke very limited, and brief, Spanish to two riders and I immediately started getting full on español ads on Pandora! Like I don’t speak fluent Spanish! Your ad budget is legit getting wasted.
But I am a little flattered thinking the algorithm thinks I do.
Dunno where I was going with this, but I’m excited to see Linux growing, and hope it gets mainstream enough that a year old unlocked phone has a fork.
The government was paid by Meta… They are just doing what they were told to do
Because it’s not about protecting children, obviously.
When someone with certain personality problems tells blatant lies, they are really only trying to convince themselves. You exist only as an introject inside their minds, you are not real to them, it does not matter if you don’t believe them because it doesn’t need to make sense to you.
To late I already implemented my own linux age verification. Every time I log in I scan my face and my drivers license and email it to microsoft, google, meta and the CCP. Get owned privacel
Fuck age verification, fuck it all to hell. Not for Linux or any other OS or device.
I think that the major current closed-source OSes today are busily harvesting all the data they can anyway, and the vendors probably don’t care much about also grabbing age, but stuff like, oh…is it illegal under this law to distribute proprietary versions of older OSes now? Like, classic MacOS, say. That’s definitely not open-source. And Apple is not going to go back and do a new release of classic MacOS to add age verification to it. But…there’s still some old software that you need classic MacOS to run. So…is it illegal to distribute essential software required to run classic MacOS software in California as of the middle of next year?
I mean, you might be infringing on copyright as well, but Apple may be okay with people copying classic MacOS around, as they can’t really make any money off it today. But this is the State of California, not Apple, that would act here.
Right… But in the age of AI, data-harvesting the right data (i.e. the human/non-AI-slop) becomes very interesting to a lot of companies, “age-verification” is an easy argument (for policy-makers) of e.g. social-media companies to know whether the user is an actual human, thus the verified data is a lot more valuable.
Sure, but we can’t make the argument that everyone vouching for age verification is doing so for the same reason.
It is undeniable that there is a very large, and growing, population of parents and adults that want age restrictions for adult content. I think their concern is valid, too. However, they don’t care how it’s done.
That’s where big tech “saves the day” by generously offering to collect all of our IDs and tying it the our accounts. Secure, and private, age verification can be done with zero knowledge proofs. But that probably won’t happen without competent government
IIRC from past reading, the driving factor behind the California bill was that some places were passing laws that would have placed responsibility for age verification on websites. Meta — probably correctly assessing that anything they did was going to be defeatable and not wanting to engage in a big fight with regulators over that — drove the California effort to create an OS-level responsibility. It’s not that this especially solves anything from the standpoint of people who want age restrictions, but that it dumps the legal problems on the OS vendors, like Apple and Microsoft, instead of on Meta.
Agree but would rather it be enforced at the OS level than per app or site. My kid just told me she uploaded her photo to some game she plays which sucks.
On most phones/pcs, you have tools to restrict what your kid can or can’t do. I don’t know the specific OS this has happened on, but you can probably limit downloads, timegate specific apps so that they can only play them when you’re around, or maybe even deny camera access to some.
How about neither. We don’t need it.
The controversy became particularly heated after reports suggested platforms like SteamOS could still fall under the law due to their ties to proprietary application ecosystems.
Ehhh. I think that’d be a hard argument to make. I mean, the OS is open-source. You can download it and modify it and reinstall it or whatever. Sure, it runs Steam, which is proprietary, but so does any other GNU/Linux distro.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SteamOS
The core operating system is free and open-source software, while the Steam client remains proprietary.
Like, the only way in which SteamOS differs from another Linux distro is that Valve, which makes the proprietary client, also happens to be distributing the OS.
Niiice.
Under the original law, operating systems would be required to request a user’s age or birth date during device setup, then expose an “age bracket signal” to apps and app stores. The law, which defined brackets such as “under 13,” “13–15,” “16–17,” and “18+,” immediately raised questions about how such requirements would apply to decentralized, open-source software ecosystems.
I kind of wonder what software running as a service on Windows is supposed to identify itself as if it’s non-interactively downloading software.
A lot of unanswered practical implementation questions surrounding this. Questions like how and why about a lot of things.
A question I have is why all the separate age brackets would be necessary. If the purpose is keeping kids from accessing porn or other “adult” material, why do they need any other categories aside from under 18 and 18+? Those age brackets read more like the kind of demographic categories advertisers, data brokers, etc are interested in than a simple age verification check.
I’m. DevOps engineer and my employer runs a lot of Linux instances in AWS. I’d love for these politicians to explain to me how age verification of Linux web servers should work for auto-scaling environments where instances are spun up and terminated automatically based on traffic volume. I’d also like to know if I should be using the age of our CEO, the age of our company (thanks to Citizens United), or something else.
Also, is each docker container a “computer” of its own? After all, I could use different distro base images!
You are required to have age verification. We licence our age verification on an instance basis. An instance is defined as whatever makes us the most money, or alternatively causes you the most pain.
You know. A worst case scenario.
I’d like to see them pair a bluetooth headset to a phone.
How old is that headset ?
If it’s over 18 years old, does it automatically pass age verification
only 18 years or younger headphones qualify for consideration.
13*
These are politicians, after all.
Good points, and well put!
Obviously uhhhh uhhhhhhh put your ID in a GitHub secret and uhhhhhh social security number and uhhhhhh
Yeah, I don’t even know what you’re talking about, and that makes me extra certain that politicians definitely don’t know what you’re talking about. It is nice to see them perhaps taking into account expert opinions on this subject, but 1 for 100 doesn’t make for a good average.
They’ll listen to the lobbyists peddling them with hookers and blow (and promises of future non-executive board memberships and and millionaire speech circuit fees).
That’s all the expertise they care about.
The govt…. Uhhh…. Finds a way (to fuck shit up)
I’d love for these politicians to explain to me how age verification of Linux web servers should work for auto-scaling environments where instances are spun up and terminated automatically based on traffic volume.
Come on, can’t be that tedious. What could it be 200-300 instances tops per day? My kid sister does that many selfies.
Obviously corporations just become exempt from the law. And any laws, any not.
Honestly I wonder if this is why the amendment is being suggested. AI products in particular are likely to be interacting with a lot of websites that will be required to verify ages, and I’m sure California in particular is loath to make waves that might throw that revenue stream into doubt.
politicians are far to stupid to know any of that. The only computer they know is their phone and maybe a laptop.
It’s the 20s version of “the internet is a series of tubes”. They couldn’t explain it if they wanted to, but all they care about is that the bribes are still spending.
It’s being exempt because the Government can’t enforce this requirement on FOSS. Linux isn’t managed by a corporation and I don’t think people realize this yet.
I would pay money to hear Linus on the phone with these self-important assholes.
we want you to force user verification in all Linux.
yeah, fuck you.
…
Give homie some credit, I think he would at least ask “why?” first. Then also wish them “good luck!” on enforcing it.
I mean they could force big corpo to not allow anyone who can’t verify age to use their services.
This is sponsored by meta to push the age requirement tracking onto the os rather than Facebook directly to avoid liability when under age kids access harmful content
An unverified age bracket in the OS that provides that to web services is the correct way to do it (a parent setting up a computer or account for a kid checks one box and suddenly google safe search, etc, everyone else doesn’t check the box, done).
I suspect meta is hoping to get better unique account to human mapping in their surveillance machine.
Which is insane, as the OS doesn’t have any way to authoritatively measure the user’s age and so they have to be ‘honor system’ where the age is whatever the user says the age is, or require some online account with identity validation, which is what facebook tries to do anyway.
Red Hat is the biggest power on Linux.
You can’t force it on any Linux distro, but on everybody who has to give a shit about compliance.
Someone will release a version with none of this nonsense and probably make a ton doing it.
I think you’re missing the fact that open source OSes are explicitly excluded in the version of the law that’s currently being discussed.
Yeah but they will be roped in along with vpns etc, but there still will always be a distro based somewhere they can’t force it.
So you’re saying that despite them excluding them now, they’ll include them later, but it doesn’t matter because it’s open source…?
I mean, I don’t disagree that it doesn’t matter, but why would they go to all the effort of excluding them now just to include them later?
I guess, California is killing Windows without knowing.
If all they are asking for is an age, just put in ‘69’ and be done with it.
Proving your age is a different story. I’m not holding up my driver’s license during an OS install.
LOL - verification? Yeah, I got your verification right here! Here’s your verification!
Weak, half-measure. You should be fighting against that for everyone regardless of which OS they use
