California moves to exempt Linux from its upcoming age-verification law after backlash over forcing operating systems to collect users’ ages
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/california-moves-to-exempt-linux-from-its-upcoming-age-verification-law-after-backlash-over-forcing-operating-systems-to-collect-users-ages-amendment-proposed-by-the-same-lawmaker-who-wrote-the-original-lawOpen linkView original on lemmy.nz1483
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See you in a year or 2.
Play as old as times:
Foot in the door technique is a timeless way to get what you want. People seem oblivious to it.
I hear frogs experience the same phenomenon with hot water.
Actually they only stay in the boiling water if their nervous system is impaired
Good thing humans dont have nervous systems
Hm? Did you say something? Sorry, I was distracted.
Also works the other way around.
I mean it makes total sense the minute you think about it at all.
It's the same with laws.
It's very hard to get the electorate united to oppose something but if they manage to unite and oppose a bill the lobbyists are back at work on Monday pushing it by a different name.
Laboyists are the scourge of democracy. Every last one of them has a rope and spear with their names written on them.
100% Microslop.
Are you implying that CA regulators do exactly what disgusting corporations do?!? I am shocked sir!
That reminds me. We are quickly approaching the date discord postponed age verification to.
Technology makes everything cheaper, including changing minds.
At some points it was unfeasible to abuse consumers because they'd object. Now, if it's on a large enough scale and valuable enough, you can just pay to convince the majority of them that it's fine.
also known as TESTING the waters, gauging public response. so they can adapt under a different scheme.
Plucking the goose with a minimum of hissing.
The principle that Bullshit, sprayed around often enough, becomes Air Freshener.
This isn't exactly it.
First or isn't a company or is the government. 2nd, that legislation is just plain dumb and open source systems like Linux, BSD can't comply with it, even if they wanted to.
The whole law should be repealed though. They use children as excuse, bit it is about surveillance.
It’s called “parenting.” Yes, it’s harder these days with the internet and literally everything “right there.” But it’s still your job as a parent.
ANYTIME ANYONE imposes restrictions “for the children” - there’s something nefarious going on. If it’s a politician-they are looking to build a database for $. If it’s your priest-he’s banging the alter boy after ccd, or hates himself so much for being gay he’s lashing out at the lgbtq community. If it’s a company-they’ve either been threatened into doing it or more likely are on the take with a fat payday. If it’s a developer adding it into Linux, they should expect fierce skepticism and backlash from the community.
It’s NEVER about the children. It’s always an alternative motive. If they actually cared about kids, they’d make sure they were fed at school, they’d invest in their education, or they’d invest into social programs to help out those less fortunate.
The california law isn't actually age verification. It is unchecked age assertion at the operating system level. He is also there specifically for the parents to fill out.When a new device is purchased. I have no doubts.It will be misused and lead to age verification in the OS with a third party verifying the age, but that isnt want the bill is now
Everything you said is correct, but at the same time: "We're not driving off a cliff ^(yet)^, we're just moving in for a closer look."
That is true that we're headed towards a cliff. The way the California bill is structured.It can only be used to filter algorithms, make content and cannot be used for content moderation or filtering. It does nothing to stop what other states or the national government will want to do with it once it's in there. It also does nothing to stop companies from requiring actual age verification or having accounts. You know , someone like microsoft would love to tie an Id to the computer and make you have a microsoft account to use it.
I don't think it's any coincidence that this is occurring at the same time companies like Palantir are signing government contracts left and right and mega-sized data centers are sprouting up all over the country.
Just like it's never really about FREEDOM™
The only way to "protect" or "target" any demographic is to first identify everyone to see if they're in that demographic.
That's almost always the only reason it's done.
Thats not the case here.
Shift all the blame. Guns? America? Fuck that, it's the individual, not the industry.
The internet is always two things. The web, access to information on all levels (good or bad ), should be available. It needs to be regulated bc META and anything Elon is apart of, still exist.
Parents are fighting, "literally everything" ! We as a species, is losing to whatever the "internet" is. We need real regulation.
Ear me out: make tools for parents to restrict their child themselves instead of restricting everyone and rob data
Oh you mean the thing that worked for 20+ years? Are you crazy? Think about the profits and data we won't collect.
And the worse part, we DO have tools for parents. Either they don't know these tools exist or they don't know how to use them. Mostly because they're tech-illiterate. Kudos to the parents who educate themselves.
This is a benign example, but I was talking with a fellow parent about our dislike of Paw Patrol and told them I had to remove that as an option in Netflix. They were shocked that was possible and I could see the gears turning in their head with that new info. Granted I'm not parenting a teenager yet, but it seems like most of the functionality in bigger platforms generally exists, people just don't know it's there and to set it.
Hmm I guess I'm not paying enough attention. What's wrong with paw patrol?
paw patrol is just so over stimulating with frequent cuts and it's clearly designed to hook kids short attention spans / does not help develop longer attention spans. It's a classic problem that kids don't want to stop watching and have tantrums if you enforce screen time and turn it off. All of this to sell huge toys that kids think they want and will play with one time.
Also the stories are not really that great, and suck to watch as a parent. They always introduce an issue which is immediately resolved, triggering that instant gratification in your kids brain, without teaching them about conflict resolution or anything really useful. This isn't even about the idea of Adventure Bay being a police state or promoting the privatization of communal services.
It's an unfair comparison, but a show like Bluey has great storytelling and while not being purely educational, teaches kids how to emphasize with others and deal with conflict that isn't easily solvable, even for adults. The music, illustrations, and stories are a work of art and a more valuable use of time than Paw Patrol.
Those are valid points that I haven't thought of. Thanks for the response.
It's already available and parents are not utilizing it.
But I also don't see the problem with this. As long as there's savvy and smart children that did get educated on safety, the knowledge can propagate to those that did not.
The parents have determined that it's not needed. They've determined that trying to strictly regulate exactly what Little Johnny can and can't see online does him far more harm than porn ever could. This hyper-authoritarian nonsense needs to die in a fire.
Or we regulate the use and teach how it properly works. Tools for parents are get but it's not a fix.
And none of that regulation will have anything to do with age, if you want real effectiveness. A teenager seeing a dick and a dick, a vagina and a vagina, or a dick and a vagina, being mashed together isn't concerning in the big picture. The stuff that is worrying about the internet affects adults just as much as children, like social media.
You missed the point completely. My example was Meta and Elon's companies not teens fucking.
Age verification is pointless. The post I responded to, was talking about it is the parent's (individuals) job not the government's (regulation). That would be wrong.
That is an extreme view and I believe a dangerous one. Regulation like not experimenting on teen females which caused some to take their life. That seems pretty age related.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/facebooks-dangerous-experiment-teen-girls/620767/
Tbh, this is just a massive stack of misguidedness.
First, look at what the original law does:
Removing the requirement for the OS to provide an age doesn't change anything at all, because someone running an OS that doesn't provide an age will just be blocked everywhere. That's not a solution, that's a joke to appease idiots who don't know what the law does.
This is just as misguided as the backlash against systemd who added an age field to the user account to allow people to be still able to access age-restricted content.
The actually relevant part that people should be combatting is the requirement for apps and services to do age verification using the OS-provided age. The OS age field doesn't matter.
I wish people actually read the california law, it's rather short, and covers a lot of the "gotchas" people are coming up with (e.g. No it doesn't apply to servers).
I don't like age verification laws (Especially since I live in a jurisdiction with one already in effect) but at least argue against the law itself rather than a strawman version people heard about via social media.
This is so common online.
Bad Thing happens.
People argue against Bad Thing incredibly fucking badly. Just abysmal. They don't understand why or how the Bad Thing happened. They didn't read the document containing Bad Thing. They don't know who or what is involved with Bad Thing or where. Nonetheless, they vehemently argue against Bad Thing, using only their imagination as source material.
Someone with more experience fighting Bad Thing shows up in the comments, tries to argue against the misinformation, only to inevitably be accused of defending the Bad Thing.
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.
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.
The government was paid by Meta.. They are just doing what they were told to do
I’m a 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.
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.
Obviously corporations just become exempt from the law. And any laws, why* not.
Obviously uhhhh uhhhhhhh put your ID in a GitHub secret and uhhhhhh social security number and uhhhhhh
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.
Come on, can't be that tedious. What could it be 200-300 instances tops per day? My kid sister does that many selfies.
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.
The govt…. Uhhh…. Finds a way (to fuck shit up)
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.
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.
Good points, and well put!
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.
How about neither. We don't need it.
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 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
Easing local control is what that law was about (and it did think far enough to only include user facing). If there wasn't a global tendency to move towards surveillance and identity verification I'd be all for it. As it is I have some reservations about slippery slope.
The law doesn't require identity verification. It requires the OS to provide the age group of the user (set at install) to programs running on the OS. Something that, if adopted widely, would immensely help with allowing parents to control access (i.e. if they decide their kid should be able to see everything, just put them in ths age group for that, similarly they could also do that and manage it the same way as they would now. Or if they're lazy as many parents sadly are, there is at least some enforcement of age control that someone thought about, without giving up any identifying info beyond an age group). Yes it could be circumvented somewhat easily, but as far as I see it that's always a feature. A child being exposed to something accidentally has very different implications than actively trying to access it.
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.
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
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.
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.
You can't force it on any Linux distro, but on everybody who has to give a shit about compliance.
Red Hat is the biggest power on Linux.
The most pedophilic government in history desperately needs to know if your children are on the computer
... For reasons
California's government is not synonymous with the federal government.
American states are not at all like provinces.
Install a router/device based content filter if you need to block children from accessing porn.
Considering things that are, or could be considered as, porn are everywhere from Reddit to Wikipedia, that doesn't fix the issue. But I agree, this is something for parents to deal with, not legislation.
It has nothing to do with children at all.
Yeah, and while we're at it, kids should be able to buy alchohol and drugs and go to strip clubs. It's just a parenting issue.
Make phones 18+ to buy. Make it a legal requirement for parents to set up parental controls. Make parental controls not suck ass. Make the phone tell the website if child or adult no age brackets nonsense. IMO children don't need access to all websites.
Still there are some issues where abuse can come from parents but hey if they wanted they could give their children alcohol too so that point doesn't really fly with me.
I mean, it's not going to work, because your kids are gonna have a smartphone, and they can go to their friend's house or wherever and they aren't gonna have content filters. And then you think "okay, I'll install software on my kid's viewing device to censor stuff", but these days, it's probably not terribly difficult to get ahold of an old phone/tablet/computer, if all you want to do with it is view pornography. Everything's got a web browser in it, and that's been the case for long enough that there's lots of disused hardware just sitting around that can browse the Web. I've thrown out a PSP, phones, tablets, countless computers...I suspect that someone's parents are probably willing to hand their old gear to their kid, and they float around. If you live in an isolated cabin in the Alaskan wilderness, maybe access to Web-capable devices is a barrier, but if your kid has friends, I suspect that it's not all that hard to get ahold of one device that they have that can browse the Web.
I mean, the realistic answer here is "you're not going to stop kids from viewing pornography if they sufficiently want to view it". One kid figures out how to do X, and it doesn't take long for word to get around.
EDIT: I just hit Amazon looking for an example.
https://www.amazon.com/HOTTABLET-Tablet-Android-Protective-Bluetooth/dp/B0F3XD9M6C
That's a $39 Android tablet that can browse the Web, has 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB of flash (plus an SD card slot). That's gonna be fine for browsing all the porn you want out there.
Like, it's pretty hard to keep someone from getting access to something like that. If there weren't a supply of old hardware floating around and new hardware wasn't this cheap, okay, but devices capable of browsing the Web are everywhere.
TV on wall aggregates and displays daily web data for each device?
Wild they still play the "think of the children" card while ignoring the Epstein files.
Oh they're still thinking about them.
While masturbating furiously.
This will make finding children much easier for Palantir and its pedo owners. They could even identify more susceptible children more easily.
For a moment I freaked out that they were only gonna exclude Linux and not open source in general but it seems they exclude based on the license based on this article which is a good thing. The dozens of OpenBSD and FreeBSD users may rest safely now
Doesn't matter. The thin edge of the wedge is going to get in. In 5 years Linux will be forced to comply.
This is like winning a small fight and continuing to march on to Moscow on the winter.
They’ll keep whittling rights down until everything you do is logged with your ID and is whitelisted for your consumption (and I mean whitelisted by rich white list of folks who have the power).
Anything LGBTQ will be blocked as controversial. And teaching they don’t like will be hidden. Was slavery bad? “Well, that’s controversial. The Europeans did nothing but civilize those savages don’t you know! And our wealth justifies the whole thing!”
So they're basically admitting that they don't need this for any computer since if you don't need it for open source why would you need it for closed source? You think kids don't know how to download and install linux? If I could do it with floppies and a book in the 90s then kids today can do it with a USB image and LLM assistance.
But in reality they'll probably just wait for a few years and try and push it through again like how they do with most shitty legislation.
Yes. I think most kids don't know how to download linux. Just the same as I think most adults don't know how to do it. It doesn't matter if it's actually easy. That's not the question. The question is if people know how to do it.
Just the same I don't think they know how to download a non-google based browser.
It's not about difficulty. It's about desire to do so. I've heard pancakes are very easy to make. I have no desire to make pancakes. I'm 42 and have never made pancakes. I know there's eggs and flour, and a bowl. I'd have to learn. And to learn, I have to want to learn. And that all goes back to having desire to learn.
Necessity is the mother of innovation. And right now, 90% of the population do not give a damn about which os they use. They just call it "the facebook machine", and it's their cell phone.
Desktop across all platforms is dying. Windows 11 sucks. The ram costs are making everything unobtainable. The vast majority don't even know there is a different way. They just pull out their cell phone, check their tiktok and whatever else, and they go about their day.
At this point three people have desktops. Gamers, hobbyists, and people who need them for work.
So yeah. I DO think most people have zero clue that you can install linux from a usb. I also think most people have never heard of linux.
I wish I still knew where this comic was. It was two geologists, and they're discussing how the common man must surely know of the starter rocks that everybody knows. Then they start listing a bunch of crystals and rocks nobody has ever heard of before. And they say "oh, and obviously everybodys heard of (insert rock you've never heard of)" and his coworker says "well obviously".
Completely unaware that what seems common to them is completely unknown to everyone else. I really feel like about 30-50% of linux users have that mentality about PCs. They have a PC. They find Linux easy. Therefore it IS easy, and everybody on earth can use linux.
For some of you, you don't see the failure of that logic, while the rest of you are cringing right now.
You're probably thinking of an xkcd comic:
https://xkcd.com/2501/
You're thinking of XKCD 2501: Average Familiarity:
Necessity is the mother of invention. If you put enough roadblocks in the way these kids will learn same as we did. The only difference is they'll have an LLM and youtube videos to learn what they need instead of BBS, IRC, and books like we used. Kids know how to search the web. They might not know what they don't know but as soon as they search "how do i browse the web without my computer telling on me" and linux comes up then they'll fall down the rabbit hole. It's like you think these kids exist in bubbles.
You're placing a lot of "if"s in there, and treating them as if they're already true.
Roadblocks to what? To using a pc? What makes you think kids WANT to use a PC at all? Is the roadblock getting to access the internet? Because there's no roadblocks for that. They have cell phones. Thats what they know the internet as, and they're accessing it just fine. Is the roadblock privacy? You think kids who take out their cell phones in public, and record them and their friends, and anyone walking by in the background, as they dance the newest trendy dance, to upload to tiktok, are worried about privacy?
And yes, I do think everyone lives in a bubble. Some people live in the same bubble. Most people live in multiple bubbles.
Did you know the Cleveland Cavaliers have lost the first 3 games in a 7 game series against the NY Knicks? Probably not. I live in Cleveland. It's all anybody in this bubble is talking about. I don't even like basketball, but right now everyone in the Cleveland sports bubble is losing their shit. I imagine outside of Cleveland nobody gives a shit.
Your bubble seems to be linux. You think linux is more prominant than it is. Right now desktop linux is at a 5% highest ever user base. It has nothing to do with people ditching windows. It has nothing to do with privacy concerns. It has everything to do with Valve making huge progress towards gaming on linux. People are taking their old "not good enough for windows" pcs, and suddenly their gaming lifespan covers more.
Because again. Nobody is saying linux is bad. What it does, it does well if you know what you're doing. What I'm saying is nobody cares about any of that until they have a desire to use a pc, that isn't windows. Most people are just ditching pcs completely because for watching youtube, and browsing facebook, and recording tiktoks, why do you need anything more than a low end cell phone? Why buy a pc during a time when prices are sky high, when they get what they need from the thing already in their pocket?
I want your energy. I'm going to use this one in the future, thanks.
Comments like these are very healing for me.
Most kids don't know anything about computers these days. All they know are phones and tablets. Maybe this will get them to learn some basic computer skills.
On your last point: I think that's why Colorado should do a referendum. If we collect enough signatures the passed law goes to the ballot and the citizens can reject it. We can also collect signatures to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot to ban some of the most invasive age/identity verification going forward.
To be fair, there are important differences between open source and closed source software.
I guess, California is killing Windows without knowing.
That's one way to encourage people to move to open source software
Imagine if that made MicroSlop and Apple open-source Windows and Mac OS. That would be a wild world.
Yes we ou.
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
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.
Enforcing it on android/apple/windows/steamos/chromeos is still problem tho.
Tho I do wonder how they handle chromeos. Do each student have to put their age every year?
My steam account is old enough to legally drink. Wonder if that'll factor in.
That doesn't prove anything. There's no proof that the person currently using it is the same person as the person who created the account.
By the way, you might also notice this argument also works against age verification systems where the user's age is verified only once. Unless you intend to check their identity every single time they log in.
Age verification is just a ham-fisted way for the state to try to take over a role that should be exercised by parents. Parental controls exist, people!
or rather every single second the device is being used
Parents not raising their kids right is why we can’t have nice things. It’s always used as an excuse for some draconian measure.
the parental control thing is a thin smokescreen. Its about control.
The reality is our OSs and the websites we visit know exactly who we are. They know our blood type, they know if you are pregnant before you do. Why would they need your ID?
SteamOS, ChromeOS and Android are Linux basedoperating systems though. Especially SteamOS is literally just an arch fork with steam preinstalled.
They are talking about how steamos might still be included. Due to the proprietary portions. I'd assume android would fall under that as well.
Most Linux distros contain proprietary packages, it's one of the reasons why for example Fedora isn't considered beginner friendly, they don't ship proprietary stuff so it doesn't have codecs, etc by default.
isn't patents the reason fedora doesn't have hardware accelerated codecs? mesa has the drivers, fedora just doesn't compile those drivers in
Yes, it is the patent shenanigans.
But there is a difference if it is part of the base experience or unavoidable, like you need a Google account to do anything on an OEM Android Install, like install any app and such. I guess same is true for steamOS, since focus on the OS is the steam app.
steam os can be modified, but chromeos is explicitly locoed down. yet, people say even steam os might not be exempted by this
I was too lazy to lookup what license steamos uses for distributing lmao. Article says that would be the defining bar for the pass meaning BSD included in this.
Does this not just defeat the purpose of this bill? My god the people are so fucking stupid.
It would still affect Apple, Microsoft, and Google.
Yes but why is Linux special? You force all to comply or none to comply, that's why these people are fucking stupid.
That's the thing. Linux isn't special. It is open source oses and applications where you have license to modify and redistribute.
Probably because the law makers realized how hard this would be to enforce for open source.
This would also mean that applications that are just source available would not get this exemption since the user is not typically allowed to redistribute.
More like the corpo fucks pushing this realized it would hurt them more than benefit them.
The entire idea of this shit is trash pushed by corpos and gambling sites to deflect from the evil they are doing to humanity.
because Linux is owned by people, not corporations.
you'll see who is really behind this bill when corporate lawyers show up soon.
Wao, I am gladly surprised by this. I would have never thought this would be possible, yet here we are.
California software companies have serious lobbying power.
I mean... yeah. OpenAI is a California software company and it's the biggest lobbying force behind the age verification bills.
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.
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
Common Linux double u.
California is making computers shittier for the rest of the world. Sorry for lashing out, fuck you!
Colorado also has a bill and there is one in the works at the federal level. But yes, its bullshit.
That took way too fucking long and is still extremely bad, with or without the Linux exemption
So BSD will have to implement age verification?
Article says open source OS so BSD should be safe.
It doesn't even makes to collect age on any OS unless the OS is PornOS or something. What exactly is the threat? What exactly does verification do?
IIRC, they want to have browsers automatically report age, and have OSes restrict access to software (like browsers that don't do that) based on age as well.
I believe the "goal" is to restrict access to information to younger persons. Porn is the threat they most often wave around, but many advocates also want to restrict access to social media, and apps that have in-app purchases, etc.
Absolutely the law is still dumb, and people that use FOSS OSes should still fight it. But with this change, as least you won't have to compile your own version of systemd (and NOT distribute it) to escape the insanity.
I bet this will be as easy to circumvent as changing the user agent of your browser and most developers outside of the US wont even bother to introduce age verification for a small fraction of their users.
Age verification laws are cropping up in far more jurisdictions than California (which is already quite large both in population and economically).
Anti-circumvention laws already exist. If OSes and browsers do start reporting ages, you can expect Apple, Google, and Microsoft to use the DMCA to (at least) shift liability (potentially criminal liability) onto users that adjust their browser to report an inaccurate age.
If this proposed law the "end of the world"? No. But, it is yet another contribution to both tech and government panopticons and should be resisted, even WITH a POSS carve-out.
As several people I follow try to remind me: "Users of non-FOSS software deserve privacy and safety, too."
I mean every OS is pornOS lol, they just can't get over people watching porn, puritanism still messing with us hundreds of years later
This reminded me of a joke patch someone sent to Firefox to rename incognito mode to porn mode.
Suddenly, Android and Chromebook become Linux. Maybe Apple will become Unix again.
Read the article. The amendment says nothing about Linux. It talks about open source where the user has a license to modify and redistribute. So unless Google makes android fully open source they will still be included.
Yes, I know AOSP is open source. But they are also talking about how steam os wouldn't be exempt despite it being arch based. Due to the proprietary portions.
I think that is exactly what they mean, Google abuse/subverting the floss ecosystem creating a de facto closed system, and would have to open up to be a really open source OS if they want to get exempt. Same with apple and the BSD kernel and base (although it can be said that they are not subverting the spirit of the code they use since BSD licenses ate by design made to allow closing the source, etc).
In any case I am pretty confident that all big tech want to eagerly embrace age verification since it is another data point to sell and for their ad machinery.
Steam already kinda has age verification on their store - you need to register your credit card to access adult material. Honestly seems like one of the easier and better ways to do this. I don't know if that existing check could be carried over to their OS, their OS and store are pretty much a bundle already.
what's worth considering is even on android forks that are deemed foss, they need lots of driver blobs for all the hardware, and some people intentionally install google servives via opengapps. how will those count for this law?
and then don't forget that due to drivers, relatively few open source desktop installations are fully open source
"We'll come around to you next time"
There is a time limit an exception like this will be held. Once it becomes normalized on proprietary systems they'll expect it on the rest.
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
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?
Niiice.
Idk about you but my system is always a little nervous.
The whole idea of age verification at the OS level is a foolish means to a well-intended goal.
No, it's not. It's a malicious goal with good branding. It's not about protecting the children. It's about massively invading our privacy, identifying verifiably human data, and laying the groundwork to tie all our online activity to our real identities.
I was referring to the many people who support the idea, who are individuals with a whole set of motives, some of them no doubt malicious and sinister and others who sincerely (even if cluelessly) have the of protecting their children from evil, exactly as you personally have the goal of protecting everybody from the evil you personally see.