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California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

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Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#171
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is correct. It is not the government's job to raise our children. The more we ask the gov't to do that we should do, the less power we actually have. Some will say this ship has sailed, well, I say it's not too late to sink it.

But it seems that many parents do not bother to do anything to raise their children properly, including setting up parental controls.

Let me be very explicit so we're not dancing around the topic:

The potentially all-powerful government shouldn't know:

- what vices a person has

- what religion a person has or doesn't have

- what porn you watch

- what alcohol and drugs you buy

PERIOD.

All of these things can be exploited. To control jobs, to control finances, to extort influence, to shape ideology, etc.

The government shouldn't be able to catalog those things in a database for later misuse.

The government shouldn't be able to install friction or barriers that make it easy to cordon off and kill these things at a later time.

The "think of the kids" argument can go to straight to hell. Nobody's having children anyway.

This is a very real (not logically fallacious) slippery slope right into the pages of 1984.

It's not about kids. It's about control over society as a whole. They're going to force you to use your ID to access the internet, force you to use an approved device, and the minute you step outside of allowed behavior, you'll be punished.

Shackles and telescreens are coming, and they're using this argument to build it.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#172

The entire age verification and identity verification surveillance system shows state democrats aren’t on our side.

The California law has no age verification, identity verification, or surveillance. It is just a pretty simple parental control system, which only applies to devices whose primary user is a child.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sick of these "government bad" takes. They lack constructive suggestions, like your "sink it" nugget, they lack decent problem descriptions, as if anything after the sinking (likely private governance, aka feudalism) is immune to the ills of big-gov, and on top perpetuate reductivist arguments as if any kind of restrictions of freedom is by definition bad. This broad rejection without good reasons is borderline…

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Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#174
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not following you here. Certainly parents can install parental control software, but what does this have to do with children's PII being shared with sites? Just so we're on the same page, the way AB1043 works is that the OS determines the user's age and then shares the age bracket with apps. No PII is shared with sites (this is not to say that the age isn't sensitive, but it's not PII as usually regarded). Is you…

Certainly parents can install parental control software, but what does this have to do with children's PII being shared with sites? The parent can block or just never approve all the sites that require PII. but it's not PII as usually regarded We will never agree here. All the companies I worked for financial considered any attribute of the person to be PII, even their IP address. We were audited very strictly on thi…

Thanks for your explanation. I understand what you're talking about, but this all just seems to be entirely orthogonal to age assurance mandates, which are largely about controlling which content and experiences minors engage with, in many cases regardless of what parents want.

Again, this isn't an endorsement of these mandates; I'm just saying that what you're proposing here doesn't address the objectives that policymakers who are in favor of these mandates are trying to achieve.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one kid is able to bypass the system it means it's zero percent effective. Same thing with alcohol, and cigarettes. Especially if it means I have to show my ID to buy those things.

It feels more complicated. Some kids getting access to booze here and there with planning and coordination is different from kids walking into a liquor store or bar whenever they want.

It's literally all or nothing[1]. Either measures are 100 percent effective or they are completely broken and should not exist.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology)

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no past generation could stop their kids Past generations absolutely protected their kids from cigarettes and alcohol. A gate doesn’t have to be 100% effective to have net benefits.

If one kid is able to bypass the system it means it's zero percent effective. Same thing with alcohol, and cigarettes. Especially if it means I have to show my ID to buy those things.

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Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#177
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For (A) we have nothing to talk about. I think we fundamentally disagree about how society functions, and we aren't going to knock that out over hackernews. For (B), your proposal requires the website have a database over current rules in every country they would be accessible from. Would a website then, in your opinion, be responsible for the accuracy of this database? We have to presuppose an official GeoIP source…

For (A) I guess you are right, we won't agree. I do like your username however. For (B) this is already a thing. Porn sites and already doing this. Instead of blocking a region I am proposing to stop blocking and instead the law permit them to just add a header. The only people I can imagine apposing this are commercial VPN providers.

> Porn sites and already doing this.

I think a better example might be places like polymarket (not allowed to operate in us) or usatoday (serves an EU only version with no cookies). The technical limitations on those systems are both GeoIP as far as I'm aware, and that seem sufficient for regulators.

What I find more interesting is that what you want is within the scope of this law. It's only required that the operating system takes in your age from an admin, from there the application (user agent/webbrowser) is supposed to handle the blocking, which it could do with a header as you suggest.

I will note that you are going to find a lot of libertarians that would oppose banning GeoIP circumvention.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta alone spent 2 billion dollars lobbying for this worldwide, and it was a massive success, it's passing everywhere unanimously.

Citation for this claim? Searching lands on this page without any citations and seems AI generated slop: https://captaincompliance.com/education/meta-is-spending-2-b...

There was an AI generated slop report posted to Reddit that went viral. It even got some news coverage before anyone stopped to read the files and discover that it was gibberish.

I still get downvoted for pointing it out and trying to ground the conversation in facts. As you noticed the story continues to thrive on bad news sites and social media.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it seems that many parents do not bother to do anything to raise their children properly, including setting up parental controls.

Let me be very explicit so we're not dancing around the topic: The potentially all-powerful government shouldn't know: - what vices a person has - what religion a person has or doesn't have - what porn you watch - what alcohol and drugs you buy PERIOD. All of these things can be exploited. To control jobs, to control finances, to extort influence, to shape ideology, etc. The government shouldn't be able to catalog th…

Nobody here disagrees. What should be the case is that sites are broadly required to flag what kind of content they serve so parents can choose to exercise their own level of desired control.
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