Live data from Hacker News

California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

tomshardware.com

271–280 of 408 posts

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#271

This is a silly idea since California's law was actually well-thought-out. This will actually force social media to ban Linux clients, since the social media can't be compliant in that case. The operating system won't provide an age signal and the social media isn't allowed to ask for one on its own. I also want a permanent ban for anyone who calls the California law "age verification". It does not verify age. Period…

I would love to see an entire generation of kids who don’t post on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and the likes.

Social media from Meta and AI generated videos are a net negative to society.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#272

So Android is exempted since it's opens source?

I think since it is a for-profit project it is not exempt. At the least it would not make any sense otherwise.

I also agree that this is now a mess. Courts will lateron find that such exemptions make no sense, since it is unfair to Windows users. And Windows will require mandatory ID verification; I think they already do that to some extent, e. g. when you register the OS, unless you use the workarounds to not give up your ID in order to use Windows (not sure if this has changed with Windows 11, I won't use that version and it is unlikely I will use any later version; I use Win10 only on a secondary computer anyway, have been using Linux since soon-to-be 30 years so I could not care any less about this ruthless and evil operating system called Windows, now with mandatory AI slop spam).

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#273
post #62

So is anyone going to revert the commits that jumped the gun on this? E.g. systemd's birthdate field https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954

Why does birthdate trigger y'all so much, but physical location (literally the field right before it, that you can see in the diff context) doesn't? Shouldn't we be protesting even harder against systemd tracking our physical location?

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#274
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why?

It’s 150 comments of back and forth on a change which doesn’t have a concrete reason, the maintainers aren’t in agreement on what the right approach is wrt the field’s behaviour, and the person who submitted it is bouncing between saying he’s keeping it on topic and then adding scope where he believes it should be added. I also personally disagree with the change, I think the OP has gone ahead and implemented what th…

That's the facebookisation or redditisation of open source. Open source used to mean when you got the software you got the source code, but now it means a platform for arguing. And there's no doubt in my mind when people say they can't switch their project from GitHub to Forgejo because they'd lose "contributions", they mean this.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no problem with that as long as it's not the government controlling the age verification. It should be a parent. And as a parent I want the ability to properly control my children's devices - the fact that Apple, and especially Google pretty much ignored this feature until now is a big part of why we have these dumb laws in the first place. Think about it - if every phone you got asked you at first config "are…

> And as a parent I want the ability to properly control my children's devices * https://www.apple.com/uk/child-safety/ * https://families.google/familylink/ * https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/family-safety You already have the ability, all parents do, that some (or most) haven't is why this crap gets proposed in the first place and used as a justification for invading everyone's privacy. If (some) paren…

California AB1043 is the only reason that app providers have to give a shit about whether parental controls are enabled btw. Before these laws, most apps were openly ignoring parental controls.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#276
post #62

So is anyone going to revert the commits that jumped the gun on this? E.g. systemd's birthdate field https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954

Systemd is paid for by Big Business, so they will retain user-identification information in the long run of course. Poettering will never revert what he is paid for by the TechBros.

Can you provide a link to your own business-free init system that you wrote?

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part of "OSS"? The clown developers who work for Big Business? How do they represent any of the Average Joe here?

The people making PRs like this. Clearly,

authoritarianism is when I can't track you without asking first

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#278

Hope you all are excited for the most important parts of the internet to be completely unusable by default on Linux in a few years.

This. This literally makes it illegal for social media sites to serve Linux clients. The previous bill (the one that propagandists call "age verification") was actually really good, and this one is really bad.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#279
post #206

Hope you all are excited for the most important parts of the internet to be completely unusable by default on Linux in a few years.

Good. I’d rather have free computing than the modern web.

But it's not free, this bill makes social media illegal on linux

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#280
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy laws don't prevent foreign entities from influencing elections and making children addicted.

This is a reach. Children can't vote. If that was a real concern you would be banning adults from social media.

We should do that. Unfortunately adults have these pesky things called freedom, and rights. We should also ban them from smoking cigarettes.
Post reply on HN