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Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

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Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#121

Post by duskdozer »

self_awareness wrote: post #104

I wonder, why California law mandates systems that the rest of the world should use? Does California have such massive market?

>The economy of the State of California is the largest in the United States, with a $4.048 trillion gross state product (GSP) as of 2024.[2] It is the largest sub-national economy in the world. If California were an independent nation, it would rank as the fourth largest economy in the world in nominal terms, behind Germany and ahead of Japan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California

So yeah it's pretty big.

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#123

Post by aaztehcy »

ekr____ wrote: post #75
txrx0000 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two things very very wrong with the California law, which you call "age indication". 1) The parental responsibility is given to the wrong people. You're basically being forced by law to give all apps and websites your child's age on request, and then trusting those online platforms to serve the right content (lol). It should be the other way around. The apps and websites should broadcast the age rating of t…

> 1) The parental responsibility is given to the wrong people. You're basically being forced by law to give all apps and websites your child's age on request, and then trusting those online platforms to serve the right content (lol). It should be the other way around. The apps and websites should broadcast the age rating of their content, and the OS fetches that age rating, and decides whether the content is appropri…

[flagged]

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#124

Post by MarsIronPI »

gzread wrote: post #114
shevy-java wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In both cases the operating system stores information it has zero business with.

The operating system already stores your full name. Isn't that a problem?

Not necessarily your real full name. Plus on Unix systems full name is not a required field in /etc/passwd.

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#125

Post by fasterik »

uyzstvqs wrote: post #51

People need to understand the difference between age indication and age verification . Two very different things. Age indication is a completely private and realistically as-effective alternative to the invasive age verification . Age _indication_ means that when you set up your device or create a user account, you enter a date of birth for the user. The OS then provides a native API to return a user's age bracket (n…

The distinction doesn't matter in this case. The fundamental question is whether a government can compel a decentralized open-source project to change its codebase. If you believe code is speech, it's a violation of the right to free expression.

Even if you think adding "age indication" to a project is harmless, you have to consider the precedent this is setting for compelled speech in the future, potentially by regimes that you are not politically aligned with.

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#126

Post by ddtaylor »

dzikimarian wrote: post #109
ddtaylor wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A pointless slippery slope to attempt to stand on that points directly at the Overton Window being drawn around this.

Is it? A lot of parents uses Family Link and similar solutions, which are way more invasive than that.

Those are examples of software people choose to use voluntarily. The context here is government removing that choice and forcing you to use something under the conditions they set.

I'm sure there are parental controls for many that go too far or not far enough. A reminder of why the government trying to solve parenting problems is likely to fail like most of their other attempts, such as failing to stop people from growing plants.

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#127

Post by kelseyfrog »

Havoc wrote: post #65
uyzstvqs wrote: post #51

People need to understand the difference between age indication and age verification . Two very different things. Age indication is a completely private and realistically as-effective alternative to the invasive age verification . Age _indication_ means that when you set up your device or create a user account, you enter a date of birth for the user. The OS then provides a native API to return a user's age bracket (n…

That's just setting things up for a smoother slippery slope... As appealing as the private part sounds I genuinely think it may make the situation worse here by facilitating the transition & muddying the waters

Why reach for a slippery slope fallacy when plenty of other fallacies will do? Have you considered reworking your argument to use proof by assertion or even the moralistic fallacy[1]? You might get better milage out of those.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#128

Post by hdgvhicv »

gzread wrote: post #112
kelnos wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t see how that’s better in any real way. It's so much better. In the one case, the OS is leaking age information (even if just an age range) to every service it talks to. In the other case, the OS isn't telling anyone anything, and is just responding to the age rating that the app/service advertises.

How would you implement a feed of mixed content? Say you're YouTube and some videos are about puppies and some videos are about guns? How would you hide only the gun videos from the homepage when the user is under 16?

Why does YouTube allow videos about guns but not boobs?

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#129

Post by iamnothere »

ben-schaaf wrote: post #70
hypeatei wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your overall sentiment that this is benign because it's ineffectual in its current state. If anything, this is going to warm people up to the idea of government mandated prompts gathering personal information in their OS, and legislators in 2030 (or whenever) are going to say: "this isn't working, lets build on top of that prompt we already have and make it verify IDs" In other words, I think this fir…

> This is the governments first plunge into mandating things on the frontend. ADA mandates computer accessibility, as frequently interpreted by courts. CCPA & GDPR mandate a whole bunch of stuff. Hardly the first plunge.

ADA has only ever been interpreted to apply to services. No prior law has ever been applied to specify how an OS should function.

This law violates the first amendment and will be overturned. Until then it must be resisted.

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#130

Post by iamnothere »

tombert wrote: post #21

I've been running NixOS for awhile, which is very firmly integrated with systemd. I wonder if it's time to try something like sixos or Guix SD.

At least NixOS has signaled disinterest in this, and as an NL project it’s beyond CA legal reach. They also disable userdb by default, so this is irrelevant unless you enable it.
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