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Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

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Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stronger: Once you accept their right to ask , then you open the door to their right to a truthful answer, and thus to a verified answer.

Hasn’t the right to ask existed since the invention of consent laws? The state being able demand a persons age, and gate their behaviour based on that, has existed for hundreds of years so far. During that entire time the requirement to be truthful has also existed otherwise the laws would be meaningless. All that’s changing now, is figuring out how that extends into the digital realm. I personally find the argument…

Hard agree. I don't think we allowed video store operators in 1995 to just let kids wander into the back room and rent porn, but we're so used to there just being "no rules" online, it is coming as a massive shock now when it's being suggested that maybe there should be some basic guardrails to discourage that.

Let me be clear, I don't want face scans, or more of those creepy companies that operate this age verification crap for Discord, etc. Because I know it's not going to be implemented in the privacy-preserving way it could be, if there's ANY involvement with identity documents. Not least because we don't even have any proper cryptographically useful identity cards, so everything like that operates on a "trust us bro" basis where they pinky promise not to accidentally store everyone's raw face scans / ID cards / numbers / etc and inevitably leak them.

But out-of-box age declaration is not extreme and is not slippery-slope, any more than out-of-box user account creation 25 years ago has led to out-of-box ID card checks.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

finally the die hard systemd haters will have an actually valid point.

I’m unfamiliar with systemd’s haters or why this would give them a valid point. Could you please elaborate?

systemd is a massive blob of code that infects every part of a system and all of its subsystems. It completely changed the way system administration was done, the way init scripts work, and added tons of things to init that some argue aren't necessary, like dhcp and DNS.

Newer linux folks like it because they're used to it, people who don't like it use devuan, gentoo, or one of the others that still lets one use openRC or whatever else.

upthread someone mentioned that systemd already has the ability to store the birthdate of a user. Why would an init system need that? It doesn't, but here we are.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#214
post #27

So in red states porn is being used, and in blue states TikTok and Instagram are being used. Is anyone tracking who is behind the concerted efforts here? For example, which organizations, executives, lobbyists and politicians are valid and responsible parties?

Meta is one of the biggest ones pushing for this, because they don't want to be accountable so these types of laws pass the buck onto the delivery platforms (Apple, Google, other OSes) Meta is then funding/lobbying alongside a bunch of other conservative groups like Heritage Action, and the digital childhood alliance (also made up of a ton of other conservative lobbying groups)

Sure, but Meta also wouldn't mind if age verification of some kind were used, because it would just increase the moat they already have. Meta or Google would have no difficulty complying with any of these laws regardless of how extreme they are, while the mom and pop shops can't comply and are forced out of business.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#215
post #58

I feel like all of these laws are being designed backwards. Content providers, like MPAA films, should have to identify what sort of content they are providing. Then I can give my kids a device configured to allow some or all of that at my discretion. Requiring my kids' devices to advertise their age (or their age "bucket", as if that was a meaningful difference) to protect them is not doing me or my kids any favors.

This is definitely not about "protect the kids" or age verification, this is a stepping stone to full identity verification to use the internet at all.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally a slippery slope argument

It's a fallacy when there is no cause and effect for each step. This, however states the steps.

What? The GP comment is one single line which states that it just "will" happen.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#217
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criminals don't have to "recruit and pay huge numbers of naive bank customers"; in my jurisdiction, they just walk into a casino with a few hundred thousand dollars, exchange for chips, pretend to gamble for an hour, then exchange the chips for cash, and walk out with a nice receipt. There're more complex schemes involving real estate and other mediums too.

That’s cute, but it doesn’t really scale. Organised crime groups aren’t interested in laundering a few $100k at a go. They’re moving and laundering millions, you can’t put that through a casino without it being very obvious. There is a huge international criminal industry that exists to find and hire money mules, and launder eye watering amounts of cash. Where I worked, we broadly assumed that the police weren’t inte…

The 'small-scale' 100k-1MM per participant per day per casino laundering can add up to 'real money' quite fast.

The larger-scale money laundering in my area is a but more complicated, involving import/export schemes, real estate transactions, and property developments. I'm not in a mega-city, so I assume these schemes are taking place at a larger scale in those. I have only ever heard of very basic and stupid schemes (which didn't provide any tax revenue to my goverment) being detected or prosecuted.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#218
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Illinois now requires operating system providers, open source projects included, to build age verification by 2028" however "nothing in the bill has teeth against someone with no business presence in Illinois"

Companies like Red Hat/IBM operate in Illinois and for better or worse have controlling interests in Linux and across open source projects pretty broadly. Wouldn't they be forced to include the capability in their products, which then percolate out to everyone just by network effects?

I don't see how they enforce it though? Isn't this saying every linux instance needs basically a backdoor network access? How would verify the 30 pods on my node are from minors or adults without that? Or this is more about a user facing node? So my aws nodes need to verify my age before I ssh in?

Remote desktop services?

Sounds so complicated to actually do.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#219
post #89

Linux distro founder here (stagex) I will never be compelled to implement this, and would never merge it. Every release requires quorum signatures by an international maintainer team, and the distro is designed to work offline-first, with some variants not even supporting network drivers in the kernel, so Illinois legislators can eat shit.

Just wait until all vendors are required to lock down their devices like Apple does. Apple has shown that it is possible, thanks Apple!

How many jailbreaks has Apple had now? I even have an Apple DRM bypass not public yet. We will be fine ;)

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#220
post #2

What does that mean, practically? The person who installed linux on that particular device is liable? >no algorithmic feeds for minors by default Any choice of what content to display is an algorithm. Maybe they want a simple or easily explainable algorithm?

Presumably this means no targeting the user's preferences and just showing everything by newest/most liked.

"most liked" won't work. has to be chronological, and manually curated. the way fediverse works. when you make an account somewhere, you can choose to see the local people, or the entire network, but it's all chronological.

There's things like hashtag searches and whatnot, but none of it is algorithms; in the sense we understand it to mean, here, these are not manipulative algorithms designed to keep people on a site and keep ads rolling by.

on the fediverse, there are bots to curate content such as "most liked", one can subscribe to these bots to see such "views" of the feed.

there's absolutely no reason for any of that crap to be built in, other than that's how reddit (and HN) do it.

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