California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by wizzwizz4 » Mon, May 25, 2026, 10:15 PM UTC

forgetfreeman wrote: post #169

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laws like that are sensible – and, in fact, already apply to the internet, too . Age verification doesn't help with that.

Well lack of age verification definitely isn't fixing anything either so what's they play here? We all just collectively as a society just shrug like oh well, no fixing any of that?

No, we should take measures that actually address the problems that exist. Problem numero uno: the Big Tech companies are creating systems and digital environments that are hostile to everyone (of which children are a subset), compelling everyone to use them, and punishing those who attempt to get away. We cannot fix that by merely dictating terms, especially if those terms are such that only the Big Tech companies themselves could possibly know enough to enforce the terms.

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

#222

Post by jwitthuhn » Mon, May 25, 2026, 10:18 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #153

jwitthuhn wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an admission from the writers that this law is unrelated to safety and people should very loudly and frequently point that out. If OSes that don't verify the age of their users are a genuinely unsafe for children, why should they be allowed just because they are open source? That doesn't seem to mitigate dangers associated with age in any away I can identify.

Have you considered that the writers typically have legislative but not technical skills and are just trying to placate upset voters, without really understanding what the optimal solution could be? Reading this and other threads you can see therea re plenty of highly technical people who struggle to articulate what kind of policy they want or what kind of parental controls they want to set up themselves? It's kind o…

"One can point out that such electoral pitches are dishonest bullshit until one is blue in the face"

This is what I intend to do. To just let lawmakers get away with passing bullshit because "of course they will" is a defeatist attitude that I don't advocate.

That is why it is so important to be loud about this incredibly obvious disingenuous behavior. Make sure everyone knows the people advocating this do not care one bit about children's safety.

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

#223

Post by jjcm » Mon, May 25, 2026, 10:23 PM UTC

This will only help if the law states that internet companies that check this have to default to assuming the user is an adult. Otherwise the end result will be that Linux clients will get caught in a dragnet of automatic denial.

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

#224

Post by throwaway173738 » Mon, May 25, 2026, 10:25 PM UTC

nodar86 wrote: post #192

farley13 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree - making folks intending to interact with minors comply makes more sense. That said, outside of the merits of this approach, I am dubious of any actual implementation given 2 points. 1) Protecting the youths will always be a leaky bucket. With disadvantaged youths possibly more at risk. Those exposed to non-compliant parents ("cool" parents who are ok with sharing unsuitable content) or lacking strong…

> "cool" parents who are ok with sharing unsuitable content Or simply parents who won’t agree with the government on what is suitable for their children. We already have parental control on all mainstream operating systems, why cannot this simply be the responsibility of the parent as are so many other things regarding what children do, watch, eat etc?

Because what parents have access to now is extremely ineffective unless they prevent their kids from going outside or going to school. Right now the onus is entirely on parents too keep their kids off the Internet equivalent of smoking cigarettes, and it’s a losing battle. What we’re looking for is for the liability to shift off the parent and onto the people intentionally communicating with children. Frankly the proposal above was very reasonable. If you don’t want to intentionally communicate with kids then do nothing and you have no liability.

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

#225

Post by hunterpayne » Mon, May 25, 2026, 10:25 PM UTC

forgetfreeman wrote: post #163

throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #150

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…

[flagged]

Your post says far more about you than libertarians. Remember, every time you give the government a power, you are creating an avenue for corruption and by design putting someone who probably isn't qualified in charge of decisions they lack the experience to make reliably. There you go, a simple argument that increasing government power has a drawback that you never consider. And that's why you post says more about you than anything. Such an extreme position is impossible to defend and anytime you try either a) the person you are debating isn't very skilled at debating or b) you are just being stubborn and ignoring facts and arguments you don't like. I suspect its B.

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

#226

Post by chickensong » Mon, May 25, 2026, 10:28 PM UTC

throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #150

burnte wrote: 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.

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…

I dunno, "government bad" seems like a pretty reasonable default. Governments typically have a high amount of corruption and are generally unhealthy organizations. It doesn't make sense to delegate more responsibility to an entity with such structural issues.

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

#227

Post by oceansky » Mon, May 25, 2026, 10:29 PM UTC

thesmtsolver2 wrote: post #161

oceansky wrote: post #111

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...

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_b...

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

#228

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 25, 2026, 10:30 PM UTC

lokar wrote: post #220

codedokode wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the header/metatag is designed poorly. The RTA proposal is that every operator of every site must verify the content and add the header to mark the site as "safe" or "unsafe". This is unnecessary burden that they have to bear if this proposal is given a green light and this is wrong. Instead, the default should be, that if there is no header or it cannot be parsed, then the content is unsafe. And if there is…

The page having a simple rating assumes there can be one mapping from content to rating for the whole world. I doubt we can even have one for North America and Europe.

[deleted]

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

#229

Post by galangalalgol » Mon, May 25, 2026, 10:30 PM UTC

iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #200

zdragnar wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people who will adamantly insist that keeping classes within similar development ranges is harmful and will vociferously reject any such proposal, up to and including things such as "gifted" schools and the like. It's why some schools in (iirc) California did away with higher maths like calculus entirely. Sadly, it seems there's nothing actually common about common wisdom.

I will admit that I never heard a serious argument from anyone that did not rely on issues not related to individual student's education. If you have any materials on those, I would love to read some of it.

Montessori advocates for mixed age classes where more advanced help teach the less advanced, as the teaching itself solidifies it in the more advanced student's mind. Not sure if it is valid. But it is something with studies and meta studies that may have been done well or poorly, not just an aesthetic choice. I think Vulcan style training pods driven by AI like khanmigo will end up being better education than the vast majority of students will ever have access to in person. Or consider it the realization of "a young lady's primer" from diamond age.

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

#230

Post by wizzwizz4 » Mon, May 25, 2026, 10:31 PM UTC

throwaway173738 wrote: post #224

nodar86 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "cool" parents who are ok with sharing unsuitable content Or simply parents who won’t agree with the government on what is suitable for their children. We already have parental control on all mainstream operating systems, why cannot this simply be the responsibility of the parent as are so many other things regarding what children do, watch, eat etc?

Because what parents have access to now is extremely ineffective unless they prevent their kids from going outside or going to school. Right now the onus is entirely on parents too keep their kids off the Internet equivalent of smoking cigarettes, and it’s a losing battle. What we’re looking for is for the liability to shift off the parent and onto the people intentionally communicating with children. Frankly the pro…

I want to intentionally communicate with kids, because kids have always been valued members of the online communities I frequent. Right now, it is easy for social media giants to exploit children, easy for child predators to get access to abuse children, and increasingly-difficult to maintain online spaces in which children are allowed to safely exist. That is surely not what we are intending to accomplish, here.