Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

linuxstans.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 570 posts

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

#221

Post by kej »

xp84 wrote: post #151
kej wrote: 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.

Did you read the law? It actually imposes very (in my humble opinion) good rules on the content providers, specifically social media. We know why social media is addictive - the personalized feeds are highly optimized to extend usage time, with no amount of time being "good enough." Social media sites would be banned from using this type of feed, limiting it to feeds of content you've subscribed to or requested only.…

Right, I'm saying that if the goal is to keep kids off of addictive social feeds, it would be better to have social media have to say "this site implements addictive feeds" and then I can configure my kids' devices to disallow that. The decision should be happening in my house on the devices I control, not in a Meta data center. The current law just gives Meta a way to start building a shadow profile early.

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

#222

Post by [deleted] »

otterley wrote: post #184
cogman10 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Novice, but I'd argue that Dobbs has seriously eroded that case law. The right to privacy used to be pretty settled law, but now the foundation of that settled law is on sandy ground.

It was never really all that settled, IMO. Roe v. Wade (which is now dead) was built on a pretty shaky foundation that was inspired by emanations of privacy rights like the Fifth Amendment, in the absence of clear Constitutional language that made a privacy right explicit.

[deleted]

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

#223

Post by lrvick »

petcat wrote: post #191
lrvick wrote: 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.

> Linux distro founder here (stagex) What does it mean to "found" a Linux distro? Can you describe it?

https://stagex.tools

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

#225

Post by lrvick »

Reason077 wrote: post #157
lrvick wrote: 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.

> ”Linux distro founder here (stagex)… designed to work offline-first, with some variants not even supporting network drivers” If your OS doesn’t access the internet or isn’t intended to run browsers / social apps, then you are outside the scope of this legislation. That would be a bit like requiring a toaster to ask for your age before letting you operate it.

But someone could attach a GPU in the offline OS and use it to generate porn with local AI models! Oh no! How will we stop them?!

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

#226

Post by terribleperson »

xp84 wrote: post #197
terribleperson wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is a safe assumption. As a counter, actual age verification is being rolled out in other places. I really don't think we're in a position of choosing between no age-based access mechanism, and age-based access mechanism. Between the anti-porn types and public demand for some kind of regulations on social media, regulation of some kind is inevitable. Our actual choice may only be what type of restri…

Re: your last paragraph I actually agree with you, if you mandate that the site has to look for an affirmative signal and if it doesn't get one, has to assume the user is the youngest possible age group. Users would demand the proper support for it. Although it would have to have some teeth capable of biting the client software companies, because for instance, if browser(s) chose to on their own simply send "I'm over…

Yeah, that's pretty much what I am imagining. You're right about needing some teeth - maybe the legislature could define a spec, and penalties for implementing the feature in a commercial product without actually following the spec.

I really think all we need is what you describe in your third paragraph. It doesn't need to be bulletproof, it just needs to be an easy way for parents to set the level of content their children can access without them having to hover over their children at all times. Something like that could easily be set up in the Genius store when someone gets a new iPhone, or set up at first boot on an Android phone. That's like 90% of the devices anyone is actually worried about. Windows support of the feature would take it to like 99.9%.

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

#227

Post by dooglius »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #175
lrvick wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never show fear to tech-illiterate bullies trying to compromise constitutionally protected rights. That is how freedoms get quietly lost. Users need to see that the people in positions of influence in FOSS projects they trust are not afraid of this bullshit. I -hope- someone is stupid enough to take a case like this to court so we can establish some much needed case law here. These overreaches deserve to be co…

> I will never show fear "never show fear" and "never engage intelligence" are two different things. Understand what people will do in response to your actions, and act accordingly to achieve the outcomes you want. Please by all means fight the law, and do so intelligently in a way that will actually help.

Can you be specific in how you think he is behaving unintelligently, and what you think that people will do in response to his actions?

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

#228

Post by lrvick »

reverius42 wrote: post #209
lrvick wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

stagex accepts tax deductable donations via opencollective but we do not actually have a registered legal entity, so yes, probably fine. I mostly just want to make it clear this type of legislation is unenforceable and a waste of everyone's time.

> accepts tax deductable donations via opencollective but we do not actually have a registered legal entity that, uh, sounds sketchy

Opencollective collects funds to distribute to open source project maintainers. Not that it matters. We have never collected a single donation, but figured it was worth a shot. lol.

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

#229

Post by terribleperson »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #182
terribleperson wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is a safe assumption. As a counter, actual age verification is being rolled out in other places. I really don't think we're in a position of choosing between no age-based access mechanism, and age-based access mechanism. Between the anti-porn types and public demand for some kind of regulations on social media, regulation of some kind is inevitable. Our actual choice may only be what type of restri…

> I really don't think we're in a position of choosing between no age-based access mechanism, and age-based access mechanism. It is impossible to win a battle you stop fighting.

But it's possible to lose a battle you were never going to win in the first place, and end up in a worse place.

I think that if these types of laws (illinois, california) don't hit a critical mass, we're going to see ID verification become the dominant method of age verification. Most websites will use it, and it'll become global because it's easier to just demand an ID and a photo for every user through some third party provider than to offer looser restrictions for the handful of states that have different demands.

This is especially true since it's now been demonstrated that states (like Texas) can go after out-of-state sites serving people in Texas. Sure, you could scrupulously try to identify which state someone is in and use the appropriate level of verification, but then you might be liable if it turns out it was someone from Texas or Georgia or Britain using a VPN.

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

#230

Post by genewitch »

ux266478 wrote: post #49
guerrilla wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect. GNU/Linux includes userland while Linux doesn't.

However, unlike GNU plus Linux plus systemd plus FreeDesktop.org, it does not constitute a usable Operating System for a Desktop computer per se. Merely having a notion of userland isn't sufficient! Is age verification to be placed within the coreutils? I think not! Hyperfocusing on putting the API in systemd should be sufficient.... Pay no heed to anyone saying anything different, regulators!

  $> ls -al
User age not set, please verify age before invoking CLI utilities.
Post reply on HN