Open software should not implement this feature because slippery slope is not a fallacy based on my experience. Force them to actually create a government approved operating systems to make it clear how absurd this is and so that we know who will bend the knee.
California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash
271–280 of 525 posts
Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
What tools would you want?
Honestly, I don’t have a perfect answer. It really depends on what the service is. My main thing is I want to be able to opt in or out of various filters. I don’t mind if my kids want to listen to music that has swear words, but I don’t want them watching videos where they give horribly sexist pickup artist advice. This isn’t just about what I feel is age appropriate, either. It is also about what I know about my kid…
This level of filtering is so granular and bespoke that I'm not surprised no one offers it.
Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I personally think this current version of the legislation is a good compromise. I don't think it is a good compromise. It seems to cover the wrong use cases. My use cases have nothing to do with children on any level. Why would I want to submit to government restrictions? That makes zero sense. It's as if the right-to-repair-movement would suddenly be undermined by a lobbyist advocating how restrictions are great.…
I'm sure than intelligent person like yourself understands that a lot of voters have kids and prioritize feeling that their kids are safe, even if those feelings are not always grounded in rationality. Most people shy away from complexity.
Yes, but equally so, some intelligent voters (who might've moved out of CA by now, as moving might be the best way to solve that disconnect) might also believe that we should be living in a Republic (and the government should not impose majority-favoured restrictions to the detriment of minority) rather than unrestricted Democracy. .
Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash
#274Linux was always exempt--because it's not an operating system.
Huh? An operating system, as defined by Andrew Tanenbaum[0], the author of both Minix and of the best operating textbook ever, is a combination of:
- an "extended machine": provide usable abstractions over the hardware to reduce complexity to a manageable level
- a "resource manager": provide for an orderly and controlled allocation of the processors, memories, and I/O devices among all the various programs wanting them.
By that definition, Linux is very much an operating system... unless by "Linux" you meant the kernel only without the additional tooling (systemd, libc, coreutils, shell, etc.) that distros ship with.
Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash
#275Earlier 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.
That's a sorry attempt at an excuse. Companies are expected to collect ID and have related business logic that respects local laws but can't figure out how to tag their content? That's an utterly nonsensical position.
There's no reason a simple, standardized header can't be used to communicate any number of classifications simultaneously.
Edit: It occurs to me that if you oppose all age related measures then my above response isn't entirely fair to you. I still think it's an absurd objection but the comparison I made no longer applies.
Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
Public education is extremely different from age checks in apps. Yes, homeschooled people are generally really dumb because humans are not born with the knowledge of the world or how to teach it. This is different from California telling Debian to ask for user ages.
You have that backward. The home-educated typically score 15 to 25 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests. -- https://nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/#Academic
Asking NHERI to evaluate the effects of homeschooling is like asking Focus on the Family whether children do worse when raised by gay couples.
Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash
#277The law is so broad that theoretically, age verification can be on your watches, your Ti-84, anything.
Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash
#278Linux will be exempt for now. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see them try to slip it through later. Legislators in California have learned over the years, and have carved out exemptions in bills such as gun control bills to get it passed, and later classified their exemption as a "loophole" to be closed.
Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
If I'm reading that right this covers all of Meta's state lobbying spending which is $45M + $25M federally and it's not all directly related to this age gating stuff, but general shaping anti-child exploitation policy?
> On every social media regulation bill in Colorado, Meta takes an "Amending" position, actively fighting changes. Across 117 lobbying records on 22 bills:
> Bills regulating social media: Meta position is "Amending" (fighting) > The one bill putting the burden on OS providers: Meta position is "Monitoring" (watching)
> Meta fights bills that regulate Meta. Meta watches bills that regulate everyone else.
So their lobbyist choosing not to fight against the OS age gating is the big reveal.
Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash
#280The only device mandates that should be taking place is for the default installations of web clients should be checking to see if parental controls are enabled. This only impacts the major browsers. An intern at each browser company could add this check in minutes. If they are enabled and the person logged in is on a regular account (not admin or power user of sorts) then the base installation of web clients must che…
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 problem with your proposal is that it's already the status quo. Various whitelists exist but service operators don't generally bother with these things. What you end up with is a largely unusable experience if you enable whitelist filtering.
The core problem is the lack of buy in. Unfortunately that likely needs to be forced. I think it's not unreasonable to legally require people to make a claim about the nature of what they are serving up. They already need to be aware of the legal status of what they're doing anyway so it hardly seems as though making such a determination should pose a burden when you consider that it's an alternative to either requiring ID, requiring the client send age bracket information, or other heavy handed interventions. The choice here isn't "the status quo vs a header" but rather "some other age related regulation vs a header".
An easy way to enforce this "voluntarily" (ie coerce) without sending government agents after every small time website operator would be to require that mainstream browsers and other client software (based on MAU or similar metrics) refuse to process content that does not send a classification header. Doesn't matter what the header says or what the status of the user account or parental controls or whatever else is, it has to send the header regardless or it will be blocked without exception. That would presumably trigger broad compliance with the relevant regulations.