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

tomshardware.com

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

#301

Post by platevoltage »

coryrc wrote: post #233
burnte wrote: post #205

Earlier 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

Aside from the horribly biased source, standardized testing scores are a terrible metric for judging education levels.

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

#302

Post by forgetfreeman »

trinsic2 wrote: post #237
forgetfreeman wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The current form of government and the last administrations have allowed this environment to exist. We don't have antitrust regulation being enforced and citizens united is still in effect. This is only going to cause things you describe to get worse and the U.S. government is complicit in this because we have a two party system that works directly or indirectly for the establishment. I'm not sure if you are encourag…

That's a problem with the politicians folks have chosen to elect, not an issue with the concept of governance. And while I agree with your analysis proposing we all wait patiently for "market forces" to resolve whatever ludicrously unethical bullshit industry is up to at any given time is also clearly a non-starter. So now what?

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

#303

Post by fc417fc802 »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #72
Bender wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree fundamentally and ideologically but we are past that point. The toothpaste is already out of the tube as they say. There will be restrictions so all I can do is suggest more sensible restrictions that keep the control on the client side and do not share data. Any data shared can and will be abused, leaked , sold, stolen without consequence.

I heard that lie about "sensible restrictions" so many times, now I am waiting for "sensible violence", "sensible beating to death" and so on. It is a false argument that "there will be restrictions so all I can do is suggest more sensible restrictions", what you can do is recognize that "no restrictions is an option". It is like negotiating with a terrorist that wants to kill you and this is his starting position an…

> now I am waiting for "sensible violence"

That exists and is called "self defense", no?

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

#305

Post by Terr_ »

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.

It's a hard problem but the key is that it needs to be on the client rather than on the server, because that's what can have any information on jurisdictions, local regulations, religions, or general parental preference.

For example, it would be insane if every website and blog in the world to had to run logic to detect and prevent Elbonian males under 16 lunar years from seeing ankles except on Thursdays.

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

#306

Post by platevoltage »

7e wrote: post #91

Why should Linux be exempt? Linux lobbyists seem to be against the public good. It takes an AI agent 5 minutes to add this feature and then they add be good forevermore. And given that the software is open source, everyone can use the same library to be compliant. Belly-aching snowflakes…

Why should I care about being surveilled? I have nothing to hide. \s

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

#307

Post by ImJamal »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #98
grim_io wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you can't. Like no past generation could stop their kids.

> no past generation could stop their kids Past generations absolutely protected their kids from cigarettes and alcohol. A gate doesn’t have to be 100% effective to have net benefits.

Well in the past there were laws banning the selling of cigarettes and alcohol to minors. Selling alcohol to a minor can cause you to lose your liquor license. With much of the online content being free and not involving a physical product it has become significantly harder for a parent to protect their children.

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

#309

Post by ImJamal »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #136
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no past generation could stop their kids Past generations absolutely protected their kids from cigarettes and alcohol. A gate doesn’t have to be 100% effective to have net benefits.

If one kid is able to bypass the system it means it's zero percent effective. Same thing with alcohol, and cigarettes. Especially if it means I have to show my ID to buy those things.

Guess we should get rid of murder and rape laws, right?

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

#310

Post by kelnos »

Bender wrote: post #3

The 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…

How does this work for mixed-content sites? Like say a minor visits a video sharing or social media site and the default feed/recommendations list includes stuff that should be age-restricted, but is mostly stuff that shouldn't be.

The entire site shouldn't be blocked; the browser needs a way to tell the website "my parental controls are enabled and I need to you to filter out age-restricted content".

Alternatively, the RTA header/meta could include a parameter/attribute for an "alternate URL" to load when parental controls are enabled. This could be useful to allow sites to present a custom error-type response, but could also be used to automatically redirect the user to similar, but age-appropriate, content.

Anyway, this all ignores the fact that "protect the children" isn't really the goal here: it's to slowly eat away at our ability to be anonymous (even read-only anonymous) on the internet. Age verification is just a watered-down way of saying they require positive identification, and eventually our hardware will have to cryptographically attest we are who we say we are. I really hope this isn't inevitable, but it's starting to feel that way.

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