Carry permit to operate a compiler is in our near future.
Richard Stallman's "Right to Read" is worth reading again, because it portrays a very similar scenario.
Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak
41–50 of 148 posts
Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak
#42OP is certainly right that a lot of this legislation is written in ways that are hard to interpret and that often seem like they would have undesirable side effects even under the assumption that the basic idea is good (whether that's actually true is a whole different question). In the specific case of CA AB1043: (1) Systems are required to ask the user for their age and just trust whatever they say (2) Applications…
I think this legislation is as dumb as everyone else does, but it also seems like the cheapest way for everyone to agree that we did something about the moral panic without actually giving up anything. It doesn’t do anything with ID or privacy or even actual verification. There’s no complicated auth dance to do with government services to verify our age tokens or whatever the latest Rube Goldberg machine “zero knowle…
You're on the right path, but the "something" politicians want to do is specifically "regulate Facebook's patent harms to children". Facebook's counter-argument is: "we don't have a legally ironclad way to check user age, it should be Apple and Google's job". So the politicians want to write a law to make it Apple and Google's job to check age.
In other words, all of these age verification laws are here predominantly to indemnify Facebook from a growing wave of child endangerment lawsuits in a way that will ensure Facebook doesn't have to kick off even a single teen from their platforms. That's why the "verification" is just a date and an age range bucket.
My personal opinion is that these laws are stupid, but not harmful to Linux users, and that everyone angry at systemd for complying is shooting the wrong guy. Your real target is Facebook and you should be yelling at your local representative to make this bill not target Linux distros.
Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak
#43I think you miss the point
(But who am I)
the simple fact you sending the same signal over and over again, with all other signals your browser send, it will be another key to make you apart. They don't care if you lie. Important that you lie the same story every time.
And after having your dob, who could easily be a flag if you are less than 18, they could easily request your name, or a document number, but I think it will be much better, it will have some ISP and/or Device ID.
Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Systems are required to ask the user for their age and just trust whatever they say > > This is the thing they actually get right. It removes the inconvenience, privacy invasion, forced use of corporate verifiers with perverse incentives, etc. Meanwhile if the user is actually a child then their age is set by their parent. Well, maybe. For instance, if a child buys their own device they could set the age to whatev…
> For instance, if a child buys their own device they could set the age to whatever they want. If a child has the money to buy a device without the parent knowing about it then they could just buy a used device that has already been configured with an account or pay a high school senior to set one up on their new device. > Rather, the way it works is that the developer is then assumed to have "actual knowledge" of th…
> > For instance, if a child buys their own device they could set the age to whatever they want.
> If a child has the money to buy a device without the parent knowing about it then they could just buy a used device that has already been configured with an account or pay a high school senior to set one up on their new device.
Yes, agreed. I'm just describing how it works.
> > Rather, the way it works is that the developer is then assumed to have "actual knowledge" of the user's age (See 1798.501(b)(2)(A)) and then has to behave accordingly in other age-restricted contexts.
>How is mkdir or python3 supposed to "behave accordingly in other age-restricted contexts"? And if the answer is that its behavior is entirely unmodified, why is it required to do something without effect?
I agree this is undesirable. See: https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/device-based-age-assuran...
> Also, who is the "developer" of a thirty year old project with thousands of contributors and multiple forks? All of them? None of them? The last one to make a commit, even if they're outside the jurisdiction?
This unspecified in the current text.
Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak
#45[flagged]
>This systemd change is absurdly overdiscussed. It's a field for a number, no verification, no enforcement for anything.
> And no, I do not accept the slippery slope fallacy.
aka:
$OBVIOUSLY_DUMB_OVERREACHING_EASILY_ABUSED_POLICY is absurdly overdiscussed. It's $ABSURDLY_REDUCTIONIST_VIEW. And no, I do not accept $HISTORICALY_VERY_LIKELY_OUTCOME fallacy.
Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak
#46OP is certainly right that a lot of this legislation is written in ways that are hard to interpret and that often seem like they would have undesirable side effects even under the assumption that the basic idea is good (whether that's actually true is a whole different question). In the specific case of CA AB1043: (1) Systems are required to ask the user for their age and just trust whatever they say (2) Applications…
I think this legislation is as dumb as everyone else does, but it also seems like the cheapest way for everyone to agree that we did something about the moral panic without actually giving up anything. It doesn’t do anything with ID or privacy or even actual verification. There’s no complicated auth dance to do with government services to verify our age tokens or whatever the latest Rube Goldberg machine “zero knowle…
I think the writing has both intentions. Both implicate companies to comply as well for the mass to not defend. If it was not, there wouldn't be a guy on TV saying that there are 5000 possible pedo cases that are not being investigated and that's why they need it.
Anyone with more than 2 brain cells can put it together
Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak
#47OP is certainly right that a lot of this legislation is written in ways that are hard to interpret and that often seem like they would have undesirable side effects even under the assumption that the basic idea is good (whether that's actually true is a whole different question). In the specific case of CA AB1043: (1) Systems are required to ask the user for their age and just trust whatever they say (2) Applications…
I think this legislation is as dumb as everyone else does, but it also seems like the cheapest way for everyone to agree that we did something about the moral panic without actually giving up anything. It doesn’t do anything with ID or privacy or even actual verification. There’s no complicated auth dance to do with government services to verify our age tokens or whatever the latest Rube Goldberg machine “zero knowle…
> I personally hope this legislation dies and we can be done with this silly exercise, but if we’re stuck with age verification moral panic than a simple OS-level switch that we set once and then forget about seems like the least intrusive form of “age verification” we can get away with.
Just for clarification. CA AB1043 was signed back in 2025 and takes effect January 1 2027.
Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak
#48I think you miss the point (But who am I) the simple fact you sending the same signal over and over again, with all other signals your browser send, it will be another key to make you apart. They don't care if you lie. Important that you lie the same story every time. And after having your dob, who could easily be a flag if you are less than 18, they could easily request your name, or a document number, but I think i…
It actually is more like a flag in most cases. Specifically, in the case of AB1043, you enter your age or your DOB but then the OS provides an age range (Also, while some bills do seem to require browsers to promulgate age data to websites (e.g., NY SB102A [0]), AB1043 does not. Rather, it requires the browser
to read the age range just like any other app, but does't say anything about providing it to sites.
[0] https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S8102/amendm...
Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak
#49NO, DO NOT COMPLY WITH FORCED SPEECH
Might seem harmless now but it won’t next time, and you will have already capitulated
Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak
#50It seems incredibly silly to me that this is being rushed into systemd and other linux components. I understand Apple making changes, and even Canonical, but systemd is not run by one corporation and there is no reason to adhere to a badly written law. Why play along with the charade? If root is root, the "age verification" field does not make any sense. Why are these changes being made on a worldwide basis when the…
Open source is driven by contributions. Most of the time, if someone wants a feature, implements the feature, and submits a reasonable PR to a project, that project will have the feature. In this case, the PR appears to have been written by someone who is not a regular SystemD contributor, and (through a bit of Googling) works for a FinTech company with no obvious interest. I can't comment on why that individual want…
> No one is going to not buy something because it is kosher. But if paying a thousand dollars a year to put a small circle-u symbol on the back of your box can increase sales by 1% among observant Jews, most companies are going to do it.
Contrary to perceived politics, many Muslims will eat kosher food because it's a superset of halal rules (excl. alcohol).
It's a globally consolidated certification through organizations like the Orthodox Union. This is unlike halal which is local and has many scammers offering to pencil whip compliance. This means many Muslims will prefer kosher to "halal" food to avoid due diligence on the certification agency.
To tie this into age-verification, companies and ecosystems will use the strictest method that makes them globally compliant. Consumers will prefer that convenience even in the presence of intense political beliefs.
A bank that uses seamless OS-level age checks everywhere will win against one asking manually in the jurisdictions it isn't required.