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

Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

agelesslinux.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

631–640 of 671 posts

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#631

Post by intended »

brightball wrote: post #45
nextos wrote: post #14

Something remarkable and unsettling is how the age verification debate has popped up almost simultaneously in the US, UK, and EU. With the same logical fallacies. Pretty telling about how transnational lobbies and their interests work. Controlling what children do online is a solved problem: Parenting and parental control applications.

It’s not if you’ve paid attention to political trends for the last 15 years. Everything is happening at the same time in every country. It’s clearly being coordinated.

Nope.

TLDR: The macro forces are more than sufficient for this situation to occur.

HN-goers are largely unaware of the scope of the Techlash globally. Voters want tech firms to be more responsive to their needs.

Governments are beyond frustrated with tech, and every nation is trending towards authoritarianism.

So Governments are more than happy to appear responsive to voter needs, while also gaining a new source of leverage on tech.

I don’t know the lobbying teams directly, but I know many civil society and online safety folk.

Currently, most of those orgs are excluded from conversations and funding. Tech firms have also been cutting down on their safety teams, especially since the current US admin came to power.

———-

If this is actually to be addressed, “enshittification” needs to stop being a thing. Tech used to be known for excellent products, but currently its seen as untrustworthy and most likely to break the law with impunity, and to nickel and dime users.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#632

Post by gzread »

headsman771 wrote: post #628
gzread wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you think they'll do it for over 18 just because they can and it's easy to do?

Yes. Because it isn't any of those 3. It's not in contravention of any long standing norm (just since the popularization of the internet), law, or long standing precedent. And because it gives multiple groups extreme power and influence over many things. And because those groups clearly crave that power and influence. The internet is the new public sphere and forum, and it should not be possible except through legal…

Why does screen readers cause those things but age verification doesn't?

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#633

Post by gzread »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #626
gzread wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can redirect based on over18 every site will do that to learn the same information as if the client just sent it, but slower.

If such a feature were specified then a site would merely have the option of providing alternatives. In the event that it did, whether or not to follow such redirects would be entirely up to the client. Such a system is clearly the technically superior solution. It regulates the provider as opposed to the client, forcing the market to provide a workable solution for concerned parties while the client maintains comple…

So we're back to every website having a link to the over18 version of itself

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#634

Post by intended »

rockskon wrote: post #184
brightball wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not if you’ve paid attention to political trends for the last 15 years. Everything is happening at the same time in every country. It’s clearly being coordinated.

It's almost like a well-monied or well-connected lobbyist is pushing this heavily. Multiple contenders out there as to who it could be. But regardless of who the originator is, the push can be kneecapped. Imagine jurisdictions that have an opposite push - one that criminalizes use of age verification software such as mandating providing government ID or facial scans. It can be done!

Right now, Tech is the bad guy across the world.

Especially the moment you move outside of America. Tech has always been comparatively more attuned to US mores and voter sentiment.

Everywhere else, I only see frustration and people trying to find someone who knows someone at a tech firm to get help.

The backlash against Tech firms is a force of nature at this point. Voters are currently unwilling to listen to appeals to reduce government overreach. Governments are trending towards authoritarianism globally, and are more than happy to give voters what they want, while also getting more leverage over tech.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#635

Post by stephbook »

tosti wrote: post #483
stephbook wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also glad I got to experience phpBB message boards, justin.tv and a Facebook that was about friends. But nowadays you get Discord servers with IS propaganda and twitch.tv is full of prostitutes. Facebook is "the feed", scoured by corporations, full of idealized vacation photos and Russian propaganda. The old days are not coming back and doing nothing will lead to a further deterioration of the internet landscape.

Get off of FB, Twitch and Discord. There's still choice. My 6 online friends are on signal and they're 5 real people I interact with irl and 1 guy I never met irl.

Im not on either of these. But letting your kid roam the internet is different from back then. It's like marijuana, which is 100 times strong now than 50 years ago.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#637

Post by coldtea »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #542
coldtea wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why I need to debate against obvious illogical positions, but here we go: > Well that's not much of a solution is it now? More like an attempt that we all can see will fail. Some entities not wanting to implement a perfectly fine technical solution is not the same as "that's not a solution". If schools not bothering is your issue, just like the state can mandate a "age verification", it can also mandate…

> There's no perfect solution A solution—ie, solving a problem—does in fact imply perfection.

Only in mathematics or in some rigid aspie conception of the term "solution". But we're not debating about solutions in cartoon land.

If real-world solution implied "perfect" there would be no debate regarding better and worse solutions concerning their results - which is what social and political and team and inter-personal and even ...spousal debates are all about.

And that's about merely inherent issues, before we even come to how a proposed solution interplays with other things (e.g. mandatory age verification vs privacy, or policing vs personal freedom, or censorship vs innovation and authoritarianism).

In real life practical solutions always have tradeoffs and weak spots, but can nonetheless make the problem much smaller as to effectively be irrelevant or at an acceptable level.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#638

Post by coldtea »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #543
fc417fc802 wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is an argument against age restrictions since you could just as easily pass a law that instead required schools to enable various filters. You could even require mainstream devices from major manufacturers to support certain filtering standards. And you could require websites to send self categorization headers. There is no valid argument for why ID checks are necessary if the goal is simply to get filtering i…

I don't really give a damn about the freedom to say stuff on the internet, so you're trying to convince the wrong person.

You just want censorship and state control. So perhaps you have the wrong ideas. Your "solutions" are worse than the problems.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#639

Post by fainpul »

gzread wrote: post #577
fainpul wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a lawyer. But it seems to be the same as accepting the terms of service of some product you use or clicking on a "Yes I'm 18+" button to gain access, isn't it? If you somehow suffer from a negative outcome, it puts the blame clearly on you, from a legal standpoint, if you lied about your age or ignored the TOS.

It says nobody is liable for the signal being wrong i.e. the parent is allowed to give the child an over 18 account or full access if they think that's appropriate.

It says no such thing.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#640

Post by fainpul »

gzread wrote: post #562
fainpul wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not that it's hard to cheat (it's easy), the problem is it makes you officially a liar and liable for "illegal app use". It might not be a problem for you , but some underage kid, who lied about their age, gets addicted to a game with in-game purchases and gets into financial trouble now has no recourse against the company who made the addicting game.

There's no liability in the law for a child who uses an over-18-signaled account and accesses over-18 content, nor for a parent who gave that account to the child. It's all the parent's decision if the child should be restricted or not.

As noted in my other reply to you as well, this is false.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

Post reply on HN