"The kids are still online and they’re still being harmed. In some cases, it might even be worse. Yesterday I reported that eSafety had privately acknowledged that forcing kids to use platforms in a logged-out state could be exposing them to more harm."

If only someone had foreseen this outcome.

#AusPol #SocialMedia #ThinkOfTheChildren
https://www.crikey.com.au/2026/03/31/australias-teen-social-media-ban-isnt-working-yet/

Dylan "I read the law and I'm here to implement it" M. Tylor gets up in the morning and decides to write age verification code that he himself calls "hilariously pointless and ineffective", within a week strikes 4 repos off his list, and i bet the Linux Kernel is going to be next (I'm joking... mostly)

It's worth noting that the first people who approved the PR on systemd repo are 2 big tech employees - Mircoslop and Redhat/IBM (why I'm i not surprised!!), someone then opened a revert PR, Lennart Poettering (systemd creator) closed it.. thus blocking the removal

And this is why you now have Liberated Systemd, a fork of systemd without Age verification.. which IS 'hilariously pointless and ineffective' at saving children

when engineers starts reading the law like a specification, this is what you get.. useful idiots.

#ageverification #authoritarianism #SaveTheChildren #thinkofthechildren #epstein #surveillance #bigtech #government #privacy #anonymity #humanrights #FreeSoftware #freespeech #ubuntu #linux #fedora #arch #archlinux #agelesslinux #artix #whonix #tails #systemd #opensource #openknowledge #openaccess #cyberlaw #infosec

RE: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116307429187383416

I'm not worried about the surveillance laws as much as I'm worried about the "bUt wE cAn mAKe iT pRivAte" camp

#ageverification #authoritarianism #SaveTheChildren #thinkofthechildren #epstein #surveillance #bigtech #government #privacy #anonymity #humanrights #FreeSoftware #freespeech #ubuntu #linux #fedora #arch #archlinux #agelesslinux #artix #whonix #tails #systemd #opensource #openknowledge #openaccess #cyberlaw #infosec

Honestly.. at first i was surprised (and disappointed) at some major Linux distributions not having a clear answer to age verification laws after weeks of their announcement, but then lots of them started discussing them. really! discussing them! what's there to be discussed?

"maybe we can implement age checks in a privacy respecting manner? 👉👈"

And it's just so happens this serves the corporation that you work for best interests! Big tech "Foss devs" have a clear conflict of interest here

#ageverification #authoritarianism #SaveTheChildren #thinkofthechildren #epstein #surveillance #bigtech #government #privacy #anonymity #humanrights #FreeSoftware #freespeech #ubuntu #linux #fedora #arch #archlinux #agelesslinux #artix #whonix #tails #systemd #opensource #openknowledge #openaccess #cyberlaw #infosec

Did you know that #systemd already has `emailAddress`, `realName`, and `location` fields? but they where never meant for home users, only enterprise workflows, so adding `birthDate field` isn't really much work, and you could see why systemd doesn't consider that bloat

And this is exactly why systemd is bloated because it doesn't consider lots of things to be bloat in the first place

It's never a good idea to rely on software that serves corporations best interests, because corporations care about profit not principles, #FOSS principles.

#privacy #anonymity #ageverification #ubuntu #fedora #linux #arch #pop_os #midnightbsd #bsd #surveillance #SaveTheChildren #thinkofthechildren

"Mehrere US-Bundesstaaten erzwingen künftig eine Altersverifikation für Nutzer. Wie sollen und können Linux-Distributionen darauf reagieren?"

https://www.heise.de/news/Think-of-the-children-Linux-Community-gegen-die-Altersverifikation-11211944.html

#linux #Altersverifikation #thinkOfTheChildren

"I pulled the actual bill text from 5 state age verification laws. They're copy-pasted from two templates. Meta is funding one to dodge ~$50B in COPPA fines — and the other one covers Linux."

#AgeVerification #AgeAttestation #ThinkOfTheChildren #Privacy #CA_AB1043 #AB1043 #SB3977 #IL_SB3977 #COPPA #FaceBook #Linux #OpenSource

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rmhxk1/i_pulled_the_actual_bill_text_from_5_state_age/

FTC Admits Age Verification Violates Children’s Privacy Law, Decides To Just Ignore That

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/04/ftc-admits-age-verification-violates-childrens-privacy-law-decides-to-just-ignore-that/