Apparently it is time to say it again: You aren’t helping or achieving anything by squatting onto github/gitlab/irc/etc to tell people, that you think age verification is a bad idea.

1. Nobody involved thinks the laws proposed in some US states are a good idea.
2. There is a more nuanced discussion to be had whether some form of standardized parental controls are, but technical forums aren’t the place to do that either and the situation is heated enough, that even the most socially skilled people aren’t in the mindset for nuanced anymore. (Congrats!)
3. Unfortunately a large part of the FOSS space is financed by companies, who want to continue selling hardware with Linux and we live in a society. So if this becomes law, something will have to give. The correct way to oppose this is by participating in the process. Vote, write to your representatives, etc. (Or viva la revolution, good luck)
4. All you are doing by writing in those pull requests is pilling onto the abuse some of the most burned out people in the industry already experience over this and other even stupider topics.
5. Figuring out the line to walk between designing something adequate to comply to different (existing and proposed, potentially conflicting) legislation and privacy is difficult and you are not doing anybody a favor by making the space to do this in collaboration transparently and openly hostile. Ending up with various different/non-standard stacks to do this would have even worse consequences.
6. If you actually have technical feedback and are up-to-date on all the relevant context, of course you are welcome to participate. But expect to do the work in that case, just complaining will again not help.

Jeez.. people, you aren’t doing better than the wayland haters. And no, just being on the right side of the general debate, doesn’t justify this shit.

@drakulix hot take, but people implementing fascist asks fucking deserve pushback

fuck this tone-policing nonsense

@Ember @drakulix People would be more open to this entire discourse if it wouldn't have been started by a MAGA dude that thinks "woke states" shouldn't enact such legislation to cause harassment.

Yeah people jump at each others throat, because a fash person made a reddit post, congrats.

@karolherbst @Ember @drakulix I haven't read any reddit posts. This shit has come up again and again for years. If we take further steps towards this they'll keep trying to force more shitty things through that end up actually violating privacy more. None of this has ever been about protecting children... It's been about surveillance and control. We don't need any of this. Now, I don't condone harassing people, but we do need to pushback when things matter.
@karolherbst @Ember @drakulix To be clear, by "they" I don't mean the devs implementing this as a reaction to changing laws. I mean the lawmakers making these laws. Although immediately caving and implementing whatever they want doesn't do the devs any favors either.
@tachi it's not even caving because of pressure, it seems a whole lot more like the law just gave them an excuse
@Ember Yeah I'm sure it seems like that in some projects, with some developers. With other projects it does seem like they're being forced into it by various factors so they're trying to make the best of a bad situation. Both situations suck. Pushing back on both devs and lawmakers is needed but honestly I don't expect much from lawmakers. Harrassing isn't how we solve this but pushing back certainly doesn't seem to work either. I have no answers.
@Ember It does suck that this is happening in a lot of core projects though. Countries seem to be able to export their policy to projects that are used globally by everyone and it adversely affects FOSS. If devs don't care about that then the only option we have is to stop using their software.

@tachi hard when it's core sofware, it's not like there's an actual alternative to systemd and the freedesktop stack, or the linux kernel for that matter

also with how many projects are embracing slop it really feels like OSS as a whole is going down in flames, can't avoid it all aside from just, not using computers if at all possible

@tachi @Ember @drakulix not implying that everybody that is upset about this read a reddit post, but it does seem to be the original source for the current wave of backslash.

Like I'm not disagreeing with people being upset with the legislation, but it also doesn't feel too good to know that people are angry at each other because some fash person made a reddit post.

@karolherbst lmao. who the fuck cares about what some reddit fascist said, that doesn't make "age verification" trash justified, nor does it make pushback on it the same as being MAGA

@Ember right and I haven't claimed either of those things.

Just that people already hate that literal trolls jumped on the discussion to fuel it and if everybody else also jumps on it as a result it won't lead to anything productive..

Nobody likes this and everybody would be happier not having to do this. Like there is no disagreement about this being an awful situation to be in.

It's the trolls that is dealt with, not community feedback being ignored.

@Ember Then call out or write to the law makers involved, whether MAGA or "dems". Or write the companies pushing this non-sense (e.g. freaking Meta). Or write the companies wanting to sell computers, that you as a customer demand, that they rather stop selling their stuff in the affected states. Or try to work on the implementation to ensure, that distros with no financial incentive won't have to ship any of this and have an option to disable these "features".

There is actionable stuff here or alternatively use any coping mechanism you employ probably frequently in these tiring times over this mess and the systematic change all of us would like to see.

But effectively harassing individual developers, who try to keep their jobs over an api, isn't it.
@Ember @drakulix what a fucking wanker you are...
@swick @[email protected] @drakulix We dont allow children to drive cars, I guess we shouldn't allow children onto Github either ;-)
@vladimirchicken @swick As much as I think Ember is in the wrong here, I hope I don't have to state why we shouldn't counter this with more harassment. Mute/report/move on.

Also this is exactly the attitude, that got us into this mess, let people make mistakes online. You don't have to be the one engaging with it, but this is how people learn. Don't tell me you didn't make some enemies in some niche forums in your formative years. I certainly have posted stuff, I am not proud of in hindsight.

Anyway, seems like it is time to mute this thread.
@drakulix @vladimirchicken @swick yes

it is important to try and be charitable and tolerant. constantly reacting to people just ends up with people who would normally get along, arguing over things that are either stupid or they actually get along with

it's important to do your best to actually listen to people and understand what they're trying to say. what they actually believe, and where their frustrations are
@drakulix @vladimirchicken @swick also, age-ism is toxic. there are legitimate reasons to care about age, when it comes to consent for example

but it is not okay to dismiss opinions and views because of age. it is not okay to assume that someone is dumb because of age

yeah, younger people are usually more immature. leave them be, gently call out their behavior

and of course, older people make mistakes too, let's not jump to the worst possible conclusions
@Ember @drakulix Do you want them to ignore law? Direct your anger towards the correct places.

@Ember Hot take, but this attitude will get you killed.

You are not going to survive fascism with infighting. Quite the opposite: causing infighting is literally their strategy, because isolated people are easy prey.

Malicious compliance on the other hand will help you survive. And I would be very stunned if any linux-based age verification system would be hard to bypass for users.

So let them cook. And don't abuse your allies.

@Ember And on the subject of tone policing:

Most of what @drakulix says applies no matter if you write: "My dearest maintainer, I don't like the idea of age verification" or "You are a fucking moron for implementing age bullshit."

You're not wrong because of your tone.

You're not even wrong.

I just don't see, how github arguments will have any meaningful impact.

@drakulix "(Or viva la revolution, good luck)"
is this sincere?
@vepr_jako_pepr What relevance does that have to the topic at hand?
@drakulix In that solution of the prescence of this violent enforcement of surveillance should be a focus
@drakulix and these measures are being pushed through without either a mandate or general election so within representative democracy that only leaves appealling to the sentiment of current representatives which is not ideal.
The situation is bad and has to be acknowleged.
It is relevant to the post since sentiment maintenance is important
@vepr_jako_pepr This was a callout post of highly specific problematic/toxic behavior and by no means an attempt of an exhaustive listing of countermeasures, nor an essay about the effectiveness of said measures in our current or any hypothetical political system.

If that is the discussion you want to have on fedi of all places about this, feel free to start your own thread instead of hi-jacking this one.

I for one won’t be baited into seriously answering whether I would endorse a violent uprising in response to a joke I made.
@drakulix it doesnt have to be a defeatist solely violent war, and the jokiness is the problem.
And threads arent yours if its on a public platform with the intent to grow and become as big as possible!
You just have a name at the top
@vepr_jako_pepr Then we are at a fundamental disagreement, since I neither think fedi is a platform with intent to grow (nor is it my intent on this platform) nor do I think I need to engage with everyones opinion.
@drakulix foss community in general seems to have this idea that the solution to anything is harassing developers

like there's this one person who I shall not name (to protect the guilty), who's in theory an anarchist, who, in response to [a developer saying they added a feature to an app they are working on at their free time] lashed out at the said developer with "are you only adding this now, why wasn't it there before" and suggested that there should be legal responsibility for
checks notes people taking time to add this person's pet feature into an app they develop in their free time

when i called them out on this shit, they asked me not to interact, then called me a tankie in a subpost
@alice Way too many people have started to expect polished products from free time projects with no financial incentive. Which is likely indicative of the quality you generally can expect even from free stuff these days, but this seems to simultaneously attract the worst of people...
@drakulix Strong agree and this is important for everyone to hear, but with one caveat: don't proactively help the fascists.
Once the battle's lost and you *have* to do it (i.e. once the law is passed and has taken effect), then I agree with everything you said, but devs helping fascist *in advance* deserve to be called out for what it is

@1ace the laws have already passed, The CA one goes into effect end of this year, e.g.

Though they can always be amended and some are working on it to e.g. exclude FOSS from the mandates.

@karolherbst ok, I guess I had misunderstood then (I didn't read up on it because I didn't need to and there's enough bad stuff I have to read, so I had mostly information in passing for this case); thanks for the extra info! I though it was still being discussed/negotiated/whatever it's called, and the final law had yet to be passed, but if that has already all happened then my caveat doesn't apply in this case. I stand by it for other times though :)

@1ace different states/countries, different situations. Some countries have already, some have stricter or weaker requirements

So the range is between "this doesn't do much" and "this really is surveillance"

And CA just says your OS needs to provide an API for apps to roughly figure out how old you are

But like you can just... lie and enter any date, because there is no verification on the data, unless your parent enters it, which opens a different set of issues.

@karolherbst @1ace honestly the response I've seen to CA's law is upsetting. I'm against age verification like literally everyone else is, but CA doesn't even put requirements on IDs being valid and still managed to placate the lazy parents falling for these bills. I wish people would push for that, because I'm happy to make placebo-daemon to ask for ages or whatever instead of the insane laws other places have been passing
@karolherbst @1ace also considering that kids might get their devices setup by parents, CA's law actually comes across as bizarrely effective? Trying to have websites ascertain people's ages seems both like a nightmare and incredibly easy to falsify compared to a question that likely gets asked during device setup, which the parent can then answer before giving the device to a kid

@Lyude @1ace oh yeah.. that one is defo on the "least bad" side of the scale.

But like abusive parents are a thing and they delibiratyly hiding things from children (e.g. sex ed stuff) is a problem. But that problem also exists without this law and it's up to schools to teach that stuff despite the parents wishes not to anyway 🙃

@karolherbst abusive teachers are also a thing though. It's all hopeless 😭
@1ace @drakulix or just ignore the laws and don’t listen to laws of places you don’t live in. Complying to fascist laws is fascism.
@luana @1ace People involved do live in places where these laws are already in place and the possible consequences of violating them threaten their very existance financially.