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 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 🙃