Mastodawn

Ridley @ WATCH LYCORECO 1d ago

I see so many people making a huge deal out of linux stuff adding support for the california age thing, and I'm like. you know basically every online service has been required to ask for your age since 1998? this is literally just "at account creation, the device owner can set an age field. to whatever they want. and then apps can query that instead of asking themselves."
you can set it to the unix epoch if you want

✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago

@rcombs yeah i really don't get it

✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago

@rcombs everyone knows young people will lie about their age. this enables them to lie about their age very easily. why the fuck would you put up a fuss about it

Cassandrich 1d ago

@whitequark @rcombs I think there are two aspects here. One is the matter of unknown and untrusted folks inserting themselves into projects eagar to comply in advance. This expresses a disempowerment of communities and a surrender of editorial control to a fascist government. From this perspective, it's the statement of values that matters more than any practical effect.

✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago

@dalias @rcombs how is it "in advance" if there are laws about it today?

Cassandrich 1d ago

@whitequark @rcombs Is that a serious question? There is no law that says that we as the authors of a program have to modify it to behave in a certain way. If there is, it's unconstitutional. Even if it weren't, we wouldn't comply. It's complying in advance if nobody is holding a gun to your head or putting handcuffs on your wrists. Governments do not decide what we can write.

Cassandrich 1d ago

@whitequark @rcombs Even as a Linux business not up for civil disobedience, it's complying in advance if you don't go to court, either waiting for the state to take you to court, or preemptively suing to block enforcement. You wait until a court rules that you have to comply to do it (and then you deal with the fact that the upstream FOSS projects won't comply, so you have to maintain your own patches to comply, and you can use that hardship to help your case in court) rather than just agreeing to do it to begin with.

Ridley @ WATCH LYCORECO

@dalias @whitequark it is absolutely absurd to demand this course of action (at great expense and risk) of a business whose lawyers say "yes this is most likely constitutional, yes you're required to comply"

Ridley @ WATCH LYCORECO 1d ago

@dalias @whitequark like, even if you *did* intend to take this to court, the correct de-risk is clearly to implement the extremely simple required API in advance, so you can roll it out quickly and not end up in contempt if the court case doesn't go your way

✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago

@rcombs @dalias also it's not "civil disobedience" if your ass is not on the line

Cassandrich 1d ago

@rcombs @whitequark No, you don't get contempt for taking reasonable time to comply with a court order.

Ridley @ WATCH LYCORECO 1d ago

@dalias @whitequark you may well get the fine if the court rules against you and you'd been out of compliance the entire time without a preliminary injunction in place (and who knows if a court would grant one for this)

this is not risk any business should be expected to take

Eric Schultz 1d ago

@rcombs @dalias @whitequark where are these businesses related to desktop Linux that are going to be sued by the California AG and in which the AG can prove with a preponderance of the evidence the number of children affected by negligent violations? The fine depends on that.

Ridley @ WATCH LYCORECO 1d ago

@wwahammy @dalias @whitequark the most obvious candidate is Valve? and I'd expect it'd be very possible to come up with cases for Canonical and perhaps Framework

the preponderance of the evidence standard simply means "more likely than not", and any competent AG is going to be able to convince a judge or jury that at least a few thousand kids have probably used Steam Decks in California

Eric Schultz 1d ago

@rcombs @dalias @whitequark Valve, totally agree on, they'd be screwed and I get why they'd comply.

I don't see how they could plausibly count the other ones and more relevant, why would the AG of California use its limited resources to do so? It doesn't make sense.

Criss "The Crisses" Xes 1d ago

@wwahammy @rcombs @dalias @whitequark

Agelesslinux.org

An installer to strip age verification (out of systemd for example), reply to requests with noncompliance, and distributing tiny devices with anti-age-verification distro at events… in other words someone baiting a court case specifically to make a point. Probably wants a swift ride to SCOTUS. 👍