Mastodawn

Adam Demasi 2d ago

I didn’t think this needed to be said, but don’t make up conspiracy theories about Linux projects complying with the age verification laws. You’re frustrated like we all are, but you’re directing it at the party that has little power other than to implement it as minimally as possible.

Instead, contact the lawmakers that passed this without listening to groups such as the EFF, who warned them about how it affects platforms other than Apple and Google’s. There’s still time before the laws come into effect.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/ab-1043s-internet-age-gates-hurt-everyone

A.B. 1043’s Internet Age Gates Hurt Everyone

EFF has long warned against age-gating the internet. Such mandates strike at the foundation of the free and open internet. They create unnecessary and unconstitutional barriers for adults and young people to access information and express themselves online. They hurt small and open-source...

Electronic Frontier Foundation

@kirb there was literally no need to implement anything.

@oblomov of course there was. How do you think it helps to pretend otherwise?

@benjamineskola @kirb no, there was not.

@oblomov how not? do you imagine that the law simply goes away if you wish hard enough, or do you think that people in (e.g.) california should simply be forced to use windows or macos instead?

@benjamineskola @oblomov @kirb

Let them try to enforce it

@einsiedlerspiel I seem to keep making this point elsewhere, and so I’ll be blunt: if you are not the person against whom the law will be enforced, I don’t think it’s your place to say ‘let them try to enforce it’. You are demanding that others face the consequences on your behalf.

@benjamineskola

right, at some point it starts being my problem because I'm sitting downstream of this code. People are responsible for the code they write and the harm it does. This is how you talk yourself into 'just following orders'. You're free to act out of self preservation. I'm free to withhold my sympathy.

And we're talking here about laws that are not even yet in effect, and compliance implemented by someone who isn't in the position to be held responsible in the end either. The stakes could not be lower. How am I supposed to trust that there is a point at which I downstream won't be thrown under the bus by these projects, when the stakes inevitably will be higher?

@einsiedlerspiel Be serious. How are you going to be 'thrown under the bus' by this? It's an optional feature of an optional piece of software.

@benjamineskola

It's part and parcel with similar pushes for 'trusted environments' on end user devices. It's building infrastructure.

And yeah in its current iteration it is almost minuscule, that's why it's so alarming that compliance is so eager.

@einsiedlerspiel I have zero sympathy for hysteria about this.

It's a bad law, yes. But the people affected by it do not have the luxury of simply ignoring it and hoping it'll go away.

@benjamineskola

well it won't go away if there's no resistance and the infrastructure for enforcing it exists that's for sure.

@einsiedlerspiel I'm not sure there's much that could be done to resist it from Europe anyway, so I don't know what you're making a fuss about.

@benjamineskola

Laws that I don't have direct influence on, not even the bit of voting power i might have had in the us, affecting what kinda control mechanisms are normalized in software i rely on? How could that be upsetting. The US exports these policies.

@einsiedlerspiel you do realise that literally nobody is forcing you to run this software, right?

@benjamineskola

a) we're talking about systemd and related projects that are infrastructure for basically every non microsoft/apple desktop I could recommend to newbs.

b) Again the current iteration is almost minuscule, but it's the general trend towards locked down devices. The impetus of these laws is a push in the direction of the situation of mobile devices at which point you might as well say 'noone forces you to use a computer' (Also the mobile space already provides the model for how the "noone forces you" always has a 'yet' implied. Evenn without laws there is software that I *need* to access existentially important services which I could not use without a 'trusted' device; see banking software, app-only ticketing etc.).

But we don't need to continue this. All I'm saying is this no big deal attitude will backfire and we absolutely need software projects asserting their opposition. (And I'm not willing to cede this field to fucking lunduke).

No I don't expect everyone to take the bullet, but I expect the acknowledgement that there is indeed a choice.

@einsiedlerspiel Look, I think it’s a good thing if people refuse to comply. But I don’t think that’s going to be a reasonable choice for everyone. Not everybody can afford to risk getting sued, and it’s not my place to tell them to get sued anyway.

Given that, I think it’s necessary for the means to comply with the law to exist.

In which case I don’t understand why so many people are throwing tantrums about someone implementing such means.

ClickyMcTicker 1d ago

@benjamineskola @einsiedlerspiel You do realize that literally nobody forced you to respond to someone like that, right?

Nor did anyone force you to use any operating system other than the one you wrote single-handedly from scratch. Nobody forces you to drive on public roads or use a cell phone. There’s a lot of things nobody forces you to do that you choose to do anyways, because we live lives and exist in a society.

FOSS software exists across borders. I’m not going to make the claim that the modern American Republican Party is a Nazi party, but “just follow the law” equates to “just following orders” and had the business community followed one man’s orders in the 1930s we may not have certain groups of people to defend the rights of today.

If the majority of the FOSS stakeholders decide that age verification should not move forward for ethical reasons, the real answer is to cut California off. Developers in that jurisdiction will have to find a way to comply with the law should they stick with the wider community’s tools, but it’s ultimately *their* responsibility to follow *their* laws.

@ClickyMcTicker Okay, you’ve written a lot of words but have also completely missed my point.

You can just continue to use the software and disable/ignore that feature. It’s that simple.

@benjamineskola @einsiedlerspiel Europe could refuse to do the same thing that enabled DMCA into the menace it is. This time they could say no to enforcing America’s bad laws on their citizenry. In that case, you don’t like California law, don’t go to California. Before you say that’s impossible, please note that lots of countries refused to enforce Soviet laws against black markets. Of course, if Britain and Europe are passing their own age gating laws, that doesn’t work.

@su_liam I think you’re missing my point, which is that people in Europe refusing to follow a Californian law does precisely nothing.

@benjamineskola If the local government, unless they want to consider themselves an inferior subsidiary to California, should be protecting their citizenry from California law. I guarantee you, no one in California is tying themselves into knots to follow EU law. For that matter, lots of people in California are breaking Texas law. Thankfully. This is a failure at least as much by your government as by anybody else.

@benjamineskola People in Canada refused to obey things like fugitive slave laws, and it didn’t do nothing. It gave people an option. Countries that refused to implement Germany’s Nuremberg laws gave safe harbor to people running from murderous genocide(of course, some of those countries had their own xenophobic laws, Germany didn’t model their racism on the US by accident). If everybody kowtows to the most draconian laws, then the whole world is as bad as the worst dictatorships.

@su_liam I don’t know where you got the impression that anyone in Europe cares about following US law anyway. Nobody gives a shit. So what’s your point exactly?

@benjamineskola Yeah, we’ll see. Right now, it looks like they’re falling over themselves to implement California kiddie gates, but sure. Maybe they’re just getting ready for AfD and all the other Le Pens to tell them what to do.

@su_liam yanks think the world revolves around them, that’s all.

@benjamineskola I mean, that was the subject under discussion, but sure… yanks suck. Whoo… At least those Brits are saints, right? Mm?

@su_liam yanks think the world revolves around them in the sense that they are convinced that the rest of the world obeys their laws.

which is precisely the subject under discussion: i don’t know why you seem to believe anyone outside the US cares about following this Californian law?

@benjamineskola Another weenie decides blocking is easier than talking. I retract any tone of respect I might have wasted on this… individual.🖕

@benjamineskola @benjamineskola Okay. I’m not the one saying developers in say Sweden should obey California law, but whatever. Let Ben do Ben in his own little bubble.

@benjamineskola @einsiedlerspiel We’re all free(those of us who already have free* software) to refuse to install the latest security update that includes kiddie restrictions. If that makes us typhoid mary to the rest of the internet, so be it.

@einsiedlerspiel @benjamineskola It doesn’t just exist, if Europe, Canada and the rest all rush to comply, there is no alternative. We could place all our hopes for free(like speech used to be) software behind the Great Firewall. I’m sure that’ll work out well…

@benjamineskola @einsiedlerspiel If they’re looking to enforce their draconian little law against the people who don’t write the software implementing it, then: I am Spartacus. And I intend to remain so. Next time I go into California, I will take my laptop, that will remain illegally free of any such implementation. The belly of the beast. And yeah, I will continue to criticize people safe outside of the belly of the beast who chose to build the tools of repression.

@su_liam lol ok

HeliosPi 1d ago

@su_liam
@benjamineskola @einsiedlerspiel
Check out Ageless Linux's example of defiance. This is the spirit of revolt which improves the world. Do not comply with fascism in advance. Shaming those who do is fair play also, because of what is at stake.
https://agelesslinux.org/

Ageless Linux — Software for Humans of Indeterminate Age