Khrys3d ago

The Engineer Who Tried to Put Age Verification Into Linux

https://www.sambent.com/the-engineer-who-tried-to-put-age-verification-into-linux-5/

The lasting damage was knowing it could happen at all: that a single contributor with no stated organizational backing could submit compliance infrastructure for surveillance law directly into the software that boots your computer, get it merged by two Microsoft employees, and have the creator of systemd personally block the removal.

The Engineer Who Tried to Put Age Verification Into Linux

Dylan, useful idiot with commit access, pushed age verification PRs to systemd, Ubuntu & Arch, got 2 Microslop employees to merge it, called it 'hilariously pointless' in the PR itself, then watched Lennart personally block the revert. Unpaid compliance simp.

Sam Bent
Show threadMartijn Vos3d ago

@Khrys

I don't understand what the fuss is about. This is exactly the right way to comply with that law: an optional birth date field. You don't want to have to submit an idea to your OS or implement facial recognition, and you certainly don't want to tie account creation to external services for those things, but now parents can fill in the birth date for their kids, and everybody else can ignore it. This kind of thing needs to be in the hands of parents, not external companies.

So I don't really see the problem here.

Show threadLegit_Spaghetti2d ago

@mcv @Khrys

So I don't really see the problem here.

I do. The problem is that the guy is complying in advance with unjust, abusive, and dangerous laws.

"Okay, guess I'll add it in" is not the correct response to an unjust legal requirement. The correct response is "Fuck you, make me."

Show threadMartijn Vos2d ago

@Legit_Spaghetti @Khrys

"Fuck you, make me."


Sorry, but nobody is making you fill this in. It's an optional field. And there's no verification on it.

Show threadGeorge Liquor, American
@mcv @Khrys @Legit_Spaghetti Not required at launch of the feature, anyway. Your take is naive. It's a foot in the door for mass surveillance.
Mar 21 at 3:31pmWeb