Eric Schultz4d ago

RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@wwahammy/116264430375745593

I want everyone who says "this is the law, distros need to comply" I want you to explain a plausible set of circumstances to lead to the following:

* That the AG of California will sue a random Linux distro which has effectively no money
* Prove who the OS distributor actually is (is it the committers? Committers of what part? Their bank account with $12 in it?)
* Prove by preponderance of the evidence how many children used the OS in order to set the fines
* get a judge and jury to think this isn't a massive waste of their time
* That it isn't just a violation of the law but is a "negligent" or "intentional" violation
* all the while, the OS maker and everyone else having effectively zero knowledge of who uses it since there's no continuing relationship with users.

How does all of this happen?

Show threadJoe Cooper 🇺🇦 🍉4d ago
@wwahammy while I agree the default answer to every invasion of privacy should always be, "fuck you, make me", I suspect this one will be enforced by the same companies that lobbied for it. So, Facebook, YouTube, streaming services, seem very likely to start blocking systems that don't report an age. I would just stop using those services (though some would be painful), but it'd be pretty disruptive for most folks, I think. Same story as DRM in Firefox.
Show threadEric Schultz
@swelljoe the California AG is the one who can enforce the law. It doesn't make sense for them to sue random distros.
Mar 21 at 3:56pmWeb
Show threadJoe Cooper 🇺🇦 🍉3d ago
@wwahammy yeah, as I said, I don't think it'll be enforced by law. I think it'll be enforced by the same companies that lobbied for the law. You want to visit Facebook, YouTube, TikTok? Gotta have an OS that complies. And, they'll have the law to point at when people get angry about it. Obviously the big operating system vendors will comply, so the ostracization of open source users would suit the billionaires just fine.