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?

@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.

@swelljoe

If, say, FB started requiring systems to report birthdate, they'd have to get that information through the browser -- which would then have to be implemented by multiple vendors, and what's to stop them from just allowing you to enter whatever birthday you like? (For that matter, what's to stop a system user from filling in whatever birthday they like?)

This requirement looks to me exactly like a typical political "be seen to be doing something, even if it's really stupid".

@wwahammy