@freya
your argument sound like an ad hominem.

one can also implement parental controls to be not creepy; without it turning into an audit of the child's every activity or doing gps tracking. reasonable parenting is working on limits in cooperation/input of the child.

new features i didn't expect and am happly suprised about this release in gnome: https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2026/01/gnome-50-will-support-bedtime-daily-screen-time-parental-controls/amp/

@cas

@jane @freya agreed, this was basically the point i was trying to get to. parental controls in Linux are absolutely a good feature to have, and the GNOME community have earnt a lot of respect from me for implementing this functionality. The ability to impose restrictions on non-sudo users (particularly children) is NOT a restriction of freedoms, I'd argue it's the opposite.

Knowing you can give your kids a device running a FOSS OS while being able to ensure they aren't accessing software they shouldn't is a good thing, give them the freedom to enjoy tech without looking over their shoulder

@cas @jane @freya You ARE supposed to supervise your kids. You know?

It is called "Parenting".

You let them break the computer. And if you catch them installing something nasty you tell them that they should not be doing that.

@ZanaGB @cas @freya yes. but at what point has the child learned enough? at what age is privacy more important? you can't supervise a child all day long unless your an "helicopter parent"

it's giving your kid training wheels with a bicycle so your sibling can take them on a small road tour, there isn't an exact day where a newborn turns into a kid turns into an teenager turns into an adolescent.

@jane @cas @freya

Y'all SERIOUSLY need to trust your kids more. They arent stupid.

Dunno about your local culture. But everyone here grew up knowing you never had to talk to strangers, nwver dibulge any information and stay away from anything that demands a paynent.

Kids are smarter than you remember. Tell them not to do something and why and 99% of the time they will follow through.

No, you will not get a free PS2. No, that raffle for the shiny creature is rigged against you. No. You may not have horse armour. That game looks sketchy but it comes from Steam you might have it. No i dont care all your friends are posting selfies they are going to get hurt and you cannot make an instagram.

One thing is not letting your kids have any agency (helicoptering) and the other is telling them gently they cannot have things and why.

You cannot leave IBM, Amazon, Google, Meta and Oracle decide how it is best to take the task of parenting. The owners of the platforms with addictive content aimed towards children do not have the besr intentions at mind with these policies. The best way to prevent kids from being in places they should not be is... Being literally around them every now and then to check what they are up to and simply... Dont let them go to those platforms.

@ZanaGB you're not getting the point. we're talking about someone having problems with parental controls in foss while @cas was talking about the different topic of age brackets api laws and people misunderstanding unrelated things.

we're not talking about big tech.

@jane @ZanaGB @cas This push for "age verification" and more surveillance comes at the initiative of Meta. We absolutely *are* talking about Big Tech.

Zuckerberg spent ungodly amounts of money lobbying to push for this surveillance vanguard. Why do you think he wants this so badly? When has anything that Zuckerberg ever wanted been out of good intentions?

And yet people bend over backwards to comply in advance. From your bio, I assume you (jane) live in Germany. As a German you aren't even in the jurisdiction of Californian laws.

But you'll get the surveillance regardless through systemd even though your country doesn't even mandate it. Same as every other user of systemd worldwide, which is probably every single user of GNU/Linux who isn't able to compile Gentoo for themselves. (Telling me about NixOS or some niche distro is missing the point.)

People whose homecountry doesn't even mandate this should not have this shoved down their throat, irrespective of noncompliance or disobedience, and should remain empowered to choose a different component that doesn't have this integrated.

Stop complying to fascism in advance.