OK this is a stupid question, but why have Linux projects (apparently) fallen over themselves to comply with an age-recording statute in a single US state (albeit a large one), when those projects have been failing for decades to respect national and even international law regarding disability?
#accessibility #disability #linux #FreeSoftware #fascism #AgeVerification #infantilism
Because it's not a single state, not even a single country. I think this video about systemd is elucidating:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5AcreFk40U
Watch until the end, because the last message is important.
I don't think that's what he is saying, but rather that we are pointing our criticism at the wrong people.
@ammdias That is the same bullshit as limiting your suggestions to go vote to change the situation while continuing to go to work like the obedient serfs that they are … instead of finding other ways to change the situation like organizing a general strike.
No matter who US-Americans voted for in the last US presidential election, the winning candidate would give the world genocide in Gaza.
Politicians can't code. It's certainly not them who'll add the surveillance features into our operating systems. *Someone* is doing it for them. If that someone refuses, it's not going to happen. Begging politicians seldomly helps. Criticize those who implement their fascist wishes.
I thought the Colorado situation was ongoing. But that doesn't invalidate my point that some statutes are given rapid attention and others, which are designed to help minorities are not.
Oh, and at the risk of being snarky, I note with amusement that a response to a point about accessibility is a youtube video. Honey, it is wasted on me.
I'm sorry for the YouTube link, I just didn't want to repeat an argument somebody else expressed a lot better than I ever could. Basically, the author argues that the anger towards free software developers for trying to implement law-conforming changes in their projects is misdirected -- it should be towards those passing those laws.
Having been in a somewhat similar, although not as important, situation more than 10 years ago, I understand this point of view.
"Hey don't blame *me* I'm just complying in advance" is not the argument they think it is
@johnzajac @ammdias @iaruffell
Also none of this does anything to explain why they can't comply with accessibility law.
@ammdias @iaruffell The problem is, they aren't being made to comply with laws in one or two areas, they're falling over themselves, ignoring dissenting voices in their rush to implement this in a thing that shouldn't even have anything to do with it anyway. Systemd just supposed to handle startup and services, not keeping records of the users.
The thing is, the laws aren't even binding them yet. Most don't even apply to them since they aren't centralized in those two states. The laws aren't even really finalized yet and implementations now may not even comply with the final laws...
And implementing those laws globally also tends to violate laws elsewhere. They're picking complying in advance with area laws that aren't even 100% legal over complying now with global laws that are.
@ammdias @iaruffell I do want to be clear: collecting user data to be submitted to applications outside of the user's control is non-compliant with a lot of privacy laws elsewhere. I'm no lawyer, but I'm willing to bet it's non-compliant with privacy laws even in California, as limited as those are... (Yeah, the law itself is pretty contradictory.)
They don't have to do this. Systemd is not California (or Colorado) based. It's global and it's implemented globally, which means it absolutely is violating laws elsewhere.
They could have spoken to lawyers. The EFF would have been glad to take this up I have absolutely no doubt. They even could have listened to the voices of people saying "hey, this may not even be legal."
But it's being rushed through in a hurry instead.
These age-verification laws are getting promoted by Meta, in their ongoing efforts to evade culpability for content moderation & to eliminate privacy as a civil right.
https://www.gadgetreview.com/reddit-user-uncovers-who-is-behind-metas-2b-lobbying-for-invasive-age-verification-tech
https://fortune.com/2026/03/02/social-media-companies-age-verification-addiction-privacy-concerns/
https://thedeepdive.ca/who-pushes-age-verification-bills/
Meta never abided by child protection laws before. Why now?
https://archive.is/ZyajL
https://winbuzzer.com/2026/03/18/reddit-user-uncovers-meta-2b-lobbying-age-verification-xcxwbn/
They want to be able to sell ads adjacent to CSAM content for the Epstein Class & not face the type of repercussions ...
1/
2/
... Musk is facing for his CSAM generator, GrokAI.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crrn054nxe7o
https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musks-grok-undressing-problem-isnt-fixed/
https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/article-848034
Social media are accustomed to shifting operational costs elsewhere.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/elon-musk-ai-startup-xai-raises-6-billion-1235909709/
They don't want to pay employees for content creation or moderation.
Remember who gave Musk a ton of money for xAI, Alwaleed bin Talal.
https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2024/05/saudi-prince-alwaleed-bin-talal-invests-elon-musks-24b-ai-startup
Meta is likely getting similar investment from the fossil fuel industry ...
3/
... in their efforts to end any democracy acting on climate.
The Epstein Class is desperate to cover up the trade in children & women.
https://apnews.com/article/usaid-rohingya-exploitation-trump-budget-cuts-ebd7a05e2f507b810194e71ae6b3c515
The rights of the disabled aren't even a blip on the radar screen for fascist billionaires like Zuckerberg.
He'll fund a genocide or coup for anyone.
Remember, the fossil fuel industry's role in genocide.
https://www.reuters.com/graphics/IRAN-MYANMAR/JET-FUEL/jnpwkonqrpw/
Severe foreign aid cuts imposed this year by U.S. President Donald Trump, along with funding reductions from other countries, shuttered thousands of schools and youth training centers in camps for Rohingya in Bangladesh and crippled child protection programs. In addition to unwanted marriages, scores of children as young as 10 were forced into backbreaking manual labor, and girls as young as 12 forced into prostitution. In a statement to the AP, the State Department said the U.S. has provided more than $168 million to the Rohingya since the beginning of Trump’s term and had “advanced burden sharing and improved efficiency” in the Rohingya response.
My guess?
Linux developers may have patrons that they don't want to irritate.
My observation is that swift unemployment in a day job follows when a FOSS developer fails to fall in line.
@ tante@ tldr.nettime.org is just one example I can cite.
Age verification is getting unprecedented levels of support from funded mass malign influence campaigns.
@Npars01 @iaruffell @ammdias I note that Meta is among their supporters.
I just went to their website, and the first thing you see is this blurb saying, “The Linux Foundation is a neutral, trusted hub for developers and organizations to code, manage, and scale open technology projects and ecosystems.”
NEUTRAL!
NEUTRAL!
Tell me you’re beholden to your corporate overlords without telling me you’re beholden to your corporate overlords.
@gtsadmin @ramsey @iaruffell @ammdias
There is no fate but what we make.
Linux will not be subsumed into Meta's plans for state surveillance.
Why?
Linux people ascribe to John Oliver's credo...
@Npars01 @iaruffell @ammdias This is why tech companies hiring FOSS maintainers or key developers is fundamentally malicious and something we should not accept.
If they want to fund the people working on the commons they depend on, they need to do it in ways that do not give them, or even give the appearance that they have, editorial control over anything.
As one of them myself, I can say this is not terribly hard but it requires standing up for yourself and your project. Communicating that control over it is not for sale and that terms of engagements need to acknowledge that.
@Npars01 @iaruffell @ammdias There's no need to guess: Linux developers that are trying to address this are concerned about legal exposure.
Ultimately, if CA decided to bring suit against one of the vendors or projects, the law would *probably* be overturned, etc. But that costs a ton of money that vendors don't want to spend and projects do not have. The EFF has said that they believe the law will apply to the distributions, regardless of whether they are based in CA or not.
I'm a bit concerned about the frenzy over this: it seems to have originated with a right-wing personality and is taking on a tone similar to the anti-Mono and anti-systemd brigading that was particularly nasty. And people are turning on FOSS developers in a particularly nasty way now. It's not helpful, and it's not conducive to solving these problems. Disagreeing with the way projects/distributions are handling it is fine, of course -- but people should be able to argue without slinging hate at people at the first sign of disagreement. We should be better than that.
From what I've seen so far, none of the proposed ways to comply with the CA age-verification requirement are even difficult to disable.
There is too much badness going on right now for this kind of vicious infighting.
Note: I wrote about all this here: https://lwn.net/Articles/1062112/
He makes a lot of fair points that adding a birthdate to the systemd records doesn't mean it has to be filled out... until it does of course! What happens when the new law passes that not filling out your user records is a felony?
The prescription of "talk to your politicians" is the same liberal hogwash that got us here. Millions of people came out against the 2003 Iraq war in the US and it still happened. The lack of imagination about how to resist and limiting your actions to begging powerful people not to do bad things will be the death of us all.
Anyway, I look forward to hoarding Ubuntu 24.04 USB install drives until the day that hardware stops supporting it. Sad to see the commons stop being free as in "free speech".
Of course, the developers could *choose* to not implement that change and make software that could not be used legally, in the same way that users can *choose* to not fill that field and risk being brought to justice. But for the user to be able to make the choice, the developer must implement it 🙂
Yeah lots of options for not building fascist infrastructure into formerly-free software. And here we are watching people freely make the wrong decisions.
So the stock response on accessibility is "If you want accessibility, write it yourself." Actually, that doesn,t even work, as offers of help in my experience are rarely encouraged.
Nothing is preventing Californian legislators from adding this, er, feature from their ProtectTheKids distro.
Accessibility is hard. Really only Apple have made a passable go at it. You have to know stuff and have experience in the field to really make a difference.
Anyone thinks they can add an age API because it looks easy but is in fact hard. Took me 30 mins to add a maliciously compliant joke api to Fuzix, and it's actually IMHO better designed ;)
Much open source is doing "easy" stuff again and again, because it's people doing stuff for fun. Hard stuff is underresourced
This is where project governance comes in. The tools are there.
I don't think it is that technically challenging as socially and organisationally challenging. I suspect most devs see it as tedious or unimportant.
I can see that it might seem a bit mysterious for those who have not used a screenreader before.
Also, you know, doing work with actual users, etc.
Indeed. At least X11/orca worked for those distros that cared. It is telling that Wayland development and adoption was without any apparent care for accessibility.
But even where there is a screenreader (and the orca folk are heroes), the vast bulk of apps are, at best, patchy. There are some honourable exceptions. Libreoffice and thunderbird are usable, but Gnome appears to be going backwards, and (it pains me to say) KDE is a disaster.
@aral @iaruffell thank you for bringing this up! I was completely unaware of it.
If Wayland is unable to support screen readers while X11 is, then surely that's a reason why all distributions should be defaulting to X11? I've honestly never understood what the benefits of Wayland were supposed to be, but disability inclusion ought to be a really big deal — even if we were not obliged to do so by law, making our systems usable by minorities who are otherwise excluded is just good manners.
You'd have thought! Actually, Debian used to default to MATE/X11, I think for that reason. Or at least flag it.
The problem is being fixed by the Orca folk, who are basically on their own, as far as I cansee. It is not yet, I believe, quite feature-compatible with Orca/X11.
Disclaimer: I get this from lurking on the Orca mailing list, but i am sticking with X11 myself for now.
Well, it is one answer.
But I was also thinking about how "protect the kids" rhetoric has been internalised onthe one hand, and how folk just want crips to go away and stop being untidy on the other. I guess those are the underlying factors both for expectation of enforcement and for complying in advance.
@iaruffell @Merovius @dr2chase I think it's mostly because their actions betray their beliefs. As you say, some of them are opposed to accessibility accommodations because they're in favor of opression of disabled people. Mostly those same people are actively looking for reasons to gather files on you, police your behavior, betray your kids' privacy.
When I look at the individuals who are spending effort on maintaining and improving accessibility (or often trying to build back up to a previous level that was wantonly destroyed), those are not the ones jumping on the censorship bandwagon
@DiogoConstantino @iaruffell In fact there are several. Europe has the European Accessibility Act:
The technical conformity definitions for this law are covered under EN 301 549:
https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_en/301500_301599/301549/03.02.01_60/en_301549v030201p.pdf
In the US there are a couple applicable laws. There's the rehabilitation act of 1973, most notably section 504 which prohibits denial of service on the basis of disability for federal programs and activities that receive federal funding.
There's also section 508 of the Americans' with Disabilities app which mandates all government websites and applications used internally be made accessible:
https://www.section508.gov/
And there is the CVAA which requires consumer digital communications and video equipment or apps be made accessible, enforced under the FCC via a civil complaint process:
https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/21st-century-communications-and-video-accessibility-act-cvaa
Then there is the Accessible Canada act
https://www.chrc-ccdp.gc.ca/individuals/accessibility/about-accessible-canada-act
Indian Rights of Persons with Disabilities act
https://cdnbbsr.s3waas.gov.in/s3e58aea67b01fa747687f038dfde066f6/uploads/2023/10/202310161053958942.pdf (they actually have three aplicable laws, this is just the most recent)
And so on.
The definitions of how to comply do varry and overlap somewhat, but many of them sight the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as the gold standard
https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/
HTH! Surprised you didn't know any of this, some of these laws have been on the books for decades.
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