@erincandescent "only ever going to be filled in on the machines of children administered by parents who want such restrictions enforced"

You say this as if it's not a huge problem in itself. We should not be building or shipping tools for abusive parents to use to surveil or control their children.

@erincandescent That doesn't justify being part to it and essentially forcing distros to ship an abuse-mechanism unless they actively patch it out (thereby having to make a highly charged political statement).

Yes a determined parent with technological know-how can always find a way to put such malware onto their child's machine. We should not be making it an out-of-the-box feature of "Linux".

RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@mgorny/116274748222570834

@erincandescent Combined with other things, yes. See for example:

@erincandescent Right now, there is no standard place for a DOB field to be stored or for applications to know how to access that information or use it to enforce rules blocking access to information.

By creating standard places to store it and standard APIs to access it, you setup the infrastructure needed for these abuses to be something available out-of-the-box rather than requiring a ton of custom hackery by the abuser to setup.

@dalias @erincandescent The thing I am worried about is when the first bit of software tries to use that API, even when I am located outside of the demanded age restrictions. And it does not really matter if that software is a web browser to provide fingerprinting, a media player to verify that I am not playing an R-rated movie or Steam to collect statistics.

I don't believe/trust this stays opt-in and if I don't provide anything, (1) nothing will complain and (2) nothing will use even the negative information against my will. I don't believe in adding an API that is supposed to not be used based on where I am geographically located.

(And I don't trust an API that emerged as a result of this geopolitical climate.)

I don't want such an API existing on my device, even if “the API itself is harmless” and the harm may come from “just” from the applications that utilise it.

@ledoian @dalias it’s Linux, you’re root, you can just change the code to simply lie or do whatever you want, you have that capability.

Unless someone legislates that you can no longer actually control your own computer (and yes, people are trying to do that), or systems are legislated to collect some kind of proof but that’s a completely different legislative problem