Mastodawn

Diogo Constantino Mar 22

@iaruffell it's not true that it's on a single USA state, more countries are approving laws like this, and Brasil has since last week one that is in force. Also California is not just any state, that's probably where much of the business for FOSS companies is, so are a lot of the developers, and so are a lot of the users. There's nothing to be gaining by loosing all of that. The fight is at the legislatures and court level, will be won by making FOSS illegal for large parts of the world.

Drew Mochak Mar 22

@DiogoConstantino @iaruffell Sorry but are there not relevent accessibility laws that are also not specific to a certain state or country? In fact they have been around much longer, so if anything, accessibility should be a higher priority.

Diogo Constantino Mar 22

@prism @iaruffell can you mention one that is not being followed? Or that would be a crime not to follow? or that would impact as many people? While I personally agree, it's not us who set the priority, neither are the developers.

@DiogoConstantino @iaruffell This is a curious statement. Who does set the priority of a free and open source project, if not the developer? Is that not the whole point?

@prism @iaruffell sometimes it's, other times, because we live in society, it's societal mechanisms such as the state.

@DiogoConstantino @iaruffell I'm curious where you feel accessibility falls, in this context. Is it a societal pressure that devs should feel a need to respond to? I assume you would consider the age verification laws and undue burden imposed by regulation. Yet, you also see a willingness to engage. Which is not really present for the disability laws. Why do you think that is?

@prism @iaruffell

1. numbness
2. I never saw an accessibility mandate that makes it a crime to disregard, and that will result in strong prohibitions/blocks it like these age verifications laws make it. These are a much greater threat to not comply.

@DiogoConstantino @iaruffell

1: What does this mean, "numbness?" "Complying with the law is hrd so we decided not to?"

2: Then you aren't looking very hard. From the EAA:

Here’s a list of the key penalties that might affect your business:
• One-time administrative fines ranging from €5,000 to €250,000+ per violation, depending on the severity of the issue.
• Ongoing daily fines up to €1,000 per day until the issue is resolved.
• The suspension of market access for non-compliant products and services until the issue is resolved.

The ADA also has enforced civil penalties, as does, well, every other law to ever exist. This being the nature of laws.

3: as I pointed out before, some of these laws are decades old, yet all I hear from the FOSS community is a bunch of fingerpunting and no action. These age verification laws are very new, some of them being actively fought in court or not even fully signed into law, yet here we see an instinctive response to jump for Palantir like a trained seal.

@prism @iaruffell the numbness that I observe is not so much a decision regarding complying or not, but not making a conscious decision and not taking much action.

It's considerate of others to not drop acronyms they many not know. So to those who don't know, EAA is the European Accessibility Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Accessibility_Act).
Fines don't necessarily mean crime, there are more types of law violations, in Portugal it's not a crime but the law defines fines.

European Accessibility Act - Wikipedia

@prism @iaruffell Also the requirements according to the EAA are relatively few.

By the way, I'm not defending this situation, I'm trying to explain why I see this being treated differently.

@DiogoConstantino @iaruffell I understand :)
We may have fallen victim to a linguistic error, if you mean crime as in criminal penalties as in jail time, the age verifications do not impose this either, as far as I am aware. Plus, developers have in the past made very public, principled stances on refusing to comply with various laws that have resulted with those people going to jail.

If not, I'm a bit puzzled. I think suspension from the marketplace is a pretty serious potential consequence any app developer would take seriously. I certainly wouldn't want to get fined thousands of dollars a day either! Regardless, this is broadly comparable with the penalties outlined for failure to comply with the various age verification laws.

So far all that is being proven is my original contention, which is that the situation is different only because developers care to enforce certain laws, AKA their personal priorities, over others.

@prism @iaruffell What each developer chooses to do to put him/herself into danger, it's only up to him/her to decide, I consider extremely unethical to demand them to put themselves in danger, if someone wants risks to be taken, that someone should do it him/herself.

I don't think they care in the sense of believing these laws is the correct path, some may, others just don't want to take the risk, of harming themselves or their users (via non-compliance blocks).

@DiogoConstantino @iaruffell I'm not demanding anything. I am stating a point of mutual agreement, which is that developers choose the extent to which they wish to comply with any law. They do so on the basis of what matters most to them. In this case, even though the potential consequences are broadly the same, and far less clear than the already established accessibility law, certain people are now rushing to prioritize the needs of surveillance capitalism over their users.

Clearly the law is being used as a shield, deployed when it suits them and discarded when it no longer does. Spending time to implement a field, but not (for example) adjusting the font size in the boot menu, is a choice they made. Nothing more or less. It's a choice we see made by FLOSS developers every day. Which makes us stay far away from FLOSS projects.

They can choose differently. Tomorrow. Today. Right now.