Mastodawn

The idea that one should be forced to verify one's age or identity to use one's own computer absolutely baffles me.

Perhaps I am some kind of dangerous computer radical these days, thinking that one should be able to buy or make a computer, install one's choice of OSs and software, create a local user account, and get on with one's affairs, privately and without interference.

Quiet enjoyment of one's computer.

* No age or ID verification

* No jumping through hoops to install software, or third parties restricting the software that one can run

* No third party accounts

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Author-ized L.J.

@neil only Linux, BSD and other FOSS offerings have this experience now, it seems — so that's like 90% of computer users being registered and tracked from their home computers, without even going into what happens on phones and other devices. I was also baffled when I briefly used Windows/MS Word on another computer and needed to log in with an email to leave margin notes as a different user. On LibreOffice I simply need to type in a different name in the setting, but on Word I had to log in through a remote server. Serious overkill.