Comment on System76 on Age Verification Laws
mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 2 days agoI don’t think I’ve said shit about you, as a person, beyond ‘your arguments are bad and you should feel bad,’ with an abundant side of ‘and here’s why.’ You’re getting the toned-down version of reflexive sarcasm at some baffling things you continue to say. By all means, let loose, because blunt honesty might get us closer to sharing the same reality.
I’ve already linked to where I said, content warnings good, age gating bad. You think this should replace all ‘I am 18’ prompts.
I’ve belabored the distinction between freely adopted implementation and any form of state enforcement. Like, there’s plenty wrong with user-agent strings, but even a simple requirement to accurately report browser version would be quietly horrifying. Robbing software developers of the ability to say ‘that was a bad security decision, let’s just not do it,’ is intrinsically fucked.
If you need it restated:
I despise the idea of my own damn machine needing to know my birthdate. Largely, but not entirely, because that points toward verification demands which you agree would be intolerable. The internet should not work differently based on who you are.
I don’t think this law will achieve anything worthwhile, and I’m not convinced you do either. Your defense of it is full of things I would say as condemnation.
I fully expect this to get worse, based on all recent visible trends. Countries are banning young people from using entire categories of website. Glorified chatrooms are asking to see your driver’s license. The last thing a liberated internet needs is more personal information.
PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Maybe this is where the confusion comes from. The reason I think this is an acceptable idea, is specifically because there is no requirement for it to be accurate, and technically, it doesn’t seem possible to tack on a more intrusive system after the fact (owing to the fact that everything is stored locally). In effect, it seems to just be a, “filtering level” flag - something a user can chose to use (or not) to filter different types of content. This seems like its happening in parallel of government/corporate survailance, rather than in service to it.
Actually, this is the part I have the biggest issue with - esspecially because I don’t agree with some of the implementation details, like the requirement that the original input be a numerical/date input field, labeled as age rather than a bracket selection, or something else more clear and granular. At the same time, I think there is something to be said for government intervention in areas where private companies have failed to innovate/standardize, USB-C being the prime example.
That said, honestly, thinking about how suboptimal this is, even as a content filtering system… I think you’re right that this is the wrong approach. Something like flags marked for “hide sexual content”, “hide gore”, and “hude potentially disturbing content” would make far more sense than a set of unified age brackets. So, at least as a technical standard, consider me convinced that it shouldn’t be implemented.