Submitted 1 month ago by Amoxtli@thelemmy.club to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/operating-systems/california-introduces-age-verification-law
No biggie. I got ready for this in minutes after hearing about it.
#!/usr/bin/env fish read -P "Are you old enough? (yes/no) " input if test "$input" = "yes" -o "$input" = "Yes" echo "Proceeding..." else echo "You are not old enough. Exiting." exit 1 end
… What? … Why are you all looking at me like that?
No doubt in response to Europe making its choice for software open source. Expect targeted attacks on FOSS to increase
Troubling, given how much the put-up-or-hack-up users-are-developers ethos having slipped as more and more come in enjoying the convenience wrapping, with their consumer mentality.
This is religious repression of TempleOS
How am I going to purify my code and my soul
Yes but Newsom says funny things about bad orange man, so he’s got my vote.
Saw someone say this on the last article I saw regarding this, but:
What’s stopping the OSes from just putting “Not for use in California” on their product/website? Seems like a simple and easy fix lol.
That is amusing if BSD do that. Being from there.
The law does not require photo ID uploads or facial recognition, with users instead simply self-reporting their age
That part is good at least. It also makes the entire law an exercise in wasting everyone’s time and money.
The law was designed this way specifically so that people won’t fight it as hard because it doesn’t provide any verification requirements. That bill would come later once the outrage over this has waned and the age gating becomes normalized in the local culture so that people just shrug off the verification requirement in the future
Yeah… no
No matter how hard they try, you can’t legislate parenting.
What the fuck? This is ridiculous and it won’t actually solve anything at all.
This will not matter to most of linux, it’s non enforceable and easily circumvented.
But the issue is what they used for thumbnail. Steam deck.
Steam is bringing linux to the the masses but they won’t be able to sell any without complying to the part that all apps that can be installed must be able to ask the os to give this data.
Steam already requires your age when you look at m rated games. The only difference is that the age verification is before you get to that page.
Also, the age verification is literally just check a box. Its the less of several evils, but really if I HAVE to verify my age, Id prefer to do it this way
this is not a checkbox, but a date field. and the hard part is, KDE needs to implement it, other desktops need to implement it too, and somehow it has to be fit into the existing linux user database that does not have a dedicated place for information like this.
it also means using older operating systems became illegal, including windows 7, xp, etc
How old is my tomcat user? How about my various docker containers, are those separate OSes?
Your average legislator hears the word “Docker” and imagines a ship unloading cargo. Of course computers on ships need age verification! Voters will appreciate a crackdown on nautical child labor.
decrepit boomer voice Whoa there sonny! Lots of stuff sharing just one computer? Sounds like communism to me!
It’s just a simple DoB input, which can be local afaik
Even entering DoB is imo too much of a privacy breach. In my view, they should just take the highest age bracket described, apparently 18+, and then ask that on OS installation: “Are you over the age of 18?” If the user says yes, it installs, and every app is hardcoded to receive that 18+ bracket when checking demographic. If they say no, then it simply replies that users under 18 may not install it under the laws of California.
If it’s not stored, not a big problem, but yea that’s useless bullshit that’s just annoying and feels like a breach in our lives
Go read the bill, particularly section 1798.501.b, 1798.502.a and b. Every developer of every application that can be downloaded from every package system MUST request your age bracket every time it is downloaded. And possibly every time it is launched. Basic utilities like ‘ls’ and ‘cat’, that pong example I pushed as a test, everything.
microslop and or palintir stink all over this, mroe than likely its the latter.
Microslop was created by a pedo
Even if they could enforce it which I highly doubt, this law is clearly a “Fuck you and your free software”.
Like if a “too young” user have the skills to update the OS to change or even remove the age verification, who will be responsible? Yeah I don’t know either, but both will be bad.
I mean, they could already just lie about their age like kids have been doing since the existence of adult websites. Even the facial rec stuff is easily fooled by a video game model. Just has to be able to be manipulated so you can do the head turns or whatever they ask of now.
This feels like a non issue.
“Age verification” is a big umbrella.
Claiming that merely checking an entered birth date is the equivalent of uploading an ID is disingenuous and just fishing for clicks.
Yes, there are tangible connections to other concerning privacy violations in this space… but come on. Steam asks you for your birth date before you watch an R18+ game trailer. I’ve been lying on that form for over twenty years, since before I was 18.
I think people are down voting you since they actually have not read the law themselves and don’t realize that the law itself says nothing about actually verifying that the age is correct. It is no more than what you said, like steam asking your birthdate before you look at certain games in the store.
Yep, which from a system setup point of view makes a lot of sense. I’m glad law makers are thinking about computer system design even if the laws aren’t perfect out the gate. At least in this instance it isn’t some covert data collection exercise!
To be honest I haven’t read the law in detail, but I doubt they’ve thought about things like automation, share accounts and other sysops concerns but it’s better than the past 30 years where lawmakers treat digital and the internet like some mystical black box that’ll sort itself out.
Its parents that are pushing for this stupid shit. I hate that the majority of voters want to implement robust age verification.
Is it? Honestly I think it’s just astroturfed. The entire imperial core suddenly got obsessed with regulating the internet after young people started waking up to the realities of the genocide in gaza.
Parents have been complaining about this for close to a decade but it really hit a peak in the last 4 years. Now that people have floated solutions they actually have legislation to vote on. If you are seen to be shooting down legislation that “protects kids” the average parent is going to hate you.
They think moderating internet usage is hard for them to do and they think that this is a magic solution that will actually work to keep their kids off these sites. Its dumb but its the world we live in.
Parents who view their kids as property
it’s horrible
Are they? The law effectively only applies penalties to the parents. If you have not ready the law I highly recommend it. It is very short and says nothing about actually verifying the age of the user. It is equivalent of entering your age on steam or the “are you 18+” questions.
The law effectively only applies penalties to the parents.
This applies penalties to far more than the parents. If I provide an operating system to a California parent, and my operating system does not include this “signal” apparatus, I can be fined $7500 every time a kid launches an application on my OS, for my deliberate decision not to implement their asinine horseshit.
Go read the bill, particularly section 1798.501.b, 1798.502.a and b. Every developer of every application that can be downloaded from every package system MUST request your age bracket every time it is downloaded or face the fine. And possibly every time it is launched. Basic utilities like ‘ls’ and ‘cat’, that pong example I pushed as a test, everything.
I hate the law I dont need to read it. I oppose all age verification measures floated. Do you think the average parent is reading these laws? They dont care that they have to verify age they will happily sign in with facebook and give over their ID. They see this as an actual solution even though it effectively just makes everything worse.
Is this only for Californians? Only Americans? Or everywhere?
The Californian law only affects California.
Individual OS vendors might decide to implement it in a way that affects other places as well, e.g. in the past, Valve decided they’d rather not implement age verification for Germany and just stopped selling all porn / super violent games in Germany. Maybe they’ll now implement it for Germany and California.
Couldn’t they make it locationally dependent?
Probably only Californians. Or at least IPs out of California.
For example, PornHub (Canadian company) is completely open to be, being Canadian. But if my VPN puts me in a state that has banned porn (Virginia for example), the site don’t let me on.
I’m sure it’s much like that. If you are in California or your IP is based out of it, the OS will require age verification, likely at startup.
Ah, I see. Not too worried about this then
California users practice penmanship in preparation to expected return to paper and pen.
Time for US-based linux distros to move their servers elsewhere (if they haven’t already).
Everyone not in California: mutes California
Will they patch useradd or adduser to support that?
They’d have to. It would be the only way to make the changes uniform across distros. And of course, we could always use the unmodified version.
I haven’t seen any devs in the linux space actually write about a real solution but my guess is likely not. Since the law specifies that users are “children”.
This is stupid and a waste of my time.
Age verification is stupid. I wonder if anyone thought of using a captcha. Require users to solve an appropriately complex problem before they use systems that require a certain amount of intelligence.
Would be fun to embed empathy quizzes for access to social media 😄
Age verification is stupid, but it’s also not the goal.
All the “think of the children” is really just subtext for “we want to be able to track literally everything you do”.
Yes this is true, and it’s good to remind everyone. I just had a random idea for the (rare) exception to the rule.
Land of the Free, amiright‽
Land of the Free^*^
^*certain^ ^terms^ ^and^ ^conditions^ ^may^ ^apply^
I understand why people are upset, but isn’t the operating system asking the user for age and then that age being used to get through service age gated the better path forward?
I would much rather be able to tell my computer I’m an adult and be able to go to an adult site and have it use that instead of the adult site having to handle the load of age verification. If the age is set per-user, kid profiles and parent profiles can both work to limit content for kids without impacting what the parents see. Hell, even just not having to click through those stupid steam prompts every time I look at a game with an m rating or whatever would be awesome. Especially since my account is over 18…
The best analogy I’ve heard for this… "Parents to be doing the parenting, versus, a government doing parenting and unbeknownst apples it to everyone ". And it is speaking of widely available tools that are already available such as parental controls in routers, devices, etc.
The analogy discounts “little hackers” or minors that intentionally will break laws to get what they want; in which then no “age verification” service (made by anyone) will work in practice.
And it is speaking of widely available tools that are already available such as parental controls in routers, devices, etc.
widely available? what kind of parental controls are available in
?
Parental controls already exist. There is no reason to force this invasive bullshit on us. If parents want to restrict/monitor their kids online all the tools they need to do so are already available. The government need not be involved.
Completely agreed, but our opinions don’t change reality, and we see the same sort of requests from countries across the world. If something like this is going to happen, it’s better to fight for the version you want instead of holding your ground in absolute terms and getting whatever is given to you.
I’d much rather this didn’t exist at all, but if they’re going to do it anyway, this way is much less invasive and could be a lot better for our privacy.
Even taking this past the parental control aspect, there are plenty of sites that are mandated to age gated, and having that built in and able to dismiss those with a binary of ‘of age’/‘underage’ (confirm to send, obviously) would be great, and would remove the need for some of the existing privacy nightmare ID validation sites. Which would be a overall benefit.
You’re identifying yourself lock-step to the government to run your computer. That telemetry is now theirs. Everything you ever do on that computer is now tracked or trackable to you and stored in a giant data center, probably eventually into a trained model of you.
You look at news about protestors, you leave a scathing review about a business supporting ICE, you post anonymously on a web forum that you’re displeased with the administration, All that needs to happen in the current climate is an executive order and the next time you go to update your passport or hop on a flight, you’re being detained as a terrorist.
Giving them this all willingly is a horrible idea and they will eventually use it against you.
The better path forward is to drop all this age verification bullshit. Completely and fully stop. NONE of it is needed. NONE of it.
Linux from Scratch is a refuge. It would be greatly improved with a package manager.
When I did it I added rpm and apt (and alien). It was a clusterfuck. Good times.
Effective date known yet?
January 1st 2027 per the bill text …legislature.ca.gov/…/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_i…
I was wondering if they’d require that new REAL ID versus the older (and cheaper) State ID, but from what I can tell it’ll just involve a user-declared age to preserve privacy. At least initially.
Sometimes newsom does some epic shit, but then we get shit like this, and I wonder whether I want to live on this planet any longer :/
its impossible to enforce. ca suck
Fokeu@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Luckily this dogshit is completely unenforceable. Doesn’t excuse the people who introduced this law, of course.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 1 month ago
It’s hard enough trying to get Linux adoption in schools and businesses. This law makes it an additional liability.
Administrators of FOSS systems will be considered OS Providers under this law, and will be liable at $2000 to $7500 for every child they expose to a non-compliant OS.
Those few schools that have adopted Linux will be forced to switch to M$ and Google products.
Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
You keep saying that, but nothing about it is carved out specifically one way or the other for FOSS. As it is worded, any network sysadmin is considered the “OS Provider” exactly the same under Windows or Linux as they “control the operating system software on a computer”. They don’t “develop” or “license” the software in either case, windows or Linux. They control the OS the same amount under either windows or Linux.
Maybe it could be argued they are more likely to choose windows since the people developing and licensing the software are a big corporation and is therefore more likely to be compliant? But it isn’t like Canonical and RedHat are just some guy in a basement - these are commercial entities developing and licensing software just like Microsoft.
I agree the definitions in this bill are absolutely insane - the idea that the developer, licensor, and administrator of a computer’s OS would ever be the same person is astronomically unlikely. Maybe they mean something different by “control”, but it isn’t defined so that makes it up to the courts to decide with no direction.
Eezyville@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
This is just another charge to add when someone is accused of a crime involving computers. It doesn’t have to be a computer related crime but just be part of their property.
Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
I love the definitions section… So, first it defines the 4 age brackets a user can be: Under 13, 13-16, 16-18, or over 18. Then they define “Child” as anyone under 18. Then, and this is where it gets good, they define a “User” as a “Child”. So by these definitions, no one can be considered a user if they are over 18. (which, then, why is there an “over 18” age bracket defined earlier??)
Not only do these people not seem to understand technology, they also don’t understand that people over 18 use technology, or maybe exist?