this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2026
138 points (90.6% liked)
Technology
83150 readers
3563 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What problem does this even solve? On Linux, what app would even be asking how old you are? Web browsers for sure, and maybe electron apps like Discord? But what else is there?
I'm on Bazzite (based on Fedora). I'm comfy with it, moving distros is a significant effort, so I'm very unlikely to ever jump ship. If I have to make a workflow that mirrors the official Bazzite images and neuters this age check, so be it. Not that complicated.
But I'm willing to bet the community will step up and maintain browsers/apps that don't have these age checks in the first place. Firefox has many forks that definitely won't, and Vesktop will probably stub this out when it inevitably comes to Discord. If there's nothing to ask for age verification, it doesn't matter what the OS can do.
I really don't see a need to burn a distro I'm comfortable with, even if the upstream maintainers are a little dumb. There a ton of ways to bend a Linux distro to your will without throwing your hands up.
well, the app catalog, steam, certain games, ...
tbh parental controls would be useful to have. you can't be watching every minute if they are doing something inappropriate. usage time limits are also useful.
why are people so much against tools? we are so afraid of the slippery slope that we don't even consider to accept legitimately useful optional tools
can we acknowledge that what happens on the internet today is harmful to children? now, you either properly set up limits for them, or cut their access, if you want any good.
For 99% of what happens on the Internet? No. No, we can't. That would be malicious fearmongering.
For the remaining 1% (or less)? Fine and impose sanctions on any companies that produce content intended to harm children (mostly Meta, and any company that makes games with lootboxes), and their CEOs and boards.
Educate parents so they can prevent their children from accessing that harmful 1%. Fine any that refuse, and take their children away as you would any other abusers'.
But this age tracking shit will do absolutely nothing to protect children, it will do absolutely nothing to educate parents, and worse of all will do absolutely nothing to stop the companies that intentionally harm children.
Its only purpose is to control access to the Internet, and to establish a foothold to justify a slippery slope of ever worsening spyware measures, that will harm not only children but the whole population.
malicious fearmongering? all that most people know about "the internet" is facebook, instagram, tiktok and the other corporate propaganda machines. by popularity, that is absolutely 99% of the internet, and not "the renaining 1%", as you are portraying it.
wasn't that exactly what I was saying? providing tools in the freaking operating system to limit what your kid can do? but downvote me to hell because I'm clearly wrong and that will surely fix everything!
you know what it will do? with proper OS level integration, with programs taking it upon themselves, easier presets for the kid to only access age appropriate things. age brackets, that's it.
then even the web browser can manage the limitations natively, either with filterlists like what ublock uses, or when the visited website self-declares its category.
how in the fucking hell will it control access to the internet when the local system administrator can change the age bracket setting in the OS.
All Linux distros either come with parental controls or have a way of installing them. This age verification shit was never about protecting the children.
when I was looking I have found exactly zero parental controls for linux. which ones do you know?