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How some Linux developers defeated (for now) the new OS age-verification laws. Long live those Linux developers, who "heavily criticized the mandates", made public statements, and contacted the legislators.
Because other Linux developers, instead, immediately bent over backwards to start implementing changes towards accommodating those laws; for sure they didn't heavily criticize the mandates, nor make public statements, nor contact the legislators.
Let's not misdirect peoples anger over age verification
The blame for age verification rests solely on the legislative bodies and the governors who didn't immediately veto it.
The first thing on the post you linked is the systemd change which adds a new number field in a completely user controlled local environment where they can write anything they want.
Oh nooooo... ಠ_ಠ
Oh come on we know how this works. Age verification is a prelude to digital ID and that "totally optional user field" is a prelude to something not optional. The current incarnation of that PR is optional and user controlled but it leaves us open to more and more.
Never give them an inch
It really doesn't. You are showing you don't know how it works.
Webpages can enforce remote verification for sure, that would fuck anyone, Linux included, but a local data file doesn't leave anything open for the idea I just said.
If you have root access you have complete control of what happens in your local environment. The only way to enforce user verification is to make it remote reliant (just like it's done in Spain for example, government regulated digital certificates), and then this new field is useless.
It wasn't a good proposal given that the original intention was compliance in a very useless way, but y'all are going crazy without learning about it.
Then if it doesn't matter, why even put it in? I know you're not so ignorant as to not realize this is how it starts. They add something innocent and unimportant so that idiots like you will say "it's fine, it's not a big deal, it doesn't matter" and then they slowly make it more and more invasive, little by little
Idk man, why put it? I agree, I down voted the proposal since it was useless. Didn't go mad posting about it tho.
I understood from the beginning that you are trying to make a "slippery slope" point, but this is open source, each change should be evaluated as is, with what it implies. A local field that isn't being used in anything doesn't condition users or Devs to anything that will then make them accommodated and easier to approve an actual invasive feature.
I will agree with the slippery slope argument when they propose a feature that is minimally invasive. This was both useless and 0 invasive.
Edit: actually no, this feature wasn't useless overall. It was useless for age verification, but great for parental control. The moment a kid doesn't have root access to the computer, a parent can put whatever age to block the kid from whatever features the parent wants to block them from. Think about it, self enforcing age verification doesn't give power to governments, it gives it to the root user of the computer, aka parents. It's something that actually works.
They defeated one of the laws in one jurisdiction. The California law is still in place, international laws are still in place, and federal laws are being advanced.