people on reddit are doing a whole lot of yapping about age verification in Linux

[cas@social.treehouse.systems]

@eliasr @pid_eins superficially sure that makes sense, if FOSS existed in a vacuum I'd be totally on board. But despite the efforts of many to create and share software while taking zero responsibility for the consequences of their actions, software still exists in the real world.

To be clear (though I think i said so in my post) im not in favour of governments imposing restrictions or requirements on software, these laws are arbitrary and almost as hard to define concretely as they are to enforce.

With that being said, if I may attempt to challenge your underlying assumptions here: how are the requirements of law different to the requirements of (for example) a security minded individual, or an enterprise customer?

I want to daily drive a Linux phone but I care a whole lot about security and implementation details basically mean to only way to implement a truly secure OS stack is to use proprietary "trusted apps" from Qualcomm to protect my OS encryption keys (think software backed TPM), I have no doubt in my mind that people may object to the idea of Linux loading proprietary trusted apps into the "secure world" to implement this functionality, but would you object to the kernel adding support for this because it might not be "what the users want"?

I guess im making two points here so i'll try to separate them:

1. At what point is a topic so technical that the opinion of an average user with minimal context shouldn't be trusted?
2. How do you in practice enforce that "libre" software is always serving "the users" without alienation and othering?

Like I personally am always pretty confused and occasionally frustrated by the systemd unit constraints system, did i want Requires= or BindsTo= or WantedBy= or Requisite= etc.... Similarly the fact that every openrc service file is a shell script is infuriating, does these mean these aren't libre projects?

And again, yes I think the laws are fucking dumb, i just think criticising systemd and XDG in particular is just virtue signaling here, not advocating for real change. I hope i don't just come across as contrarian, you're making a philosophical argument so I hope it's ok to respond in kind.

[alatiera@mastodon.social]

@pid_eins @cas What a a gift, I couldn’t ask for a better honeypot

[migratory@jorts.horse]

@cas this is a canonical example of "complying in advance"

[zanagb@lgbtqia.space]

@cas "i do not understand why people are so upset that i am giving a gun to the firing squad and i am pre-emptively placing myself against the wall. Its not like they will shoot me and go after everyone indiscriminately or anything. Would you rather the goons need to find their own guns and justified action to prosecute me?"

The only thing y'all needed to do is not implement that garbage until 2027, and force everyone to walk the legislation back. And if they dont: "sorry you cannot use this in california". But hey. No. Fuck the entire world over complying with one law for 1/50th of the US of A.

Everyone involved on the linux exosystem development should be ashamed. The big iron financing your patches has played you like absolute fools.

[zanagb@lgbtqia.space]

@cas @jane @freya You ARE supposed to supervise your kids. You know?

It is called "Parenting".

You let them break the computer. And if you catch them installing something nasty you tell them that they should not be doing that.

[navi@social.vlhl.dev]

@cas @jane @freya

I mentioned here here:
https://social.vlhl.dev/notice/B4PU0aMRZdCXV8QAJk

but tl:dr I believe that a child young enough to need parental controls should not be left alone unsupervised w/ an internet device, and that teenagers should have already learnt discretion and have built a trust relationship with their parents

in a good world then, parental controls would just be guardrails for the former, but in the world we live in, i fear how much abuse, well, abusive parents might cause on the latter by forcing parental controls on their devices

[jane@smolhaj.social]

@ZanaGB @cas @freya yes. but at what point has the child learned enough? at what age is privacy more important? you can't supervise a child all day long unless your an "helicopter parent"

it's giving your kid training wheels with a bicycle so your sibling can take them on a small road tour, there isn't an exact day where a newborn turns into a kid turns into an teenager turns into an adolescent.

[navi@social.vlhl.dev]

@cas

> what would you have them do? Would you rather every desktop environment had its own way to store this data??

I'd rather they, and everyone, waits longer

system76 is trying to get US politicians to open exceptions for foss, laws in multiple states are contradictory, and in brasil there's lots of people trying to change that law as they see how bad it is

codifying an api for it now feels so premature and somewhat dangerous, bc what if what they implement is then not allowed in some other state or country?

[jane@smolhaj.social]

@navi @freya @cas my god, the point of parental controls is tbe potential to turn of browsers and the "internet"

[jane@smolhaj.social]

@navi @freya @cas

a trust relationship is exactly the thing i am arguing for, i'm not sure how much you dealt with actual parenting and supervising children.

you're arguing against a cptsd survior, i had very a abusive parents. the reality is that we as a foss community should enable healthy foss tools, because the stalkerware will get developed anyway due to money incentives. and it will not rely on any age bracket stuff as the primary usecase for stalkerware is stalking partners.

[navi@social.vlhl.dev]

@jane @freya @cas

i speak out of the self experience i mentioned above, out of the need growing up of watching over my small brother, and out of the personal experience shared with me by friends while growing, who did have the parental controls in apple devices used against them, and that's all

[fence@xyzzy.link]

@pid_eins @cas the ones that yap about it have no idea who those 2 people are I belive

[trahflow@norden.social]

@cas @eliasr

Is it virtue signalling though?
Can't it be plain frustration about the state and trend of the world in this matter?

Yes, it might be barking up the wrong tree.
But I think what many people are looking for is acknowledgement of that frustration, a feeling of being heard at least within *their* community. At least within libre FOSS.

How to respond to that is a choice.

[jane@smolhaj.social]

@navi so your arguing against a specific implementation? memories while growing up are heavily skewed, that was a really though thing to learn for me while taking care of a kid for a year. there were even moments were it made sense to lie or heavily skew the truth, a thing i couldn't have imagined before.

[navi@social.vlhl.dev]

@jane i argue against specific features, that are often included in "parental control"

so far the only thing people convinced me could be okay, is screen timeout timers

what i get worried is, for a teenager, making it easy to allowlist websites and content types, and making it easy to track everything they do with their devices

sure, there is other ways of doings those things, but the easier those tools are to enable and use, the more i saw them get abused