Wild they still play the "think of the children" card while ignoring the Epstein files.
this post was submitted on 25 May 2026
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For a moment I freaked out that they were only gonna exclude Linux and not open source in general but it seems they exclude based on the license based on this article which is a good thing. The dozens of OpenBSD and FreeBSD users may rest safely now
It doesn't even makes to collect age on any OS unless the OS is PornOS or something. What exactly is the threat? What exactly does verification do?
Wao, I am gladly surprised by this. I would have never thought this would be possible, yet here we are.
California software companies have serious lobbying power.
Enforcing it on android/apple/windows/steamos/chromeos is still problem tho.
Tho I do wonder how they handle chromeos. Do each student have to put their age every year?
My steam account is old enough to legally drink. Wonder if that'll factor in.
Common Linux double u.
The proposed amendment specifically states: “Operating system provider” does not mean a person or entity that distributes an operating system or application under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software.
That's one way to encourage people to move to open source software
Imagine if that made MicroSlop and Apple open-source Windows and Mac OS. That would be a wild world.
How about the government focus on taking rights away from people who have actually harmed kids, like I don't know, maybe a giant pedophile ring in plain sight? Instead the focus on taking rights from everyone because someone, sometime, in the future harm a child.
The government was paid by Meta.. They are just doing what they were told to do
its not even about "protecting the innocent" is about snooping on potential dissidents/ threats to the status quo of the govt.
The whole digital footprint thing is really having me dawn a tinfoil hat. I was doing Uber a few days ago, and listening to Pandora. I spoke very limited, and brief, Spanish to two riders and I immediately started getting full on español ads on Pandora! Like I don't speak fluent Spanish! Your ad budget is legit getting wasted.
But I am a little flattered thinking the algorithm thinks I do.
Dunno where I was going with this, but I'm excited to see Linux growing, and hope it gets mainstream enough that a year old unlocked phone has a fork.
Because it's not about protecting children, obviously.
When someone with certain personality problems tells blatant lies, they are really only trying to convince themselves. You exist only as an introject inside their minds, you are not real to them, it does not matter if you don't believe them because it doesn't need to make sense to you.
It’s being exempt because the Government can’t enforce this requirement on FOSS. Linux isn’t managed by a corporation and I don’t think people realize this yet.
Red Hat is the biggest power on Linux.
I would pay money to hear Linus on the phone with these self-important assholes.
we want you to force user verification in all Linux.
yeah, fuck you.
...
Give homie some credit, I think he would at least ask "why?" first. Then also wish them "good luck!" on enforcing it.
You can't force it on any Linux distro, but on everybody who has to give a shit about compliance.
I mean they could force big corpo to not allow anyone who can't verify age to use their services.
This is sponsored by meta to push the age requirement tracking onto the os rather than Facebook directly to avoid liability when under age kids access harmful content
An unverified age bracket in the OS that provides that to web services is the correct way to do it (a parent setting up a computer or account for a kid checks one box and suddenly google safe search, etc, everyone else doesn't check the box, done).
I suspect meta is hoping to get better unique account to human mapping in their surveillance machine.
Which is insane, as the OS doesn't have any way to authoritatively measure the user's age and so they have to be 'honor system' where the age is whatever the user says the age is, or require some online account with identity validation, which is what facebook tries to do anyway.
How about they spend their time revamping parental controls instead? The age gate stuff is clear about user data collection and nothing else.
Because they don't give a single fuck about the kids, unless they're pedos fucking kids, then they give all the fucks.
Exactly. Age control is obviously needed I am so glad I'm not a kid that has to navigate the social algorithms of our time.
That said this is obviously a law being pushed by the technofascist companies like meta and their goal is always more power, in this case more data. It's crazy how many law makers just do what they are told. they are doing the same with trying to lock down 3Dprinters.
More local control in operating systems as well as parental controls in platforms like YouTube where they could have full control to turn off the algorithm, maybe even a browser api where you need admin to enable adult mode. But based on everything I've seem from companies like google and meta they don't care in the slightest about the children as long as they make their bag
Easing local control is what that law was about (and it did think far enough to only include user facing). If there wasn't a global tendency to move towards surveillance and identity verification I'd be all for it. As it is I have some reservations about slippery slope.
The law doesn't require identity verification. It requires the OS to provide the age group of the user (set at install) to programs running on the OS. Something that, if adopted widely, would immensely help with allowing parents to control access (i.e. if they decide their kid should be able to see everything, just put them in ths age group for that, similarly they could also do that and manage it the same way as they would now. Or if they're lazy as many parents sadly are, there is at least some enforcement of age control that someone thought about, without giving up any identifying info beyond an age group). Yes it could be circumvented somewhat easily, but as far as I see it that's always a feature. A child being exposed to something accidentally has very different implications than actively trying to access it.
I’m a DevOps engineer and my employer runs a lot of Linux instances in AWS. I’d love for these politicians to explain to me how age verification of Linux web servers should work for auto-scaling environments where instances are spun up and terminated automatically based on traffic volume. I’d also like to know if I should be using the age of our CEO, the age of our company (thanks to Citizens United), or something else.
It's the 20s version of "the internet is a series of tubes". They couldn't explain it if they wanted to, but all they care about is that the bribes are still spending.
Obviously corporations just become exempt from the law. And any laws, any not.
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Fuck age verification, fuck it all to hell. Not for Linux or any other OS or device.
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See you in a year or 2.
Play as old as times:
- Company announces garbage change
- People freak out
- Company says ok we will only do half of the garbage
- People calm down and forget
- Company later does the rest of the garbage
- Nobody cares because half of it is already there
This isn't exactly it.
First or isn't a company or is the government. 2nd, that legislation is just plain dumb and open source systems like Linux, BSD can't comply with it, even if they wanted to.
The whole law should be repealed though. They use children as excuse, bit it is about surveillance.
also known as TESTING the waters, gauging public response. so they can adapt under a different scheme.
Plucking the goose with a minimum of hissing.
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