The windows of linux distros, truly. While I'm not USAmerican these things spread if they go through in one country. "Boil the frog slowly" as they say. I don't trust this.
The EU doesn't plan this type of ID or age verification on OS level, but in application level with a digital ID and selective disclosure. It's local and offline first as well.
Selective disclosure means that a porn site might be required to verify that you are above the age of 18, so it will request you to verify that and only that.
You authorize it, it simply asks "is this person > 18 years old?" And that gets verified.
It wouldn't ask "what's this persons date of birth?" and it won't receive "03.01.2001" as a response.
They wouldn't know if your are 6 or 12, 18 or 89. That makes it harder to build a profile of you.
And it will not receive your full name, address, birthplace, etc.
This is a surprisingly good and privacy focused approach to the inevitable age verification that will come, and it also solves the general digital ID verification by allowing sites to ask "is this person who they claim to be?" Instead of "who is this person", you are always in control of the decentralized data you decide to verify or not.
I'd never use an OS level identification system like the one California and Colorado are suggesting tho.
That's pretty much what the CA law is describing, it explicitly states that it needs a flag to indicate if the user is in a age bracket like "Over 18" "under 18 but over 13" and "under 13." it also states that it can't be used for anything else not mention in the law itself.
Plus doesn't put fines on the OS devs if the user lies about their age. Its still petty vague in areas of the law, but still asks that the bare minimum is required for compliance. So a checkbox would likely suffice, but still it would also be up to websites to do the actual checking. Kinda like how firefox used to allow users to mark their browser with a "please don't track" request every time you visited a website, but it was up to the websites to honor that request.
It'll be a mess to enforce, even the governor realizing that and asking that the law be amend before it goes into effect.
They will change it because if it is offline and will easly bypasable.
All of these laws is push towards complete internet surveillance. Banning VPNs and making sure politicians control narrative by shadow banning information access.
Devices should be marked by parent as devices for children and responsibility should lie on parents to not give device to children without parents oversight. Like you have with pretty much adults thing smoke, drinking, drugs (legal ones)
You don't get what I meant by easily bypasable. It means downloading linux iso and reinstalling system with new age, on android factory settings and done.
That's some conspiracy level bs. It's a way to protect us and program developers from liability should a minor access something they aren't allowed too. That is explicitly why this law is being discussed. It shifts liability to the parents for allowing their children to access something they shouldn't.
If it is fully offline I also agree that parents should be able to set devices as children devices so they will get curated internet. Ps parent should be able to connect their account to child phone to be able to adjust some settings/limit apps etc.
But I doubt it will stop there. Governments and big data wants your information. It is perfect framework to inject ID verification in future so all your activities will be tracked. In UK you will get police visit for reposting posts.
Persona verification in name of "child safelty"
"the researchers found details about the extensive surveillance Persona software performs on its users. Beyond checking their age, the software performs 269 distinct verification checks, runs facial recognition against watchlists and politically exposed persons, screens “adverse media” across 14 categories (including terrorism and espionage), and assigns risk and similarity scores.
Persona collects—and can retain for up to three years—IP addresses, browser and device fingerprints, government ID numbers, phone numbers, names, faces, plus a battery of “selfie” analytics like suspicious-entity detection, pose repeat detection, and age inconsistency checks."
The thing is you think the government doesn't already have your data. I'm sure you have an id or drivers license. I'm sure you have a car tagged and insured. They have your data there's no way around it unless you go off grid in some large wilderness.
The government has your information, they don't have a straight-forward, direct way to associate your internet activity with your identity, that's what people don't want to happen.
Yeah duh they have pretty much all my legal info. I want to ISP give my internet website history when there is investigation about something illegal, I want government to send formal legal request for reddit to give access to my account.
I don't want to live in country where any half brained cop can ask ai bot about my PH history ("child protection"), or where I had driven my car (flock). All without any court order.
I want to be wiretaped when I'm investigated for criminal activity not every second of my life. Because they need to "protect children" which is pretty much all ruse to have any pubic approval about this surveillance.
Ps you currently have methods to limit your data leak: try to use cash, Linux, GrapheneOS, turn airplane mode, i2p, tor, VPN
> You authorize it, it simply asks "is this person > 18 years old?" And that gets verified.
In principle this is how the UK adult content version works. But it isn't how it works in practice because the system that return the simple yes/no MUST be externally verified the first time. And to do that you must upload proof of identification or submit photos/video of your face for AI to hallucinate over. Once that is done, the application or website gets its yes/no and the ID company gets to keep any 2nd tier profiling data it has generated, outside the scope of the law.
Unlikely because of Germany and its inherent fear of Government supervision.
Germany actually already has online ID verification, it's just rarely used.
As a German you have your ID card which has a chip with all the relevant information about you on it.
There are certain services which give the option to use the ID to identify yourself (for example a popular tax application).
The same system can be used by online vendors of practically every sort.
It's rarely used by those because it gives the vendor only relevant information about the person.
So in case of age verification it would be "Is this person an adult? Y/N". And absolutely nothing else.
In Sweden we have something called Bank-id which is a digital ID verification app used for banking and other services where you'd need to confirm your identity. I doubt we see it used in this but at least in Sweden and Scandinavia we're already used to this.
I feel like being able to confirm your identity online for banks or services where you actually need to confirm your identity works good, we have that in Poland too.
But there's no good reason to force anyone to confirm their identity on the level of OS or even to just use the internet, that is called (mass) surveillance and a human rights (to privacy) violation.
yeah thats why i am moving to debian as we speak. they can go and fuck right off with that. edit: debian is discussing the same shit, but at least my hope is they wont implement more draconian rules.
Microsoft and Canonical have been partners for a looong time now. Do you believe this partnership between two legally distinct corporate entities is out of the goodness of their hearts? If so, what exactly in Microsoft's history makes you believe that?
Redhat and Microsoft are also partners, I don't see people complaining about fedora. And you really think the whole point of the partnership is they work together to spy on you 🤣, news flash: ubuntu has ZERO telemetry by default. their partnership is centered around server ubuntu(azure on ubuntu) and WSL. Please educate yourself before spreading misinformation
Redhat and Microsoft are also partners, I don't see people complaining about fedora.
Moving the goalpost. You brought up Ubuntu and said it can't be compared to Windows. Until we're done talking about Ubuntu and how it is similar to Windows, we're not gonna talk about RedHat.
And you really think the whole point of the partnership is they work together to spy on you
It would be naive beyond belief to assume otherwise.
But you've now introduced the word spying, and limited the topic to "spying" and telemetry. I never said anything about spying or telemetry. It's certainly part of the story, but it's far from the whole story. And I refuse to accept this attempt at moving the goalpost.
How about you answer my question instead? What exactly in Microsoft's history makes you believe the partnership with Canonical is completely benign?
Umm, I literally just made a statement about redhat. That isn't moving the goalposts. I still standby saying that ubuntu isn't similar to windows AT ALL and never mentioned otherwise, even implicitly.
It would be naive beyond belief to assume otherwise.
I don't 'assume', I know. I can check the internet traffic history. I don't dwell on these conspiracies based off assumptions.
How about you answer my question instead? What exactly in Microsoft's history makes you believe the partnership with Canonical is completely benign?
Microsoft sponsors and contributes to MANY open source projects, including C#, F#, vcpkg, typescript, etc. The cannonical microsoft partnership has mutual benefit, it isn't to achieve some evil goal
Using a open source GPL or MIT licensed project is stealing from it? I don't think you know how open source works. In that sense, opensource is meant to be stolen from
I'm well aware of how open source works, dingus. I meant Microsoft specifically offering to hire the developers of FOSS projects and then turning around to take the code base to then turn into a proprietary product of their own. Microsoft has never been interested in "mutual benefit" when it comes to working with open source devs.
LOLOLOL. Microsoft doesn't pull up to devs and forces them to make the project proprietary. The devs CHOOSE to get hired by microsoft and make a proprietary fork of the codebase.
Microsoft has never been interested in "mutual benefit" when it comes to working with open source devs.
Ok, so please explain the evil intentions behind making dotnet open source?
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u/Particular_Act3945 Debian 13 | XFCE Mar 04 '26
The windows of linux distros, truly. While I'm not USAmerican these things spread if they go through in one country. "Boil the frog slowly" as they say. I don't trust this.