“Complying in advance” is when you go out of your way to do things that you don’t have to do to support authoritarian overreach.
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To the best of my knowledge, none of the regulations listed here: https://actonline.org/2025/01/14/the-abcs-of-age-verification-in-the-united-states/ is currently in effect, except for the Texan situation (in effect, but blocked by a court).
So I'd say if we are serious about what phrases mean, we need to distinguish between passed, enacted, and in effect.
I get that you can't implement things last minute, but I also don't see distros coordinating and discussing whether they should resist, and what form of resistance is possible, if any. Not even the small circle of the biggest upstream ones.
That type of coordinated discussion seems to be absent from the public space, but what isn't absent is developers and maintainers tossing around their favorite "cool implementation ideas".
I'd say this is what frustrates people and makes them talk about "complying in advance".
For the record: It is highly unethical to demand from others to violate laws in effect, risking the consequences that you have described.
To be fair, I prefer a system like this linked to user-accounts which gets exposed to apps and browsers.
Way better than having to authenticate to a third party service.Yes it can easy be bypassed by everyone that has root access. If you have local root I assume you are at least 16 or even an adult, so who cares?
You give the kids their own account with the age lock on it
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“Complying in advance” is when you go out of your way to do things that you don’t have to do to support authoritarian overreach.
“Complying in advance” is not when you follow laws that have passed and have clearly defined penalties
Learn what phrases mean, maybe
@danirabbit
Is complying good or bad? -
@the_decryptor *shrug* I already read both the law text and the reporting on it.
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@the_decryptor *shrug* I already read both the law text and the reporting on it.
@solitha @the_decryptor @danirabbit I found this while doing more research about this
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@solitha @the_decryptor @danirabbit I found this while doing more research about this
@r0k Yeah, it's not really about protecting kids. Never has been.
Just makes me wanna huck all the data collectors into the sun. So very tired of it all.
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@danirabbit@mastodon.online @smolbrain@floofy.tech it's similar thing to when people are accused of having to use llms at work
should they try to reduce harm and keep it out of actual projects and waste it on internal shit? absolutely
should they quit their jobs in protest? uhh i mean if somebody can do that and survive then that's quite a privileged positionMy core belief is this is a first-amendment issue. But in order to get that affirmed by a court - it seems like you need to have your rights infringed first.
With the law not being in effect yet, not sure what standing anybody has to claim damage.
And handling all of that is so expensive. No single person can afford to fix this. I think that's by design.
Fuckin' sucks.
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When you tell me to just not implement age declaration, do you understand you’re asking me to risk thousands of dollars in fines? Which means realistically the only way for me to not follow the law is to close my business and stop making elementary OS. Do you think it makes sense for me to decide to have no income right now in the middle of massive tech layoffs in a purely symbolic act of protest? Do you really fully understand this is what you’re asking of me?
@danirabbit this is a very naive take. Frog getting boiled.
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If the worst thing that’s happened to your rights in the last few years is you might have to type the number 18 into a text box you need to touch some fucking grass. Take that energy and go to a protest. Write your reps. Stop voting for Trump. Don’t vote for Gavin Newsom. Delete meta’s apps. But constantly harassing open source maintainers like we have some kind of power is wild. I am a low income marginalized woman who is just trying to survive right now and I have much larger rights issues
@danirabbit@mastodon.online It just feels like we're giving up privacy rights inch by inch, to satisfy the overreach of a government most of us aren't even subjects of. Systemd already decided that
birthDatewill only be settable by admins, so the "lol just lie bozo" excuse doesn't work if you're don't own the machine you're using (like a teen in most households). That very much is complying in advance. Some government someday will declare that, say, information about trans identities should not be accessible for people under 18. Or maybe Russia will pass a law that the OS should transmit information about the sexual orientation of the user. Or China asks about religious affiliation. So sorry I guess that people didn't think of your business while the Torment Nexus gets build. -
When you tell me to just not implement age declaration, do you understand you’re asking me to risk thousands of dollars in fines? Which means realistically the only way for me to not follow the law is to close my business and stop making elementary OS. Do you think it makes sense for me to decide to have no income right now in the middle of massive tech layoffs in a purely symbolic act of protest? Do you really fully understand this is what you’re asking of me?
@danirabbit "You mean, you are asking me to choose between ethics and principles, and money in my bank account? Fuck that, I choose money every time" lol
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@danirabbit i definitely understand the perspective of following the laws passed as written lest facing literal ruin. Personally I read the outrage as an extreme fear of slow boiling. While right now it may just be entering a fake 18 in a text box. There is a fear of continued extrapolation (that to be fair hasn't actually happened yet). That the next step "Isn't that bad" and so on. Many see it as, one step down that path is one too many. Give a facist a cookie kind of thinking.
I understand this too and... im so conflicted. I agree we shouldn't give an inch on some things. But when you threaten good people trying to do the right thing and who are otherwise absolute allies... the calculation is never simple. Everyone is scared and hurting... im sorry FOSS creators like you are targeted like this... and im sorry we, those without, are all being taken advantage of by those "with".
@smolbrain
What I am angry about is that 40M citizens in California make such decisions for 10B potential users in the world. It's not 'comply with THE LAW', rather comply with the law in one pretty tiny fraction of the world that in good old colonialism manner wants to make every person on earth happy by enforcing whatever shit they think is right onto them without asking.
Bonus: It's at least possible that revealing the date of birth of a user by default is AGAINST THE LAW in the European Union. So implementing such measures tells 400M people their laws don't count because 40M people think they shouldn't. @danirabbit -
When you tell me to just not implement age declaration, do you understand you’re asking me to risk thousands of dollars in fines? Which means realistically the only way for me to not follow the law is to close my business and stop making elementary OS. Do you think it makes sense for me to decide to have no income right now in the middle of massive tech layoffs in a purely symbolic act of protest? Do you really fully understand this is what you’re asking of me?
I guess "not complying in advance" in such a case would be something like stating "I can't do otherwise now because I need money to support myself so won't shut down my company, feel free to switch to another OS" and not, absolutely not and never, try to diminish the severity of this attack on general-purpose computation ?
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I guess "not complying in advance" in such a case would be something like stating "I can't do otherwise now because I need money to support myself so won't shut down my company, feel free to switch to another OS" and not, absolutely not and never, try to diminish the severity of this attack on general-purpose computation ?
You could also add to the checkbox something akin to "are you're Gavin Newsom ?" and if they say yes "you're clearly too technically illiterate to be allowed to use a computer" and then reboot..
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@alice exactly. Like I’m not going to die on this particularly hill. If something actually harmful was happening it would be a different calculus. But this is so ridiculous to be like whelp better self destruct over it
@danirabbit @alice u know what this might even be good. now pron sites can stop asking me if im over 18 and just fetch the fake age from the os
/hj
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When you tell me to just not implement age declaration, do you understand you’re asking me to risk thousands of dollars in fines? Which means realistically the only way for me to not follow the law is to close my business and stop making elementary OS. Do you think it makes sense for me to decide to have no income right now in the middle of massive tech layoffs in a purely symbolic act of protest? Do you really fully understand this is what you’re asking of me?
@danirabbit I’m hopeful that https://agelesslinux.org/ gets there first—they are very explicitly trying to get sued over this, which should hopefully clarify the legal situation soon enough. Additionally, they make some good points—for instance, there may be the good faith effort defense, e.g. you could ask the user for their age once at installation/upgrade time, prevent the installation if it’s below 18, but never store it anywhere.
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@danirabbit I’m hopeful that https://agelesslinux.org/ gets there first—they are very explicitly trying to get sued over this, which should hopefully clarify the legal situation soon enough. Additionally, they make some good points—for instance, there may be the good faith effort defense, e.g. you could ask the user for their age once at installation/upgrade time, prevent the installation if it’s below 18, but never store it anywhere.
@danirabbit that’s also the point of their efforts—trying to protect you and others who are much smaller and much harder to find than someone who paints a target on their back and taunts the lawmakers.
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@danirabbit that’s also the point of their efforts—trying to protect you and others who are much smaller and much harder to find than someone who paints a target on their back and taunts the lawmakers.
@danirabbit furthermore, they make the legal argument (and I think their logic is sound) that if you don’t collect age data at all, it’s impossible to determine whether your users are children, and therefore impossible to determine if you actually violated the law. so the snake eats its own tail, or nothing at all in this case.
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@pojntfx I live in California
@danirabbit @pojntfx Come to Europe, we have good food and public healthcare
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@danirabbit @pojntfx Come to Europe, we have good food and public healthcare
@speaktrap @danirabbit @pojntfx I live in Europe, I'm sad to inform you I still have to pay rent
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@danirabbit @khw A real Unix / Linux person is born on 1970-01-01
Well I am 11 month younger than that but pretty close. And it has actually never crossed my mind before that I am born at the EPOC year.
