“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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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 Here’s an idea. Instead of implementing age verification, one could implement a dialog confirming that user is not located in California.
Also, Estonia offers no-requirement e-residency and ability to set up a company. All without leaving your computer. Just saying.
There are many ways to fight bad laws and it seems to me that you might be in a position of significant influence here to do just that.
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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".
@alice @danirabbit @smolbrain but if you don't attack your allies for not being as Pure and committed to your ideals as you, what's the point of being a leftist?
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@danirabbit Here’s an idea. Instead of implementing age verification, one could implement a dialog confirming that user is not located in California.
Also, Estonia offers no-requirement e-residency and ability to set up a company. All without leaving your computer. Just saying.
There are many ways to fight bad laws and it seems to me that you might be in a position of significant influence here to do just that.
@k that’s not how things work. I’m technically incorporated in Delaware, but I pay payroll in California and I work here in California thus I “do business” in California and I have to register with the Secretary of State and pay taxes here and follow regulations
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@danirabbit which bill/law is being referred to here?
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@solitha @danirabbit wow, thank you for sharing that
I wonder how they expect enterprise installs to satisfy this... what is the age of a system account, if that's all that logs in?
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@solitha @danirabbit wow, thank you for sharing that
I wonder how they expect enterprise installs to satisfy this... what is the age of a system account, if that's all that logs in?
@solitha @danirabbit or if a system is multi-user, which user's age matters?
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@solitha @danirabbit or if a system is multi-user, which user's age matters?
@r0k It's pretty bare-bones with a lot of question marks remaining.
From what I understand, they passed the law intending to amend it into a viable state... which really leaves devs twisting in the wind.
Kind of typical of California legislation. Probably good intention, but bad implementation.
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@r0k It's pretty bare-bones with a lot of question marks remaining.
From what I understand, they passed the law intending to amend it into a viable state... which really leaves devs twisting in the wind.
Kind of typical of California legislation. Probably good intention, but bad implementation.
@solitha @danirabbit yeah, I saw that in the article you shared (thanks again for that)
so much heavy lifting there:
"Despite signing it, Newsom issued a statement urging the legislature to amend the law before its effective date, citing concerns from streaming services and game developers about "complexities such as multi-user accounts shared by a family member and user profiles utilized across multiple devices." Whether amendments will materialize before January 2027 remains to be seen."
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@danirabbit Hmm, I understand. That's unfortunate if it's indeed based on where it's registered and not on where your customers are from
https://archlinux32.org/ has decided to comply by geoblocking affected regions, I guess they probably aren't affected by this then because they aren't a Californian/US entity?
@pojntfx https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043
IANAL but I do think it's about who uses it, not where it's registered.
Then again it's a pretty hollow law and they expect to fill in details with amendments. In its current state it's really too vague.
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@khw sure you can disable it, but then any application trying to access the age API will block the content you’re trying to access. It’s much easier to just type in an age that’s over 18. Be born in 1975 or something
️@danirabbit @khw Just curious about this API thing. Is there a known API that can be used by Linux distributions for this right now or will we see different implementations until everyone agrees on it (supposedly through freedesktop)?
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@danirabbit @khw Just curious about this API thing. Is there a known API that can be used by Linux distributions for this right now or will we see different implementations until everyone agrees on it (supposedly through freedesktop)?
@rodolphe afaik there are no actual implementations yet. I don’t think we’ll see any implementations until after we have something merged into XDG portals
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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 I think I will non-comply in advance to laws which will be put into place soon.
Especially having sabotage setups in place for the moment the laws get enacted.. -
“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
I mean... it's your distro and you can plan your workflows however you want (and I am the world's least skilled person at project management, so certainly don't take any advice from me on it), but AIUI the legislation you have in mind doesn't come into force until 1st January 2027, so "in advance" is not an unreasonable descriptor for compliance work done now.
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@khw sure you can disable it, but then any application trying to access the age API will block the content you’re trying to access. It’s much easier to just type in an age that’s over 18. Be born in 1975 or something
️@danirabbit @khw A real Unix / Linux person is born on 1970-01-01
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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?
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.
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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
@matt @danirabbit It doesn't bother me in the slightest.
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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.
