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

[hipsterelectron@circumstances.run]

@pid_eins @cas if you read IBM and the Holocaust you learn people who provided false data to the nazi census were actually considered heroes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Carmille

[cas@social.treehouse.systems]

@f4grx i'm sorry but this is just FUD. GNOME lets you set a profile photo for your user account but we aren't getting up in arms about how any unsandboxed software could upload it and run facial recognition.

[hopeless@mas.to]

@pid_eins @cas

People are justified to raise an eyebrow about waving this through without any kind of compulsion. It affects the "Overton window" and enables the next steps that were too far away without it.

[cas@social.treehouse.systems]

@justsoup on the one hand, i think id generally fully agree with you here, but in this case i struggle to see how things would be better if systemd/xdg refused to comply. I think it would be contrarian and shallow from an implementation perspective to refuse to store the users DoB in systemd's case, or for XDG to refuse to define a flatpak portal API to get the user's age bracket, both of these are fairly reasonable features were they not motivated by legislation.

i'm glad folks like Jeremy from system76 are pushing back harder against this, and from an individual level I'd agree that we should not comply, but from an OS/distribution perspective it feels like a pretty milquetoast response to just throw up your hands and say "Sorry, if you live in Cali we can't give you our software"...

[cas@social.treehouse.systems]

@ki damn i thought i had escaped the systemd haters this time

you quoted me lol, did i say "community project"?

[rakoo@blah.rako.space]

@cas

The history of social progress has shown us that progress never happens by complying with authoritarian laws in advance, quite the contrary. It has always been by resisting as a unified group against authoritarianism. Systemd isn't going for social progress, it's a tool for developing capitalist commercial solutions. They get criticisms primarily because of that, and complying to these laws is inline. They're not a friend in this situation so them doing shit is absolutely unsurprising

You don't need age verification to do parental control. You need guardians acting as actual guardians, educate themselves on what taking care of human beings is. Once again the children are not an excuse for adults' laziness

[cas@social.treehouse.systems]

@hipsterelectron i think i'm missing several layers of context to understand your point here tbh?? /gen

[ki@chaos.social]

@cas
calling out AI slop and toxic practices isn't just "systemd hate," especially when it comes to supporting fascism

> "trusted people in the open source community"

if systemd isn't a community project in your opinion, then it's not about "people in the open source community" anyway. And it really isn't. Glad we're on the same page regarding this point.

[cas@social.treehouse.systems]

@rakoo i agree that systemd is pretty entrenched in capitalism, and i very much agree that complying in advance is super not great.

Where I struggle is with the prescriptive language that systemd or freedesktop shouldn't comply with these laws. This can only harm distros who are then forced to deal with the situation themselves and then what? Now they have to face the backlash based on their explicit decision to comply or not.

Linux distros refusing to comply would carry significantly more weight imho, and I'd advocate for pressuring Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse etc to refuse and make some noise about this. I just can't say the same for the much more legally and financially precarious distros out there

[haui@mastodon.giftedmc.com]

@navi
From a political perspective the government is like thick oil or tar.

You can push it with great effort (mass action) but the most important part is that you stand firm to stem the flow. The capitalists control the tables legs.

To comply with bad tendencies will make it easier later to implement worse laws since that is its historically materialist direction at the moment.

I suggest not fighting over this but partner with the eff or fsf for politics, and just do implementation
@cas

[rakoo@blah.rako.space]

@cas

Note that the only software that face a backlash are those that comply with authoritarianism, not the others.

yep, that's why all distros, all kernels, all the bits that are concerned need to get together as one voice on this issue. The group takes care of the individuals. Now that systemd has complied, the ones that don't use it will bear all the pressure. And the ones that do use it won't go against systemd's decision because they still are alone.

If anything systemd has become a spof that allows this kind of things to happen

[cas@social.treehouse.systems]

in the replies i expand a bit more on my point that systemd/xdg refusing to comply would more or less force distros to do the work themselves (potentially to a worse standard) or refuse, and in either case have to face the blowback themselves. While we can and should criticise industry backed distros if they blatantly disregard the interests of their users, particularly when they have the power to push back against legislation like this.

However it seems absurd to me to expect small community driven projects to navigate this legislation themselves or have to take the heat for taking steps to protect the livelihoods of their maintainers by complying with this legislation, something they would have to expend more effort in doing if the projects they are built on (systemd, flatpak, GNOME, KDE) took the high road and refused to comply.

I think there is a pretty huge lack of understanding by a lot of even highly technical Linux users when it comes to how the software supply chain of their distro actually works.

Very relevant example:

Danielle Foré (@danirabbit@mastodon.online)

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?

Mastodon (mastodon.online)

[kkarhan@infosec.space]

@cas I still think #SystemD should refuse to comply and I will certainly #RefuseToComply with @OS1337 as a matter of principle!

Because #Cyberfascism is bad!

[cas@social.treehouse.systems]

@rakoo I agree with your suggestions but i still feel like your analysis isn't fully grounded here. Pushing back is good, coming together to do so is amazing, but it's also not mutually exclusive with ensuring that distro maintainers don't get caught in the net and fined

i expanded a bit more here, id also suggest giving Danieles post I linked to a read

kcxt (@cas@treehouse.systems)

in the replies i expand a bit more on my point that systemd/xdg refusing to comply would more or less force distros to do the work themselves (potentially to a worse standard) or refuse, and in either case have to face the blowback themselves. While we can and should criticise industry backed distros if they blatantly disregard the interests of their users, particularly when they have the power to push back against legislation like this. However it seems absurd to me to expect small community driven projects to navigate this legislation themselves or have to take the heat for taking steps to protect the livelihoods of their maintainers by complying with this legislation, something they would have to expend more effort in doing if the projects they are built on (systemd, flatpak, GNOME, KDE) took the high road and refused to comply. I think there is a pretty huge lack of understanding by a lot of even highly technical Linux users when it comes to how the software supply chain of their distro actually works. Very relevant example: https://mastodon.online/@danirabbit/116250765623660340

Treehouse Mastodon (social.treehouse.systems)

[cas@social.treehouse.systems]

@kkarhan @OS1337 power to you, honestly

[ret@furry.engineer]

@cas so basically:

"well, if we're going to slide into fascism and real-id laws, might as well make it user-friendly!"

nope, nope nope nope. Fight this shit every step of the way. Couldn't disagree more strongly with every single thing you've said.

Principles matter, my man. Sometimes they don't make sense, they don't fit in nicely with how an ideal world should be, sometimes they make things more difficult. That's the nature of boycotts, of refusal, of being led by your heart and not by your brain sometimes.

[kkarhan@infosec.space]

@cas na. It's just having basic principles!

[rakoo@blah.rako.space]

@cas Thank you for the perspective, those are really interesting. I still think that systemd being the all-encompassing OS layer it wants to be, it is the best place to fight back against this. All distros will have to fill the bit anyway. But I know it takes a lot of energy to actively fight, sometimes too much.

[cas@social.treehouse.systems]

@ret yes fight this shit at every turn, but don't get mad at distros (particularly small and community driven ones) for not wanting to risk not complying. maintainers didn't sign up to risk their livelihoods against fascism and we shouldn't expect them to take on this liability

[ret@furry.engineer]

@cas nobody compelled systemd to do this. Some commenters on the original PR made that much clear.

Nothing/nobody compelled systemd to do this. It was a choice to make this easier for others. Greasing the wheels of this awful concept.