Simple solution. From now on Linux distros should ship with a big message “NOT FOR USE IN CALIFORNIA”.
You want to force age verification? No server in all of California will run. Period.
Ah, the Glock solution.
Enlighten me pls
Yeah… It says just that in the article. You did read the article, right? I mean you didn’t just read the title and then rush in here to make a comment?
How people farm internet points is serious business
Supposedly the age verification thing that’s needed is the equivalent to a porn site verification. Just enter a birthday that’s in the 1800s, and you’re set. This is still a bad direction to go towards though, as it’ll set precedent for future bullshit.
Exactly. Today you can enter Jan 1 1800 and it will take it. That’s not the problem.
The real problem is the precedence it sets. An asinine rule gets passed and companies adhere to it, meaning they are enforcers.
Tomorrow when laws require real verification, like ID scan then they’ve already agreed to be the gate keeper for said asinine laws. It’s harder to back out at that point.
It’s all surveillance and it should be stopped.
There is nothing that’s “needed”. Its an OS not some demonic construct. It should also be noted that teens will be impacted in it as well - all minors. All this age gating, discriminatory behaviour is eating us alive. Age verification should not exist at all.
So now when I spin up a VM at my sysadmin job I have to tell the server I’m an adult? Does anyone actually know what the fuck we are doing here? What an absolute clown show.
This is what happens when boomers never die and stay in office for a lifetime. They don’t understand technology but are allowed to make the laws that govern their use.
Nha boomers are not the cause for this shit. Smart ass marketeers and tech bro pushing for more precise target identification and thus more reach for them are to blame. And those I stumble upon are definitely on the younger side.
When can just change the laws when they leave
Does anyone actually know what the fuck we are doing here?
Obviously not, no.
You’re a sysadmin… you should know this.
You’re the person who has to actually think through the results of other people’s decisions.
That’s your job, lol.
Other people get paid to make decisions, not think about them.
Other people get paid to make decisions, not think about them.
And ofc they don’t suffer any consequences for making bad decisions.
Precisely, shit trickles downward, that’s how the economy/society works!
EDIT: Swear to god I didn’t even read your username before saying that.
So, goddamnit poopsmith, you as well should know this!
That’s your job lol!
Haha, I’m not even supposed to talk!
How will this affect embedded os like freertos or vxworks? There are lightbulbs that have operating systems these days, am I going to have to show ID to turn on my light?
My guess would be these OS’s just wont do it and stop doing business in that state.
Lucky for you, you can just download them anyway.
My guess is also that these lawmakers dont care nor considered other OS’s than Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android.
As those are not general purpose computing devices, and additionally have no app store - no, and no.
From the law text:
© “Application” means a software application that may be run or directed by a user on a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device that can access a covered application store or download an application.
The law defines a public webpage as a covered app store. Anything that can run doom and view a webpage is potentially covered.
It’s way overbroad and unclear how it could be implemented, and likely to be challenged in court if it even gets that far.
Definitely broad and “just trust us bro” energy.
I’m looking for orgs fighting the Colorado one. I got “replaced” by AI recently, so I have all the time in the world to write letters, make calls, and go to town halls. I just don’t want to do it alone.
It all but makes the law useless, but the law characterizes viable age verification as being self reported, so the Id wouldn’t be necessary.
You guys are asking the wrong questions.
How is Linux going to do this? There’s no server for the os to send the information to report the age of its users, no way of forcing its user base to comply and no single person or entity to fine, arrest or otherwise force into compliance.
They made a law they cannot enforce.
How is Linux going to do this? There’s no server for the os to send the information to report the age of its users
The law doesn’t require sending the data anywhere, so that’s not a problem.
no way of forcing its user base to comply and no single person or entity to fine, arrest or otherwise force into compliance.
The law doesn’t require anything of users, it requires something of OS providers. OS providers have addresses and entities to fine.
What if banning Linux is part of the Agenda? And what will they do for the servers? I am declaring my pc a server as of right now…
From what I understood, it’s a requirement for a local API (for apps to use) and could be implemented during user creation.
It will be a slippery slope and IANAL, just my interpretation.
Wow California leading the way to fascism, who woulda thunk?
Colorado Dems pushing a similar law rn.
Fucking idiots.
Do you know if any organizations are coming out against it? I’ve been looking for a place to plug in. These people aren’t my representatives, but I know people in their districts and I’m curious why now? Who asked them to do this? Why did they think during the unprecedented expansion of the surveillance state was an appropriate time to propose something like this. There are only two sponsors. I looked through other legislation they cosponsored and some of it was good, some of it was garbage, but this was among the worst. I’ll try calling their numbers and send an email.
This kinda seems like a roundabout way of avoiding government /corporate age verification laws? Like it doesn’t require ID verification or biometrics and runs a local api to verify age.
Can someone smarter than me please explain if this is a good thing or not?
I’m not saying I’m smarter than you but to me it looks like “Hey yeah we require age verification. So, anyway…”
A token easily bypassed “verification” law to set and forget. It’s basically the same level of security corrently keeping teenage boys off of PornHub.
It’s not really easily bypassed though, if only the administrator can set the date of birth for an account. if the parent does not use the admin account for daily usage (and they shouldn’t for other reasons), then the majority of the children won’t be able to change it
I meant that the law is easily bypassed, for example by not implementing what you described. Good point nonetheless.
California leading the way? Have you been under a rock? It even says this in the article…
The law does not require photo ID uploads or facial recognition, with users instead simply self-reporting their age, setting AB 1043 apart from similar laws passed in Texas and Utah that require “commercially reasonable” verification methods
Get people used to a mild form of age verification. Next step, full ID upload.
Final step: Drink verification cans before you can boot your
PC.
It’s been that way for a very long time.
For everyone trying to figure out how this would be enforced, it’s not about being proactively enforced. (and data collection is 99% of it)
It’s about adding a double-tap “Well, these people also violated our age verification law, so they have to pay a fine,” added to any incident where it’s convenient to add this in. If a minor sends another minor a snap that would trigger CP laws, and one of the phones isn’t age verified correctly, fine to the parents and hands up in the air “We tried!” A minor is involved in torrenting movies? “Look, kids using illegal OS! Fine to the parents!”
This is how laws work across a lot of corrupt developing countries. There’s laws for everything, but they only get applied selectively as authorities find they fit the situation. It’s hard to actually be 100% above board and do everything legally because of a few little things meant to be impossible to actually do bureaucratically. So in every situation, any set of authorities start in with the endemic leverage of “Well, we have suspicion of you selling ketamine out of your apartment. Did you do age verification on your laptop? No? Then we can seize that as a crime and see what’s on there. OR you can give up your supplier.”
The law does not require photo ID uploads or facial recognition, with users instead simply self-reporting their age, setting AB 1043 apart from similar laws passed in Texas and Utah that require “commercially reasonable” verification methods, such as government-issued ID checks.
What even is the point of this then? To make shitty parents feel better?
Sell data. profile people more accurately.
Moving towards removing anonymity on the internet.
IRL Community is dead in america, They know the only thing we have left to band together on against their Nazi regime is the internet. This is why they are trying to destroy anonymity.
Soon it will be “Linux is for criminals” (like they said with graphene).
Yup. Replacing cash with digital transactions and eliminating anonymity online.
Yep!! All their plan, laid out clear as day. But you’re the crazy person if you bring that up among normies!
The point of it is actually the exact opposite. With this law the parent would set the age of their child. And if they decide to lie and their child is affected then they could be fined.
The other thing it does is if a platform decides to ignore the age range of a user and it affects a child then they could be fined. But as long as they do best effort then it really only affects the parents.
It also prevent platforms from requesting additional ID verification unless they have confidence that the age bracket of that user is incorrect.
There is absolutely no reason for an OS to know a users age. At this point it is certain that they can escalate this into including gender or even race.
The children or even the teens have no meaning in this law - they are simply used as sugarcoating for the cyanide pill that’s aimed at the populace.
I agree until this law there was no reason for my os to know my age. This law creates that reason.
Any law can be bad if we take into account the imagined future possibilities. Should we outlaw electricity because it might be used in some way to make nukes?
If lawmakers try to issue further requirements for ID or facial scans then we can fight that. But until then there is nothing in this law that affects me outside of needing to enter a number less than 2005 when I setup my OS.
If you don’t have any kids then you literally can’t be fined under this law.
Should we outlaw electricity because it might be used in some way to make nukes?
No, because there are lots of good uses for electricity. What is the good use of this bill?
It prevents apps from asking for additional ID verification. I’d rather my os ask me for a number I am able to lie about than to have to send my ID to 30 different apps and data aggregators.
Many people say that we should put more responsibility on the parents for what their kids are allowed to do online. This law does that.
The ONLY way this is even remotely OK is if the OS is set to 18+ all other age verification laws are satisfied and I don’t have to provide even more intrusive information to random companies.
Considering the massive number of servers running Linux used in the industry, this sounds like a good way to kill the Tech Industry in California.
OK Newsom, you’ve lost me. I enjoyed your chaotic responses to the drumpf but you’ve officially lost me.
Realize, this has always been him. He is NOT a liberal. He is a conservative who calls himself a democrat.
That’s called a liberal.
Government-mandated age verification stuff on private hardware is basically the opposite of liberal though
Those who call themselves liberal have been doing shit like this for so long that this rank hypocrisy is part of what it means to be liberal.
If liberals don’t like it, they should have had some integrity instead of ridiculing the concept as a “purity test.”
I wouldn’t even say conservative, social fascist who hates poor and trans people.
Yeah, a liberal.
Look up the word neo-liberal. Cause that is what you mean. Continually replying “Yeah, a liberal.”, you sound like a moron.
Are people finally ignoring his paid PR xitter team? It was annoying when my family bought into that trick. Newsom was always a POS.
California! Uber Alles!
Yup, a liberal.
He used to be married to the woman that also used to be Trump Jr.’s fiancé.
He is still overwhelmingly liberal and progressive. Calling him conservative is insane.
He is basically as conservative as you can be here in California while holding a state wide elected position and even that may not be true anymore with how things have shifted since the last governor election. Point is he is generally on the more conservative end of Californian politics, hell I know some Schwarzenegger style conservatives who are more progressive than him.
He’s not even making most of those responses to Trump. His social media manager is doing it. He’s still just another Howard Schultz. “I like the idea of equality as long as rich people don’t have to reduce the rate at which they become richer.”
Yikes
What if no internet? How set up?
How the hell are they going to enforce this?
No way this is enforceable
My birthday is 01.01.0001
01.01.1970
Technically, Linux is not an operating system, just a kernel, so I’m not sure how this would be implemented.
See, here’s the big open secret. All these politicians, who make all these rules? They don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. They think a kernel is something that gets stuck in your teeth whrn you eat corn.
That was a 5’19 kernel operating in my mouth, I swear.
That’s my guess. These people have no clue what they’re doing.
Most of them are old enough to remember when politics was invented.
You just said it, it’s a rule for operating systems, which means that whoever ships Linux as part of an operating system has the onus of implementing this.
If you do Linux from scratch, that would be you I guess.
Linux being a kernel is hardly relevant though. The law lies the responsibility at the “operating system providers”, looking at the definition in the article that would be the developers/organisation behind the individual distributions. Politicians don’t care if each distro comes up with their own solution or gets built-in to the kernel.
But personally I think they all just give this law the finger, put a ‘not for use in California’ in their licenses and forget about this brainfart.
Since people aren’t reading the article and the headline is misleading. The law requires:
- The OS ask the user their date of birth on account creation (kinda like the Steam date of birth prompts)
- The OS provide an API that returns which of four age brackets the user fits in
- Companies notified by the OS that the user is under age may be liable
It was explicitly written by the authors not to mandate ID or facial recognition checks. You can lie about your date of birth. This basically creates a standard set of parental controls for parents configuring kids devices.
I think that this might actually help with the whole discord facial recognition issue in places other than the UK by allowing them to offload the issue to parents setting up devices rather than collecting kids biometrics.
Yeah I think this is pretty reasonable. If parents set their kids up on adult accounts that’s on them.
