Let’s hope other states follow suit…
Not now. These kinds of laws always enroach.
My tinfoil hat is telling me they’ll do this to make an outlaw of Linux and block it from services and sites. I hope my hat is wrong.
Keep that tinfoil hat close, I have a feeling Digital identification laws and ReadID technologies are actually moving the internet away from user anonymity, enabling a framework where users can be tied to real-world identities and easily sanctioned.
Make a post on the internet that someone objects to? boom, you just lost access to all your bank accounts.
I mean people connected to Peter Thiel are already bragging how they would love to do that
It’s physically impossible to “outlaw Linux”. That would mean outlawing the entirety of “The Cloud™”.
You understand this was in the context of the user’s side.
How would you even legislate that? “You can only use Linux if you’re a registered business”? And how hard is it to register a one-person business in the US?
“You can only use Linux if your business has over X number of employees”? So make a non-profit business that “hires” anyone who wants to use Linux.
Cool now get rid of the law entirely.
Wait… So if Linux doesn’t have the api (sorry, the “signal” 🙄) how will sites that require it respond? What does it mean to be “exempt” - every user is considered to be an adult?
You’re exempt from the service too probably.
Ehhh, honestly I’m thinking it’s more likely they’ll block you. That’s how these things tend to go in this age.
Kind of like how more and more of the Internet just outright blocks vpns.
I mean that’s what “exempt” means in this context.
Oh I understand what you meant now.
Are you implying “exempt from the service” means Linux gets blocked?
Any corporate service that does this doesn’t deserve us. Precious.
“Please stop fighting this distopian law”.
Linux is now the backbone of everything. It you mess Linux up, so many things will break. They realized this finally.
Death nail for Windows
Death knell.
A new malaphor minted in the wild!
The two expressions you merged were:
- death knell for (thing)
- the final nail in the coffin for (something)
“The final death in the coffin” would have some… interesting implications in a couple ways
Edit: also “death nail” means Microsoft started smoking
I just read it with a southern twang
Linux users are incredible in their belief that issues of privacy, security, or data autonomy will push the masses away from what they’re used to (OSX/Windows, Facebook/Reddit, etc) and towards better options (Linux, Lemmy, Mastodon, etc)
No, mate, absolutely nothing is gonna happen to Windows. It’s gonna be perfectly fine. If we’re lucky, there will be a 1-3% dip in user base towards Linux, but there’s exactly 0% chance for a mass exodus that would make the upper management stop and think for a second.
I think they were assuming that people would use linux to dodge these restrictions. Ex. a teen who can’t use a site on windows/ios might boot linux in an attempt to make it work. But as others have pointed out, it’s more likely that sites will just blanket-flag a linux useragent as being used by a child to be safe. And then a linux user changing their useragent to get around this will then be hw attestation challenged like any other OS. So yeah, it’s just going to make it more inconvenient to use an open system.
Unless a Linux UA allows for plausible deniability.
It could happen!
The first time a child is caught using Linux to circumvent this law, they’ll update the law.
AB 1856 doesn’t explicitly say that repos aren’t app stores, but a store’s main obligation under the law is to request an age signal from the user’s OS provider and pass it to developers; an exempt open-source OS produces no signal.
So what’s the outcome of that? Are covered applications and application store to treat users as children when they don’t get a signal from the OS?
That might well be the best thing that any government could possibly do to drive open source adoption.
Time to teach kids Linux
Great This could drive more people to linux than ever Especially if the law will eventually require users to verify their age with an ID. I wonder if big tech will still be this exited about implementing age verification once they start seeing people ditching their softwares in favor of FOSS alternatives!
I still hoped they’d try to apply it broadly, if only to see the outcome of Ageless Linux
Colorado already did
