This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Teens can travel alone and setup their phone in France or Ireland, or buy their phone from a dealer. All the cool kids will have free phones and be on snapchat, forcing everybody else to follow suit.
This is what happens when your phone is no longer YOUR phone
It’s literally a government mandate, they can’t not do it without leaving the market
And of all the big names, I trust Apple the most to not give my shit to The Man
Dude, apple IS the man
no problem, I'll just use apps from outside of the App Store, right?
You could, if you lived in the EU :)
The UK government is so god damn dumb.
evil*
Wow, thats fucked. I hope Australia doesn't decide to do this as well. This shit is happening so quickly at the moment
I think they did this first, at least they passed the law first. Our "left center" government in action.
me too but i'm not overly optimistic. i don't think there is a strong enough culture of anti-surveillance
if a phone is tied to a svc acct like a telco provider- age verification should be automatic as THAT provider cannot open an acct for a child.
FUCKING THANK YOU!
I'm not in favour of any of the age restriction stuff UK government is doing.
Good argument, but:
Phones in the UK can be bought without a contract and untied to any network.
Pay as you go SIM cards can be bought without a contract.
Credit cards used to make purchases online require users to be 18 or over. Debit cards on the other hand can be issued to those under 18 (but a bank account will require evidence of ID, address, age). https://www.gohenry.com/uk/blog/financial-education/what-age-can-you-get-a-debit-card-in-the-uk
can a debit card be created by someone under 18? ie does a parent have to do it then give johnny a card? can a bodega owner sell a prepaid to a minor, and can prepaids be used?
just wondering where up the chain the responsibility lies. i’m all for corps being held to task, but also parents. if i handed my kid a phone it was my responsibility.
now he had phones that he acquired. i saw them. so i know it is largely irrelevant my thoughts on chain of concern.
in short: this is a terrible tar pit of gov horseshit sold in the “protect the kids” camp but really is “build a bigger fascist state db…”
A parent can do the age verification captcha for Johnny. All of this is bullshit once they start thinking any of this will stop kids who have the help of an adult (actually, already is imo). Anyone ever hear of kids getting adults to buy alcohol for them in the past?
> can't have apps without an account
> cave have an account without a loicense
Will this finally kill off the "Apple is private enough" mantra I always hear?
unfortunately, that is now how cults work.
Mixed feelings about this.
However, ethical questions aside, and from a purely legal conformation standpoint, if the phone validates the user is over 18 and passes only that info as a token to whatever application or website requests it, then it's a good implementation. It means elimination of multiple validation requirements, minimal transfer of data to third parties, fewer sources holding personal data, etc. Whether it works that way remains to be seen.
I haven't read this particular law. But one proposed in Colorado still requires service providers to look for other indicators of age and override the one reported by the OS.
Another reason sideloading is important.
Sideloading isn’t a real term - there is only loading a better OS than whatever spy-tech google is offering.
You can’t “sideload” hardware you own - you just install whatever software you like and prefer
Exactly. It's important that we stop saying "sideloading", we should just say "install directly" or some other non-loaded expressions
Jesus Tittyfucking Christ, yes it is. I'm not typing out "installing software from outside the Google Play Store" every time, so you can go away.
You could go with something in between? Side loading is a loaded term created to insinuate we are doing something we shouldn't be doing.
No it's not. Someone just made that up.
Yes, Apple did. Before that it was called downloading
Once again, no they didn't. Literally just look it up. You have the knowledge of the world at your fingertips.
The term "sideload" was coined in the late 1990s by online storage service i-drive as an alternative means of transferring and storing computer files virtually instead of physically
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideloading
Had I said "downloading" it wouldn't have made much sense, would it?
listen, I've been in technology since before i-drive existed and I've never heard of i-drive nor do I care about the vocabulary they used.
The first time I ever heard the term sideloading was when these mobile stores started using it to make other options sound illegitimate.
2026, the year of the PWA.
What the actual fuck?????????
Well, since I'm not doing that, that would prevent me from having to install the apps that every damned company seems to insist I install rather than having a website. Kinda makes me wish for this nonsense to come to the US.
Holy. Shit.
Disgusting.
