Discussion?
Yeah. That's not what's happening.
Censoring dissent, is what I hear is happening.
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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The ending content is pretty level-headed about this. Basically, "wait for a legal consult/directives from Arch Linux before implementing anything." That seems like the most prudent thing to do.
Hopefully, the legal opinion is that this is unconstitutional, and that a conglomerate of nonprofits will collectively agree to fight this in court if any of them are sued over ignoring stupid laws.
You guys hear a lot but you don't seem to listen
there's so much shit to implement in linux, new shit to make, old shit to fix. preemptively adding this bullshit, without anyone even threatening any meaningful action, should be shot down in flames and this joker excluded from any and all FOSS avenues on account of spam and trolling.
I am sure the tali-fucking-ban are tali-fucking-banning women from using the computers by way of whatever passes for laws over there. is this bootlicker gonna implement "just a JSON field" to that end as well?
grow a spine, you corpo-fetishizing cowards. where's the "fuck you, make me" attitude? what, california of all places is gonna ban linux? fucking lol.
evidently the systemd and arch requests were from the same guy.
This dude need to chill, he also pushed the systemd change, and in his blog he seems to believe android "advance flow" for sideloading protects users.
The one they are targeting is California's AB-1043, which still have three quarters of a year before it comes into effect...
I think this dude gets too excited for his new subscription of claude code or whatever, and decided to spam every project with these request. Some of these are reasonable, some are compliance in advance.
Also this dude writes two freaking blog every week with LLM. If I were him, I would try to find some joy in my personal life, instead of doing all of these...
I fully expect this person to not be even real and instead just another ai bot to push agenda for corporate scum
He’s the third highest contributor to archinstall.
https://github.com/dylanmtaylor
Still a dipshit but probably not a bot.
Fair enough that's pretty surprising, so even Arch is not safe from lunatics... That is disappointing. As a Manjaro user, I am likely to pick up their changes via both systemd and since Manjaro is Arch based... Sad and disappointed by useful morons who have no fucking clue.
it's so strange to me that he tried to add age verification scripting changes in archinstall. isn't that the wrong place systemd makes sense but I'm puzzled by the archinstall pr
Not the wrong place if you want to comply with the law, as he explains in the PR comments, the law requires the installer to prompt for age when creating users.
The thing that's frustrating is that if the age verification laws weren't there and they wanted to add a birthday field it wouldn't seem bad. Details about the human using the account like first and last name are already stored. All you really need is username. But because it's explicitly in reaction to age verification laws we have to be skeptical about adding it.
The timing makes me even more suspicious. Of all the times one could added this field, this is probably singularly the worst one. Right after discussions of mandatory age check? Seriously?
You don't need to be suspicious, they're explicitly adding it because of that. They said as much.
I sort of get the feeling of something more than just complying with the possible age verification law. I feel like it has intent do damage and distrupt the community.
I feel this law has the intent to damage and disrupt things in general, yes. Parental controls have existed for ages but lawmakers don't seem interested in them. For example, all the porn bans, rather than forcing sites to use some sort of self tagging system that parental controls could easily see (like some response header) they just want them to take IDs. All of it is a push to forcing people to always be online transparently with their real identity well known.
The law yes, it is also I think is a response to rising anger against billionaires. They want to make sure that they have the necessary systems in place when anger actually turns into action.
But I was talking about this person in particular. It feels like no one without a ulterior motive would try to get such a thing passed preemptively and so much like a coup. Even if this law passed in all states you could probably drag any requests to add such a verification for years and years without any actual sanctions. So why the rush to comply without exploring any other options?
@JackbyDev @underscores Yes we do, because it is an erosion of our freedom.
You're saying that in a post age verification world though, my whole point is that if this were there before it wouldn't seem bad. I'm not saying we should add it now because it would've been fine before.
fascist cocks won't suck themselves.
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It’s very obvious this is just an entry point to degrade even more of our privacy and rights. How many times is this kind of shit gonna keep happening and people will still fall for it.
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Never comply with advance. Nazi wants that. Make them fight for it. Let them sue, and get community funding for the case, and then delay the court case again and again, and maybe comply when they lose.
If you comply with advance, you are actively helping them, along with creating fear.
the law wouldn't hold up in court anyway. its not practical for any ecosystem outside online sites.
accounts and users are the same thing, despite what the law says. it also doesn't different a person from a user, meaning a compromised system that is complying with the law, its actions represent the user, and the account holder is held responsible.
its made to absolve meta/Microsoft/google from their actions in targeting kids with intentionally addictive content and making the "account holder" at fault.
I don't know what people expect.
All big linux distros are going to be quickly a target, because the people who like age verification laws like that hate the idea of free software.
Putting a dummy, useless age input, is a good way to comply maliciously, and can be easily reverted if these stupid laws ever get removed.
It wouldn't surprise me if obvious ways to bypass it appear a few seconds after the changes are validated.
The alternative is that these systems could be outawed in a lot of places, which would have a much more negative impact than an age field.
War is about knowing to take a hit to avoid defeat, sometimes.
@Solumbran@lemmy.world @pglpm@lemmy.ca @linux@programming.dev
The Brazilian flavor of age checking explicitly prohibits self-declaring ("vedada a autodeclaração"). Estimation of age via selfie or behavioral analysis, as well as the need for government-issued IDs, perhaps validation via credit card microtransactions, are some of the accepted age verification mechanisms for Lei 15211 ("ECA Digital" or, more informally known as "Lei Felca" due to the involvement of a YouTuber sub-celebrity on getting this thing to Brazilian lawmakers). Doing age bracketing via self-declared mechanisms, such as birthdate input or the usual consent button, risks fines and other provisions.
KYC ("Know Your Customer") is, deep down, what these laws are going to be about, ID checks as sine qua non part of purposefully vague-worded laws with broad and outreaching enforcement, so tech organizations and companies worldwide, especially the smaller ones, will eventually find themselves in a situation where they are legally compelled to implement everything that's being pushed as part of these dystopian laws. After all, it's far from being just a Brazilian or a Californian thing.
Currently, yes, we're seeing this law-concept restricted to a handful of places such as some USian states, as well as countries such as UK, Australia, Canada, now Brazil... Zoom out, however, and you'll realize how this thing is gradually spreading worldwide because this is the only way for age verification to get effectively enforced.
You read it correctly, those laws are very likely getting to more and more countries, eventually turning KYC into part of international, industrial standards. Nothing too hard for big corps to do on their own, such as Google and Microsoft, even Canonical and Red Hat which are large companies, but small companies will end up being pushed into relying on non-free third-party KYC services in order to comply with age verification.
Such situation would end up benefiting the big players, with KYC services such as Persona becoming the new ubiquitous Cloudflare when it comes to this digital landscape. KYC gates, in this sense, would become the new CAPTCHA, Biometrics-as-a-service would become the new normal, true FOSS projects would become unlawful a priori while large corporations would thrive with another data point for tracking and advertising, and as the tolerance bar gets lowered, people will end up used to it, because any attempt to be against it will lead, at best, to social ostracization...
I don't know, maybe I'm being overly pessimistic about it, but I can't help but notice how dystopian things, some of which were long foretold and were warned about, are slowly taking away our privacy and freedom...
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I have no idea what to think because this sounds reasonable, but so do the arguments that it's a slippery slope and complying now makes it easier to surveil us all later. (Yes, I know this is the name of a fallacy. I'm curious as to when is it a fallacy and when is it not. I can absolutely imagine people saying "slippery slope fallacy" and being right, I can also imagine a different situation where people say "slippery slope fallacy" to something and it happens exactly as the people whose claim is being denied with "slippery slope" fallacy said.)
A slippery slope isn't always a fallacy. Yes, that is a specific name of a fallacy, which people commonly point out, but it is also the form of a valid logical argument. If there is support that this will happen, it isn't a fallacy.
I this case, a user-entered field is useless to "protect children" (being generous and assuming this is the actual reason for the laws). Children will just lie, as they have been doing for decades. The state will point to this as the law not fulfilling its stated goals, so they'll need to verify age through other means. Even if the goal isn't surveillance of people, this is still likely to be the result logically. This means the slippery slope argument is valid.
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What does he mean by required? This law would apply to a tiny fraction of users - no one in my continent for example. I hope he understands there's no way it should be required for everyone.
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My Linux based IOT devices will now need age verification for default accounts..? And now any devices will expect to have non-shareable specific accounts…? So to open my fridge and use its apps I need to verify as me..? I’m me?
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Please don't make me switch distro :(
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