I’ve been posting this in other threads too and while the OS angle is huge, and worth picking a fight with, I haven’t seen any coverage over how this goes after developers too.
I think this is an attack on ALL open-source.
These bills are written by people who are clearly or maliciously tech illiterate and don’t understand either the terminology or the practical impacts. And of course it’s wrapped in ‘what about the children?!’
They include definitions like (paraphrasing; not quoting a specific bill, but New York, Colorado and California do this):
“Application” is any software application that may be run on a user’s device – so … EVERYTHING.
“Application Store” is any publicly accessible website or similar service that distributes applications – so … also everywhere, such as GitHub or GeoCities.
“Developer” is a person who writes, creates or maintains an application – so if you have a github repo, or you’ve posted a binary or perhaps even a script somewhere recently, you’re a developer.
And then require both developers and operating system providers to handshake this age verification data or face financial ruin. I think the original intent or appearance of intent is that the store developer needs to do the handshake. I’m not a lawyer, but I can’t imagine these definitions aren’t vague enough that they can’t be weaponized against basically anything software.
I have a github account, and have contributed to “applications”. As I read them, these bills pose a serious threat to me if I continue to do so, as that makes me a “developer” and would need to ensure the things I contribute to are doing age verification – which I don’t want to do.
I think that even outside the surveillance aspect, the chilling effect of devs not publishing applications is the end-goal. Gatekeeping software to the big publishers who have both the capacity to follow the law and the lawyers/pockets to handle a suit. These laws are going to be like the DMCA 1201 language (which had much much more prose wrapped around it and was at least attempting to limit scope), which HAS been weaponized against solo devs trying to make the world better.
I fully expect some suit against multiple github repo owners on Jan 2, 2027.
I’ve emailed the office of Buffy Wicks, the author of the California bill, with similar details as the above. I haven’t yet identified the authors of the NY and CO bills, but I’m working on that too. If you live in one of these places, please contact your state officials and tell them this is a bad idea – and if you don’t live there, keep an eye on your state bills.
It definitely is. And it’s not incompetence or illiteracy, it’s the powerful and government institutions coming after all things privacy, anonymity, and autonomy. I had this gut feeling in summer 2024 that they would eventually attack and functionally ban desktop Linux, BSD, GOS, and other privacy tools. I just didn’t know how at that point.
They’re locking us into their systems, their rules, their information. I implore everyone to look deeper than surface level analyses. If you think they pirated all the information on the global web just to train their AI, you’re missing something. It’s deeper. My theory is eventually, they will lock all hardware and networking to gather information from their sources, and only their sources. They will hold back real information and access to it, while feeding us only what they want the populous to think.
They want us enslaved to them, in body, in mind, in “spirit”, in every way. The rich HATE us and genuinely want nothing but the absolute worst for us. Do not deceive yourself, these people are unimaginably evil and cruel. They want to hunt some of us for sport and feed the enslaved remainder us their delusional version of reality.
This is an attack, it is intentional, it is determined, and it is not stopping unless we stop it.
You gotta stop equating Microslop-owned GitHub with code forges/repositories. The first step is change language to be inclusive to other platfrom while not specially mentioning the proprietary, megacorporate option—such as saint code forge or VCS host. The second step is to create an account elsewhere as you primary spot. Our framing of these things matter, & if you don’t like the state imposing its will on you, the corporate option here is more or less an extension of the state (contributors in Yemen for example will be blocked under US sanctions, bug reporters will be required to agree to the ToS & data collection machine of Microsoft, if the capitalist class doesn’t like your project they will have it removed like Yuzu & yt-download while they will allow state-sponsor gangs like ICE to remain on the platform). Break out of “the network effect”.
It wasn’t Microslop-owned for most of my experience with it, but even sourceforge went the way of enshittification. The only real hope is, unfortunately, decentralization. My worry that is that discoverability is the payment.
We can’t trust that any single point of failure won’t eventually fall to corporate greed. But if there’s a central place to locate things, there’s a central place to control them; even if it’s literally “search”!
Funny as search doesn’t work on MS GitHub without auth. If you post your library on a language’s forum, a personal blog post, & some other place, the search engines (or ugh LLMs with Exa search) can find the. There are decentralized forge options like Radicle, or at least a nonprofit-owned. But all snapshot-based VCSs will have the limitation of needing some centralized source of truth in most cases since the model makes a conflict out of patches being pulled in out of order (which the patch theory-based stuff covers).
But we can all still watch the wording aspect so folks feel free to not do dumb things like assume code = Git = MS GitHub.
Fair enough. My point wasn’t to equate code with github, but to suggest that github, and any other code repository, is effectively an app store by the definition of the California law, and is therefore supposedly responsible for handling this ‘age signal’ bullshit.
Similarly, GeoCities from the 90’s is a publicly accessible website (*actually it’s not – just tried and it seems to completely dead now as opposed to mostly dead in early 2000’s, RIP) with the ability to (and did) distribute software and would have also been an “application store”. Archive.org is maybe a better example now: you can download tons of ‘applications’ from there and none of them will ever have age verification baked in. Is Archive.org now illegal? Let’s find out.
These bills are written by people who are clearly or maliciously tech illiterate and don’t understand either the terminology or the practical impacts.
They’re paid by people who understand all of this very well and will profit. That’s the whole reason this exists.
I can’t imagine these definitions aren’t vague enough that they can’t be weaponized against basically anything software.
Yes, that’s the point. The more vague the “laws”, the more control.
It’s why libs have been lobbying for state control of “social media”. It’s a meaningless term that represents state control of all social interactions. That’s the actual goal.
I get really upset when there’s this association between “the libs” and “non-authoritarian voters”. I’ve not done and don’t support lobbying for state control of social media.
I fully agree that there are shitty people elected as democrats.
I could go on a whole mile-long monologue about this, but I won’t do it here. I’m aware of the various definitions of liberal and I don’t want to talk about that – I’m using the US scope of the two parties that can actually matter: Conservative/Republican vs Liberal/Democratic. [If you Identify as Liberal in the US, you’re probably actually Socialist, but the media hates that word, so we don’t use it]
The short version is that the PEOPLE want things to be better; the voters called “the libs” want things to be better. Not enough of us are engaged at the low-level to fix this and I think it’ll only take a few of us to do the grass-roots remix that the conservatives did as the tea party, and fix the situation with the democratic org that will both win us elections (if we get anymore) and cut out the rot.
Gotta start local though. If you’re mad, join your precinct and choose who votes in the district, etc. Don’t wait for November and then be mad at your choices. Primaries are over for 2026, but you can influence choices for local offices in 2027 and other state and national ones in 2028.
Don’t just be mad at your options, help make the options better. And 'Both Sides’ing is either malicious or at least detrimental:
“Oh, the system is fucked. Guess we’ll keep aiming for the dystopia! We can’t possibly change the system!”
I’ve been posting this in other threads too and while the OS angle is huge, and worth picking a fight with, I haven’t seen any coverage over how this goes after developers too.
I think this is an attack on ALL open-source.
These bills are written by people who are clearly or maliciously tech illiterate and don’t understand either the terminology or the practical impacts. And of course it’s wrapped in ‘what about the children?!’
They include definitions like (paraphrasing; not quoting a specific bill, but New York, Colorado and California do this):
And then require both developers and operating system providers to handshake this age verification data or face financial ruin. I think the original intent or appearance of intent is that the store developer needs to do the handshake. I’m not a lawyer, but I can’t imagine these definitions aren’t vague enough that they can’t be weaponized against basically anything software.
I have a github account, and have contributed to “applications”. As I read them, these bills pose a serious threat to me if I continue to do so, as that makes me a “developer” and would need to ensure the things I contribute to are doing age verification – which I don’t want to do.
I think that even outside the surveillance aspect, the chilling effect of devs not publishing applications is the end-goal. Gatekeeping software to the big publishers who have both the capacity to follow the law and the lawyers/pockets to handle a suit. These laws are going to be like the DMCA 1201 language (which had much much more prose wrapped around it and was at least attempting to limit scope), which HAS been weaponized against solo devs trying to make the world better.
I fully expect some suit against multiple github repo owners on Jan 2, 2027.
I’ve emailed the office of Buffy Wicks, the author of the California bill, with similar details as the above. I haven’t yet identified the authors of the NY and CO bills, but I’m working on that too. If you live in one of these places, please contact your state officials and tell them this is a bad idea – and if you don’t live there, keep an eye on your state bills.
It definitely is. And it’s not incompetence or illiteracy, it’s the powerful and government institutions coming after all things privacy, anonymity, and autonomy. I had this gut feeling in summer 2024 that they would eventually attack and functionally ban desktop Linux, BSD, GOS, and other privacy tools. I just didn’t know how at that point.
They’re locking us into their systems, their rules, their information. I implore everyone to look deeper than surface level analyses. If you think they pirated all the information on the global web just to train their AI, you’re missing something. It’s deeper. My theory is eventually, they will lock all hardware and networking to gather information from their sources, and only their sources. They will hold back real information and access to it, while feeding us only what they want the populous to think.
They want us enslaved to them, in body, in mind, in “spirit”, in every way. The rich HATE us and genuinely want nothing but the absolute worst for us. Do not deceive yourself, these people are unimaginably evil and cruel. They want to hunt some of us for sport and feed the enslaved remainder us their delusional version of reality.
This is an attack, it is intentional, it is determined, and it is not stopping unless we stop it.
What if we just rm -rf all the pedophiles instead?
THIS GUY IS THREATENING OUR GOVERNMENT
fucking sad but true
You gotta stop equating Microslop-owned GitHub with code forges/repositories. The first step is change language to be inclusive to other platfrom while not specially mentioning the proprietary, megacorporate option—such as saint code forge or VCS host. The second step is to create an account elsewhere as you primary spot. Our framing of these things matter, & if you don’t like the state imposing its will on you, the corporate option here is more or less an extension of the state (contributors in Yemen for example will be blocked under US sanctions, bug reporters will be required to agree to the ToS & data collection machine of Microsoft, if the capitalist class doesn’t like your project they will have it removed like Yuzu & yt-download while they will allow state-sponsor gangs like ICE to remain on the platform). Break out of “the network effect”.
It wasn’t Microslop-owned for most of my experience with it, but even sourceforge went the way of enshittification. The only real hope is, unfortunately, decentralization. My worry that is that discoverability is the payment.
We can’t trust that any single point of failure won’t eventually fall to corporate greed. But if there’s a central place to locate things, there’s a central place to control them; even if it’s literally “search”!
Funny as search doesn’t work on MS GitHub without auth. If you post your library on a language’s forum, a personal blog post, & some other place, the search engines (or ugh LLMs with Exa search) can find the. There are decentralized forge options like Radicle, or at least a nonprofit-owned. But all snapshot-based VCSs will have the limitation of needing some centralized source of truth in most cases since the model makes a conflict out of patches being pulled in out of order (which the patch theory-based stuff covers).
But we can all still watch the wording aspect so folks feel free to not do dumb things like assume code = Git = MS GitHub.
Fair enough. My point wasn’t to equate code with github, but to suggest that github, and any other code repository, is effectively an app store by the definition of the California law, and is therefore supposedly responsible for handling this ‘age signal’ bullshit.
Similarly, GeoCities from the 90’s is a publicly accessible website (*actually it’s not – just tried and it seems to completely dead now as opposed to mostly dead in early 2000’s, RIP) with the ability to (and did) distribute software and would have also been an “application store”. Archive.org is maybe a better example now: you can download tons of ‘applications’ from there and none of them will ever have age verification baked in. Is Archive.org now illegal? Let’s find out.
They’re paid by people who understand all of this very well and will profit. That’s the whole reason this exists.
Yes, that’s the point. The more vague the “laws”, the more control.
It’s why libs have been lobbying for state control of “social media”. It’s a meaningless term that represents state control of all social interactions. That’s the actual goal.
I get really upset when there’s this association between “the libs” and “non-authoritarian voters”. I’ve not done and don’t support lobbying for state control of social media.
I fully agree that there are shitty people elected as democrats.
I could go on a whole mile-long monologue about this, but I won’t do it here. I’m aware of the various definitions of liberal and I don’t want to talk about that – I’m using the US scope of the two parties that can actually matter: Conservative/Republican vs Liberal/Democratic. [If you Identify as Liberal in the US, you’re probably actually Socialist, but the media hates that word, so we don’t use it]
The short version is that the PEOPLE want things to be better; the voters called “the libs” want things to be better. Not enough of us are engaged at the low-level to fix this and I think it’ll only take a few of us to do the grass-roots remix that the conservatives did as the tea party, and fix the situation with the democratic org that will both win us elections (if we get anymore) and cut out the rot.
Gotta start local though. If you’re mad, join your precinct and choose who votes in the district, etc. Don’t wait for November and then be mad at your choices. Primaries are over for 2026, but you can influence choices for local offices in 2027 and other state and national ones in 2028.
Don’t just be mad at your options, help make the options better. And 'Both Sides’ing is either malicious or at least detrimental:
“Oh, the system is fucked. Guess we’ll keep aiming for the dystopia! We can’t possibly change the system!”
In NY:
Nily Rozic has sponsored assembly bill A8893
Andrew Gounardes has sponsored senate bill S8102A
Jacob Ashby has sponsored senate bill S3591