• grue@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    190
    ·
    18 hours ago

    Nobody gives a fuck about your weaseling technicalities. The salient fact is that this change was made in order to “comply in advance” with totalitarian fuckery. It SIGNALS POLITICAL SUPPORT for it, and that’s not okay!

    • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      5 hours ago

      The salient fact is that this change was made in order to “comply in advance” with totalitarian fuckery. It SIGNALS POLITICAL SUPPORT for it, and that’s not okay!

      On an individual level, absolutely do not comply in advance with fucked up laws.

      But as a technical professional working in regulated industries, you have to try to predict future legislation to remain compliant and permit your place of work to continue operating. Anything computer or network related takes time to update, and if you do it wrong you can bring your entire organization down. It’s far better to be proactive and ensure that your organization is compliant with future legislation than it is to sit on your hands because you don’t like this new change and then have to scramble to implement it at the 11th hour before your organization becomes noncompliant and may be forced to pause operating business. That’s literally your job if you are, say, a SystemD developer working for RedHat/IBM

      This ire needs to be directed towards your local politicians (whether or not such age verification laws are in the process of being passed!), not towards career developers who happen to work on projects you care about

      • girsaysdoom@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        3 hours ago

        I’d agree with you, except that it’s clear that the political systems we live under are flawed/non-functional. Non-compliance may be our next best shot at stopping these laws from getting any more traction.

        It’s clear to me with the stance that the dev that closed the revert pull request that they aren’t willing to form any resistance to these types of changes. Actually, the revert pull request stated that their request was due to a number of people discussing the matter and they ultimately decided that there could be harm inflicted, yet the dev ‘poettering’ decided to supercede this decision. Not only is this the first crack in a hold-the-line situation with other major FOSS projects refusing to make the change but also shows their hand at how they stance themselves politically.

      • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        4 hours ago

        …if you do it wrong you can bring your entire organization down.

        In theory, but also we just don’t hear of this actually happening to organizations very much. Why? (I could be wrong, I don’t constantly dig through news to find instances of this happening.)

        Everything from tax issues to personal data retention and protection policy gets overlooked all the time, with very real consequences, and we don’t hear of those organizations getting “taken down” for it. (Like when Equifax lost all our Pii and were just like ‘whoops.’ They’re still forcibly embedded in our lives anyway.)

        Maybe this would get used to bring down a tiny small business if it caught legal attention, but anything larger could likely shrug it off.

        Organizations don’t seem to bother with such inconveniences unless it’s actively enforced and audited. Is California really going to do that with this? Seems like it’d be prohibitively expensive.

        So it’s just a little weird to me when legislation is proposed to infringe on end-users and suddenly there’s this huge rush to “get compliant” ahead of time. It seems like a lot less IT due diligence and more virtue-signaling agreeance with totalitarian politics.

    • Ooops@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      6 hours ago

      fact is that this change was made

      No, no change was made in fact. It was a pull request… that was rejected.

      Guess if I propose to edit you comment to “I’m stupid” and you say “no” you have also made that change somehow…

    • Balinares@pawb.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      66
      ·
      12 hours ago

      I studied at the PR in question and that’s not the conclusion I arrive at. Let me try to explain how this looks to me.

      Also keep in mind, I do think we absolutely need to keep the political pressure on and push back on identity-gating policies with all our collective might. In that light the PR itself does the two things I’d absolutely require here: one, it allows the user to put whatever value they want in that field, including none at all, and two, it disallows all apps from reading that field without the user’s active permission.

      Basically it’s a superficially valid implementation of a bullshit requirement that still leaves all the power in the user’s hands and therefore renders the requirement meaningless. Or in other words, a huge middle finger to the proponents of age-checking.

      Mind you, I feel there’s also value in loud non-compliance and I’m glad some are taking that road – keep it up, folks. But I’m leery of demands that only one single approach be taken. This needs to be fought on every front we can. And to me the PR in question reads like an effective defensive move.

      • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        4 hours ago

        That’s something I wondered about the person who implemented this too, I wonder if it was an attempt to install a bare minimum to say “There. We did it. Leave us alone.” Instead of leaving it up to the government to force the issue, and he’s getting absolutely raked over the coals for it.

        If that’s the case, I feel terribly bad about this backfiring so hard on him. I do think we should be putting up a lot more resistance before resorting to something like this though.

        • ptu@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          3 hours ago

          Some others have also suggested that this was done out of spite, however after reading the github I didn’t see anything said to support that. Are you sure you’re not reading something into this that’s not there?

          • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            3 hours ago

            I’ll be honest I haven’t dug into the GitHub transcripts.

            Are you sure you’re not reading something into this that’s not there?

            Absolutely not sure! In fact my first inclination leans towards the cynical “This is totally a pro-authoritarian virtue signal move.” Because that’s seemingly everything nowadays.

            But also I know things are seldom as they first seem. So I’m at least curious about this guy’s actual motives. Coming out of nowhere just for this contribution is hecka sus though.

            I don’t like any of it. I looked to the Internet and open source to escape that petulant normie-verse of endless rage and braindead legislation. And they’re coming to assimilate us like they do everything else. :(

            • ptu@sopuli.xyz
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              19 minutes ago

              I agree that not everything is what it seems at first, I just fear it’s wishful thinking in this case.

      • Lucy :3@feddit.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        edit-2
        10 hours ago

        I “love” how everyone now recommends alternative/non-systemd distros, not realizing that those will have to implement exactly the same sooner or later. Systemd is just moving fast.

              • Lucy :3@feddit.org
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                2 hours ago

                But systemd exists inside the US. What do you want, an optional field to be optional for the US? Then good news, the fucking optional field is already optional.

            • kptn_o@discuss.tchncs.de
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              7
              ·
              9 hours ago

              If you are an international organized collective without monetary goals - who the fuck cares about local law? What is the worst that can happen - threaten to jail a person that is using $LINUX_DISTRIBUTION?

        • Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          8 hours ago

          You do realise there are many different jurisdictions om this planet, right? Some fight back more valiant against this shit than others.

          Of course it’s still up in the air where which law will be introduced, but assuming every single distro or project has to follow the same laws is naive.