The whole assumption in this article is that any age gated apps are worth sticking with for some wondrous reason.
No thanks.
It also lists drm issues and unsupported anticheat mechanisms as a supportive argument.
Whole thing is tone deaf.
Maybe that’s the point? Engagement farming? Not sure.
Either way, no thanks on any of those.
for us open source nerds, sure.
but telling people interested in linux but still using windows/macos that most things they use also works on linux, as we have done for the past decade, only to have the corporate internet be inaccessible to them if the, end up doing a blanket ban on non-age-verified/verifiable devices.
unless of course you truly are a foss puritan and expect people to throw away every proprietary bit when switching to linux, in that case, lovely weather to die on hills
This is a very black and white take.
You can be a pragmatic Linux user and want compatibility and all that, but still opposite this bullshit. Age verification is not the solution to child safety online. Parents and schools are, IMO. We have a collective responsibility.
It seems you did not read the article. I don’t see anyone being on the side of these age verification laws. What they are saying is that the laws are bad for Linux and it’s users even if Linux was left out of the laws’ scope.
I was replying to Marty, there. 👍
If services start just blocking Linux, that is really bad for Linux users and adoption rates. It does not matter what apps you personally think are worth sticking with. It will just make Linux worse for everyone.
The point of this article is clear: that these laws are a problem to Linux and everyone even if Linux is left out of the scope.
I feel like I’m losing my mind. The internet isnt dying we are killing it with everything for a long time now I just seems like I’m not living in a reality. I read news articles, interact with the internet, apps, my phone. Whatever, and it’s all so bad, things are getting so bad,
This is crazy right? I’ve been working on de-goggling which in very close. But their search thing; who wants that? It sounds awful. Not to mention how it’s going to kill traffic to other sites. The AI nightmare? Seems like everything is getting vibe coded to hell. And I don’t trust it. I don’t trust it to work, I don’t trust it to be secure, I don’t trust updates to fix things. Now this censorship shit or being so heavily pushed, constantly, constantly, constantly, constantly pushing.
Here is some article that’s like “it’s good actually and open source is wrong”? Are there really people out there like this? I’m not talking your parents who use crapgpt for what’s the weather or whatever; but like people who know and want this?
Did you read it? I do not see this “is good actually and open source is wrong” anywhere, it seems you misunderstood something. Calm down and have a nice day!
Did you read it?
I’m talking about this part:
that’s just even more confusing for people picking between Linux distributions and desktop environments.
Being exempt from building or using the system doesn’t save Linux and open source from being locked out of the room by companies who then require it by law.
Which seems to imply that they think open source projects should do it because they will face adoption issue. Which might be true, but really we need to stop these laws from happening in the first place. I will grant that the poster does not attribute foot nor bad to the situation.
but really we need to stop these laws from happening in the first place. I will grant that the poster does not attribute foot nor bad to the situation.
What I think everyone is trying to tell you is that nobody is disagreeing with this sentiment. These laws are bad, I doubt the poster of the article would disagree. What is trying to be said here is if these laws go into affect (which is bad), and they exempt Linux (which seems good), they will quite possibly condemn Linux to an even smaller niche of tech nerds than it already belongs to and that is bad for Linux being a desktop platform, and it may be better for Linux to comply for its survival as a desktop platform. That is all that’s being said here, nobody is arguing the merits of the laws.
I for my part do need web search. Couldn’t even tell you halve the marketplaces that exist and am not going to cross reference by hand when looking for something.
I guess you can just go to Elsevier for your knowledge needs but that’s hella pricy and sometimes worse than what could be found on the web.
I could see Steam getting forced by legislators to use age verification.
That would be a pretty major headache for Linux users.The author is not in favor of DRM or age verification on linux. They are simply pointing out the implications of the proposed exemptions. The real problem is that these sort of invasions of privacy are being considered AT ALL. Nomatter how they are implemented, they will be horrible for everyone except big brother.
Personally I take any ‘age check’ I can’t get around with a VPN and a browser ID string (or whatever the kids find next) as evidence of egregious enshittification, and my answer is to stop using that site.
But I’m in a privileged position where I don’t need to for work, never did facebook et. al., dropped reddit (and slashdot before it) except for niche, mostly read only stuff that I can drop in a heartbeat and am a non USian. The vasty majority of internet users are not.
The article is right, this is going to cause headaches at the least and breakage at the worst. Once 99% of the population has accepted this (95% of non phone users), they’ll come for linux, rewriting and refining the currently broken legislation. The politician class globally hates free speech and private communication, this is another big nail in the coffin.
I have some hope that the internet will treat de-anonymization like censorship and route around the damage, at least for quite a while. Sturgeon’s law also applies, at least 90% of the internet is crap, and the proportion is climbing fast with AI slop, but it’s also the greatest single step in freedom of access to (useful) information ever and I don’t want to lose that, and we shouldn’t have to pay for it with voluntary surveillance.
Remember, there’s a bunch of other choke points that can be used to the same effect as OS, ISPs, DNS, fingerprinting, search engine, the list goes on. It’s just that Microsoft, Apple, Google actually want this for the data harvesting potential so OS is easy.
At some point there will be a need for internet 2.0 built with anonymity and encryption baked into the bottom layers, perhaps it’s time to start building.
Age verification seems silly but if Linux doesn’t play along with compatibility, it’s doing to be locked out here in 3 years.
