A small set of people are merging changes to various Linux components to make sure every application knows your birth date.
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@ShadSterling @wwahammy @artemis @smn I actually think that the license change and/or a website note saying "don't download this if you're in $jurisdiction" is an excellent response.
It's not like CA or the UK or Brazil can actually police who downloads what OS, and it removes legal liability* from the distro without actually affecting access or changing the code to support surveillance. The distros *do* need a way to avoid legal liability.
If in the end this leads to a situation where most Linuxes are officially banned in most of the world but people routinely ignore that ban, that's a good thing actually because it trains people to ignore bad laws. If some jurisdictions escalate to more invasive measures that target users, that's where you'll actually find a political base to resist this.
* I'm not a lawyer, but I have seen decent-sized orgs go this route.
@tiotasram @ShadSterling @artemis @smn I think the warning on downloads is perfectly fine but let's step back for a second: which distros need to avoid liability?
Most distros likely don't, they have no assets or there's no organization to actually sue. A few distros have some assets but why would the AG ever consider suing them? And how would they prove the number of negligent violations? There's no centralized record of users.
Are there companies who might be at risk? Valve seems the most likely but the Steam Deck is a gaming platform in millions of houses. That's worth suing over. But why would they sue Canonical over Ubuntu? Are there even 100k kids in all of California using Ubuntu? I doubt it. -
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A small set of people are merging changes to various Linux components to make sure every application knows your birth date.
This is being done rapidly by people with questionable justifications and being merged with no youth and few marginalized people involved.
@wwahammy Any distro or Linux app that asks me for my DOB will be uninstalled with extreme prejudice.
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@jnfrd @wwahammy @artemis @smn remember. Nebulous is transparent. You can't see through it. Ridiculous is opaque. It's pretty damned obvious when something is ridiculous. And we see ridiculous in all its opaque glory daily, but we know it's ridiculous. Any rational human being is not taking Trump seriously. Is Europe? Fuck, Iran isn't. Ridiculous reduces the number of people with wool over their eyes and buys into it. Nebulous is a fart. Ridiculous is a wall.
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duh it's going to be hard. why are we giving up before trying? sometimes difficult things are achieved, and it's because people had a plan of action and didn't stop trying to push even when it looked bleak. I would have been trying something way earlier if I knew this was on the books. if you don't want to do anything, that's fine, personal choice and all. but lots of people are really mad. so what is our plan, what can we do for those of us ready to fight?
@crypticrainfall @smn @artemis I think you've volunteered to create and implement the plan
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I found this a good write-up https://www.sambent.com/the-engineer-who-tried-to-put-age-verification-into-linux-5/
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@wwahammy lol, when I wrote that reply, I'd seen your username, but didn't read your display name until after I'd hit post.
Anyway, yes, yes you do write gud
@alice I really am impressed that I wrote something good enough for someone to share it with me unknowingly
I think I get some sort of angry FOSS activist sticker or something.
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@wwahammy Any distro or Linux app that asks me for my DOB will be uninstalled with extreme prejudice.
Seriously, I dont know a Linux user who wouldn't immediately remove the thumb drive of any distro that asked for this. I know Arch users aren't going to tolerate it.
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duh it's going to be hard. why are we giving up before trying? sometimes difficult things are achieved, and it's because people had a plan of action and didn't stop trying to push even when it looked bleak. I would have been trying something way earlier if I knew this was on the books. if you don't want to do anything, that's fine, personal choice and all. but lots of people are really mad. so what is our plan, what can we do for those of us ready to fight?
@crypticrainfall @wwahammy @smn I'm really regretting stepping away from FLOSS when I did. I hadn't realised just how urgent the issue was going to become. I feel like we've somewhat sleepwalked into this, despite the warnings from folks like Eben Moglen, because we trusted too much in democracy and underestimated the nefarious goals of corporations like Meta. And still the seriousness doesn't reach the general population. Literally nobody know on other platforms or irl talks about this; if I raise it, it's crickets. They just don't care.
( Edit: I hadn't realised Moglen was yet another problematic individual in the Free Software hierarchy. So that's unfortunate. )
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A small set of people are merging changes to various Linux components to make sure every application knows your birth date.
This is being done rapidly by people with questionable justifications and being merged with no youth and few marginalized people involved.
If its stealing your birthdate off other apps, thats outrageous. If it asks for it in order to download, I'll never use the software. I don't give my birthdate to anyone but the IRS and my state voting office. Thats bad enough.
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I found this a good write-up https://www.sambent.com/the-engineer-who-tried-to-put-age-verification-into-linux-5/
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duh it's going to be hard. why are we giving up before trying? sometimes difficult things are achieved, and it's because people had a plan of action and didn't stop trying to push even when it looked bleak. I would have been trying something way earlier if I knew this was on the books. if you don't want to do anything, that's fine, personal choice and all. but lots of people are really mad. so what is our plan, what can we do for those of us ready to fight?
@crypticrainfall @wwahammy @smn well to begin with I'm going to see what the EFF have to say, and other freedom and privacy activists. They'll have been applying some expertise to the matter.
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So the age verification stuff is beyond terrible. But the systemd PR specifically seems like a weird one to get worked up about?
It does 2 things:
1) The schema-docs for the the userdb JSON, which already allows you to add arbitrary user-defined fields in addition to the pre-defined fields, now define an optional "birthDate" field to be to be a "YYYY-MM-DD" string.
2) Added a flag to `userdbctl` (edit: `homectl`, actually) to be able to set the field from that command, instead of having to edit the JSON some other way.Like, I already deal with multi-user systems where "hobbies" is a field in there. I don't see the harm in saying "If you wanna add a birthDate field, it should be 'YYYY-MM-DD' and not seconds-since-epoch or something".
The polkit stuff? Makes my gut churn.
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So the age verification stuff is beyond terrible. But the systemd PR specifically seems like a weird one to get worked up about?
It does 2 things:
1) The schema-docs for the the userdb JSON, which already allows you to add arbitrary user-defined fields in addition to the pre-defined fields, now define an optional "birthDate" field to be to be a "YYYY-MM-DD" string.
2) Added a flag to `userdbctl` (edit: `homectl`, actually) to be able to set the field from that command, instead of having to edit the JSON some other way.Like, I already deal with multi-user systems where "hobbies" is a field in there. I don't see the harm in saying "If you wanna add a birthDate field, it should be 'YYYY-MM-DD' and not seconds-since-epoch or something".
The polkit stuff? Makes my gut churn.
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If its stealing your birthdate off other apps, thats outrageous. If it asks for it in order to download, I'll never use the software. I don't give my birthdate to anyone but the IRS and my state voting office. Thats bad enough.
@oldoldcojote the OS asks at first boot and then would share the date (or a rough age) to every application on the system that asks.
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A small set of people are merging changes to various Linux components to make sure every application knows your birth date.
This is being done rapidly by people with questionable justifications and being merged with no youth and few marginalized people involved.
@wwahammy Fork that shit.
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@wwahammy Fork that shit.
@flipper I mean, definitely could but defaults are a powerful thing in this world.
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@flipper I mean, definitely could but defaults are a powerful thing in this world.
@wwahammy It was meant to be a play on words, but I understand your very real and serious point.
California uber alles, as Jello Biafra would have said.
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@oldoldcojote the OS asks at first boot and then would share the date (or a rough age) to every application on the system that asks.
Will definitely put me off any linux if it goes forward. I use an older ubuntu now on more recent computers, was going to update. Now?
this is so dystopian
