Tldr… Why would they have verification for an OS?
I don’t know much about this issue, I thought it was a social media thing.z
The most pedophilic government in history desperately needs to know if your children are on the computer
… For reasons
The social media companies don’t want that kind of responsibility. So they’re trying to make the operating system vendors do it. That’s roughly how that law came into existence.
More or less. When I spoke with Wicks’ staffers in charge of this, they said that the reason behind it is that California has age restrictions for various kinds of sites and applications (no porn apps under 18, restrictions on social media and chat for kids, etc). The various big tech companies said they didn’t want to be responsible for figuring out how to track and verify all that, so they asked for something that would mean they didn’t have to.
The bill was originally written with that as the background, and they specifically added language about just trusting what was entered and not collecting identification past that.
I got the impression that the staffers were intelligent, thoughtful people, just with no experience or knowledge of non big tech stuff. They have been living in the Apple/Microsoft/Google world like most normies. They were very surprised and intrigued when I told them that Debian collects no information on users. One said they were interested in giving Linux a try because of how bad Windows 11 is.
And as far as I know it was written pretty much by Meta. And then we have lobbying and some law text written by a private company ends up being pushed in several states. (With minor changes.)
I mean we happen to share some goals. I think it’s great they just trust what somebody enters. It’s probably there because they want more users and less barriers in the way. Bit it happens to help with privacy as well. And people don’t need to scan some government ID. Same with Linux I think. They probably had someone do the numbers to find the sweet spot between enshittification and users leaving. But I won’t complain if it means more Linux market share.
For now
idk about Cali, but Colorado’s state government has a pretty good track record of doing reasonably sensible things and listening to constituents. I assume that if this law ever actually makes it to rollout, there will be a huge backlash, and they will get rid of it immediately. And if everyone switches to Linux to avoid the bullshit (doesn’t seem unlikely), then there will be a huge shitshow if they try to impose the rule on open source OS’s.
Yeah. I fear “Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children” applies to Linux children as well. And I mean if protecting minors is an important issue… why shouldn’t it be important for ALL children? Some day they’ll find out the exemption applies to any Android phone and rethink the approach.
Also… How’s that going to work out with software? Is every cross-platform app making substantial changes to the logic for the Linux users? How is later on supposed to grant access if the API is missing on Linux? Can the R18 game tell if you’re an adult if it’s not implemented? The platforms like Youtube if you’re legible to watch the content? I guess as long as other laws forcing the software developers to abide by other laws, this will just lead to banning adult content for Linux users altogether, because the standard interface to assure age is missing and they’re still forced to make an effort.
