RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@wwahammy/116264430375745593
US government in 1996: strong encryption is a munition and you can go to prison for years if you export
FOSS engineers: hey so only use this if you're in the US but we'll give instructions for how to do it otherwise 😉
California in 2026: we're passing a law that allows the AG to sue OS providers in civil court if they don't implement sge verification in order to restrict Apple, Google, Facebook and the worst companies in the world.
FOSS Engineers: OMG THEY MIGHT COME AFTER OUR LINUX LAPTOP VENDORS WHO HAVE LIKE 3 TOTAL CUSTOMER WE SHOULD HAVE IMPLEMENTED AGE GATING YESTERDAY I PROMISE WE'RE NOT CHALLENGING YOUR AUTHORITY GOVERNOR NEWSOM
@wwahammy To me, age verification means someone actually checks. AFAICT this leaves it entirely up to whoever configures/admins the device. Which still sucks, but I feel like this puts it more on par with the thing where websites ask for your birthdate and all it does is teach kids to lie about their birthdates.
Strategically, I'm not sure where I should fall on this, because while it's just as ineffective and misguided, it avoids some of the worst harms and might displace more harmful laws.
