Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age
agelesslinux.org729 points by nateb2022 18 hours ago
729 points by nateb2022 18 hours ago
Something remarkable and unsettling is how the age verification debate has popped up almost simultaneously in the US, UK, and EU.
With the same logical fallacies. Pretty telling about how transnational lobbies and their interests work.
Controlling what children do online is a solved problem: Parenting and parental control applications.
I'm completely baffled why anyone still engages with the "official" framing around this. Obviously, it's not for protecting children. Obviously, it's a technocratic trojan horse for increasing surveillance capabilities on digital systems. This is so cynically anti-democratic that they obfuscate the real purpose, don't even bother to make it plausible, and everyone is left talking about how "awful it is" that it's already legislated.
I swear to God, if someone replies to this talking about how we need to protect the children I'm going to start requiring "age verification" from commenters, and I'll do a little background check to find out w̵h̵e̵r̵e̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵y̵ ̵l̵i̵v̵e̵ if they're over 18.
It's because none of the stuff you say is obvious is actually obvious. You might be totally right about all of it (my own view is that regardless of what the intention is, this stuff will inevitably be misused), but it needs to be demonstrated that you are. The word obvious has a different meaning.
This is a pretty common phenomenon in politics, where people have a political view that is obvious to them, but other people actually disagree with that view. This is one way that political discussions go off the rails, because if you think your own views are obvious, you quickly start thinking that people have some ulterior motive for debating that "obvious" view. But the reality is often just that they just have a genuine difference of perspective, that the thing that is obvious to you is just not obvious to them.
If this goes through, I wouldn't be surprised if facial recognition ends up being the "solution" to the problems this creates.
I walked to get a sandwich today and I counted no less than ten cameras along the way.
On an unrelated note, I'm thinking of taking up a laser hobby.
High power lasers reflect in unpredictable ways thereby endangering everyone around you. There are other options that don't risk bodily harm.
> If this goes through, I wouldn't be surprised if facial recognition ends up being the "solution" to the problems this creates.
The end goal is for every IP address to be associated with a physical person and an ID card number. Which is where we'll end up after they'll unsuccessfully try to ban VPNs that are used to bypass age-verification checks.
> Obviously, it's not for protecting children
Frankly, this is false. There's a lot of well intentioned people writing these laws and pushing for them.
> Obviously, it's a technocratic trojan horse for increasing surveillance capabilities on digital systems.
However, it is also this.
And that's not a tradeoff I think we should make as a society.
Well said. Yeah. Well intentioned things can still result in bad outcomes.
"well intentioned people"
I believe the standard nomenclature is "useful idiots".
AGE VERIFICATION ERROR
YOUR POST HAS BEEN HIDDEN UNTIL VERIFICATION IS COMPLETE
UPLOAD BUTTHOLE PRINT TO FACEBOOK. COM/VERIFY
> There's a lot of well intentioned people writing these laws and pushing for them.
No, there absolutely are not. There are Meta et al and their international lobbyists, pushing copy-paste bills. Anyone pearl clutching for the kids is an idiot, or is paid off.
If it makes you feel better to turn people who disagree with you into cartoon villains, then more power to you. But you'll lose the debate because you will only engage in strawman arguments. There are real arguments in favor of this that should not be dismissed, but should be embraced and we should explain why those arguments are weaker than ours.
I feel extremely strongly that this is a Trojan horse that will expand surveillance and control by governments and giant corporations, and ultimately be used to lock us out of our own devices. I think many people supporting this are well-meaning but extremely naive. Meta is not naive of course, they expect to come out on the top of this as a giant corporation. But there are millions upon millions of people who do support this that are not going to come out on top. Those are also the people we need to convince. We're not going to change meta's mind, but we might be able to change others minds.
>I'm completely baffled why anyone still engages with the "official" framing around this.
We all know how these laws are not meant to protect children.
Then we decry the hypocrisy of it.
And then we stop at that.
So nobody is saying what needs to be said.
These laws are explicitly designed to hurt children.
These laws have nothing to do with children. Neither protection nor malice.
It's mass surveillance. Let's not get distracted.
That doesn't really with with the voting. AB 1043 passed 58-0 in the Cali state assembly which is mostly normal democrats. Those people aren't thinking ha ha ha our evil plans are working. They are thinking let protect kids. I'm skeptical of your obviouslys.
Controlling what children do online is a solved problem: Parenting and parental control applications.
Spoken as someone who probably hasn't used iOS/Mac parental controls. It is a hot buggy mess that randomly blocks whitelisted applications as well. We use it, but it is a constant pain. Also a lot of applications only work half, e.g., TV apps blocking off all content rather than only content that is not age-appropriate.
By the way, we were initially firm believers of not using parental controls at all, by limiting time and teaching kids about how to use devices in a healthy way. But a lot of apps (e.g. Roblox, YouTube Shorts) are made to be as addictive as crack, making it very hard for a still not fully developed brain to deal with it.
That said, I absolutely dislike the current lobby for age verification because the goal of Meta et al. seems to be to be to absolve themselves of any responsibility by moving verification to devices and to put up regulatory walls to make it more difficult for potential competitors to enter the market. It is regulatory capture.
Why are you giving your children access to any devices, online services, video games, social media?
Seriously. There are mountains of evidence all of this is harmful to developing brains.
The addiction economy is hard to deal with for anyone - regardless of age. So, I agree this is definitely not a solved problem, but from what I see the only viable way forward is actually to do pretty drastic things like not own a smartphone.
You can remove most objectionable elements with uBlock filters. Also dedicated browser extensions exist to deal with the biggest offenders.
If you're willing to use alternatives and do without the services entirely then simply DNS blocking a handful of big names on your LAN immediately resolves the majority of the issue.
It’s not a parental controls / software problem. It’s a parents showing self control / parenting and monitoring their children in person thing.
How many kids do you have? What software do you use for this continuous monitoring? How do you balance spending 18 hours a day continuously monitoring your children, with also working full-time and being a human yourself? Please elaborate on your personal system because I think you could help out a lot of people.
I am strongly against this age verification, I think this is an absolutely, catastrophically terrible idea. However, I'm also a parent who has been in the trenches. This is a damn hard problem, and we will lose our access to computing and a relatively free internet if we just sit back and say that it's on parents and parents are stupid if they don't know how to solve this problem.
Do you genuinely not remember being a child?
tbf, when most of those posting here were children, access to smartphones/tablets with unrestricted internet connection wasn't a problem
but i do remember my parents actually raising me pretty hands-on, taking care of me not watching stuff I shouldn't be watching which of course existed and was easily available
This reddit thread¹ details thoroughly the connection to Meta (Facebook) and to a lesser extent Discord as being behind the push in the US.
1. https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_b...
Did you read it? It does neither of those things. It establishes that Meta is fighting to amend these regulatory bills to push onus onto operating systems and Discord isn’t named once in the OP.
Your username is appropriate.
From rfk: “Rep. Kim Carver (R-Bossier City), the sponsor of Louisiana's HB-570, publicly confirmed that a Meta lobbyist brought the legislative language directly to her. “
That’s more than fighting to amend. I’m not sure where I got the discord connection but I thought it was from that link. I’ve read a few things on this subject recently so I may have mixed up two different sources.
Obviously Discord is related. I can simultaneously support age constraints and also *not want my child’s 18th birthday leaked under any circumstances*.
It’s not if you’ve paid attention to political trends for the last 15 years.
Everything is happening at the same time in every country. It’s clearly being coordinated.
Btw, it doesn't need to be actively coordinated for this to happen.
Building architectural styles used to be per city and now buildings look roughly the same worldwide. Style is dependent on the year built not the location.
Because every architect is "reading the same magazine" worldwide now that the internet exists, rather than debating in their own city.
Similar monoculture of global thought is happening in all fields.
> Similar monoculture of global thought is happening in all fields.
Thereby removing yet more interesting things to see in the world through the spread of hyper-optimized inoffensive blandness. In the same way that restaurants are slowly turning into the same set of grey boxes with little of note distinguishing each.
I like the idea of your reply. This is what I'll add; Politics, religion and nation states, in a sense, are in some kind of shift. Politics: many nations with a lot of money and arms are engaging in world threatening actions. Religion: The three major ones, with no disrespect to the other ones, are warping into something that is spinning away from their original writings (of course, in some ways this is good, example: stoning.). Nation States: destruction on a massive scale-Syria, Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan...Is Iran next?
Perhaps instead of taking some responsibility for their actions, nations are going to further restrict their populations?
IMHO it’s a conspiracy against rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_against_rights
And when this nonsense is defeated, I’d like to see aggressive prosecution wherever we can get it.
It's almost like a well-monied or well-connected lobbyist is pushing this heavily. Multiple contenders out there as to who it could be. But regardless of who the originator is, the push can be kneecapped. Imagine jurisdictions that have an opposite push - one that criminalizes use of age verification software such as mandating providing government ID or facial scans. It can be done!
This Reddit thread claims to have identified Meta/Facebook as a/the major villain (for age verification):
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_b...
Disclaimer: I have not myself verified the claims.
It can't be done unless you have deeper pockets and access to media controlling the hard of thinking.
Well obviously? It's literally being broadcast in the news when diplomats talk to each other. What do you think they are talking about if not policy discussions?
Trade, wars, stuff like that. Foreign affairs, not domestic affairs.
All discussion of foreign affairs is the discussion of domestic affairs somewhere.
So it seems normal that a bunch of politicians, in the current climate, got together and decided that the weakest form of age verification imaginable absolutely had to get passed everywhere?
That's incomprehensible to me.
I'm not saying there's definitely no coordination, but nobody had to get together to decide that 2026 was the year for 90s fashion to make a comeback. Human society is very prone to fads in all areas.
The simpler explanation is that we live in a world that is more connected than ever so politicians, campaigners and the rest can get policy ideas almost instantly. There is no grand conspiracy, just a smaller world.
Yeah, it's not like there's a literal james bond supervillain who writes books about this stuff and brags about how half of parliament is in his pocket.
For anyone that doesn't know, this is referring to Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum.
Shorter paths of communication.
Smaller quorums needed for control.
Fewer people with more wealth pushing through what they want across more borders.
Less and less concern for citizens in general.
We are seeing a rapid centralization of power.
Why are they getting ideas from each other instead of their own citizens? That in itself is a conspiracy of the elite cabal
My guess would be some very influential NGO(s). But I haven't looked into it or thought about it.
I estimate we have two to three years in the English-speaking world to organize an effective lobby for the rights of the common man before changes to the speech environment and habitual methods of communication make it impossible. There's less than a year before the wave of lock-downs reaches normal internet users through announced policies like the Android software installation ban and through the growing effectiveness of algorithmic "Joy of TikTok"-style discussion selection, and one to two years after that before we run out of other avenues. The latter timeline could be too optimistic if the completion of the TPM-to-cloudflare chain of permission for desktop environments (steps had been made in the past but failed after public pushback) comes without a lot of advance notice. Don't forget - after each new constraint on the public, the next counter-reaction will be smaller, and the next change will be bigger or sooner.
The cloudflare thing is insane.
Like overnight a while ago, normal everyday websites are suddenly inaccessible (yes I have JS on, no it won't work.) Sometimes only the first page loads.
Can't complain to CF either, because that too is walled off by their non-functional robot detector.
This serves as a two-way filter for me. Any website I'm not allowed to access is not worth accessing. I'll take my attention and business to where I'm wanted instead.
> Controlling what children do online is a solved problem: Parenting and parental control applications.
This is absolutely not true.
Here in the UK schools are swarming with ipads and shit like that. They're given to primary school children because they're "more engaging". Children are supposed to practice their reading and even handwriting[1] on ipads. Naturally they're on youtube instead. It's really bad. As far as I can tell, private schools are even worse. Currently the only way that I know to escape this is homeschooling.
Saying "it's a solved problem" is incredibly dismissive to parents who do everything right in their homes, but then send their children to school and schools exposed their children in this way.
Saying that phrase in such a definitive manner caters to the interests of the companies who push these shit onto schools. Please stop saying it, it's harmful.
[1] leaving this reference here because I'm certain that people without school aged children won't believe this is actually true: https://www.letterjoin.co.uk/
There's no (state) school giving out tablets that aren't pretty much single-use locked down devices.
That's the parents.
The expectation that "Parenting" is now outsourced to Teachers, to the Government, to anyone else. People seem to expect they just have a kid, and somehow magically they'll grow up to be a perfect person without any work from themselves. So there's over-reach, there's pressure on making "unworkable" soutions, because the people they're trying to force "solving" the problem aren't the people in the best position to do so.
Your comment seems working from that very same assumption.
Yes, all the "technical" part of content filtering etc. is very much a solved problem. The issue is that's not a "zero effort" solution - they still need to be enabled and managed. And I'm not sure that's a "technical" problem than can be solved.
There's huge pressure on teachers etc. to "solve" these sort of problems - just go to any PTA meeting and there's a lot of loud voices asking for stuff like the laws the original post is highlighting. And politicians listen to the loud voices, and feel they have to be "seen" doing something. Even if that "something" is impossible, unworkable, and fundamentally harmful.
> The expectation that "Parenting" is now outsourced to Teachers, to the Government, to anyone else. People seem to expect they just have a kid, and somehow magically they'll grow up to be a perfect person without any work from themselves. So there's over-reach, there's pressure on making "unworkable" soutions, because the people they're trying to force "solving" the problem aren't the people in the best position to do so.
Yeah, because the parents' time is now dedicated to their employers. When parenting wasn't outsourced, families typically had a parent at home doing it full time.
Don't blame the parents and ignore the story of reduced family capacity.
> Yeah, because the parent's time is now dedicated to their employers. When parenting wasn't outsourced, families typically had a parent at home doing it.
This seems to imply that the problem is that we started letting women work, but I suspect the actual problem is back to restrictive zoning again.
If you let people actually build housing, and then some people have two incomes, they use the extra money to build a big new house or drive newer cars etc. If you instead inhibit new construction, the people with two incomes outbid the families with one income for the artificially constrained housing stock, and then every family needs two incomes and like flipping a switch you go from "women are empowered by allowing them to work" to "women are oppressed by requiring them to work".
I don't think just building more housing is sufficient. That might decrease the cost of living somewhat, but probably not enough to remove the need for a second income.
I think ideally most families should be able to survive on the income of one parent, regardless of which parent that is. But I'm not sure how to get there, although I think the problem is closely tied to wealth inequality.
I also think in a better world, it would be practical for both parents to work, but work fewer hours, each working 20 hours a week. But in the US at least that generally isn't practical because most such jobs don't provide health insurance or retirement plans, and are typically very low paying jobs.
>I don't think just building more housing is sufficient. That might decrease the cost of living somewhat, but probably not enough to remove the need for a second income.
While shadowy special interest groups and large corporations are able to write text directly into the laws of anglophone countries, The People can't even talk about one instance without fragmenting into a trillion pieces covering topics such as the affordability of housing.
The left wing constantly says “we started letting women work”. Women have worked for thousands of years. The phenomenon of manipulating women into believing working for a corporation is some kind of “higher calling” is relatively new, and it’s been a disaster for the family unit.
We can distinguish these two things, right?
One is that people tell women it's good to work for a corporation, some of them believe that to be true and choose to do it, the others retain and exercise the option to do something else.
The other is that we set up an artificial scarcity treadmill so that if some families have two incomes, they outbid the ones that don't on life necessities and then women have to take a job at a corporation in order to be able to afford to live indoors even if that's not what they would otherwise choose to do.
Well the first naturally led to the other. So you can distinguish them, but they are not separate.
In order to get from the first to the second, you need the artificial scarcity laws, and we ought not to keep those.