"Forced Age Verification Is Coming To Linux"

[Theundercoverman_]

As much as I hope this all gets repealed and scenario 2 happens, I doubt most people care about this at all because they only use locked-down smartphones and don't care about their privacy anyways.

And again, stopping this isn't enough anymore. Everything has to be pushed back, but it won't. As much as I hate to say, it's time to accept that FOSS is dead and never coming back.

[Theundercoverman_]

After thinking about it, ageless linux won't have much of an effect on this.

Scenario 1: The legal crocodiles smell the bait and don't touch it. If other distros start feeling they could try their luck too, they will go after one of them to make an example and everyone else will be forced to comply.

Scenario 2: A few more people will wake up but most people still won't care because they only use locked-down proprietary OSes that can easily comply with this.

Either way, this will kill off almost every single Linux distro and open source program. Better get used to Micro$lop Windows and iOS then. At least they can and already do comply. Unless everyone in the USA and the rest of the world came together and protested "GIVE ME PRIVACY OR GIVE ME DEATH!" or "GIVE ME FOSS OR GIVE ME DEATH!", we are all fucked, and again, most people probably don't care and might even support this shit to "protect the children".

[digdeeper]

If so, then we should start hoarding yet-uncompromised ISOs right now, and also host repos with uncompromised apps, on the darknet.

[12ax7]

Would blockhain technologies be appropriate here?

[moeloli]

If so, then we should start hoarding yet-uncompromised ISOs right now, and also host repos with uncompromised apps, on the darknet.

Which operating system ISOs specifically do you recommend archiving? Only 64-bit or other architectures too?

Would blockhain technologies be appropriate here?

What do you mean? Maybe meant to post in the honeypots thread?

[digdeeper]

If so, then we should start hoarding yet-uncompromised ISOs right now, and also host repos with uncompromised apps, on the darknet.

Which operating system ISOs specifically do you recommend archiving? Only 64-bit or other architectures too?

Probably any "big" ones. Especially those that already admitted to cucking. 64 bit only is fine I guess since I presume no one is really maining 32 bit anymore.

I think the hosting repos is more important. From the way I'm reading the law, every app on the repo would have to be modified, in a way that is able to "receive age bracket signal", and send it to the developer. So, the cucking repo would have to become a literal malware spreader, to obey the law.

It's easy enough to find some old ISO on torrents or whatever. Not that easy to compile everything from source to remove the age bracket signal. Having only cucked repos ensures that, whenever you install anything, it will have the spyware, or you will have to compile.

[Theundercoverman_]

Colorado is at least considering excluding Linux and other open source operating systems. Hopefully other states will do the same.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Colorado- ... xclude-OSS

And California and any other states who don't make exceptions should at least create their own distro with their own shit so free distros like Debian and Arch won't have to comply and can simply ban users from those states.

[moeloli]

Colorado is at least considering excluding Linux and other open source operating systems. Hopefully other states will do the same.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Colorado- ... xclude-OSS

Yay, some uplifting news at least, even if in the long run we're not safe.

[equilibria]

.

[Theundercoverman_]

Colorado is at least considering excluding Linux and other open source operating systems. Hopefully other states will do the same.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Colorado- ... xclude-OSS

Yay, some uplifting news at least, even if in the long run we're not safe.

It's a meaningless victory at best. Linux would only be safe if every state made exceptions for Linux, then Linux would likely get tons of media attention which sounds good at first until the government decides Linux is a problem and removes the exception or outlaws Linux entirely (by making it illegal to install custom operating systems on any devices and forcing desktop manufacturers to lock down their desktops?). Even if these laws are repealed or amended, the lawmakers will keep proposing increasingly invasive laws that most people will get sick of hearing and stop caring anymore if they ever did to begin with. I could see at least one state propose a mandatory real-name system and centralized authentication across all platforms like China's, and when that happens, every other state and country will follow until it becomes global.

[moeloli]

https://www.mail-archive.com/misc@openb ... 97124.html
Found a mailing list thread about this for OpenBSD. I don't know which replies are from developers if any, but it seems that OpenBSD likely won't cuck (at least for now) since they're based in Canada, but who knows if they'll cuck when the law reaches Canada.

[digdeeper]

https://www.mail-archive.com/misc@openb ... 97124.html
Found a mailing list thread about this for OpenBSD. I don't know which replies are from developers if any, but it seems that OpenBSD likely won't cuck (at least for now) since they're based in Canada, but who knows if they'll cuck when the law reaches Canada.

This might be the best post I've seen on this topic, or maybe even overall. It's like the freaking Daigo parry but in forum post form...Let's see some quotes:

The best time to challenge a precedent is when
it’s being set. Many people have mentioned the slippery slope from
this to future verification (as opposed to just attestation), and it
is important to note why they want to do this in a two-step process
instead of going straight there: by implementing the entire measure
straight, opponents of the law will be able to organize against it by
tapping into people’s reaction to both the harmful precedent and the
actual action itself; by splitting it into two, initial momentum can
be built up only by citing the precedent and potential slippery slope
and then dismissed by making age attestation appear to be a
reasonable compromise between no restrictions at all and full age
verification—and then later on, once the precedent is set and that
public discussion is closed, the next step will only have to be
justified for the difference (the change from age attestation to age
verification), not for anything generally applicable to both
attestation and verification, and attempts to build momentum can be
demobilized by citing the fact that the new verification law is not
too significant of a change over what already happens.

Nice and concise explanation of why they do it in a "boiling frog" way, instead of all at once.

There are entire ecosystems built around isolating children, stripping them of any
potential support networks and indoctrinating them into harmful
worldviews, and for these kids, the Internet can be the only lifeline
keeping them going.

It's funny how, somehow, chaining kids got stuck into a technical mailing list. But, it makes sense. And it's a conversation that has to be had at some point. It has to be realized that without the idea of "kid as toy", "kid as pet to raise", none of the recent slave laws could ever hope to be accepted. But, people prefer chasing their tails forever, wondering "just how much kid chaining is acceptable, in exchange for giving up our precious adult freedoms?" than ask "should we chain kids at all?". In this climate such laws will inevitably keep getting proposed.

Let’s not miss the forest for the
trees; in trying to counter the actual attestation/verification part
of it, let’s not forget that the core premise—that parents have the
right to fully control the information children are permitted to
access—is in and of detrimental to the idea of a free and democratic
society.

Yeah. It's funny how fast people can do a 180 on information freedom, once access for children dares to be brought up.

On top of that, community-run open-source operating systems including
some Linux distributions and OpenBSD are the one refuge people can
find from constant attacks on their digital freedoms left, right and
center. These attacks can come from big corporations or they can come
from governments. If users cannot be guaranteed protection from such
attacks even on open-source software and when these attacks come from
foreign adversarial states, what even is the point of community-run
open-source software? (And ‘fork it, remove the code and compile your
own version’ is not feasible; I do not expect every 12 year old in an
abusive household to be able to do that.)

Another bullseye. I wonder why the FSF hasn't spoken on this topic yet. I suspect it's because they exactly would say something like "just fork it". As long as the FOSS movement keeps being a cult that requires unreasonable demands, well, it will get buried by the proprietary big corpos. Seems like a good moment for it as any. It's make it or break it, and it seems the "FOSS community" will chose the break it.

I also want to emphasize from the perspective of a consumer just how
demoralizing it is to see institutions founded around the principles
of liberty and open-source falling in line. It is one of the most
effective ways to kill any chance of there being an effective
political opposition against this agenda. If they won't stand up
against such tyranny, who even will?

Heheheh. Yes. Another bullseye.

Governments don’t like when laws are openly
flouted, because it challenges the idea that they have inherent
authority beyond what they're given by the state’s capacity to
enforce them. If a government knows that a law will openly not be
complied with, it will try not to pass that law in the first place
in order to preserve this facade that once something is law it
necessarily has to be complied with no matter what.

And this is why the Ageless Linux might end up being quite important.

Anyway, none of this means that OpenBSD won't cuck anyway. The devs haven't spoken as far as I can see.

[moeloli]

https://sourceforge.net/projects/pb-gh- ... d_release/
Puppy Linux's JeetForge page now says the following:

WARNING! The Linux Operating Systems available for download from this site do NOT contain User Account Management facilities nor Age Verification facilities.

Do NOT download or execute (run) these Linux Operating Systems if:
1. You reside in a jurisdiction that has implemented a law which requires Age Verification facilities at the Operating System level;
and
2. You are under the minimum age specified in such a law.

If you personally are able to satisfy the requirements to download one of these Operating Systems, you must not allow it to be used by any younger person who is barred from doing so by any applicable laws in your area of jurisdiction.

Known jurisdictions are: Brazil (from 17 March 2026); California State of the USA (from 1 January 2027).

[Theundercoverman_]

https://sourceforge.net/projects/pb-gh- ... d_release/
Puppy Linux's JeetForge page now says the following:

WARNING! The Linux Operating Systems available for download from this site do NOT contain User Account Management facilities nor Age Verification facilities.

Do NOT download or execute (run) these Linux Operating Systems if:
1. You reside in a jurisdiction that has implemented a law which requires Age Verification facilities at the Operating System level;
and
2. You are under the minimum age specified in such a law.

If you personally are able to satisfy the requirements to download one of these Operating Systems, you must not allow it to be used by any younger person who is barred from doing so by any applicable laws in your area of jurisdiction.

Known jurisdictions are: Brazil (from 17 March 2026); California State of the USA (from 1 January 2027).

Unless all these laws get overturned which won't happen, then the next best thing would be this. Distros shouldn't comply with one jurisdiction at everyone else's expense. Instead, tell the underage citizens of California and Brazil to fuck off.

But in all seriousness, it's sad we even have to have this discussion. There are many ways to protect children without ruining FOSS and Linux but isn't that what the governments really want?

On top of that, community-run open-source operating systems including
some Linux distributions and OpenBSD are the one refuge people can
find from constant attacks on their digital freedoms left, right and
center. These attacks can come from big corporations or they can come
from governments.

First, it's age verification APIs to compromise Linux, then they might force hardware manufacturers to lock their bootloaders even on desktops to prevent us from installing Linux, then it's government-issued digital IDs. Enjoy whatever digital freedoms and privacy you might have left, because in the future, we'll all be living like China: totalitarian enslavement.

[Theundercoverman_]

The Online ID Check Situation is Crazy
https://odysee.com/@AlphaNerd:8/the-onl ... is-crazy:c

[lostuser]

slop

[lostuser]

slop

[moeloli]

https://dylan.gr/1773080716

Sure, in the short term as a user, you can protest, complain, disable, spoof and patch out these mechanisms but what happens when your bank, government, online stores, games and social media require you to verify your identity to access their services? You will fall in line, open source or otherwise.

That's a weak last paragraph, like it's aimed at normalfags/failed normalfags.
>bank, government, online stores
Have a dedicated pozzed system (whether a VM or on real hardware) to access real life-adjacent stuff like that. That's a sensible thing to do even without the age verification dilemma. Or be a NEET.
>games
The best games are offline and over 20 years old.
>(((soycial media)))
Really?

[moeloli]

The Online ID Check Situation is Crazy
https://odysee.com/@AlphaNerd:8/the-onl ... is-crazy:c

I watched that video and the TL;DR is that they're going to implement a federal law for "app stores" to add the age verification bullshit: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-con ... /3149/text
There's something slightly off-topic about that bill that I have to comment on, though...

(A) ADULT.—An “adult” is such an individual who has attained 18 years of age.
(B) TEENAGER.—A “teenager” is such an individual who has attained 16 years of age but has not attained 18 years of age.
(C) CHILD.—A “child” is such an individual who has attained 13 years of age but has not attained 16 years of age.
(D) YOUNG CHILD.—A “young child” is such an individual who has not attained 13 years of age.

Only 16/17 year olds are "teenagers", and anyone younger than that is a heccin little "child"? Really? Nice infantilization psyop.

[Theundercoverman_]

(a) In general.—Each covered app store provider shall—
(1) at the time an individual creates an account with the covered app store provider—
(A) request age information from the individual; and
(B) verify the individual’s age category using a commercially available method or process that is reasonably designed to ensure accuracy;

And since F-Droid, Accrescent, and Obtainium (which isn't even an app store) don't support account creation, either they're exempt or they'll all comply by forcing online accounts for all US residents, which defeats the purpose of using those stores. But Google is killing off third-party app stores anyways.

As far as desktops go, they define mobile devices and operating systems but not desktops. Does this mean that Linux is exempt from this? I guess as long as fewer than 5,000,000 people in the US are using specific package managers and their repositories.

[digdeeper]

(a) In general.—Each covered app store provider shall—
(1) at the time an individual creates an account with the covered app store provider—
(A) request age information from the individual; and
(B) verify the individual’s age category using a commercially available method or process that is reasonably designed to ensure accuracy;

And since F-Droid, Accrescent, and Obtainium (which isn't even an app store) don't support account creation, either they're exempt or they'll all comply by forcing online accounts for all US residents, which defeats the purpose of using those stores. But Google is killing off third-party app stores anyways.

As far as desktops go, they define mobile devices and operating systems but not desktops. Does this mean that Linux is exempt from this? I guess as long as fewer than 5,000,000 people in the US are using specific package managers and their repositories.

The key seems to lie here:

(6) APP STORE.—The term “app store” means a publicly available website, software application, or other electronic service that distributes and facilitates the download onto a mobile device of an app from a third-party developer by a user of a computer, mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device.

It appears that only repos that support downloading "onto a mobile device" count here. But then, it is weird how they would mention "general computing devices". Do people download mobile apps from a computer, then transfer? I would say that, if you host desktop-only software, then you are exempt - but not with 100% confidence. Either way I doubt any distro reaches 5 million US users.

[Theundercoverman_]

Even if a distro never reached 5 million US users, the package manager might, because package managers like apt and pacman are used not only by Debian and Arch, but all their derivatives (including Ubuntu and it's derivatives). In that case, wouldn't every Debian-based distro, even the smallest ones, have to comply with this?

[digdeeper]

Even if a distro never reached 5 million US users, the package manager might, because package managers like apt and pacman are used not only by Debian and Arch, but all their derivatives (including Ubuntu and it's derivatives). In that case, wouldn't every Debian-based distro, even the smallest ones, have to comply with this?

Hmm, maybe. It's hard to judge these things because they are so obviously written with a phone app store in mind. But I guess apt technically counts.

Yet, it still comes down to me to the "facilitate download to mobile devices" part. I'm not sure if apt can be considered to do that.

[Theundercoverman_]

No surprise Meta is spending millions on this bullshit.
https://odysee.com/@AlphaNerd:8/meta-sp ... -new-age:0

[sam]

zb2rhnCimjGr2AMGPRMwKJQyTWtQiGpUc2gMP42q5q5G7btPc.jpg (74.39 KiB) Viewed 46512 times

Why am I here?

[moeloli]

zb2rhnCimjGr2AMGPRMwKJQyTWtQiGpUc2gMP42q5q5G7btPc.jpg
Why am I here?

Why would they even bother blocking access for a third world shithole? Are the favela monkeys going to run out of their jungle to catch you and bite you across the globe? The most they could do would be blocking Arch's website and repos on their own ISPs/DNSs.

[www]

I tried to know if Brazil had any means by decent regulation and I discovered their website API called gov.br needs to be linked to ID or face analysis check. This really is banquet for government and hackers

https://old.reddit.com/r/brdev/comments ... o_deveria/ (sorry, the translate dont work in old mode lol, but they saying that you need use a VPN, probally random, but sadly they dont know that mostly vpn are trash and is more dangerous that non-VPN. I have suspicious that any program, app and more need do this ID verification so probally gov.br will not use in everywhere. madness bc everything in internet can steal ur data free )

https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/2 ... Pe9Ld3.mp4

[Theundercoverman_]

download/file.php?id=11

This block will remain in place until these laws are clarified, repealed, or amended to exempt FOSS repositories.

In other words, this block will remain permanently, because I don't think these laws will ever be repealed. If anything, they'll see FOSS repos as a way for kids to bypass age verification if it did get excluded. And while people can still use VPNs to bypass this, it's only a matter of time before one state or country passes a law requiring age verification for VPN services or outright banning VPNs. Digital IDs and age verification isn't going away, and I wish I could be proven wrong about that.

[digdeeper]

systemd joins in on the fun

[qualia]

systemd joins in on the fun

BTW, just to emphasize this, and explain why i think adding this to userdb is fine:

i actually believe that making sure apps cannot just read the birthday field is a good idea, but it's just one tiny piece of data among so so much more important stuff. if people run apps unsandboxed these apps get access to any file in $HOME and a tonload more stuff of the system. And that data is a lot more valuable than the birthday is. Hence, let's maybe not waste discussion around isolating apps from that single piece of information that is the birthday, while leaving everything else wide open.

The answer to the PII issues is hence not restrictions in userdb, the answer is proper app sandboxing. And that even already exists in flatpak! It restricts access to $HOME already, and to userdb too! And that's the way to do it!

Hence, just embrace app sandboxing! And if you come to me and say "hey, I run all my apps without sandboxing, but i want the birthday hidden anyway" then I can only say, your model is really really broken. Fix your security model first, then come back.

So, I think userdb should reveal the birthday to per-user code, because that per-user code then can consume this and provide a portal or something to properly sandboxed apps that provides a more restrictive api, i.e. age brackets and so on. But that kind of stuff is outside of the scope of systemd, here in systemd we just provide you with a way to maintain the original data, the precise policy enforcement on it must happen in the sandbox.

- Poettering

The level of retardation is genuinely astounding. Just sandbox your 'apps' (i hate the term 'app' so much). What if the user doesn't want to or doesn't know how to do it? Doesn't matter because "it's just one tiny piece of data" that apparently isn't even valuable (if it's not "valuable" then why are the lawmakers trying so hard to force you to give it away?)