We need to collectively abandon tech that insists on any of this. I post about this often, but I'll say it again: this will come with discomfort; you need to be okay with that temporarily.

These ghouls cannot withstand weeks / months of boycott. They simply can't, daddy earning reports and the shareholders won't allow it.

Sigh, guess it’s time to bust open a pre-code copy of ‘How to build Linux from scratch’

The Illinois age verification law, however, applies to Linux distributions and other open-source operating systems.

Get fucked Illinois.

I will not comply. I do not care how hard it makes my life. This is a line in the sand I will not cross. If a social media asks me to upload my government-issued ID, that's the end of that social media. If a computer asks me to use my government ID to use it, that's not a computer I will use. The only online service I can see that would need my government issued ID is my bank. And that's only because they are required to collect it in order for me to have an account. Everything else can go fuck right off.

Open/libre source operating systems won't. No matter where you live. As long as all purpose computers exist.

However, the EFF believes that operating system providers such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft will require more personal information.

To protect the children, of course.

Currently, the age requirement is attestation. You click through an age gate.

So essentially its the same as most social media, which currently requires you are over 13. Kids have long learned to lie about their age to set up social media accounts.

Laws may get passed to require an ID check or confirmation, but at that point that'll require telling the device (and its corporate masters) your identity and I think that's going to interact with privacy rights.

I learned in the USENET days to adopt a handle, to keep my meat identity separate from my online identity. We're going to have to learn that again.

I2P and onion don't need it

I’m tired of this notion that society must protect children from reality. If parents want to raise their kids in stupid sheltered worlds, that’s their stupid fucking choice and should go no further than their choices for their kids. Sheltering children is a stupid concept. Parents should be explaining the crazy shit kids will see and give them a healthy way to absorb the bad in the world not trying to act like it doesn’t exist. We shouldn’t have to bend over backwards to capitulate to their idea of how a kid should be raised. I shouldn’t have to give up my privacy to prop up their fantasy. Personally, every kid I’ve seen be sheltered ends up a more fucked up adult. The world is fucked, kids should learn how to live in it.

The real workaround is using Linux. Age verification isn't truly enforceable in Open Source software

What are you supposed to do with work laptops and such that get passed around? Head of IT supposed to submit their ID for each one?

My collection of hoarded media waits eagerly if this forces me to say goodbye to the internet outside of work obligations

I’m waiting for the selfie required logins. Right now, you log into YouTube or anything else with that user base and they want a selfie and a phone number. YouTube even asks for your address. You can skip. For now.

Stallman calls this “Service as a Software Substitute” (SaaSS): users operate weak “thin clients” while the real computing happens on someone else’s server. He argues this creates dependence and oppression because users cannot control, inspect, modify, or reliably access the software handling their data. He develops this argument in “What Does That Server Really Serve?” (2010).

If it does it will be the last thing it does

It also drives me nuts as a non-American that random states in America can pass laws that I then have to deal with.

I mean I already use Linux but I'm sure I'm going to bump into this somewhere eventually. I think this might be the final straw though, I pretty much don't use any social media as it is, this might be the thing that just makes me detach from the internet altogether, or as much as humanly possible at least.

The Linux exemptions in Cali and Colorado bring up something else if that gets followed on a broader scale: Can't apps and services just start blocking Linux and start specifically demanding Windows or Mac?

Pretty sure China doesn't have laws that demand your age.

Oh well back to C64

Things will just get worse if we don't do something concrete, like organizing protest marches and petitions, going on strike, and similar.

Quoting from an episode of Slow Horses: "heavy on hashtags, light on results".

Shut the fuck up, nobody cares about your robot fanfiction. Know your fucking place, trash! Fucking robots, I don't talk about no robots. They got no soul.

- FilthyFrank

Also, if you think the Fediverse is gonna be safe from this, then I have bad news for you. Also, decentralized networks in general could be targeted by this sorta thing if what happened to A/I is any indication.

What happened to those Mastodon instances and to A/I is proof that even decentralized networks can be targeted by censorship.

mine won't :)