This is unacceptable. And I’m sick of all the fucking workarounds to maintain basic privacy.
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.
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.
Open/libre source opetating systems won’t. No matter where you live. As long as all purpose computers exist.
Enjoy not being able to use your bank, major websites, email, online shopping, pay utility bills, do basic and required civic functions online (that require alternatives of driving long distances and/or waiting on the phone for long periods of time), etc because your open source operating system doesn’t pass the attestation check.
Maybe not long after Google, Cloudflare and others will just block you behind anti-bot defenses because you don’t pass such a check and only bots would not pass such a check.
Hiding on Linux is not a solution to a legal problem. It’s at best punting.
This stuff is either defeated or you’ll enjoy living as a hermit cut off from society with your perfectly private, perfectly offline computer.
What I’m about to say, I say only as an alternative in conjunction with fighting legislatively: It’s time many of us alter our behaviors to accommodate these crackdowns. Not as a matter of subservience, please don’t think I mean it that way, but as a matter of practicality and survival. Make cash withdrawals when possible to pay for goods and services. Transition back to paper bills. Separate from computers where you can, while also understanding that the places you can’t, you’re just going to have to deal with the bullshit. Resist where practical, if only for your own sanity.
Yeah, Twitter did already because I connected with a VPN once. Good, no more Twitter then.
People need to fight back! But I guess it’s already too late. They’ve already succeeded in dividing the young people, so there can be no coordination or solidarity. Brainrot is real!
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.
ID required for computer use in general has to be my line in the sand and that scares the fuck outta me. I have no idea how to make ends meet for the people who depend on me, if I have to walk away from computers, but there has to be a line somewhere.
The problem is that they made people addicted first. This is like saying “Everyone, we need to boycott heroin until they stop cutting it with fentanyl!”
What we need is to take over the government and enact and enforce laws against this. Hopefully by voting.
Hopefully not by voting. I absolutely loath peoples misplaced trust in bureaucratic mechanisms. If you want something done you do it, I’m not going to vote for someone in one of the pre-approved parties, just for them to give 40 reasons why it’s unreasonable. You are never allowed to vote when it could actually create change, remember that.
Run for office, then. And if that isn’t possible, then it’s time for more radical measures.
Voting won’t fix everything, but there is a good reason voter suppression exists and why most people had to have their right to vote fought for.
Sheeeit, I live in a state where we directly voted for a particular thing, like overwhelmingly the public said “yeah, do things this way for fuck’s sake!”
And the legislators? They said “we don’t think that’s in your best interest, actually, so no, don’t think we will”. And that was the end of that. (Actually not really, they did similar stuff with a couple other things too, including screwing our teachers enough to get them to organize a bit despite how heavy their workloads already are, damn was I eager to help with that!).
Voting to solve problems. Lol!!
spoiler
Dear reader, if this is you, you don’t have to begin anew the tired recapitulation of the arguments - I do vote, like a chump, every chance I get, while also knowing we simply cannot vote our way out of this, that has been engineered (and continually is!) to never happen.
Bingo. Voting does absolutely nothing & has never solved anything. All you’re doing is replacing corrupt politicians with more corrupt politicians in which the majority of them are bought & paid for & are handpicked by their wealthy donors.
It’s one of the reasons why I left the Democrat party in late 2022 & became politically homeless & turned to Anarchy.
The real answer, is something like grassroots. Civil disobedience. General strikes. A riot. A revolution. Those are what will spark real change. Voting is an illusion of choice. A sham. A fool’s errand.
Pick up fpv drone flying as a hobby. Try out fiber optic drones.
Its like the first thing in my post “this will cause discomfort”
I didn’t say it was going to be easy at all, its going to be hard, but with some conviction in the values / morals informing your reason for protest its actually easy after that initial week is over.
Edit: its also infinitely easier to enact change like this in your own life than to smash a grand slam with a “government takeover.”. Not saying that wouldn’t be great, but let’s start with the things we have control over.
Also, you can just do both; vote and boycott…
So abandon everything then?
No, just tech that demands age
which is going to be all tech legally required to :(
I grew up in a time of technology being a liberating force that helped us live in a society more firmly based on individual rights.
I no longer live in that world.
No it won’t be all tech, that’s just giving into FUD. People run servers out of their house, people write software. People used to use websites Joe Shmoe wrote and ran in his basement. If you choose to use things like meta and google it is exactly that, a choice. Tor network, I2P network, Gnutella, freenet, usenet, torrenting, these are and always will be options unless the entire internet infrastructure is burned to the ground.
Computer: “State your name at once >:(”
Me: “tree fiddy”
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.
True, the fediverse isn’t immune from oppressive governments having physical access to its servers or users.
It does, however, prevent easy worldwide censorship possible with corporate social media, especially those HQed/hosted in SilV.
Pretty sure China doesn’t have laws that demand your age.
“S-SHUT UP DANKIE.”
🤣
Sigh, guess it’s time to bust open a pre-code copy of ‘How to build Linux from scratch’
Won’t help much when the internet requires devices be verified by Google Play or equivalent to log into any accounts or do anything.
I guess maybe you can paint pictures and self-host things on your DIY OS, but the stuff web like banking etc that integrates you into society won’t be accessible.
I fucking guess. I am at the point where I will take my children out of school if they are forced to do face scans or give any ID in order to participate and learn. I’m almost at the point where I would rather lose my job than comply with this
take my children out of school if they are forced to do face scans or give any ID
don’t know where you live, but here in the ol’ U of K, schools have been doing that sort of thing for over 20 years! I was appalled when I first heard about it, and I think it was from a friend whose kids had to give fingerprints. “Oh yes I know - big brother, but it’s so convenient” was their attitude.
It is appalling, but I could see parents from 20 years ago being less concerned than now. Of course back then they weren’t aggregating user data to today’s level, at least I don’t think.
What bothers me too are things like Palintir. Like, I don’t want my kid in some massive police database before they even turn 12
Children don’t usually have ID. You only need to provide ID to prove you’re an adult.
My country provides ID from birth.
Biometrics are only collected around 5 years old, and only for the indicators, while signature only is requested around 7, after pre-school or first year of literacy.
Photo is taken with days or weeks. The state, all of us, recognize everyone as a citizens and their rights from birth.
I didn’t say anything about having ID. I said you only need to submit ID to get access to adult content.
Australia has age verification to access social media, with an age minimum of 16. I’ve heard other countries are thinking of following.
Not really.
I got surprised a few months back with a shopping site requesting age verification. Of all things.
What site? Were they selling adult products?
A small scale site in my country. And I was trying to purchase ropes, for making dog leashes.
I’m 100% not convinced that it will stay this way. This, to me, is a push towards ID verification. Age verification is a first step. To me, it feels more like a step towards building an infrastructure to track any user
a step towards building an infrastructure to track any user
I’m inclined to believe that infrastructure already exists (both state intelligence services and corpos like Meta), this is about being able to use it in the legal system and getting people to self censor.
For normal activities this absolutely exists, and when you are just being you on the internet, a nation state could easily track you down.
However, it’s exploitable and avoidable. Probably not entirely, but if you want to you can make their life difficult.
They won’t stop until your digital identification cryptographically signs every packet you send, I guarantee it.
It won’t but that’s the way it is now.
You should do that regardless, who’s in his sane mind would trust his kids minds to the gov
Linux so far is mostly exempt and it’s the big corporations like Microsoft, Apple, and Google who actually want it so they can sell that info and use it for ads. For Linux, just consider it one more criteria for choosing your distribution if it comes around. If the distro adds it as a requirement for install, then move to another. Fortunately there are lots of good ones these days.
bust open a pre-code copy of ‘How to build Linux from scratch’
Short term, that’ll help. Long term, it won’t.
Sure, you can do that. Then what? If every single site requires a secure attestation from an identity service before you can use it, you re boned. Want to shop? Bank? Social media? Check the gd weather? If the site won’t serve you w/o a strong identity proof, then linux won’t save you. Linux will be an island.
IDK if it’ll get that far. But it isn’t that far fetched. Already today, I estimate 50% of site I try to use won’t answer me if I totally block fingerprints and use a VPN. I’m talking mundane shit, recipes, car repair info, w/e. If I remove my privacy protections, they work fine. Nothing stops that from happening to any OS that deosn’t prove a trusted ID attestation.
On those sites, have you tried VPN + ad blocking?
i’m going to switch to devuan since systemd already pre-complied wo anyone commanding them to.
This is such a weird stance given the actual change that was made. No actual age verification, no external communication of any kind. All that got added is a number field. The ability to store a number labeled “age” for user accounts. That’s it.
There already is a field for first name and last name. You can leave them blank as well (most probably do). If any software requires a number to be there, just enter 99 or whatever. Unless this gets severely worse this is such a nothing-burger.
I’m not happy about any step into that direction either, but pick your battles (or hill I guess). This certainly is a weird one.
“As a frog, you should wait until the water is already boiling before you hop”
Devuan, AntiX, and MX Linux all seem worth a look for people wanting to avoid systemd. More are listed here:
https://itsfoss.com/systemd-free-distros/
https://systemdfree.com/#distros
(FWIW, I think systemd’s age data collection is optional, at least for now. It’s not clear which Linux distros will implement/adopt it by default.)
no mention of guix on a systemd less distro list is crazy. not that i use guix, and im fine with systemd as a nixos user, but it feels like guix is the anti nixos. the richard stallman version of nixos with all the pros and cons that come with that
I run mine with the
nonguixrepository so I don’t think Stallman would approve of how I lead my life (with all the pros and cons that come with that).
Into the wilds I retreat.
Shadow tech anarchist culture, here we go.
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.
Sorta feels like iOS Face ID played a role in normalizing this for the general public
Oh, yeah. Like those memes with selfie logins to unlock a toilet or fridge.
You log in and then the AI agent will summarize what you’re watching and contact the authorities in case it flags you suspicious? How dystopian!
My collection of hoarded media waits eagerly if this forces me to say goodbye to the internet outside of work obligations
Work is an interesting point. Maybe working with a computer (a till, a barcode scanner, a stock checker, a multimeter) will be the thing that gets people scooped up and compliant first - even if you are using a work device, on a work network, on the business premises. If you want the $10 an hour: “gotta scan your ID, or you can’t activate the wafflegrill”
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?
Can’t apps and services just start blocking Linux and start specifically demanding Windows or Mac?
In principle? Yes. It could become a complete cryptographic attestation chain.
I don’t think we’re right on the edge of that rn. But years or decades from now? Who TF knows.
Imagine a world where everyone is connected via brain implants. Reality is fully augmented and thoughts are bought and sold while being carefully screened for violations. Only individuals with enough credits can be free in their own minds. What makes us human gets lost as we progress into the singularity.
I could easily see things like Discord, Meta, Google, Reddit, and Twitter doing this if it came to that, for instance.
And nothing of value was lost.
Oh well back to C64
If it does it will be the last thing it does
