517
Colorado and California age verification bills exempt open source operating systems
(www.gamingonlinux.com)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
Well that's literally what these laws are requiring. You can speculate on future laws, but you can imagine innumerable horrible futures. It's important to stay grounded and not get lost in the dooming. And I see nothing wrong with an optional feature that lets you set an age on a child's account. As long as it's something I control, then that's actually giving me more control over my hardware, not less.
Yes, there will be people pushing for more invasive methods. But those are the laws you should oppose. Not these. People tend to think in binaries. And they tend to lump everything called "digital id" into one bucket devoid of nuance or discernment.
If anything, lumping all digital id into one bucket without any nuance only helps the opponents of privacy. Simply giving the parents the option to enter an age is a perfectly reasonable policy. If you oppose that because you cannot recognize nuance and consider all id laws equivalent, then you're hurting your side. People see you appealing to privacy when opposing something that reasonable people will not see as a violation of privacy. Again, we're taking OS-level controls that actually give you more control over the machine.
You risk a "boy who cried wolf" scenario. You turn everyone against you fighting something that really isn't an invasion of privacy. Then when someone does actually try to pass a law mandating facial recognition be built into apps, people will ignore you as they already consider you an irrational radical.