At least there’s some nontrivial additional challenges to make the jump, such as authenticating the user is on an approved OS, and the infrastructure for identity verification itself. I like this better than other age verification mandates because those make the latter the first step, fueling the growth of surveillance tech and the companies providing it as a service.
Forcing everyone to use an approved OS is draconian.
I agree, but my point is that it wouldn’t be that easy to do either. I am hopeful that a system where servers take the OS’s word for it that you are in a certain age category would not smoothly transition into one where they also need proof that the owner of the hardware cannot decide that category, and that the system working this way would be accepted as a long-term status quo like those age selection menus were, because it would be actually a bit more effective at stopping kids who don’t know how to reinstall an OS so legislators could plausibly claim they did something without extra changes.
If its on the OS at least there is just 1 thing to bypass I suppose is the main benefit I can see with that method. Still got the question of what is an operating system? Linux isn’t an operating system, its just the kernel.
Step 1: don’t worry you don’t even need to give it ID!
Step 2: now pretty much everyone has implemented this, we will require ID
Although if we put this all in the OS, as Linux users could we just replace the package? Could it be better than age verification per website
At least there’s some nontrivial additional challenges to make the jump, such as authenticating the user is on an approved OS, and the infrastructure for identity verification itself. I like this better than other age verification mandates because those make the latter the first step, fueling the growth of surveillance tech and the companies providing it as a service.
I don’t want an “approved OS”, I want to run my own customized Linux. Forcing everyone to use an approved OS is draconian.
This is part of the war on general purpose computation, which could and should be viewed as an attack on human freedom in general.
Cory Doctorow was talking about this over 15 years ago.
I agree, but my point is that it wouldn’t be that easy to do either. I am hopeful that a system where servers take the OS’s word for it that you are in a certain age category would not smoothly transition into one where they also need proof that the owner of the hardware cannot decide that category, and that the system working this way would be accepted as a long-term status quo like those age selection menus were, because it would be actually a bit more effective at stopping kids who don’t know how to reinstall an OS so legislators could plausibly claim they did something without extra changes.
If its on the OS at least there is just 1 thing to bypass I suppose is the main benefit I can see with that method. Still got the question of what is an operating system? Linux isn’t an operating system, its just the kernel.