Almost all “hacks” of modern mainstream software involve users being stupid.

If you hear about a “hack” of a major corporation or hospital or something, the things that is never reported is that it likely started with someone with more user permissions than sense opening a phishing email.

It’s a website that doesn’t require a user to report their age.

You don’t understand how this protects kids because you haven’t been taught to think like a monster. That’s okay. But I have had lots of training in child protection.

The way “grooming” online often works is to get the kid to a place where the predator can start blackmailing the kid, but that’s a process. That often starts on chat apps. Those can be in video games or social media platforms, etc. The predators identify kids in the apps and then will start chatting with them. It will start off innocuous, talking about the game or whatever, but eventually it turns into the predator trapping the kid into a secret (it’s always about secrets). The predator will ask the kid “Hey, want to see some porn?” or something like that. And of course a 13 or 14 year old kid is going to be interested in that. Then “don’t tell your parents” always follows. Once they have agreed to the secret, the trap is set. The predator brings the kid darker and darker porn and makes the kid feel more and more guilty and uncomfortable. Eventually it turns into, “Send me photos of your self or I’ll publish these chats” (or worse, like in person meetings).

This is why “This is the parent’s responsibility” is cruel bull shit. Parents can’t be everywhere all the time and these predators make sure they stay out of parents views. The parents are victims too.

Everyone that says “This isn’t about protecting the kids” is half right. It’s not really about protecting the kids, it’s really about protecting Meta and other developers from liability. Users love private messengers, and internet companies love them too. But it’s a problem for Internet companies because they are the dark corners that make the internet companies liable. And they do have a responsibility to protect users on their websites, and they can’t just claim “we didn’t know”, because they damn well know.

So, their solution is to require the OS to record the user’s age, even if that’s just “18+”. The websites can call the age from the OS, get the “verified age” (they really don’t care what “verified” means, that’s the OS maker’s problem) and then open their doors to the customer. (If the kid is using their parent’s account or what ever, the internet companies don’t care. They did their due diligence.) But if the OS returns “<18” then the websites can lock down the user’s account. They can automatically turn on parental controls, require a parent’s consent, etc. Most importantly for child protection, they can turn off or very strictly limit private messaging (all of the online problems start with private messaging). They can basically do a lot of the things they are doing now, just off loading the liability onto the OS maker. Which, personally, I think is better for the parents too. It’s much easier for parents to monitor the OS then it is for them to monitor hundreds of websites and games.

And Lemmy, Mastodon, and fediverse users (and especially hosts) should want this too. Hosts on the fediverse do not understand how much liability they are taking upon themselves (if they did, they wouldn’t be hosting).

The crash is going to be rough.

Linux Community: It’s Free Software. You can do what you want!

Also Linux community: BUT NOT THAT!

The funny thing is that by January 7, all the bros screaming “I’ll never use an OS that asks my age” will have switched to an OS that asks their age because they can’t go a week without their porn.

Pixel isn’t sold with GraphineOS. You have to install it yourself.

Are there any actual “GraphineOS” devices currently for sale anywhere?

(I know Motorola has some plans to roll out GraphineOS phones in the future, but this would probably complicate those plans if GraphineOS really prohibits Motorola from complying with laws.)

I think it’s going to start skyrocketing in global desktop use. Maybe not in the US, but globally lots of other countries have good reason to migrate away from US based software companies

The problem the predators would have if they are relegated to the “kid friendly” sectors is that those sectors are much better policed by users and the corporations.

It’s not really the public content that is the problem, the problems really come when a predator can lure a child into a private chat. That’s when the predator can start their process of grooming that eventually leads to blackmailing the child (grooming is a process and it’s damn evil and damn sinister). By relegating the users to “kid friendly” areas, the opportunity to pull kids into private spaces is greatly diminished.

Now, will the predators stop being predators? No. But if the platforms have strong child protection policies that make it more difficult for the predators, then they will move on to a website that has weaker policies. Which is just about the best an organization or platform can do, make the predators uncomfortable enough that they go hunt someone else’s kids.

Okay, for your ignorance, parents bare some responsibility but not all the responsibility.

Just like the parents didn’t bare all the responsibility with the Catholic Church abuses or the Boy Scout abuses, they also don’t bare all the responsibility for the online abuses. The providers of the service also share in that responsibility.

I know you don’t. And you don’t have to. No one is forcing you to care. No law anywhere threatens any legal liability on the user.

But it’s because providers of games and online platforms don’t care that governments are having to pass laws to force organizations producing these products to care.

(Which is also why Meta is pushing these laws so hard, so that it becomes someone else’s legal responsibility to care.)

Are you saying that you literally haven’t read any things else on this thread?

They are focusing on the platforms. That’s exactly why Meta, et. al., are pushing for these laws. To off load that responsibility.

And if you are blaming the parents then you don’t understand the problem.

It reeks of a coordinated agenda,

It is a coordinated agenda, just not a secret one like people want to think. It’s being pushed by Meta and a string of popular app makers and games to avoid having to be responsible for their own platforms.

Therefore, some Fediverse instances, may end up implementing age checking, or stopping altogether if they can’t afford the additional costs of age checking.

That’s a strange argument to me. That’s exactly what Meta is intending to prevent from having to do by pushing these laws. If countries and states pass laws like the California law specifically, then no fediverse instance will need to worry about age verification. They just ask the user’s browser to ask the OS. California’s version of the law would really help small businesses and small developers, because it puts all the child protection responsibility onto the OS.

Now, regarding the “kid friendly” limitation: if the Web gets limited to “non-adult content”… what’s “adult content” to begin with?

In this case, “kid friendly content” becomes “any content that the website wants to be responsible and liable for letting users that report being <18 have access to”.

My biggest frustration with the community is not that people don’t like the proposed solution but that

1. There is so much flat denial that there is actually a major online child predator problem, and/or
2. No one should be held responsible to fix it, and/or
3. no one is offering alternative solutions.

I’m really not upset with individual users here. I understand that you are removed from the problem and don’t understand it. I really don’t blame you personally. I have had training on youth protection and it’s not an easy problem, and just throwing the parents under the bus isn’t fair. When it comes to child predators, they are often just as much the victims as the kids are. (Yes, I mean that.)

I’m upset with the EFF. They don’t have an excuse for their ignorance. They’ve been taught the problem many times and just refuse to acknowledge it. (Red flag if there ever was one, if you ask me.) If they didn’t like the verification rules then they need to start proposing alternative solutions (which they don’t have).

If their goal is to find an excuse to declare you a terrorist then there are much easier ways to do that that are already available to them. This really isn’t an efficient way to do that.

And, as best as I’m aware, no age verification laws anywhere threaten any consequences for the user. The consequences are only for the OS makers.

(Granted, the California law, at least, could be read to say that it’s the entity installing the OS to confirm ages, not necessarily the OS maker. So for most Linux distros that would shift the user age verification responsibility completely to the user installing the OS, but I’m not sure how that would work out in courts or whether websites and applications would recognize that. It will probably never actually be an issue that is adjudicated.)