Whenever you hear "ban for kids" on the internet, read in reality "ID collection by a sketchy third-party company that will definitely use it or leak it or both for every adult."
Because that's what this truly means.
Also, it doesn't even help the kids.
#AgeVerification #Privacy #MassSurveillance #Authoritarianism
As I've said before, it's hard not to read this mass surveillance/censorship bullshit as our deeply reactionary governments getting the faintest whiff that an unchecked internet severely interferes with their ability to propagandize and decided the internet had to die.
The UK and US in particular are absolutely speed-running this bullshit (with the EU, Australia, and South America not too far behind).
#Privacy #FreeSpeech #Censorship #DigitalRights #Internet #SocialMedia #AgeVerification #ClientSideScanning #UK #UnitedKingdom
RE: https://social.openrightsgroup.org/users/openrightsgroup/statuses/116205495518019401
The UK wants to put age verification on VPNs[1][2] I'm looking forward to them going toe to toe with mullvad, or how they plan to ban Tor and I2P and yggdrasil and meshtastic
#UK #UnitedKingdom #FLOSS #Privacy #Anonymity #VPN #Mullvad #Tor #I2P #Yggdrasil #Meshtastic #Censorship #AgeVerification
What I want from the modern web is to be treated like a kid 13 or under.
Don't ask me to agree to one-sided terms of service, don't send me marketing spam, don't track me, don't make me constantly hypervigilant against attempts to appropriate my money/identity/attention by pickpocketing my consent.
My leading assumption is that any app that wants to know my age means to do me harm.
This week's Linux and FOSS news:
LINUX NEWS
Ubuntu, Fedora, Linux Mint Eye Age Verification Amid California Law Backlash:
https://9to5linux.com/ubuntu-fedora-linux-mint-eye-age-verification-amid-california-law-backlash
(Seems like a new era has begun, even Linux isn't fully immune to the invasion of digital freedom, but we're fine for the most part, we can just lie about our age because we aren't required to provide photo ID or selfie unlike on some of the normie platforms. And even if another law comes out requiring Linux too to ask for a personal id, they can't do much to actually enforce it on the thousands of volunteers)
(Flathub and Snap Store having to comply is a much bigger deal though, since those are corporate entities (or at least it's planned to become one in case of Flathub, I wonder if they still stick to their plans after all of this), they might actually be forced, to query age brackets from the OS for now, but pretty likely to ask for photo ID or selfie in the future when the other age verification laws currently pending (Texas, New York, Brazil, Canada, etc.) will be accepted. Of course, it can also be circumvented by using the repos of a distro which doesn't comply, download app binaries from source code repo Releases page, compiling from source (at least from repos hosted on Codeberg, GitHub/Microsoft might comply), downloading from AppImageHub (which is community-maintained afaik) etc., but it still sucks to lose two of the largest software repos (even if I'm not a fan of Snap Store and Snap in general for "ideological" reasons))
Linux Mint shows off its new lock screen/screensaver:
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/03/linux-mint-cinnamon-lock-screen-screensaver
Arch Linux Releases March 2026 ISO:
https://debugpointnews.com/arch-linux-iso-refresh-march-2026/
AerynOS update boosts atomic update speed and adds WiFi-friendly installs:
https://alternativeto.net/news/2026/3/aerynos-update-boosts-atomic-update-speed-and-adds-wifi-friendly-installs/
Say goodbye to Microsoft Windows 11 and hello to Nitrux Linux 6:
https://betanews.com/article/say-goodbye-to-microsoft-windows-11-and-hello-to-nitrux-linux-6/
Bazzite gets a big update with KDE Plasma 6.6, Mesa 26.0.1 and more:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/03/bazzite-gets-a-big-update-with-kde-plasma-6-6-mesa-26-0-1-and-more/
(more Linux and FOSS news in comments)
#WeeklyNews #News #Linux #LinuxNews #AgeVerification #LinuxMint #FosseryTech
Re-posting https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/19520282
Let’s be absolutely clear here: The explosion of people being comfortable coming out as some stripe of LGBTQ+ has everything to do with an open internet where youth were not restricted from finding out about information related to how they felt inside. Instead of being made to feel like strangers in their own skin, with a world telling them that people like them didn’t or shouldn’t exist, they instead found community and self-love through internet forums and information which allowed them to pursue full, healthy lives as adults.
This “protect the children” malarkey is one more way for the religious groups who oppose LGBTQ+ culture to “protect the children” by restricting access to this kind of information, reducing their ability to find it in their formative years, in the name of protecting them while actually stunting their personal growth.
It extends beyond sexuality as well, although that is the most obvious since many religions are deeply censorious regarding sex.
It also affects subjects like atheism, as the various religious cultures generally do not want people contemplating the idea that there isn’t a god, especially not while they’re young, they want you long indoctrinated into belief before you can explore different ideas.
Further, when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, everything I knew about drugs was literally old wives tales meant to scare kids away from drugs, and then the internet came around and suddenly there was a boom of actual, verifiable scientific information about drugs so if you wanted to experiment with drugs, you knew what you were getting into. I once had a conversation with a girlfriend who was a bit older than me about her experiences with LSD as a teen, and she admitted that at the time she really didn’t understand on any scientific level what was happening or what the nature of hallucination was, she just knew she was having fun and seeing crazy shit.
This is a backdoor to restricting access to important information that youth need to have access to for making healthy decisions for themselves sexually, religiously, and in terms of what substances they put in their bodies.
The birth of the internet gave us a beautiful period where people could grow up with access to accurate, verifiable, worthwhile information that helped them navigate and understand the world they were growing up in and who they were within that world.
This kind of legislation intends to snuff out that openness and accessibility which led to increased openness and acceptance of LGBTQ+, atheism, and safe drug use (including the understanding that some illegal drugs like marijuana and LSD are probably safer than legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco).
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