Skavau

Right, but in this case, the parental controls just wouldn’t be doing their job. I mean, you’re right—there’s nothing you can do about that. But if I’m turning on a setting to enable a parental control and it doesn’t enable the parental control, then I’m 1) complaining about Microslop in the case of Windows, or 2) switching to a different distro in the case of Linux. Again, I’m against the idea of government-mandated on the OS side. I’m undecided on the website side of things.

Well if it’s not mandated (on the OS side that you refer to) then sure.

That’s interesting. I’m in America and, unless it’s FOSS, I definitely 100% do not trust a government-commissioned application that needs to see and manage all of my home’s network traffic in order to work. Especially not right now.

I mean it would be opt-in. Me and you wouldn’t ever get it and websites and developers wouldn’t be burdened by it. That’s the point.

No problem with your excerpt there either.

I meant there would be no way to stop any OS from just waving users through and automatically converting their account into an ‘adult account’, or just asking users “Are you 18 yes/no”. How many variations of Linux are there now?

More significantly, if this kind of capability becomes an expectation for your general usage OSes to have, then that’s less incentive for some company to come in and try to capitalize off of it and charge $12.99 per month, and then still have incentive to collect and sell data on which sites are being visited. I mean, you can be reasonably sure that Microsoft is gonna do that too, but that would be another reason to switch to a Linux distro that doesn’t do that.

I’d be in favour of the government commissioning and funding this and making it free-to-access for parents.

But even if it happened purely at the OS level, it would be laughably unenforceable at best.

Essentially, I’m confused why the world gave up so quickly on parental controls (not really confused—the alternative provides more surveillance capability).

I can easily imagine a piece of software parents can download, for free, that if installed would basically function akin to a virus on someone’s computer - it blacklists much of the internet and is updated and maintained by a company that updates the allowed sites and banned sites regularly. It could not be turned off. If it crashes, is ended by force, it automatically reloads - and any attempts to remove it sends emails or text messages to the owners (the parents) who would know something is up. It could be turned off only by the parent putting in a specific password to disable it, and if they forgot, they would have to phone the company to get it reset.

Any responsible parent would install this on the phones and computers of their kids and it would do everything they need.

Whether it should be government-mandated is one question, but it seems more like this “it’s the parent’s job, not the OS’s” has become a tagline that people just repeat rather than really thinking through it.

People usually repeat it for calls for checks on online platforms, not just within the scope of OS - but its primarily stated because people, quite fairly, don’t want to see websites having to shut down, or them losing access entirely, or losing access without handing over private data because of parents inability to control their childs access to the internet.

It was overall, less active than the Fediverse.

I think you can reasonably blame the lack of features here, honestly. I’m not saying if they had them they would have challenged Reddit, but they’d have been much more active. Community moderators almost certainly lost interest when they realised they had no real control over their community, and the longer the time elapsed with no tools to do so - the more drifted away leaving abandoned communities where AI and bots and trolls move in - compounding it even further.

They also, on day 1 of their community launch, allowed day 1 old accounts to make communities. Even if each account could only moderate 2 communities, that wasn’t smart at all.

A Reddit-styled site where AI handles community moderator decisions isn’t reddit. Communities aren’t communities, they’re just hashtags.

Indeed, but zero mod tools other than “delete post” 2 months in was genuinely laughable. To be frank, it should’ve launched with proper moderation: delete posts, ban users, sticky posts, filters for post-types etc. This is standard stuff that users shouldn’t even have to haggle for.

If they gave community moderators proper tools to help them here and put up walls - they could’ve mitigated a lot of this.

Many OS here aren’t made by companies. They can all easily just be forked and edited to immediately wave people through any hypothetical age checks, moreover any website could just ignore it and wave everyone through.

I doubt you would even get “the bulk of them”. Again, people are saying “it’s just a yes/no tickbox bro”. For now. You cannot be naive enough to think it won’t change. And the absurdity of it too. Forcing something someone may program for fun to have a specific feature.

Trying to get every site that offers mixed content, or could do so to implement recognition of all of this is herding cats. It’s completely impossible without a walled internet. Moreover, there’s just no way a OS asking if you’re 18 is going to be accepted. It just isn’t. The expectation will be that they verify your age properly.

It’s not just a privacy issue. Regulatory capture is a problem too. It encumbers small services to the point where they can’t afford to exist, and the only winners are the walled gardens. And it’s also logistically an impossible thing to attempt to regulate at scale.

Sure. For now. But in any case, aren’t they legally viable if someone complains?

The effort from a Linux team here would amount to little more than a “are you 18 yes/no” and there’s no way that would be considered good enough down the line if not now.

It seems obvious to me that, invasive as it is - an OS-level “are you 18 yes/no” check at installation would not satisfy the “protect the children” crowd at all, nevermind too that immediately when/if it goes into action - every single user would suddenly have their OS downgraded to the kiddy-level unless they declare their age.

I think these are good ideas speaking broadly, but are quite extensive in terms of implementation and getting them right.

Organization would be mutual. Moderators of each have to approve to join and remain in the hierarchy, though the “initial structure” of the community could be set up by admins I suppose. The sub community inherits “global” rules from their parent communities, but can have their own rules as well.

What do you mean by this part? That if I as a mod of [email protected] incorporated another community into this hierarchy they’d essentially be a feeder community and I’d effectively be a mod of that community?

It’s not karma farming there in many cases, it’s just trying to support the Fediverse.

What are your ideas?

I’d like you to realize that “the USA who is the least likely country to implement these laws” is literally the opposite of current reality.

In comparison to Europe/UK/AUS which is far further along this road (and implemented social media age requirements), absolutely. Also, apparently it’s just a checkbox as far as this particular California law goes.

It is a concern, I just don’t know how it’s meaningfully enforceable at scale. Just like OSA. What do you want me to do about it personally?

I never supported the idea.