Revise age verification terms for MidnightBSD

https://github.com/MidnightBSD/src/commit/529b708846e30e8eb4fcec8dfc23176ec6a74bcf

31•hpb42•21h ago

Comments

esseph•19h ago

This age verification stuff is insane.

Fringe loonies have too much power.

johnisgood•18h ago

I suppose it has to do with saving their asses? We probably have to thank the Government for this, too.

In any case, it is indeed crazy. If I were to live by this >10 years ago I would not know anything about Linux or BSDs. Or programming for that matter.

stonogo•15h ago

Meta is putting a lot of money into lobbying for these laws, presumably because it's easier to change laws than it is to fix their business model, and they're probably tired of getting sued for COPPA violations.

shevy-java•2h ago

This may make sense from their point of view, but from a user's point of view I do not understand why I would want my own operating system to spy on me so the government can get more data, which it may then hand over to others. Now the main problem is that governments become increasingly hostile to The People, but now downstream people suddenly act as surrogate-spy helpers, such as the MidnightBSD folks do. This is a simple case where people should globally reject criminal governments from spying on people.

carefree-bob•13h ago

Think of the children!!

spends time thinking of children having fun learning BSD

ducktastic•13h ago

I wasn't under 18 when I started playing with *BSD/Nix systems on my own, but how tragic that kids who would be drawn to understanding these systems are essentially 'outlawed' from learning them. As another HNer pointed out in a related post, I think this stems from not understanding the delineation between an OS/App/Platform.

michaelbrave•6h ago

not fringe loonies, big business, Meta and Palantir (and others) are financially pushing for it.

phendrenad2•19h ago

I hope they're serious about this. Start suing people in California who post screenshots of MidnightBSD for piracy.

rtcode_io•19h ago

They publicly map the free speech of the USA!

https://www.adl.org/resources/tools-to-track-hate/heat-map

shevy-java•2h ago

I guess free speech is age-restricted now. :)

If I were a kid, I would reject those attempts to age-gate restrict me. I actually wonder if that age-spying is in violation of free speech. Does free speech not hold valid for younger people? They are getting restricted here. I don't see how that is fair to them.

whalesalad•18h ago

I genuinely don't know why these small niche software projects are even bothering to address this. Literally no one cares.

WhyNotHugo•18h ago

It’s a liability for them. They’re a small project and someone who just hates open source community projects can sue them out of existence for non-compliance.

shevy-java•2h ago

That may be a rationale, but then they act to help governments spy on people. This is a no go. I understand that the government created that problem, but they should just refuse acting as proxy-sniffer for governments here. Who in his or her sane mind would want age-spying daemons to run on their systems? Next thing the BSDs will do is to support systemd ... then we can integrate the sniffing and call it systemd-kiddie-protector.c.

digitalsushi•1h ago

I wouldn't mind it getting fully tested in court, to be honest.

codazoda•9h ago

Is this an effective CTA?

What types of negative side-effects would there be from an “open source” application that was free, open, and restricted entirely by license? Rather than “we make no warranty” the license says “you may not use”.

I’ve also had a few products I’ve released on GitHub as public but never assigned a license, which probably means they are proprietary, unless GitHub TOS says otherwise.

I realize each of these is a unique situation.

shevy-java•2h ago

This is a huge problem. I won't use an operating system that comes with SpyID. I also could not care any less what any fake-rationale a government uses to spy on the people - it is simple illegal.

Then again, not so many use MidnightBSD, so ... not so many affected, right?

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Revise age verification terms for MidnightBSD

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