I don't want to give the impression that I don't find the whole direction of travel concerning, because I do, but as I understand it, the requirement is that the system administrator assigns ages to the users on their system. That seems pretty reasonable to me, and maybe even like a good idea in some scenarios. As far as I know, we aren't talking about software that fights against the interests of the system owner - that's the admin. In fact, I think this might be a feature I would even want.
> but as I understand it, the requirement is that the system administrator assigns ages to the users on their system. That seems pretty reasonable to me
Why would it be reasonable for a government to use the power of law to enforce the design of an open source operating system developed by an international consortium of developers? The very fact they are even considering this is extremely suspicious.
I’m leaning that way, too. Achieving this ought to require a few conference calls between App Store principals. Flatpak and Snap? Sure. The protest and compliance disobedience would be unreasonable over a boring standards body, not a law which must be analyzed as a “framework”.
> but as I understand it, the requirement is that the system administrator assigns ages to the users on their system. That seems pretty reasonable to me, and maybe even like a good idea in some scenarios
Does it require exact age, or just a flag >=18 vs <18? It seems like this could be trivially met by something like a file /etc/userages, where if a login is missing from that file, it is assumed they are >=18 - and a missing file is equivalent to an empty file
You shouldn’t dismiss all libertarian points simply because some of them support libertarian agendas. Most HN commenters are fine with your two scenarios, but remember:
1. If kids could download cigarettes by circumventing age checks, would they?
2. If watching porn required obtaining an in-person ID check, other threads have indicated HN accepts it.
