Software changes for compliance with age-verification laws are being pushed a bit everywhere in Linux-development; for example:
In Systemd, already merged.
In xdg.desktop.portal (a portal frontend service for Flatpak and other desktop containment frameworks), still open.
In Arch Linux, still open.
In Freedesktop.org, still open.
It’s interesting that it’s the same small group of people behind these pull requests, and that discussion threads in them have been locked owing to a great amount of negative criticisms.
They say “we have to comply with the law”. Which also means that if “the law” in the future will require proper verification, handling to 3rd-parties, or whatnot, then they will comply.
Well, it’s their right to. They don’t owe anything to anyone, and are under no obligation to report to users or to the community, nor to pay heed to anybody’s wishes.
If things proceed in this direction, we users may at some point have to choose between privacy-friendly Linux distributions or legal Linux distributions. People who, like me, are worried, need to start thinking about concrete actions to take before it’s too late: where to develop such distros? which channels to download and distribute them from? And so on. (And of course, more generally we need to write and protest to politicians, organize protest marches, go on strike, refuse to comply…)
It’s good to remind to those who keep on repeating the words “legal” and “illegal” that for example Nelson Mandela was, technically speaking, a criminal who did and promoted illegal activity. This happens when laws become immoral.
I don't live in California, but I was one of the many who wrote to EU parliament members against the chat-control law proposals, and participated in other local activities about that.
I'd be happy to write to the lawmakers in California. I suppose my email would immediately go into their spam folder.
I don't think it's unproductive at all. Positive changes and resistance to negative changes are caused by many, extremely different and complex factors, one of which is voiced discontent at all levels. It's a chain of pressures. Some elements press on other elements which are not the final target, but this pressure makes them in turn exert even more pressure closer to the target. Edit: take for instance the Montgomery bus boycott – was the bus company responsible for the law? shouldn't the black people have done the boycott then?
Without such internal pressures, positive changes may fail. History shows examples over and over (a good read is the historian Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence). I'm sure that if it wasn't me posting stuff like this, it'd be someone else, and maybe sharing a much less polite post.
Also, I think that this kind of moderation ends up giving a very false picture on the forums, as if everyone discussing there doesn't really mind about the topic.
I think developers can do something about it. They don't want to, maybe for obvious reasons, and I respect their choice. But there is a choice.
Nobody in the middle. No server storing anything. No company analyzing anything
[...]
In deferred mode, it works just like regular email. Meaning your contact doesn’t need to be online when you send the message. Your contact will get it automatically once they come online.
So I can't send a message while my contact is offline, then go offline myself, and expect that my contact will receive it when they go online? This is quite limiting.
How is PeerBox different from Delta Chat?
In principle I agree with you, pacific discussion and democracy should be the way to go. But it seems that "discussion" doesn't lead anywhere these times. Politicians do whatever they like (or what lobbies tell them to do), without checking if the majority of the population really agree with some decisions. A developer does whatever he likes, without bothering about the more or less pacific feedback he gets on github. Nobody really seems to want to have a discussion. Well guess then what the "mob" does at some point: they don't care about discussions anymore either, and they do as they please too.
I fear that riots will start on a larger scale. Even if the context today is different, the situation reminds me somewhat of what happened with the 1981 riots in Toxteth, in Brixton, and other previous riots. Unjust or misused laws; deafness of authorities about discontent; innocent and not-so-innocent people getting hurt.
I understand. Be aware that this can be quite a limiting factor, more than you think. The need to think about home servers starts to clash with the statement that
It was built from day one to be usable by anyone, with zero tech background required.
If you visit, say, the website of the American Association of Physics Teachers or similar associations, you can read their complaints, protests, and alarming messages about cuts and bad policy changes in the education system. So clearly laws like these are not truly targeted at the well-being of children. Fu*king invest on education of children and adults instead.
We forget that there's no just law, there's also morality. And sometimes they are against each other. And we must make a choice.
Thank you for the explanation. But I don't understand how it can work if:
The message needs to be somewhere in between. This is a situation that occurs quite often when you message with people in very different time zones.
