California introduces age verification law for all operating systems, including Linux and SteamOS — user age verified during OS account setup

https://www.tomshardware.com/software/operating-systems/california-introduces-age-verification-law/

Here's another article on the subject, perhaps a response to the previous link. It talks about the dangers of age verification.

https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/scientists-warn-against-crappy-age-verification-if-implemented-without-careful-consideration-the-new-regulation-might-cause-more-harm-than-good/

Thanks for those two posts @Nezbit! Very weighty and important stuff, not only wrt online safety and privacy but also in respect of privacy and security generally (IRL) and civil and human rights, especially freedom of speech/expression and ultimately, freedom and democracy. All that is already not so much under threat as under vicious attack. Even western governments are increasingly acting like wannabe autocrats.

I don't want to politicize the board, so I will only say this:

We are one very small step away from a full blow global authoritarian regime - and if you think it's not possible, all you need to do is look at what is happening in the UK with 12,183 arrests recorded in 2023 for posts on social media. That’s roughly about 33 arrests per day! The writing is on the wall for everyone to see.

And when/if that happens, all the tools needed for mass surveillance and control are already in place - because WE let that happen (as always, with the excuse of safety).

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety - Benjamin Franklin

You've hit the nail on the head I'm afraid to say, Jorge. We are indeed only a very small step away from a fulll blown global authoritarian regime, thanks to the tech oligarchs and the ignorance and even gross stupidity of ordinary internet users who have so blindly used everything that US Big Tech threw at them and who sold their privacy and security cheaply, instead of using all means available to use privacy focused alternatives.

Mass surveillance is already effective, especially so with the widespread use of Big Tech so-called AI chat bots.

All this is precisely why I have been so passionate about online security and privacy for a long time and over the years myself have moved increasingly to Linux - Ubuntu in particular as it's UK based rather than US - and privacy focused apps such as those provided by the Swiss based Proton eco-system of apps. Windows has been relegated to minor usage with a minimised install that cripples all of its spyware/ spy functions.

Linux now accounts for about 90% of my computer use, further protected for online use with VPN, E2E encrypted email, TOR network for most of my browsing - this last almost never from within Windows actually - and more.

Almost ancient history though it can be verified - During the height of COVID, Australian Police were physically assaulting and arresting anyone not wearing a mask.
The current NZ PM who left his prior job with air NZ under suspicion of underhanded dealings with Arabian nations, is pushing AI surveillance. The prior Australian PM and his sidekick Dutton who has been likened to Mussolini, fired Government staff who said anything on their own personal pages about their government. Yeah, it is everywhere Jorge.

Hardly new or even news, alas. One just has to look at the continuing Oz treatment of indigenous affairs, and the current NZ govt.'s policies towards indigenous Maoris. Racist fascists all, who'd be only too happy to 'join the club' of a totalitarian global state, alas.

And look at the 'Evil Empire' itself and what it's doing internally under the 'orange baby' - the catalogue is too long for here, alas!

Anyone who can't smell the coffee yet, as it were, has to be perfectly blind, deaf, and dumb - in both senses of the latter term - and really needs to wake up, get up, and stand up and be counted. Go with privacy software now while you still can!

You are correct.

Sounding like a true luddite which I am not, though I posses some traits, because I do look at everything new and marvel at humankind's creations, I will say that I think we were better off in some ways last century.

It would be funny if it was not horrendous, that every 'look at me' phone selfie fanatic used to seek 15 minutes of fame and now they seek 15 minutes of privacy.

Mankind's creations - I don't speak PC "Newspeak". Marvel at what?! 10,000 years of wars/butchery; Einstein's crap leading to the nuke; the holocausts of indigenous populations on the American continents and the Caribbean, Australia, Africa and elsewhere; the catalogue could be endless. There is not one achievement even in the arts that could make up for the shite that European etc. Christianity inflicted on our world. Modern humans have become nothing less than a festering cancer on the face of this planet - destroying the host. Yes, fine achievements, no? The impending totalitarian global regime that the masses seem too blind to see coming? Another fine one! As a species, humans are singularly unintelligent - most insects even would rank higher.

Would we really be better off in the last century? No. We'd only be better off before we crawled out of the trees!

If only those '15 minute fameseekers' would seek privacy! Sadly, they are the passive majority that just lets things happen. Idiots all.

@Nexter

This might be one of the few posts I will make for quite a while so I hear what you're saying, and what marvel - well we are in different countries communicating with ease so that is one. I agree the horrible ones are just that but there are some good ones.
Take care

@BassdudeNZ - As I implied in my previous, I don't consider the "positives" to remotely make up for the negatives. What's so marvellous about being able to easily communicate across countries/the seas/whatever? We don't need it, it's not essential - what is essential is food, water, shelter. It happens to be *convenient* in modern society, that's all, nothing to marvel at.

What's so good? My friends live all over the Globe. If I used my cellphone to call instead of Whatsapp I would be in debt. Emailing important documents, in my case a will to a sibling after parental death when they were phone uncontactable at one point..
Perhaps bad outweighs good, I am simply using it for the better ones now. That's me.

Anyway. All the best.

Well, unless you and your friends/family are indigenous to where you/they live, or live in Europe, you're all living on occupied/stolen lands as it were, just as Israelis live on stolen and occupied land, i.e., Palestine. In the past, such communication utilities wouldn't have been needed - as I said, convenient but nothing to marvel at. And yes, the bad does outweigh the good by an astronomical value.

If there is anything to marvel at, it is the natural world, especially other species. Take one of the most intelligent land mammals, wolves. They had the intelligence - at any rate, an elite among them - to figure that it was a much easier living to live off the scraps left by humans than to take their chances with the hunt. Not only that, they then domesticated themselves - they themselves, not imbecile humans! - and moreover evolved some form of rudimentary language that dumb humans could roughly understand - i.e., barking. Dogs are vastly more intelligent than humans, and that is something truly to be marveled at.

Assuming everything you say is correct and all bad, being completely objective, you are communicating with me here on a message board on something that is mostly "bad", you are a forum moderator on several forum platforms on a system that is mostly 'bad' communicating with people that aren't indigenous on a platform and system that is mostly 'bad'... you have to ask, if you dislike it and it is that bad, why put yourself through that much pain?
I know everyone has a capacity for masochism, but if I felt that strongly, I couldn;t, I'd find another pastime.

Really, this kind of near-polemic is always the last resort when someone runs out of sensible, rational arguments.

I was born into this kind of society, in this era, and have to use the tools available to me. Simple as that. Nothing to do with pastimes either.

Anyway, we have strayed much too far off the topic of this thread already, so let's make an end of it. And to get back to the topic, you're evidently a first rate example of someone who lacks the insight to protect his online privacy and security instead of giving away *your* data, what with using e.g. WhatsApp. Ah well, so you will be one of the people who facilitate the totalitarian surveillance state...