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stravanasu

@ pglpm @lemmy.ca

Posts
17
Comments
87
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Oh No! Now A Federal Bill Wants OS-Level Age Verification for Everyone in the USA

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  • We surely need to send protest emails and letters to legislators and government representatives – as citizens did in EU for the "chat control" proposals – and organize protest marches, strikes, and so on.

    But yes, if the regime behaves more and more like a Russian state, rather than a democracy, and doesn't care about citizens' protests, then "violent uprising" becomes almost a moral imperative. "Democracy" means "government by the people", and it's we people who must make sure no one takes the government out of our hands; nobody else can do that for us.

  • "FOSS" and "GNU Linux" do not automatically mean "for the community" or "for human rights"

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  • I have only partially until now. But sadly it looks like we're entering times where choices regarding activism will become more important and inevitable. The pool with get larger. Any kind of support: money, time, developing, participating, promoting, legal...

  • "FOSS" and "GNU Linux" do not automatically mean "for the community" or "for human rights"

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  • Yes I don't support FOSS projects that aren't willing to engage in activism. But I don't shame them. That's exactly the point of my post. Rather than shaming people or projects who've made a different choice, I think it's best to find and focus on those who share one's choice, for mutual support, discussion, and planning. It's important to understand that FOSS and activism are two different things.

  • "FOSS" and "GNU Linux" do not automatically mean "for the community" or "for human rights"

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  • Regarding "pro human rights", what I mean is that software development can be (for some) a form of activism for human rights, just like it happens in the arts and in science.

  • "FOSS" and "GNU Linux" do not automatically mean "for the community" or "for human rights"

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  • Agreed, there's a whole spectrum. On my part I'd more properly say against giving too much power to corporations.

  • The reports of age verification in Linux are greatly exaggerated, for now

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  • Well said. In fact there's more than an ecosystem problem. We must understand that saying or using "FOSS" or "Linux" does not automatically mean to stand up for human rights, for the community, and against corporations. I've personally been under this gross misunderstanding, and I think other users might be too.

    If we read the comments in current debates about FOSS, Linux, and age verification, we can see that many developers and possibly also users make statements like "the developer has no obligation towards the community", "the law is the law, no matter what the community wants", "we must comply", and similar. It's important to realize that many developers work on FOSS not out of consideration for the community or for human rights. For them it's just one kind of software development. We may have projects that are FOSS and pro-corporations or pro-surveillance. The "F" in FOSS stands for freedom to modify and distribute the software by/to anyone in the community. But it doesn't stand for "software that promotes / stands up for general human freedom" or human rights.

    So for anyone who, like me, wants to use and promote software as an assertion of and a stand for human rights and against corporations, beyond the simple "software" aspects, it's necessary not to stop at "FOSS" or "Linux" but apply more scrutiny and a more careful choice.

  • Will we have to choose between privacy-friendly Linux distros vs legal Linux distros?

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  • I was very confused about this too. But now I realize that's not what "FOSS" means to everyone. There are developers that work with FOSS in the same way they could (or do) work for a corporation – note the many comments like "users don't have any rights to make demands of developers", "developers don't owe anything to the users or to the 'community'", and similar comments. Luckily there are also developers for which "FOSS" does mean what it means to you and me.

    Maybe there are other FOSS users that are under the same misunderstanding as I was. It should be made clear that "FOSS", per se, really means nothing else than "not requiring payments" and "with source open to the public". Any extra meanings depend on whom you're speaking to.

  • IEEE talking about fediverse

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  • The jury found tech firms treated addictiveness as a feature, not a bug

    No shit, Sherlock! 😮

  • Will we have to choose between privacy-friendly Linux distros vs legal Linux distros?

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  • I'm curious to see how it'll develop.

  • Surge in Systemd forks after the latest changes

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  • Indeed! As I wrote in the post, these are just examples that explicitly mention age-verification.

  • Birthdate field under discussion also in Arch Linux

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  • FYI Systemd v261, probably due in May, is the release planned to include the 'birthDate' field.

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  • You're absolutely right. And it's the same group of people pushing for this in all these places.

  • Surge in Systemd forks after the latest changes

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  • Absolutely touché! My Android is dying and I look forward to switching to GrapheneOS.

  • Surge in Systemd forks after the latest changes

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  • 🤝 Maybe "government parent brainwash them".

  • Surge in Systemd forks after the latest changes

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  • I don't see any difference with a law saying that you must have a camera installed in your house to potentially check what you do (or what your child does). It's my house, I decide whether I want a camera installed.

    If someone tells me they're going to put a camera but it's innocuous because it's off, or because I can decide whether to turn it on, or because I can point it in any direction I like (toward the wall), well they completely miss the point: it's my house, if I don't want a camera in there, then no camera goes in there. That's my basic right as a human being, and any individual or entity or government that tries to force something like this, automatically loses its legitimacy. Its "laws" are immoral and therefore void. I don't care being then branded as "anarchist" or as "criminal". Welcome are all "criminals" from the past that fought and broke unjust laws in order to fight for human rights. I'm not a Russian, bowing my head and complying. Better dead. My grandchildren should not grow up in such conditions.

    Likewise, my personal laptop is mine and I decide what does go and what doesn't go in it.

  • Surge in Systemd forks after the latest changes

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  • Personally I do not want to comply with the law. It's a law that violates my basic rights as a human being, and any tools that favours it or try to comply with it become tools that commit the same violations. My laptop is mine, I decide what goes in it, and nobody has any right to force any software in it, no more than they have any right to put a camera in my house to check what I do. When "laws" violate human rights, what counts is not what's the "legal" thing to do, but what's the moral thing to do.

    Today we would be in a Russia-like state if people had not actively resisted, broken, and refused to comply with unjust laws.

  • Surge in Systemd forks after the latest changes

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  • Amen!

  • Surge in Systemd forks after the latest changes

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  • 🤝 Well said. Not only normalizing the new boundaries, but in the case of software or hardware, even locking you into the new boundaries.

  • Surge in Systemd forks after the latest changes

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  • It doesn't work quite that way. Typically you have a sequence of very small changes, all "innocuous", that lock you more and more into the previous ones. When you suddenly realize that the cumulative change is bad, you also find it's very difficult to "move away from it". This is why it's important not to give away a single inch, from the very start.