It’s a website that doesn’t require a user to report their age.

You don’t understand how this protects kids because you haven’t been taught to think like a monster. That’s okay. But I have had lots of training in child protection.

The way “grooming” online often works is to get the kid to a place where the predator can start blackmailing the kid, but that’s a process. That often starts on chat apps. Those can be in video games or social media platforms, etc. The predators identify kids in the apps and then will start chatting with them. It will start off innocuous, talking about the game or whatever, but eventually it turns into the predator trapping the kid into a secret (it’s always about secrets). The predator will ask the kid “Hey, want to see some porn?” or something like that. And of course a 13 or 14 year old kid is going to be interested in that. Then “don’t tell your parents” always follows. Once they have agreed to the secret, the trap is set. The predator brings the kid darker and darker porn and makes the kid feel more and more guilty and uncomfortable. Eventually it turns into, “Send me photos of your self or I’ll publish these chats” (or worse, like in person meetings).

This is why “This is the parent’s responsibility” is cruel bull shit. Parents can’t be everywhere all the time and these predators make sure they stay out of parents views. The parents are victims too.

Everyone that says “This isn’t about protecting the kids” is half right. It’s not really about protecting the kids, it’s really about protecting Meta and other developers from liability. Users love private messengers, and internet companies love them too. But it’s a problem for Internet companies because they are the dark corners that make the internet companies liable. And they do have a responsibility to protect users on their websites, and they can’t just claim “we didn’t know”, because they damn well know.

So, their solution is to require the OS to record the user’s age, even if that’s just “18+”. The websites can call the age from the OS, get the “verified age” (they really don’t care what “verified” means, that’s the OS maker’s problem) and then open their doors to the customer. (If the kid is using their parent’s account or what ever, the internet companies don’t care. They did their due diligence.) But if the OS returns “<18” then the websites can lock down the user’s account. They can automatically turn on parental controls, require a parent’s consent, etc. Most importantly for child protection, they can turn off or very strictly limit private messaging (all of the online problems start with private messaging). They can basically do a lot of the things they are doing now, just off loading the liability onto the OS maker. Which, personally, I think is better for the parents too. It’s much easier for parents to monitor the OS then it is for them to monitor hundreds of websites and games.

And Lemmy, Mastodon, and fediverse users (and especially hosts) should want this too. Hosts on the fediverse do not understand how much liability they are taking upon themselves (if they did, they wouldn’t be hosting).

There are several problems with the charlatans.

1. if you haven’t taken a science class since high school, then their advice often right. I’m amazed at how quickly the medical pseudo-science that flipped politically in my life time. I was raised in a deep red conservative Christian community and I don’t remember anti-vaccines ever being a thing for my community (we definitely had our issues, just not that one). The medical pseudo-science thing back then was firmly in the far left liberal sphere. The anti-vaxx movement was a hippy-liberal thing. (I’m not really sure when that flipped.)

2. The medical industry -including academia- is very much at fault in burning trust. There are many instances of the medical industry intentionally withholding treatments because a different treatment made them more money. Or doctors over prescribing in order to charge insurance companies more money.

3. A lot of what RFK jr says. Starts off good. He’s all like “Hey, we medicate too much. We should all focus on eating healthier and exercising. That’s what the government should encourage.” And even I’m like, “Yeah, okay. I agree.” Then he goes on to say “And that why you should shove a bowling ball up your butt.” That’s when he loses me.

I’m an environmental engineer and environmental scientist and I specialize in industrial hazmat waste issues, but I recognize even I’m a bit out of my professional lane on this.

But if you were to identify specific “toxins” that you are interested in “cleansing” there are often methods to do that. But first, I would recommend talking to a health professional. And those cleanses are going to vary significantly based on the toxin of interest.

But your best general “cleanse” is to eat more green leafy vegetables and exercise regularly. And feel free to drink a 4oz glass of milk a couple times a week.

If micro plastics were a problem then we should expect to see rapid increases in cancers in younger adults.

Handed a note

Huh. No shit.

Yeah the dude is really wrong.

Your body is good at filtering out hydrophilic toxins. But for just about every other toxin… Not so much. Most hydrophobic toxins and other toxins, like heavy metals, VOCs, pesticides, micro plastics, etc., are man made and your body hasn’t had millions of years to evolve natural filters.

The crash is going to be rough.

I wouldn’t mind if your drug dealer didn’t sell drugs to kids.

Linux Community: It’s Free Software. You can do what you want!

Also Linux community: BUT NOT THAT!

You are going to get downvoted to hell on this platform, but you aren’t wrong. You aren’t alone though. There are at least two of us that can think rationally about this.

The anti-California age law reaction in tech-bro internet circles is really irrational.

Well, very possibly.

That’s actually a funny consequence I hadn’t thought of. A media company could go to a pirating site and then file a police report claiming neglect of child protections. That could really start to spiral quick…

You’ll get age-gated in a heart beat.

The funny thing is that by January 7, all the bros screaming “I’ll never use an OS that asks my age” will have switched to an OS that asks their age because they can’t go a week without their porn.

Pixel isn’t sold with GraphineOS. You have to install it yourself.

I think it’s more likely that soon China will start heavily pushing out a forked version of Linux on cheap fully home-built PCs. Then it’s basically game over for American software companies.

I think it’s going to be higher than that. I think a lot of counties will start rapidly migrating away from American software companies, and the only alternative is Linux. China will soon really start pushing out their own fully home-grown cheap PCs to the world with some flavor of Linux as the OS. American software companies won’t be able to compete.

Globally, I bet the desktop marketshare for various flavors of Linux is pushing 90% by 2040.

Are there any actual “GraphineOS” devices currently for sale anywhere?

(I know Motorola has some plans to roll out GraphineOS phones in the future, but this would probably complicate those plans if GraphineOS really prohibits Motorola from complying with laws.)

I think it’s going to start skyrocketing in global desktop use. Maybe not in the US, but globally lots of other countries have good reason to migrate away from US based software companies

I didn’t understand your disagreement. Yes just like a bar shouldn’t be responsible for a person that gets plastered drunk after they leave, Facebook shouldn’t be responsible for the actions of a predator that goes to a porn website to lure kids. Just like the Catholic Church shouldn’t be responsible for a public school teacher that rapes her students at school. The only times any of these organizations are responsible is when the abuses happen while using their services.

I don’t get why this is controversial.

I can’t speak for the military’s recruiting practices. Yes, I fully agree that the military’s recruitment practices are very predatory, and should be reigned in. Politically, I personally think “enlistment” shouldn’t be an option at all. It should be random draft. Every year the military should tell Congress how many new recuits they need, and Congress should approve a draft of 18 year olds for that many new recuits. The draft should be random, with no deferments or other ways out of service other than health reasons as determined by a military physician. (But that’s way off topic.)

The problem the predators would have if they are relegated to the “kid friendly” sectors is that those sectors are much better policed by users and the corporations.

It’s not really the public content that is the problem, the problems really come when a predator can lure a child into a private chat. That’s when the predator can start their process of grooming that eventually leads to blackmailing the child (grooming is a process and it’s damn evil and damn sinister). By relegating the users to “kid friendly” areas, the opportunity to pull kids into private spaces is greatly diminished.

Now, will the predators stop being predators? No. But if the platforms have strong child protection policies that make it more difficult for the predators, then they will move on to a website that has weaker policies. Which is just about the best an organization or platform can do, make the predators uncomfortable enough that they go hunt someone else’s kids.