A few age verification laws have been introduced across the United States, Brazil, and Europe, whether it’s related to social media or the dreaded target of all power users—open source operating systems like Linux. Today, I don’t want to focus on the laws or proposed regulations. Instead, I want to analyze the reaction of a small minority of Linux using people and the mistakes some of content creators when they cover it. As always when I cover topics like this, we want to be careful to avoid spreading urgency and fear. So at the end, I’m going to present some solutions and what you can actually do about it.
Who Spoke Out (Or Who Can’t?)
The first thing I want to touch on is the actual official statements from official open source operating systems. Or rather lack of responses. If you asked the average Linux Redditor, they would tell you many distributions have already responded. Of course, since new distributions are added every single day, we’re going to ignore the “mom and pop” distros and focus on the ones that have some degree of real influence.
As of time of writing, there’s only 2 major Linux distributions that have actually said something concrete about age verification: System76’s Pop!_OS and the server distribution Alma Linux. Some people may have extrapolated information from some others like Ubuntu and Fedora, but these are not concrete plans nor are they announcements about policies going forward.
This leads to the popular criticism about many open source projects that asks why they aren’t saying anything about age verification. You might hear someone criticize the Linux Foundation for not doing anything about age verification for example. Now, I’m not a lawyer, but I do know a thing or two about non-profit governance in the United States.
A while ago, I did some reading about why the Linux Foundation is not allowed to directly donate money to other open source projects like Mozilla, the GNOME Foundation, or the KDE e.V.. Here’s another question: why has the Linux Foundation remained silent about something like age verification? A vigilant viewer might notice that the Linux Foundation is filed under a 501(c)(6) and surely know that 501(c)(6) foundations are allowed to represent private interest or politics! However, a line many miss when reading financial statements like these is their Form 990’s Part 1 Summary and consider that the Linux Foundation is a business interest group.
EMPOWERING GENERATIONS OF OPEN SOURCE INNOVATORS.
Now people don’t want to hear this, but I don’t see how protesting age verification fits the goals of the Linux Foundation legally. People who run companies like Mozilla and the Linux Foundation need to carefully consider these things because while their public image and whether their activities fit their mission. Commenting about specific legislation could cause the Linux Foundation to lose their non-profit status and put their business in financial jeopardy.
This is why non-profits like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Mozilla Foundation are able to take a stand against age verification. They are uniquely equipped to legally challenge the regulation and it fits their mission statement in preserving digital rights unlike the Linux Foundation. The legal angle probably isn’t interesting to many people, but I want to challenge anyone to learn about how mired these legal processes are and why non-profit companies are held to a different standard compared a private entity like System76.
It May Not Even Matter
The other thing to keep in mind is many of these laws haven’t been passed yet, but they have only been introduced. That’s still not great, but that’s far from a helpless situation, because that means there’s work to be done. One of the reasons I personally have resisted mentioning anything about age verification at all is because of this. Laws may be introduced, but they may not mean anything all. Now this might seem very dismissive of the concerns of others, but I want to analyze what has happened in history before.
Not too long ago in 2020, we experienced a global pandemic that changed the way we work, our economies, and lives. One of the biggest concerns that emerged the following years was digitally tracking others with contact tracing as a countermeasure to stop the spread of COVID-19. At the same time, Apple and Google offered a system to detect whether someone came in close proximity to someone with the virus. Despite the white papers and measures these apps took, people raised very similar if not the exact same concerns about age verification.
Even during the initial rollout of these systems, I never have seen anything about digital contact tracing in every day life. Only two entities asked to see my vaccine card didn’t even scan it, it was just given a quick glance over and that was my doctor’s office and my job, both of whom already have substantial information about my real life identity anyway. Years after the pandemic, these systems still exist in our phones today, but they have remained dormant. They were dead on arrival because the systems were explicitly opt-in and required mass adoption to maintain being privacy friendly.
It’s possible that age verification will have no weight, just like contact tracing. It might just be a popup that appears on Steam that asks for your birthday and it’s going to become just as annoying as those cookie banners that appear on virtually every single website. As far as I can tell, the American and European versions of age verification are very broad.
This isn’t even accounting all the regulation that gets bundled in or the words that get changed. That makes figuring out how to respond effectively and corporately to these laws a nightmare when they haven’t even been finished yet. A joint Harvard/Yale study by Stephen Ansolabehere and Shiro Kuriwaki suggest that US Congressional decisions typically only vote in tune with the average American 45% of the time. So with this logic and assuming age verification is universally hated, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the President, all of whom have to agree. So since all of these bodies are politicians, that’s 30.25% with Congress, reduced to 16.3% with the House, and another 9.15% after the Senate.
This is grossly oversimplifying things and makes the bad assumption that all legislation has an equal chance of being passed, but in the US, 9/10 odds age verification will fail to pass in my country’s government is very contrary to what media outlets will tell you. As always with regulation, it’s inevitable that governments will hit that 9% and fail. We see this with recent legislation like Utah’s Senate Bill 7.3 banning on VPNs, but if the government can’t live up to enforcing such a law like somehow blocking every VPN and proxy, commercial or not, does the law really exist?
What Can You Actually Do?
This drives at the heart of the issue. The only solution to stop the advancement of age verification is not get on social media and furiously type but out in the real world and make meaningful political engagement. Protest every open source project or operating system you want, but at the end of the day, we all have to follow the law, so why not play a role in shaping it?
That leaves the most tried and true solution—writing a letter to your local politician. Because here’s another twist for most democratic countries: even if something is passed federally, the last line of defense is state laws, often which ignore or change what federal laws mean. Examples of include sanctuary cities, which in the current political climate operate against federal standards. There’s all kinds of ways enforcement can fail and drumming local resistance is part of the battle.
Learn How to Write Letters, Not Code
I’m not going to get into too much detail here, but I will say this much. While younger generations like Gen Z and Gen Alpha spend lots of time on the internet, to every prior generation, the internet is simultaneously a fantasy place where wizards (developers) cast arcane spells (to make apps) and the wild west where criminals roam unhindered. So here’s my starting list to write your letter to your politician:
- You need to make the assumption your correspondence is going to read by an intern, god forbid an AI, before it reaches the intended recipient.
- Keep it short and sweet. Politicians and their aides don’t have a lot of time.
- Make it look good. Learn how to use LibreOffice, ONLYOFFICE, or LaTeX to format a professional letter. Microsoft has a great website for this and if you like LaTeX, there’s Overleaf.
- Say who you are, whether a concern citizen or the pillar of a specific community, and why you are you writing what you are. Like resume writing, somebody might remember your letter if you say you collect bass guitars. How many people do you know do that?
Clearly state that you are against age verification and cite specific reasons why, appealing to the political biases of your representative.
- If they are right leaning, say that a federal age verification bill threatens to increase bureaucratic government spending towards the effort, unnecessary restrictions on small business, and takes away state freedoms.
- If they are left leaning, say federal age verification endangers at risk youth or threatens to take away the spaces where people share news, educational/health resources, or their personal lives.
To both parties, write how age verification strengthens tech companies by allowing them to choose the regulation they want and pass the blame off to the government. The reason many of them have bent over is because the alternative is allowing the government to write regulation for them. Leverage specific actions done by your representative and how they support your cause.
Lastly, you need to offer a concrete alternative. If not age verification, what instead? I would make the argument that the phrase “parents should parent their kids” is not enough and in some ways, downplays the role government can have, and can be off-putting to a reader/listener. The last thing people want to hear is somebody telling them how to do their job and that includes politicians, especially when said politicians might be parents themselves.
- If they are right leaning, say that nothing should be done to preserve the status quo. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. It’s to preserve traditional American values and the free market. It’s a way of the same message without outright saying it.
- If they are left leaning, suggest the effort goes towards educational resources to help minors and educators with the benefits and harms of social media and how they can protect themselves and others. The goal is to empower parents, zero to hero.
Owning The Message
Something to keep in mind here is this list is not comprehensive and these are all examples. The reason I didn’t include a letter template is because if the internet is getting overrun with AI slop, you bet some bozo mails AI slop and junk mail to your local politicians too. Make it your own. If you lack confidence in your writing skills, get started using an AI, but don’t expect it to replace your writing. Writing is not supposed to be easy, but AI is derivative of the work of others and a letter is about what you bring to the table.
This is an ongoing process. If you aren’t prepared to take steps beyond a letter, then there was no point in you writing to begin with. We’ve seen from the vitriol sent to developers and immediate violent reactions from online communities that being a keyboard warrior on social media isn’t the answer. It’s about meaningfully engaging with others in real life about the issue, not how much you can “thumbs down” someone on GitHub.
Why I Can’t Speak Out
Last but not least, I’m a sniveling armchair internet critic, but I’m also asking because I can’t. Since I choose explicitly not to use my real life identity, I am in the camp of one of those people who cannot write out to a governmental entity at the risk I’m identified. But I can beg all of you to and do so maturely. Many content creators have chosen this topic purely because it gets clicks and often use fear or anger to drive engagement.
Here’s a funny thing you can beg every streamer to do to waste the time of these age verification tasks: ask them to open their mouth and turn their head side to side very close to the camera. If enough streamers or YouTubers who complain with face cams, they can contribute to the fight by weaponizing their likenesses that are already scraped for AI training and public consumption.
On a more serious note, I have intentionally made the decision to separate YouTube from my personal/professional life. After seeing many channels devastated by demonetization, I have made the decision to never pursue YouTube in any professional capacity, not full time nor part time, so I have no financial incentive and all my upfront costs are covered by Patreon and Memberships. It might make me feel better if you give me money, but this measure is to keep me accountable, decline sponsorships to maintain my opinions, and keep making personal, quality content.
I don’t have a weekly news show that urges me to publish quick reactionary videos. I want my message to be thoughtful and as someone with a life, encourage others to do the same. At the end of the day, it’s how technology serves you, empowers you to make a better society, and survive all the nasty stuff big tech companies, their lobbyists, and politicians do to the rest of us.