This was my understanding, but I really am not in the loop enough to say it with certainty, so appreciate the confirmation. I agree, I think we’re seeing from contributions made by people like Valve that there’s real value in requiring derivative work to give back to the community it drew from. But again, I’m really not super well informed. I just tend to pick GNU options when available.

I feel like there’s a lot of concern about more and more free software moving over to the MIT license.

I honestly don’t know the ins and outs, but it’s probably relevant to people concerned about it.

Honestly, in 2026 do you really think this won’t be subverted?

VPN to countries that don’t require identification. Done.

Kids have been buying accounts for years now. It isn’t new. See: WoW. This isn’t anything new, just a new market for it.

lol regarding holding anyone legally responsible. Good luck is all I can say. The US doesn’t prosecute firearms owners who claim a stolen gun that was involved in a crime, only in very clear (and especially stupid) cases. No chance this happens with social media accounts. Just none, on any wide scale.

And again, pretty easy to AI generate an ID these days… kids were doing this in the 70s and it was way, way harder back then.

And this is at the cost of mandatory handing of IDs to big tech that will inevitably leak. Are you comfortable posting a picture of your ID right here? If not, you should be no more comfortable handing your ID to Facebook.

I’m not willing up give up my right to privacy because someone else is a shitty parent, sorry. I’ll subvert it because it’s unethical.

Yakuake. Nothing major but a nice quality of life upgrade for terminal work.

A) It’s very unlikely to actually stop kids from accessing social media. VPN’s, purchasing blackmarket accounts that have already been verified, classic fake ID’s (in the age of AI generated images, no less). So they’ll just keep building profiles for them anyway (it’s already known they do this now for people not actually signed up with social media, their trackers are all over the web and it’s easy to build a profile without concerted effort against it). Why do we always think “this time for sure forcing abstinence will work!”? It never does.

B) In addition to not actually stopping building profiles on kids, it now hands them a goldmine of information on adults. Mandates it, even. Data leaks are going to get a lot more “fun”…

It’s not at all comparable. If I go into a library and get a book on fixing cars, the librarian doesn’t follow me around suggesting Joe Rogan.

Most people access their libraries via digital platforms like Libby as well these days. Unless you’re just going full Luddite and we’re just saying no digital access to anything at all.

I don’t see the value in the data being greater than the cost of administrating a patchwork of varied regulations across the globe.

This is a very strange position from someone posting in this community. You don’t think, even assuming no ill intentions, there’s any security risk in allowing big tech to access, and likely store, official identification? Data leaks happen all the time. If you wouldn’t publicly post your identification information, you should see the value in that data.

Easy block.

You may have a more personalized experience, but the front door of Youtube is… nauseating.

Is that really a good reason for banning its use for kids? Again, this is like shutting off library access because the stuff presented at the front is slop… my library presents slop at the front door, I don’t think that should stop kids from going inside.

I’d also point out at least my library doesn’t do any age verification or ID checks either.

Anyway, I cheer for any friction added to these tech companies because they are doing so much harm, so anything to slow them down.

I think this is cutting off your nose to spite your face though when it allows… mandates, rather, a huge collection of data. I’m not so sure big tech is really against this… early iterations of code to verify age were said to not store any data, but auditors found that to not be the case. That was walked back, but I find it very unlikely they won’t just do it again when there’s less scrutiny.

Especially since kids are likely going to just get on through backdoors anyway, we’ve likely done very little to stop data collection on them while handing them most adults on a silver platter. That’s in no way a score for the little guy.

I’m totally on board with fucking tech companies, I just don’t think this does it while simultaneously it fucks us.

I would love to see a platform curated with high quality content.

Nebula. It isn’t perfect, and it needs more creators, but that’s the closest I’ve come.

“Hey mom and dad can I use ‘historyTube’” “Absolutely!”. Easy.

Well, not if it’s banned as social media, that’s the issue.

Traditional Broadcasters have some standards.

Broadcasters did because they had laws restricting their content. Cable very much did not.

Think about the experience of going into a library or bookstore vs. YouTube, the content mix is not comparable.

My experience is that the stuff pushed by most libraries as their hot new items, things to read, general recommendations, are pretty much slop. Romantasy slop is a big genre all its own.

Which isn’t to say people can’t enjoy it, but it really isn’t much better than YouTube slop.

The algorithms , content scale, and access is another world.

Now that, I agree is an issue, but that’s just as true for adults as we’ve seen. I’d have less issue restricting how algorithms are pushed than mandatory ID… it would benefit all of society, not just kids, and it’s actually a positive improvement on privacy since it disincentivizes profile building.

Holy shit, that’s slimy even by their standards. It’s like they’re begging to be pirated lol.

The only real excuse for digital only is DRM free

And cheapness. Steam has always gotten away with this because it’s just plain cheap. Their distribution costs are way, way less per game and it’s easier for them to pass on savings, which I think is a big part of how they can push games for so cheap compared to most phyical media sources.

“Not doing an illegal thing” isn’t really an obligation in a sense anyone would understand that statement, but OK.

I should’ve guessed, honestly.

Youtube is a massive problem for boys. There may be a couple of educational things on there but it’s adjacent to awful recommended content.

So is it worth losing access to Veritasium, Extra History, Professor Dave Explains, countless sources for learning programming…? This is like banning kids from TV because Jackass exists. It’s always been parents’ job to help guide their kids towards media that is more wholesome and fulfilling rather than tripe.

True of books, too, by the way… the written word isn’t an automatically higher art. Pulp has always been a thing, and anyone who actually does do a lot of reading can confirm there is a lot of tripe out there right now in book form.

Read a book, find a mentor, stay in school.

Learning to use digital content is a big part of school. It isn’t the 70’s anymore. This is like pushing for abstinence only education… it is pretty much proven, from sex ed to drugs, not to work. You need to teach responsible use.

Go and give some kids free poisoned sweets and see how far that gets you.

I can’t think of a single analogous action in providing software for use for free aside from injecting malware, which I’m pretty sure is criminal? No?

I wouldn’t call “not intentionally being malicious” a responsibility anymore than following any laws is a real responsibility… responsibility here implies an active duty to do something, not really to not commit crimes. I really can’t think of any active responsibility any dev has for software they’ve put out there. It could literally cause harm to some hardware and they still really wouldn’t have a responsibility for anything as long as it isn’t (in fact that’s for good reason a common disclaimer for things that tweak hardware).

What did you have in mind as responsibilities a dev has?

Depends what counts as social media. YouTube could very much be implicated as a social media. Reddit/Lemmy obviously. There’s a ton of legitimately educational material on both platforms. What about Steam? With chat/friends/community function, isn’t that a social media? Where is the line drawn?

How well have these studies accounted for neuro-divergence in kids (something Europe has generally done a pretty poor job accommodating)? What about kids with certain disabilities that put them indoors often if not essentially always? Isn’t the isolation worse for their mental health?

Is there not some point at which you really do just have to depend on parents being parents? I accept that some state involvement is necessary sometimes, but this really feels pretty solidly in the purview of something that should be up to parental judgement.

No, it’s worse. Currently, if anything were to happen to my data, I could redownload it freely. If anything happens to your data with physical media, like the disc getting scratched and damaged, lost, or stolen, you’re just SOL.

Sure, if GOG goes belly up that goes away, but that’s what you’re stuck with in physical media the second you walk out the door with the disc.

That’s an exaggeration. If voting was meaningless, they wouldn’t bother with things like gerrymandering or other ways of restricting the vote.

I mean, while it wasn’t a good outcome for the people at large, Trump was very much not wanted by established power when he was first elected. And yet…

It’s creeping into parts of the EU. I can’t remember exactly what the loophole is, something to do with not explicitly advertising the product but rather having like a sponsored message from the makers of WonderDrug™ to ask your doctor about treatment for X condition, but I’ve seen them pop up here and there. I have my doubts the EU is going to stamp it out, but I hope I’m wrong.

GOG has managed to put out DRM free games though on a digital distribution platform. I can have my entire library backed up and it isn’t possible for them to nuke it in any way, as far as I know. It really isn’t a problem inherent to digital downloads, only the way some are trying to do it.