California Should Have Abandoned So-called 'Age‑Verification Laws', Not Make Exemptions (for Now)
If any lessons are to be learned from the DMCA [1, 2, 3, 4] and its evil sisters in other nations/continents, it is that concessions which "lubricate" evil laws will come to bite later.
C&C (not command and conquer, California and Colorado) aren't solving issues, they are trying to 'shelve' potent critics and go ahead with sinister and utterly useless (hard to enforce, easy to misuse, e.g. for censorship) so-called "laws" like California's Digital Age Assurance Act. Appeasement in this domain isn't commendable. The GAFAM front group EFF (we'll have a long series about it in the future, the EFF does not protect speech but profits from pretending that it does!) has just called it a "Privacy Nightmare" (not censorship nightmare) and explained: "We all want young people to be safe online, but we don’t need to trade everyone's digital rights to achieve it. These new restrictive mandates are used to justify government-led censorship and expanded surveillance. That's no accident."
At least their summary mentions "government-led censorship"; in practice it's corporate-led censorship, but set pedantic attention to small details aside... for now. What the EFF became is what some online circles would dub "controlled opposition" (controlled by who? Check the EFF's biggest sponsors).
The folks in the "Linux" camp (not Software Freedom camp) keep talking about "Linux" while mostly overlooking the key issues as they pertain to freedom. In a sense, they pursue the "not my problem!" stance; wherein this will be a problem for everyone else... for now. If we usher in such misguided stuff, or step aside (foot off the gas pedal) because of some temporary sense of relief/convenience, then the signal we send is that we haven't principles or sense of solidarity. The oppressor can thus engage in "divide and (or to) rule" tactics.
What we need is exemptions from politicians who are pushing this agenda (vote them out), not promises or assurances that won't be remembered once those politicians leave public office, much like we saw with "Upload Filters" and prior Trojan horses.
This issue is not limited to Brazil and the US. Their lobbyists "export" the same "blueprints" (they call it "globalisation" and they blackmail via WIPO/WTO, USTR etc.) in due course, under the guise of "uniformity" or "harmonisation". Don't fall for it.
This has nothing to do with 1) children 2) safety 3) safety of children; it's all about giving more control over our computing to third parties, not limited to governments (the EFF is fronting for corporations, so it frames it in those terms). █
Image source: 6 shot composite photographed from Atascader State Beach Park: Morro Rock