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Comment by latentsea

10 days ago

Ugh. There's just no winning with tech anymore.

I use GrapheneOS as a daily driver and I absolutely love it. It should be the default. There's already one app I use that must do something similar and absolutely just won't run on it, so I have an entirely separate phone running stock Android just for that one app. Still worth the hassle.

Glad I don't live in a place where all this madness is taking root, but still, the trend itself sucks.

By design, this app isn't mandatory. There should be an alternative way to do age verification. If you can't access a service because you can't run the app, the service fucked up.

Furthermore, there's nothing stopping the governments implementing these standards from permitting GrapheneOS' signature. It's one of the ROMs that actually has a reliable signature so unlike random images from XDA there's a case for it to be permitted. Google's integrity check isn't just a binary check, it's a combination of a hash and a pre-defined list of suggested acceptable hashes.

  • > By design, this app isn't mandatory. There should be an alternative way to do age verification. If you can't access a service because you can't run the app, the service fucked up.

    So you complain to the service, they either ignore you or tell you to use the app, and then what? They are not breaking any law as far as I can tell.

    And even if it was, class actions in Europe are close to inexistent, and it's not worth it for any one consumer to take the multinational running the service to court.

    > there's nothing stopping the governments implementing these standards from permitting GrapheneOS' signature

    incompetence and/or not caring

  • Alternatives to legal identification requirements being available isn't my experience. How do you even imagine that? Going to a local post office to show an ID anytime you want to open pornhub and your i_am_adult=token cookie has expired?

The only winning move is not to play the game. One has to have a phone these days but you don't have to do your computing on it (during personal time). Use a real computer instead.

  • > I would like to pay for goods and services online.

    > Very well sir, which digital payment service would you like to use?

    > It doesn't matter they all force me to use my phone.

    • It's pretty crazy. You can be authenticated on a website, and the website still asks you to use your phone to.. validate what you're doing on the pc.

  • This software doesn't run on a real computer. The point of the submission is that it only runs on a DRM device from two entrenched vendors

    • Why would you want to run a locked down a crippled version of linux when you can run the real thing?

      And if there really are services that only are accessible through iphone/android applications, you probably should not support them.

      1 reply →

It's not a tech issue, it's a regulation issue.

EU wants to push more control on the internet, today it's "think of the children" but when the infrastructure is rolled out, it'll be "real name verifiction" on social media, chat control, etc.

Whoever is pushing this in EU has to be removed before things will get better.

  • Luckily France is part of the EU. They seem to have better removal tools than the rest of us.