[sf-lug] Age verifucation bruhaha..

[Michael Paoli]

Well, (back) to (SF-LUG) list, as I'm guestimating that's where you saw this.

On Mon, Mar 16, 2026 at 9:57 AM Bobbie Sellers
<bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com> wrote:
>         physical
> cannot attend the meeting

No more difficult than attending SF-LUG meetings, as you at least
fairly commonly do,
as virtual likewise remains an option for BALUG.

> a link to a pertinent article.

Well, lots of articles, etc. out there, as more recently it's gained
lots of traction and public attention (well
at least among many "nerds" / tech folks and the like).

>     The purported  purpose is to protect teens from online bullying and bad information;

Uhm, it's quite a bit more complex than that, and the actual intended
purpose(s) do quite vary among the many interested parties.
E.g. some want to protect kids.
Some want to collect as much data as possible about every person on the planet.
Some with content that is or ought be age restricted, want as much as
feasible of
that burden and responsibility shifted onto others or elsewhere.  Some want to
sell software or related services.  Some want to force software changes in many
places in manner that will give them competitive or economic advantage.  Many
parents/guardians want others (school, software, laws/regulation,
etc.) to do much
of their parenting, and not have to carry as much responsibility
themselves.  And there
are many more and varied motivations beyond even those.

>     <https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/3/13/2373052/-Why-are-liberals-like-Ro-Khanna-and-Gavin-Newsom-helping-Big-Tech-vastly-expand-its-online-power%3E>

>     Have a good meeting and thanks for the hard work you do to keep
> the mailing lists and site going.
Uhm, Rick Moen does the SF-LUG list and linuxmafia.com site (and CABAL),
I do the SF-LUG site.
I do BALUG.org.  BerkeleyLUG.com - I do the site, list is hosted by Google (and
myself and a very small number of others manage the list).  And there's
overlapping/shared/redundant DNS among the above, covered by, myself,
Rick, and Al.  Likewise the 3 of us cover domains (ownership and renewal),
and may have some additional persons in there for redundancy/backup/failover.
I also do some assistance with linuxmafia.com (e.g. set up the VM software
infrastructure upon which it runs - at Rick's and hosted by Rick).
There's more,
but that's high-level summary of much ot the various LUGs bits folks
are generally
more familiar with.  And some of the various LUGs, other folks (more) actively
get/keep those meetings generally happening and going.