I’ve spent years championing Linux as the only escape from Big Tech, but I’m starting to get twitchy.
While we’re distracted by the Steam Deck making Linux “mainstream,” the corporate players and politicians are busy building a digital cage. Between California’s AB-1043 mandates and Microsoft’s “Face Check” infrastructure, I’m worried we’re heading for a hard schism: “Sanitised Linux” vs the “Free Rebel” distros.
If the compliant, age-gated version becomes the industry standard, where does that leave the rest of us? Digital exile?
I’ve put some thoughts together on why the “Golden Cage” is closing in and why education, not mandates, is the only real fix.
And services can choose to only allow operating systems which don’t lie, have anti-tamper mechanisms, and authenticate themselves cryptographically. It has definitely been easy to spoof your identity in the past, but OP is talking about where we might be heading in the future. Since the laws about OS:es having to partially identify the user is so obviously useless in its current form, don’t you think the corporations and politicians who are pushing for it are going to keep expanding it when they get the opportunity?