Indeed I wonder if that kind of keyboard check is even legal - personally I feel it as a breach of my privacy, none of their fucking business what kind of input method I use. (If anyone here is knowledgeable about such matters, please let me know!)

I’ve been having similar turd-kind encounters with bank apps even within Android. I use the egregious Heliboard from F-droid, and my bank app refused to start because I use an “untrusted keyboard” – funny as it’s way more trustworthy that Gboard or Microslop board apps. Turns out the apps of all banks in my country are like that. So now I simply access the bank via the browser instead. Fuck their apps.

But I understand that the browser solution may not work for everyone :(

Partly this problem comes from incompetence of the app’s developers, partly for shifting responsibility: it seems to me that they let Play Store do the checks, so if any hacking happens they can blame Play Store. And there’s also the modern motto: “if you want to make an app secure, make it unusable”. Even better I’d then say “don’t make it at all”! – there, security-problem fully solved.

Put pressure on banks would be best. Possibly one could also play a “disability” card: I must use such-and-such app or OS owing to visual impairment, say. Or collect signatures for a petition… but I imagine we’re a very small minority.

As a protest in my case I changed bank a couple of times.

But thank you for the USB-ADB tip! I’ll use it when I switch to GrapheneOS.

Possibly. That’s up to your distro. However, consider that EU as well is starting to speak about age verification. It’s quite clear that the whole “West” aspires to be more like Russia and China.

I wish, but I’m not so sure. Look at what happened with the Californian age-verification laws and Systemd for example. Some (arsehole, in my personal opinion) FOSS developers hurried up and bent over backwards to start complying. We’ll probably end up having “Linux” distros that will comply, and Linux distros, probably distributed via secret channels, that won’t.

The crucial point in this new press release is the requirement for “operating system developers like Apple and Google to verify users’ ages when setting up a new device, rather than relying on self-reported ages.”

Very true:

But when technologists tell policymakers this, they tell us that they have every confidence in our ingenuity, and also, they can’t be certain we’re not telling a Zuck-style fable about how the stuff we merely disprefer is actually impossible. They tell us to NERD HARDER!

NERD HARDER! is the answer every time a politician gets a technological idée-fixe about how to solve a social problem by creating a technology that can’t exist.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/14/bellovin/#wont-someone-think-of-the-cryptographers

First of all we should submerge the EU parliament with protests, as we did for the chat-control question. Then protest marches, strikes, and so on. Then simple non-compliance. Whatever is undemocratic has automatically null morally legal validity.

I think we can still use the https://fightchatcontrol.eu/ platform for this. Just need to change the text and protest against age verification.

From the press release [my emphasis]:

Require operating system developers like Apple and Google to verify users’ ages when setting up a new device, rather than relying on self-reported ages.

We surely need to send protest emails and letters to legislators and government representatives – as citizens did in EU for the “chat control” proposals – and organize protest marches, strikes, and so on.

But yes, if the regime behaves more and more like a Russian state, rather than a democracy, and doesn’t care about citizens’ protests, then “violent uprising” becomes almost a moral imperative. “Democracy” means “government by the people”, and it’s we people who must make sure no one takes the government out of our hands; nobody else can do that for us.

permanent worldwide injunction

During our in-person visa appointment in Seattle, a shooting involving CBP occurred just a few parking spaces from where we normally park for medical outpatient visits back in Portland. It was covered by the news internationally and you may have read about it. Moments like that have a way of clarifying what matters and how urgently change can feel necessary.

Our visas were approved quickly, which we’re grateful for. We’ll be spending the next year in France, where my wife has other Tibetan family. I’m looking forward to immersing myself in the language and culture and to taking that responsibility seriously. Learning French in mid-life will be humbling, but I’m ready to give it my full focus.

Sounds like a splendid person.

It’s also a smart move considering that, with age-verification laws advancing, it looks like a good part of the Linux world will become with time another instrument of mass surveillance.

entered a permanent worldwide injunction

Still more acceptable, in my opinion, than going from “using” to “leveraging”…

“friendly”? 🤣

💪 🤝

I have only partially until now. But sadly it looks like we’re entering times where choices regarding activism will become more important and inevitable. The pool with get larger. Any kind of support: money, time, developing, participating, promoting, legal…

Yes I don’t support FOSS projects that aren’t willing to engage in activism. But I don’t shame them. That’s exactly the point of my post. Rather than shaming people or projects who’ve made a different choice, I think it’s best to find and focus on those who share one’s choice, for mutual support, discussion, and planning. It’s important to understand that FOSS and activism are two different things.

Regarding “pro human rights”, what I mean is that software development can be (for some) a form of activism for human rights, just like it happens in the arts and in science.

Agreed, there’s a whole spectrum. On my part I’d more properly say against giving too much power to corporations.

Well said. In fact there’s more than an ecosystem problem. We must understand that saying or using “FOSS” or “Linux” does not automatically mean to stand up for human rights, for the community, and against corporations. I’ve personally been under this gross misunderstanding, and I think other users might be too.

If we read the comments in current debates about FOSS, Linux, and age verification, we can see that many developers and possibly also users make statements like “the developer has no obligation towards the community”, “the law is the law, no matter what the community wants”, “we must comply”, and similar. It’s important to realize that many developers work on FOSS not out of consideration for the community or for human rights. For them it’s just one kind of software development. We may have projects that are FOSS and pro-corporations or pro-surveillance. The “F” in FOSS stands for freedom to modify and distribute the software by/to anyone in the community. But it doesn’t stand for “software that promotes / stands up for general human freedom” or human rights.

So for anyone who, like me, wants to use and promote software as an assertion of and a stand for human rights and against corporations, beyond the simple “software” aspects, it’s necessary not to stop at “FOSS” or “Linux” but apply more scrutiny and a more careful choice.