Arch Linux Says Opposing Age Verification is Code of Conduct Violation

0:00The Arch Linux core team apparently believes that opposing age verification in Arch Linux is a code of conduct violation and are asking people to censor anyone who opposes age verification in Arch Linux. What in the holy sniffy flarts is going on right now? This is truly bizarre, so a little bit of background here. A developer by the name of Dylan Taylor, not really a core part of this story, but a developer by the name of Dylan Taylor submitted a number of patches to multiple distributions, including a system D component, a Ubuntu, and Arch, to add in kind of data storage, which could be used to add age verification functionality into these systems. Now, it has not been accepted last I saw into Arch Linux yet. However,

1:04many people, it got accepted into system D, and many people were objecting to any sort of age verification, this particular pull request or something else being added into Arch. So people were talking about it, and what got fascinating here is in multiple places throughout the Arch Linux world, forum, the subreddit, etc. Post started disappearing. Any time someone brought up, or the majority of times that people brought up, anything related to age verification not being liked, not being a good idea, etc., they got locked and deleted. And sorry, this post has been removed by the moderators of Arch Linux, etc., etc., etc. And I got a number of different emails from this and screenshots of people going, what in the heck is Arch Linux about to add age verification into their system. No statement officially has been made that I've seen saying that yes, they're about to add it, but it sure kind of looks like they are. So here's a quote,

2:11from one of the moderators of the Arch Linux subreddit, responding to someone complaining that every time he posts about age verification, he gets deleted and moderated into oblivion. Quote, and this is again the moderator of the Arch Linux official Reddit. I got a DM from much higher up the chain asking me to remove it. Whilst I technically don't answer to them, I do respect their wishes. They don't like someone they consider as part of the core dev teams being called out like that. What you did broke the Arch Linux code of conduct, and I want to show you exactly what broke the code of conduct. What broke the code of conduct was providing a link to the GitHub pull request, the one I just described to you, along with the following text. Here we go again. Same guy named Dylan Taylor has now once again made a first time contribution to yet another distro.

3:16That's it. Pushing age verification into Arch install. And quote, that was considered to be a code of conduct violation. So the only real thing there to oppose because there's not a whole lot of text there. There's no swearing. There's no threats. There's no allegation. It's just there's no saying that, oh, this person's doing it because of this reason. There's no conspiracy theory. There's no derogatory thing. It's just a declaration that it's happening. And in language that clearly suggests that the author is not super thrilled that age verification is being added. That's declared to be by the core dev team of Arch to be a code of conduct violation. And considering this seems to be happening happening across the Arch ecosystem, one has to assume that yeah, they're considering it a code of conduct violation. How terribly weird.

4:18This is weird on multiple fronts. One, it kind of suggests that Arch Linux is going to steamroll head first into age verification town, right? That's how it's how I read it. If they disagree with my interpretation, please speak out. The Arch Linux folks contact me directly, make a post on your website, however you want, but speak out about it if people are having the wrong assumption here. And second, this is yet another example of weaponizing a code of conduct in order to silence someone you don't like the opinion of, right? Because nothing was done that was mean here. Nothing was done that was wrong. It wasn't. No one was swearing. No one was threatening. No one was doxing anyone. No one was making derogatory statements about someone's ethnicity. Like there was nothing crazy like that happening. All that was happening was someone didn't like

5:20a poll request. A code change. If you can't speak negatively and say, I don't really like this code change about a code change without it being a code of conduct violation. How can you possibly run a software project? This is absurd. Absolutely patently absurd that this is happening. And it's crazy to me. It's it's nuts. It's nuts. But here we are. So kudos to Arch Linux, I guess, for finding a new novel way to weaponize a code of conduct. Can I make a suggestion? One, get rid of codes of conduct. Just get rid of it. Just get rid of it entirely in your project. It's not helping yet. It's making you look bad. And it's ruining your little organization entirely too. Because no one's going to want to contribute to a project where you can't even speak. You can't even suggest that you don't like a code change without it being a code of conduct. But I'm not going to I'm not going to contribute

6:24to that sort of project. I don't want anything to do with it. And I know there's a bunch of people over in Arch Linux right now that heard me say that and they went, yeah, who? Lundukes not going to be involved because well, yeah. But just the same. It's ridiculous. You're going to drive people away. And second, avoid the age verification stuff. Avoid it like the plague. I mean, if anything over the last couple of weeks has been learned, it's that people do not want to see the age verification. We are seeing a huge boosts across the board of people getting excited about Linux distributions and otherwise other systems that are avoiding age verification, right? Because no one wants this sort of functionality in their system. I don't know anyone who wants it desperately. No end users. I know some people who are like, well, that's probably fine. And then I know a whole lot of people who are like heck, no, I don't want that at all. But I don't know anyone who's like, yeah,

7:30age verification, please. Can we can we also put my driver's license number, my home address, my social security number, my bank account routing number in there? That would be great. Let's let's stick that in system D. Let's put it that in D bus and just have it stored in a little Jason file. Good grief. No one wants this. Come on now. So just my personal tidbits here, my little suggestions to not just arch, but everyone else. Come on. Just use your use some common sense here. And seriously, you need to make a statement about how codes of conduct need to not be weaponized in order to stop people from criticizing code changes. Good grief. Heavens to Betsy. Thank you to the London Journal subscribers for making every every bit of the London Journal possible. Thank you to the lifetime subscribers on all of the various lifetime subscriber walls of shame, wall of shames, walls of shame. That's probably the right way to say it. Thank you so much

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