Regarding the fact that these ads promote playing games instead of having sex … umm, that’s basically what happened. Sounds crazy but, ya, young people are having less sex today, and the birth rate has dropped precipitously. You can list a dozen other factors that would impact this as well (economy, education, etc) but access to video games does seem to correlate. Sometimes correlation IS causation.
GrapheneOS said they won’t implement age verification. That not them “being brave”, that’s them literally doing nothing at all. “Brave” would be getting the governments implementing this shit to change the laws.
Linux distros without age verification will be prohibited from distributing to regions where this law is enacted. Of course, circumventing the law is also possible, but that leaves either the project – or you – open to prosecution. As I said, your fight is with the politicians pushing through this ignorant law, not with the people, companies, or projects that are forced to comply.
Imagine being so horrible at your job as a “journalist” or an editor or a publication that you would allow an article like this to be written under your name or publication without ever mentioning the fact that age verification is being pushed by governments, not phone and computer companies (they are trying to fight its implementation), and that it is equally coming to ALL platforms (yes, even Linux) – as required by law. If you want to fight this ridiculous age verification shit, petition (and vote out) your government. I would also argue that this author and publication should be permanently blacklisted for purposely publishing this obviously biased and misleading misinformation.
Well, a couple of points about my post that seems to have generated far more discussion than I would have guessed.
I was being a little tongue in cheek, as anyone with any scientific understanding at all knows that “correlation is not causation”. And with a topic such as this, it would be almost impossible to isolate the direct causes for a) young people having sex and b) for dropping fertility rates.
Sweden is only one country. Certainly not one that I was focused on (at all). Generally speaking, fertility rates are dropping amongst western (and Japan) countries. Of course there could be outliers. I don’t think that an increase of .1% is statistically significant considering the rates in some countries are about 1/2 what they were 50 years ago.
the main point of my comment was that young people are having less sex today. That was an actual study. I’ll link it if in a find it again. In Japan, it’s gotten so acute that 50% of people in their 20’s are self reporting as virgins and 20% in their 30’s. That’s insane to me as a couple decades ago, Japanese people were considered by the west to be promiscuous. However, they were also considered the gaming epicentre at that time. So perhaps the effects take a decade or so to be noticed? 😉
Or perhaps there’s no correlation at all.