ethanplant

Hey! This is a really neat project, especially considering your age.

That being said, I’m confused by why what is essentially a beginner learning project is being wrapped in language that makes it sound like a Series B startup.

“This article reached a conclusion from the author’s perspective” is not a criticism of writing. It is a description of writing.

Good writing is almost never neutral. It can be fair, careful, honest, and proportionate. But if it has nothing to say, it isn’t good writing.

I think the idea that it’s a trust issue is broadly correct. “Free vibe-coded anonymous Linux server with root access” immediately causes every infrastructure and security neuron in my body to fire at once.

Broadly I agree that you can’t expect organizations to change their behaviour without changing the incentives. That’s essentially my argument in favour of the platform accountability portions of the bill.

Where I disagree is the framing that it’s a binary between “age verification for all” or “legal liability for parents”. There is a third option: change the incentives for the organizations designing and operating the systems children are using.

Regulate recommender systems, addictive defaults, reporting and appeal mechanisms, non-consensual intimate imagery response, synthetic sexual abuse material, dark patterns, safety plans, transparency, audits, and penalties for platforms that fail to respond properly. Those are all aimed at the organizations creating or amplifying the harm. This is, admittedly, the most difficult approach, but it’s also the approach that actually addresses the root cause.

My concern is that an under-16 account ban turns the enforcement problem into an age-assurance problem for all users. The platform has to determine who is under 16 somehow, which means assessing everyone’s age. That creates privacy and access-control infrastructure while the most vulnerable teenagers are also the ones most likely to route around it.

So yes, change incentives. I just think the incentives should be aimed directly at platform conduct and design, not at making everyone prove they are old enough to participate online.

> my philosophy is this: if I'm doing my job properly, the user should never even know I exist.

This is my philosophy too working in infrastructure. It’s my job to care way too much so downstream users don’t have to.

These days I get most of mine from curated RSS feeds, here, and Kagi Small Web.

I’d be cautious about saying OpenBSD itself is directly affected. It really depends on if OpenBSD counts as an “electronic service provider”.

You do raise a pretty good point though, Canada has long benefited from being perceived as a relatively trustworthy jurisdiction. So even if OpenBSD themselves are out of scope, there is a negative reputational hit that will impact Canadian tech.

Paywall bypass: https://archive.ph/2026.05.25-010611/https://www.theglobeand...

So Riot’s finally gone full mask off and admitted their malware is in fact malware?

“Just eliminate surveillance”.

That’s a lot easier said than done.

`human.json` is a neat idea and I’ve been watching it closely. I’m even debating dropping one on my own site.

That being said, the fact that the obvious attack vector goes completely unaddressed gives me pause.

I agree with the principle that the internet has, for lack of a better word, gone to shit.

This isn’t the answer though. It’s not technically feasible and doesn’t actually address the problem.

Your falling into the classic software brain trap of thinking the solution to a social problem is a technical one, when that isn’t necessarily the case.

I don’t feel the need to. If someone says “this is AI” all I hear is, “I don’t want to actually engage with the argument”.

I also have a very specific voice. Blunt. Slightly irritated. Highly opinionated. AI is pretty bad at trying to emulate that well.

Wholeheartedly agree. I feel like we genuinely lost something when seemingly all writing turned from people genuinely sharing their thoughts to “what’s going to get the most engagement on substack”.

Forgot to switch accounts?