On 2/20/19 7:04 PM, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> There's the https://kde.modular.im/_matrix/consent?h=6fc7fefb99181b28ffdf2be32225ead05a8cd6c148da23482edbcc4b08ce7ddd&u=boud page you need to agree to before one can join. And it asks people to confirm that they're older than 16.
> 
> Why do we have this condition? There are plenty of reasons why we would need people younger than 16 to be able to chat with people in the KDE community. We've had contributors and even people giving presentations at Akademy who were younger than 16.

Hi,

I share your basic concern.

Background: It's my understanding this was added very recently in the 
context of making Matrix GDPR-compliant. Other services have moved to 
this as well, e.g. WhatsApp. It's because GDPR says, simplified, that 
for folks <16, the service operator needs to make "reasonable effort" to 
acquire/verify parental consent to use the service. This is essentially 
intended to protect minors from the service and what it might do with 
their data.

It's been discussed in the Matrix circles a few times, including:
https://github.com/vector-im/riot-meta/issues/190

I'd expect this to change as per the ticket above. I think the hot take 
of many right now is "we're going to err on the side of caution and see 
what we can shake loose later".

I think as KDE, since we have a need here, we can try to be part of this 
conversation and try to push things. For example, maybe we can acquire 
legal responsibility as operators, and then ask that Riot gets an option 
so we can make an admin decision that a Parental Consent Checkbox is 
good enough for us. This would then be a decision to live with the 
potential risk for the e.V., though.


Cheers,
Eike