Keeping digital spaces open for young people (osc26)

The complexities of our world have led politicians around the world to drive legislation forward that is supposed to "protect children". Among these are tightening of privacy laws, restrictions on access to online platforms and social media, and attempts to force operating system vendors into age verification. Recently, openSUSE has changed its site terms to require all users to be at least 16 years old. After I called out this change, a lot of people expressed their concerns about this change. As pedagogic chair of the Teckids community, I have over a decade of experience in working with (very) young users and contributors in digital spaces, and in shaping spaces where they are legally allowed to fully participate. With this talk, I want to shed light on the most important legal and pedagogic issues around children and minors in digital spaces. As more and more ill-advised regulation endangers young people and makes them virtually invisible, I want to raise awareness in the community, and help everyone to get onto the same page in order to help discuss similar issues in the future. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://c3voc.de