The California legislature is already working on forcing operating systems to attest the age of the user at the account level. See the recent gut-and-amend of AB1043 [0], which was a privacy bill [1] just a few months ago:
> This bill would require, among other things related to age verification on the internet, a covered manufacturer to provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder, as defined, to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device for the sole purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store and to provide a developer, as defined, who has requested a signal with respect to a particular user with a digital signal via a real-time application programming interface regarding whether a user is in any of several age brackets, as prescribed. The bill would define “covered manufacturer” to mean a person who is a manufacturer of a device, an operating system for a device, or a covered application store. The bill would require a developer to request a signal with respect to a particular user from a covered manufacturer when that user requests to download an application.
> This bill would punish noncompliance with a civil penalty to be enforced by the Attorney General, as prescribed.
I’ve often talked about in private settings about how running open source OSes and DRM-free setups would likely become illegal in the future. With every passing day this vision seems closer to reality.
First, there are too many brackets, second, I think the age should be set by a store, not by the user because obviously all kids will state that they are over 18.
> This bill would require, among other things related to age verification on the internet, a covered manufacturer to provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder, as defined, to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device for the sole purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store and to provide a developer, as defined, who has requested a signal with respect to a particular user with a digital signal via a real-time application programming interface regarding whether a user is in any of several age brackets, as prescribed. The bill would define “covered manufacturer” to mean a person who is a manufacturer of a device, an operating system for a device, or a covered application store. The bill would require a developer to request a signal with respect to a particular user from a covered manufacturer when that user requests to download an application.
> This bill would punish noncompliance with a civil penalty to be enforced by the Attorney General, as prescribed.
[0] https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB1043/2025 [1] https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB1043/id/3134744
If you want to know more about this lovely bait-and-switch tactic used by the Golden State's legislature, see here: https://californiaglobe.com/uncategorized/gut-and-amend-bill...