[slicktux]

Your sardonic comment says a lot but does not address the real freedom we have. Which is to NOT use those platforms that require age verification. The more people that don’t use them the more it will hurt the companies that loose a customer base; then maybe their lobbyists will force a change.

[minton]

So you’ll just not use Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, or Android? In other words, you’ll just not use any computers? Seems nonsensical.

[hamburglar]

Did I miss a memo on Linux somehow requiring age verification now? How would that even work?

[psadauskas]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47270784 "System76 on Age Verification Laws"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47239736 "Ubuntu Planning Mandatory Age Verification"

I thought I saw one about Redhat too, but can't find it.

[a456463]

Laws and lawmakers just concern themselves with making broad "laws" with little regard to specificity and applicability. California, Colorado and Illinois mandate OS "providers" to generate a signal. It is a copy pasted bill with little grounding in reality but a lawmaker is not going to say no "protecting children".

Pushed by AVPA - a group of companies standing to profit from this: LexisNexis, some Thiel corp, etc.

[crooked-v]

California's law explicitly requires the system and apps to take the user's word for it and not use other information to determine age, which more and more feels to me like kind of a brilliant move to cut the legs out from under other attempts to use the same for surveillance while still satisfying all the surface-level "protect children" sound bites.

[Tuna-Fish]

You missed US states competing on setting up age verification legislation that lets anyone sue any developer who produces systems that don't do age verification for life-destroying amounts of money.

[hamburglar]

So, Linus? Patrick Volkerding? I mean, I can build a Linux system from basically nothing.

[teekert]

Hé man I thought us Europeans were kings of dreadful regulations!

[jimz]

Eh private prosecutions and third party standing are generally disfavored to such an extent that sure, attention-whoring legislators will propose it, but whether it even passes constitutional muster on the state level is an open question, and open in every state.

[Tuna-Fish]

The standing is provided by your child seeing naughty things on the internet.

[dana-s]

There was some proposal from California or something to require OSs to enforce age verification, it was discussed in some other thread.

[crooked-v]

For what it's worth, the "verification" in the California law (not a bill, it's already passed and takes effect 2027) is basically the Steam birthdate popup interstitial. There's explicitly no actual link to any outside information, just requiring that the system save a value the user sets and then that apps use that value for any age gating.

[throwway120385]

There was a California bill that would basically require it.

[mschuster91]

> Which is to NOT use those platforms that require age verification.

That is getting harder and harder. Platforms that are not susceptible to age verification (yet?) are on their way out - when have you written an email the last time for personal (i.e. non-work, order or customer support related) reasons? A physical letter [1]? The (root) cause is, centralized platforms like Whatsapp are much much more convenient and on top of that network effects apply - when 90% of your social connections use Whatsapp exclusively, it's hard to not use Whatsapp as well.

And then you got digitalization of government services and banking. More and more governments push for the removal of paper forms and require a web service. Banking regulations enforce 2FA, which almost always comes in the form of a phone app. The web services require a browser and an OS, which may require age verification sooner than later (see the recent spat about California's law), and the phone apps are only available for the walled gardens of unrooted, Play Store certified Apple and Android phones - that can and will be forced to verify ages as well.

Hard cash is out as well, many governments have set hard caps on cash transactions due to "anti money laundering" laws, in other countries you need to have a bank account to pay for mandatory things like taxes or public broadcast fees [2], and an increasing number of vendors refuses to accept cash as well due to the associated handling cost and risk of fraud (i.e. employee theft) and robbery.

That last point alone will make it impossible to survive in society without engaging with one or more of the walled gardens.

And mercy be upon you if the US Government decides to put you on one of their black lists. No more banking, even as an European, because everything touches VISA/MC/SWIFT, your cloud accounts (and with it your phone and app stores), all gone, you are now an unperson [3].

[1] Some countries are already shutting down postal services over that, e.g. Denmark: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/21/denmark-postno...

[2] https://www.verbraucherzentrale-niedersachsen.de/themen/rund...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14203