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Comment by minton | Hacker News Reader

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

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

There was a California bill that would basically require it.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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