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Colorado and California age verification bills exempt open source operating systems
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this post was submitted on 25 May 2026
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I'm afraid this isn't the win you think it is.
One of two things will happen in the near future:
Nearly everything you do online from banking to shopping to social media (including online gaming) to paying your electric or internet bill to yes porn will require OS-level attestation to access and use the site. Linux lacking this will become an incredibly private OS that is useless for anything online making this a defeat for Linux having any hopes of real desktop market share and/or forcing it to comply. Microsoft, Apple, Google would love to push Linux as an OS option off the table.
Kids will start using liveboot or installing Linux and evading these controls, Christian fascists, tech overlord capitalists, and the government will take notice and write a bill to close this "loophole" and within a few years having already established the idea in the popular conception that age verification is okay will face lesser resistance in quickly ramming it through.
Assuming PCs don't get wiped out as a platform first, which between AluminumOS being a thing and parts being made intentionally scarce and expensive, I wouldn't be shocked if that happens.
Can't control what people do with their PCs? Just kill PCs as a platform in favor of thin clients tied to cloud subscriptions that you can control or glorified Android phones.
It absolutely is the win we think it is. These are separate from mandating open source to include age verification.
it absolutely is not. my first thought to seeing this is that they're trying to reduce the resistance to the bill, then later add linux to it and not face as much backlash. basically, option 2.
dont be blind.
So to not have the win we think it is, the California and Colorado bills would have to mandate age verification for open source operating systems.
Can you explain the wording in the law that contradicts OP’s claims?
It's going to be hard to completely kill off the Fediverse unless you block all ways in which it can be hosted, to include meshnets and the dark web.
On top of that, it'll be really hard if not impossible to kill protocols which by their design are independently governed and completely open like ActivityPub and compatible protocols; it'll be easier to kill ATproto because it has a centralized
plc.directoryledger which if that gets taken out, the entire protocol goes down with it, that and even if you self-host a PDS, you still have to interact with Bsky corporate's centralized infrastructure at some point, where with ActivityPub, each instance is independent of the other.I'm not saying I think it's going to be intentionally killed or taken down, my prediction is that everything is going to turn to garbage when bots are vastly outnumbering human users. And I think that unfortunately the only form of "captcha" that will be able to keep bots out at scale is some form of centrally issued human ID coupled with an unbroken cryptographic chain starting on hardware level. But I am of course talking only about larger public services, small invite-only private instances would definitely still be an option.
I don't really get this. Why is it such a big deal if your OS has setting where you enter your age, and the OS then sends that to websites? Face scanning or demanding uploads of photo IDs is an immense privacy violation. But simply having your OS have a setting you can use where you provide a number, a number that you're completely free to alter or report whatever value you want? I really don't see the issue with this.
This seems like a pretty easy way to give parents some control over their kid's online activities while also not infringing on privacy. The parents can set up the OS and give an account to their kids that lists their ages as under 18. If they want their kids to access the web without restrictions, they simply don't have to create an under 18 account on the computer. And even if your OS has to report an age to access a website, if it's all based on self-reporting, you can just self-report a false age.
We tend to think in binaries, as this is convenient. We tend to view all digital age verification as horrible and equally horrible. But this? Just giving parents a way to give their kids a minors-only account, and have websites respect that OS-level flag? This is nothing like bills that require uploading face scans or photo IDs.
Sure you can speculate a slippery slope. But that is a fallacy for a reason. It tends to wash out all nuance and make you conclude everything is absolute evil forever.
If they don't accept "just enter your age" in a website they are not going to accept "just enter your age" on a OS. They are going, sooner or later, to require Microsoft to check users ID to confirm OS account age.
Windows is already KYC'd by default since consumer Windows requires an MS account and setting up an MS account requires your birthdate.
Well that's literally what these laws are requiring. You can speculate on future laws, but you can imagine innumerable horrible futures. It's important to stay grounded and not get lost in the dooming. And I see nothing wrong with an optional feature that lets you set an age on a child's account. As long as it's something I control, then that's actually giving me more control over my hardware, not less.
Yes, there will be people pushing for more invasive methods. But those are the laws you should oppose. Not these. People tend to think in binaries. And they tend to lump everything called "digital id" into one bucket devoid of nuance or discernment.
If anything, lumping all digital id into one bucket without any nuance only helps the opponents of privacy. Simply giving the parents the option to enter an age is a perfectly reasonable policy. If you oppose that because you cannot recognize nuance and consider all id laws equivalent, then you're hurting your side. People see you appealing to privacy when opposing something that reasonable people will not see as a violation of privacy. Again, we're taking OS-level controls that actually give you more control over the machine.
You risk a "boy who cried wolf" scenario. You turn everyone against you fighting something that really isn't an invasion of privacy. Then when someone does actually try to pass a law mandating facial recognition be built into apps, people will ignore you as they already consider you an irrational radical.
We're sitting in a pot on the cooker. The fire is lit but the water's debatably only luke-warm. When is the right time to demand they turn that shit off?
It's not going to be putting a number into a box. That is abusable and is functionally no different than what we already have now. It will be proper age verification similar to what social media is already starting to use.
This is also not about "child safety" either. There are already tools for providing parental controls. Improving and making these options more accessible should be the priority, not enforcing it upon everyone. That is why we are calling it out for what it is, thinly veiled invasion of our privacy.
But that's literally what these systems are. There is more than one form of age verification. The type we're discussing here literally is just "enter your name in a box." It's important not to muddy the waters. If you don't know what you're opposing and choosing your battles carefully, you can't effectively fight infringement on privacy. And I really don't see anything wrong with a law that just says, "every OS needs to have a feature that lets parents self-report age on a child's account."
Yes, there are other forms of digital id laws. But we're talking specifically about OS-level ones. This literally just be a more effective parental control, giving people more control over their own PCs, not less.
Again, try to focus on what specifically we are talking about, not similar-sounding but unrelated technologies.
It's not a fallacy when multiple countries/states have passed laws that explicitly demand some form of ID confirmation/scanning and others have stated an intent for it. It's not a fallacy when you understand what the purpose of this push actually is.
The fact is the end result isn't going to be compliance with the least restrictive standard but the most. That's how regulatory compliance always works. You always comply with the most restrictive because it encompasses the least restrictive as well. Further if you stopped to think and analyzed history scientifically instead of it being a series of great man events or whatever you'd understand how capitalism in crisis reacts by crushing the working class using tools like fascism. That the 5-eyes spying abuse far from being some deviation from liberalism embody the deeper desires and wants of the modern western world to spy on and control their citizens and the world and that a free internet has been an incredible threat to state power since day one.
It's just the first big moment where their propaganda failed, where their narrative was undermined was the Gaza genocide and they will do anything to prop up the Zio-Nazi entity occupying Palestine and prevent their other narratives from suffering the same fate in future. A man in the "free speech" loving EU was unpersoned FFS and can't be given money, buy food, stay at hotels, use banks, anything for deviating too far from the approved EU narrative. These are the people we're dealing with.
It's also not a fallacy when AI has created a crisis for private/government spy fusion platforms like Meta, Google, etc in both gaining ad dollars due to AI bots being hard to discern so hard identifying humans is a must for not only spying but profits from ads.
For a long time the material interests of the massive tech companies and their financial backers and shareholders did not particularly benefit from this kind of ID law and so they pushed back and disallowed it. Now thanks to AI their interests align with those of the state, the capitalist propaganda organs, the moral crusaders. There is in other words nothing major standing in their way and tons of power centers pushing for this as a result of AI, the Gaze genocide breaking containment, etc and it has gained momentum.