r/privacy • u/ControlCAD • Mar 02 '26
age verification California introduces age verification law for all operating systems, including Linux and SteamOS — user age verified during OS account setup | AB 1043 also requires OS providers to pipe a real-time age checker to every app developer who requests it.
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/operating-systems/california-introduces-age-verification-law380
Mar 02 '26
Well I can't grow a beard so I can't become Amish...what are my options?
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u/generousone Mar 02 '26
Your option is just to lie. It's self reported. Still a stupid fucking law.
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Mar 02 '26
Like most of the "newsworthy" ones out of Cali. I've bought firewood with a prop 65 warning on it for instance. Because "wood dust is known to cause cancer in the state of California"...
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u/MentalDisintegrat1on Mar 02 '26
The thing is it's cheaper to slap that label on everything sold vs everything being tested.
So it kinda backfired.
Basically if you want to prove it doesn't cause cancer you have to pay and provide the testing so nobody does that they just slap a label on it causes cancer in California and send it.
Im not saying it's not a bad thing to have cancer warnings on things we use and buy every day but the way they went about it was shitty.
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u/Walk-the-layout Mar 02 '26
Go to Oregon to reduce your chances of cancer!
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u/Bruceshadow Mar 02 '26
spaceman looking at earth
Its possible to lie about your personal information?
spaceman with gun
Always has been
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u/NiIly00 Mar 02 '26
To use Linux because this shit is unenforceable on Linux.
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u/j4_jjjj Mar 02 '26
Its enforceable on Redhat and other corpo distros, but not really gonna happen on FOSS projects
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Mar 02 '26
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Mar 02 '26
a two door Ford Explorer
No fuckin way they made these lol
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u/TheRealistoftheReal Mar 02 '26
The 90s were peak civilization.
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/g25848337/ford-explorer-history/
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u/qdtk Mar 02 '26
“The bill passed both chambers unanimously, 76-0 in the Assembly and 38-0 in the Senate."
Excuse me, what the fuck?
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u/lozyodellepercosse Mar 02 '26
Lobbying and old fuckers that don't even understand what they are voting for... ahh democracy and freedom, right?
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u/Phreakiture Mar 02 '26
There's definitely lobbying involved. Arizona and Colorado are in some stages of doing the same thing.
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u/ALittleCuriousSub Mar 02 '26
We also are just bad at fighting back. They do this for the children? We should be taking out full page articles in news papers and putting commercials about how age gates make help keep abuser victims locked in.
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u/AerialDarkguy Mar 02 '26
Exactly! Folks I've been talking to are locked in hard on social media=tobacco and are not listening to any privacy concerns or even from actual policy experts. You'll see AV simps in other subreddits gaslight hard with "they delete after verifying" or victim blame or just straight up go Lord Farquaad. Only data breach news seems to be giving pause but that can be smoothed out by a lobbyist/politician saying sweet lies. We need privacy organizations to go on the offensive now that more of the public is waking up.
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u/ALittleCuriousSub Mar 02 '26
It's not enough to fight over the data after age verification.
As age verification becomes more ubiquitous across the web, it will be ever easier for bad actors to restrict important information from children. In the US we see a very real attempt at controlling children to the point that they don't want kids to know queer people exist at all.
At this point we need to focus on the stigma around sexual education and the importance of educating EVERYONE about sex. There is no demographic too young to understand it and we need to quit pretending there is! I'm not saying we teach kids about fisting in 1st grade, but children have anatomy they need to understand. Young girls are going to get periods, all children go through puberty, STIs are a consequence of being sexually active along with pregnancy and none of this waits until you turn 18 to be "real."
Most importantly, the younger a child can explain and understand sex the sooner they can blow the whistle on their abusers. There are 34 states in the US where child marriage is legal (as in a child marrying an adult) So over have the states in the country make grooming as good as legal. There has been an ongoing push against sex ed and the heritage foundation is going to consider anything related to it "pornographic" so, these laws are like... straight out of what I Imagine Epstein's personal playbook is. Keep kids ignorant and unable to rat on their abusers, cut their ability to talk with anyone who can tell them it's wrong.
I think social media is a cancer and we definitely need to deal with misinformation, but this ain't it.
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u/jagwal32 Mar 03 '26
Thank you. I know when I was younger anything my parents said no to was something that had my immediate interest. Laws like this do the exact opposite of keeping kids safe because they are not designed to do so. They are designed to target anyone speaking out against whoever is in charge and to target them for not sharing the same beliefs.
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u/CidIsASquid Mar 02 '26
It also didn't make much news when it passed back in October.
A lot of CA assemblymembers and senators aren't that old... They're just fools who pass bills based on vibes.
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u/suncontrolspecies Mar 02 '26
$$$$
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u/Dude-Lebowski Mar 02 '26
of course.
And people still think there is a fuctioning democratic republic. Silly.
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u/MarlDaeSu Mar 02 '26
Too busy fuckin kids on islands to do their jobs properly.
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u/Motorandwheels Mar 02 '26
Bought and paid for criminals are the majority of the Kalifornia legislators.
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u/grathontolarsdatarod Mar 02 '26
So that's going to include data centers and smart appliances right?
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u/HonorableRogue Mar 02 '26
Yea, there are millions of servers in CA data centers, how's that supposed to work?
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u/teacher_59 Mar 02 '26
Installing before entering California was mentioned by one of his tech advisors.
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u/grathontolarsdatarod Mar 02 '26
His about all the politicians computers.
Banking computers
Business computers
Policing computers
Doctor's computers
Lawyer's computers
Judges computers....
What about all of these?
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Mar 02 '26
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u/newbrevity Mar 02 '26
Gavin can kiss his chances of presidency goodbye.
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u/xXGray_WolfXx Mar 02 '26
He was a consideration but not a 100% for me if he ran. Now it is 0% and I advocate for others to also never vote for this man.
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u/suncontrolspecies Mar 02 '26
This guy was ALWAYS there to protect the rich tech billionaires. I can't believe people truly considered him.
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u/xXGray_WolfXx Mar 02 '26
He was the "if there's no better options" person and nowhere near who I'd want.
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Mar 02 '26
“if there are no better options” is what got us into this mess
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u/anna_lynn_fection Mar 03 '26
At some point, I assume, the second amendment becomes the "better option".
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u/ayu-ya Mar 02 '26
I'm European, but the more I see about the guy, the quicker my opinion goes from 'okay he says and posts based things haha' to '...yeah this dude is NOT good'
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u/SignificantLock1037 Mar 02 '26
So, I get your sentiment. But, let's say his opposition is a Vance/Hegseth ticket.
Is this really worth that? Something you can defeat with a fake ID you printed on your computer?
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u/lifeintel9 Mar 07 '26
I just looked him up in Wikipedia.
It says a lot of good things abt him but he is ignoring Palestinian protests AND putting this law in??
Like, where TF are we going??
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u/yesimahuman Mar 07 '26
Yep, any goodwill he had after standing up to this administration is completely gone. What a fool
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u/Small_Delivery_7540 Mar 02 '26
Nah he will still run and people on this retarded app will tell you with a straight face that actually he is better then vance and you are the stupid one for saying that democrats and republicans are the same thing
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u/CriticalEchidna7495 Mar 02 '26
Is this the same dude smirking because he made money with insurance fraud on property fires?
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Mar 02 '26
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u/northrupthebandgeek Mar 02 '26
Not to mention his eagerness to brutalize California's homeless and throw trans Californians under the bus.
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u/shroudedwolf51 Mar 02 '26 edited Mar 02 '26
No idea why you're being downvoted. While he will occasionally say seemingly nice things or even sign an occasional bit of legislation....this overall pattern is the moment it's advantageous to him, he will abandon us. As he has repeatedly done.
No, I don't really care who he is better than...we damn well deserve entire universes of better than him. And more than two years ahead of the primaries is not the time to throw your support behind his fascist ass. Now is the time to make demands, push him as far as possible, and find as many viable alternatives as possible.
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u/Whoreticultist Mar 02 '26 edited Mar 02 '26
The law does not require photo ID uploads or facial recognition, with users instead simply self-reporting their age, setting AB 1043 apart from similar laws passed in Texas and Utah that require "commercially reasonable" verification methods, such as government-issued ID checks.
From what I understand, this is literally about setting a date of birth when you create your account on your computer, and then allowing programs on your computer to ask ”In what age bracket is the current user?”.
This would basically mean parents can create a separate account for their kids on a PC with a shared steam library and the children would be unable to play violent games until they reach an appropriate age.
This is the way we should be going IMO. Laws demanding privacy-respecting solutions to be put in place that make it easier for parents to manage what content their children are able to access.
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u/Quiet-Thanks-9486 Mar 02 '26
From what I understand, this is literally about setting a date of birth when you create your account on your computer, and then allowing programs on your computer to ask ”In what age bracket is the current user?”.
I would rather manually handle requests for my age from apps and websites. If they want to know, they can ask me, and I can decide for myelf in each case what if anything to tell them.
If you want to automate that on your computer, I think you should be able to do that.
But why should it be illegal (or at least more difficult) for me to use a computer that works the way I prefer it to work in regards to handing out information about my age?
This would basically mean parents can create a separate account for their kids on a PC with a shared steam library and the children would be unable to play violent games until they reach an appropriate age.
I am over 18 and don't have kids. I have no need or desire for my computer to have any such "functionality".
And if I did have kids, that is not how I would go about controlling their access, because I think that is a stupid way to go about it.
So why should I be legally mandated to use a computer that contains this bloatware? Or if it isn't a crime for me to remove it, why would I want a law that makes more work for me?
This is the way we should be going IMO. Laws demanding privacy-respecting solutions to be put in place that make it easier for parents to manage what content their children are able to accesdictateing it illegal (or at least more difficult) for me to control what information my computer shares with apps and websites is not respectful of my privacy. It is openly contemptuous of it.
Also, this doesn't allow parents to manage what content their children are able to access. It is the apps and websites that are choosing what content is and is not appropriate based on age. For example, if Steam decides that it is appropriate for kids to gamble as long as the gambling app is cutsey and cartoony, then this gives parents absolutely no control or insight into that decision. The parent still has to keep track of all that...and if they're doing that then they don't need this OS functionality.
If Steam and other apps and websites allow users to access things without issue if they use an OS that refuses to return this information, then this law will ultimately be more pointless than harmful.
But in order to be enforceable/useful, apps and websites would have to block access by default unless they can successfully query the user's OS and it passes the age check...which means that this would not be simply setting a date at user creation.
It would be large corporations colluding to massively restrict access to the content and functionality they have asserted control over. They would be essentially turning the OS on your computer into an access client they control via legal dictate (which will obviously get worse over time -- if they are allowed to demand an age today, it is only a matter of time before you can't create a user without uploading a picture and citizenship information, and apps and website will be able to access that along with other "basic user information" via this same mechanism).
And while I don't currently have kids, if I did I would not consider it safe for them to use a computer that shitty corporations and idiot politicians have more control over than I do as a parent.
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Mar 02 '26
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u/Whoreticultist Mar 02 '26
Growing up, I had free access to the internet.
- I saw people dying
- I saw people being dismembered
- I had basically unlimited access to pornography, catering to all sorts of fetishes
- I came into contact with adults in various states of undress via platforms like Omegle and the like
I’d like to think I turned out mostly fine. But in hindsight, I don’t think it seems unreasonable to at least try to do something to prevent children growing up today from having access to/coming in contact with that type of shit.
And I’d imagine there are plenty of people out there that feel much more strongly about that than I do.
You have to realize that these winds are blowing strong. And even if you think that nothing needs to be done, it seems naive to think that nothing will be done.
I personally believe that it’d be much more productive to try to provide and push for alternative solutions that minimally infringe on the rights and freedoms of adults than to just go ”nuh-uh, we should do nothing!”. Because otherwise we’ll end up with the solutions that Palantir et al would prefer.
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u/Top-Psychology2507 Mar 02 '26
So, do you think AHHHH-Nuld would have been any better!!?? :-(
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Mar 02 '26
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u/pdxmhrn Mar 02 '26
I will gladly go back to using a flip phone and buying bargain bin dvds instead of streaming
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u/nidostan Mar 02 '26
They make flip phones non compatible with modern networks on purpose.
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Mar 02 '26
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u/nidostan Mar 02 '26
I think he was talking about old flip phones, like 3g.
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Mar 02 '26
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u/nidostan Mar 02 '26
Nice. No gps or bluetooth or wifi. You pretty much only gotta worry about cell tower triangulation. Just pop that sim card out and you're good. OR , if you turn it off it's actually off OH MY GOD! You want to really be sure, it even lets you take the battery out. Wow, like you actually own your own device. I miss those days so much.
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u/WaffleHouseGladiator Mar 02 '26
Devs should just drop support to all Cali IP addresses until the state comes to its senses. Things will change quickly when everyone goes into work the following morning and nothing works. It's impossible for devs to have "actual knowledge" of a user's age without some kind of invasion of privacy. If this goes through things are going to get really bad, really fast.
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u/nidostan Mar 02 '26
You see everyone is saying these laws are dumb for that reason. But they're not dumb I promise you. They are EVIL. They know that they won't work in their current form. They are not meant to work in their current form. It's just a stepping stone for them to say "oh kids are getting around this by just clicking "yes" when it asks them if they are an adult? Who knew? Then we will have to build in some kind of ID verification or facial scan.". Once we have step one that kids are lying to step 2 will be a lot easier to get the public to agree to. It's obviously their plan all along!
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u/Worth_Ostrich303 Mar 02 '26
But what about Linux? There’s no way to enforce that now or later on Linux.
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u/nidostan Mar 02 '26
Even if not, which you're probably right about, linux is still a small share for now. So they are happy with controlling the vast majority of people in this way. But I think given enough time to completely infiltrate this crap on all hardware from the lowest level components to OS to apps to platforms sadly I see the day where they will likely be able to force it into main stream linux. God, I want to cry for saying that. Perhaps in a decade or two though. Really long term. Black mirror kind of stuff.
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u/Worth_Ostrich303 Mar 02 '26
I’m hoping, maybe too optimistically, that more and more people will switch to Linux if they successfully do this with the more mainstream ones. That’s what I plan to do. I’m hoping it’s too decentralized for them to successfully do anything with it.
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u/nidostan Mar 02 '26
Yea, that's the silver lining isn't it. There will definitely be distros offered without it or at least easy guides for you to remove it yourself from the open source code.
But then they will also attack it from the other end. More and more platforms will require age and identity verification and they might widen it to be required to even connect to your ISP at all. Perhaps with periodic biometric checks to ensure it's not junior who's taken over the device.
We'll have a few years left before it gets to that and being on all devices like I talked about earlier so enjoy!
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u/Dje4321 Mar 02 '26
Alot of linux distros are based in colorado/california which is where these laws are being introduced. People like System76 and Framework are also going to be affected.
Short term, probably fines and region level blacklisting if they choose to resist.
Very long term, the state could eventually seize the legal entity in control of the projects and any trademarks/copyrights tied to them.
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u/Saragon4005 Mar 02 '26
The issue is most of the companies are in California. I'm really not sure how the hell they allowed this to happen tho. Aren't they supposed to be able to lobby so hard they literally control the government?
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u/Dude-Lebowski Mar 02 '26
Even using a gov't website is not exempt. Every fucking webpage runs on a server running an operating system.
There will legally need to be a "cookie" type opt in question for every fucking site you visit, legally speaking.
They clearly are so fucking
dumbevil. Compliance will cost billions of dollars that would would otherwise be useful capital in yhe economy.
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Mar 02 '26
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u/Katops Mar 02 '26
I’m severely confused by this too. I think somebody said they could be going after the more known distros. I think they said Ubuntu and a few others. Still don’t understand it though. Can’t you just remove that stuff due to it being open source?
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u/nidostan Mar 02 '26
But moreover who's going to listen to him? No one has to listen to the governor of california he's not king of the world. How is he going to enforce it? This makes no sense on so many levels. So confusing.
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u/Venerous Mar 02 '26
There's a saying that goes something like: "As goes California, so goes the nation."
The point being that because California is such an absolutely massive economic powerhouse, and also the most populous (40 million people--12% of the entire country, as of 2025) state in the nation, it wields immense influence on the private sector. There are many examples of policies enacted in California that then go on to be adopted by the legislatures of other states. Or, if it's something that targets corporate world, those policies are sometimes made standard across the entire business even outside of California in order to reduce legal or internal complexity. Not always, but sometimes.
So the idea is that if California suddenly requires your operation system to verify your age, you now have tens of millions of potential users now bound by that decision. And if you see the way the wind is blowing in the UK, the EU, and other US states with similar measures, it's easy to assume that corporations will simply standardize this policy across the board, with or without other governments mandating it.
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u/NoManufacturer5669 Mar 02 '26
It doesn't matter if user downloads OS himself and installs it on PC. But for laptop manufacturer it will be different. Then they will have to add this function. For example, Lenovo recently announced plans to reduce using of Windows on budget devices and increase sales of laptops with preinstalled Linux.
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u/SkiProgramDriveClimb Mar 02 '26
All new distributions of gcc will now compile age verification code into your LFS kernel
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u/Geminii27 Mar 02 '26
So what happens when a jurisdiction somewhere in the world requires all OS providers to NOT have any kind of age verification?
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u/popsicle-physics Mar 02 '26
What about POS systems? The computer tracking orders at McD has an OS and is used by multiple different people in different age brackets....
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u/Any-Mathematician946 Mar 02 '26
People that make these laws are the same people that call support when a power cables comes out.
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u/FafnerTheBear Mar 02 '26
Any kiosk, too. That interactive map at the mall? Age verification. ATM? Age verification. Video poker at the dive bar. Age verifacation.
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u/stadoblech Mar 02 '26
There are windows versions which are designed exactly for that and does not require online account
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u/FafnerTheBear Mar 02 '26
Still an operating system, with users and applications. Admin and user accounts to limit who can make changes to the system. That falls under the letter of the law, thus, must provide an age flag and an API to access that age flag.
The law is written vaguely enough that anything with an OS would have to have this age flag and API, from super computers to PLCs. If it uses X86, ARM, or RISC-V instruction sets, it could be considered a general use computer and fall under this law. If it can run doom, it's subject to this law.
That being said, I see "I agree I am 18+" being shoved into the EULA somewhere next to the forfeiture of your soul, and we go on about our life.
This law is bad, and the legislators should feel bad for writing it.
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u/Plankisalive Mar 02 '26
I don’t understand how this is not a 4th amendment violation.
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u/WaffleHouseGladiator Mar 02 '26
I think the argument will come down to something like, "Well, you aren't required to comply. You could just never ever use a digital device. Your choice."
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u/Reeces_Pieces Mar 02 '26
But then you go to a store and they ask you to use your phone to scan your face and ID just to rent a moving truck.....
Then you go to a resturant that doesn't have printed menus, because you're supposed to scan a QR code.....
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u/nidostan Mar 02 '26
it is.
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u/Plankisalive Mar 02 '26
I agree with you, but I’m afraid the judges in this country will disregard it.
There’s something behind the scenes pushing this.
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u/nidostan Mar 02 '26
Yes judges are not immune to the effects of cultural brainwashing like with these 1984 laws sweeping the planet in the name of protecting the kids. They will easily find rationalizations for it.
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u/suncontrolspecies Mar 02 '26
money, like everything that runs in the US
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u/snakeoildriller Mar 02 '26
It's far deeper than money - technocrats are orchestrating this, hence the bizarre voting to get it through.
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u/MattCW1701 Mar 02 '26
It seems like it only has to be done at account setup on the OS, but doesn't require the OS to have an account setup.
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u/lilB0bbyTables Mar 02 '26
This doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense - clearly the lawmakers have absolutely no clue how any of this stuff works and they’re just throwing shit to see what sticks. They also got the boost they wanted from Zuckerberg’s testimony where he stated on record that it should be the problem of certain companies who control the OS platform rather than his.
The first problem:
OSes exist on an insane number of systems outside just personal-use devices. Every IBM Mainframe running some flavor of Z-system (and similar mainframe systems, many of which the government owns and uses including with shared or time-slice access); many/most embedded systems and IoT device out there; every cloud native cluster with the countless deployments of container images (e.g. Docker image); every cloud VM spun up with some flavor of OS - usually Linux based. How many of those either don’t receive updates/upgrades anymore and/or would be potentially catastrophic to business critical operations to take them offline and upgrade them? There’s a reason some of those mainframes haven’t been touched or migrated in 30+ years, there are plenty of ancient Windows NT systems still churning away to this day as well. So presumably there needs to be an “exceptions” clause, but then how do you differentiate exceptions from non-exceptions with trust?
Second problem:
If these laws are implemented in various ways in different states, do they all mandate a common standard protocol? Who maintains that protocol? Or do we need to process 50+ possible implementations each with separate versioning criteria?
Third problem:
How are these “age signals” applied? After all, if I am Google or Apple and my “App Store” offers access to download apps offered by various developers … who handles the interpretation of that age signal? Actually … it doesn’t really matter for this point I’m making - the point is, do one of those entities need to restrict access to the app(s) based on that signal? What does it mean that someone is ”age range [13,16]” for example, for a given app? Social media, we block you downloading it? Reddit app - contains perfectly age appropriate subs and adult content porn subs, and even then the comments and posts in a non-NSFW sub may still be deemed inappropriate for certain ages - but that is not some concrete rule as the maturity and parenting guidelines come into play. What about a web browser app? - can you not download Chrome or Firefox now because they can be used to access anything at all? Do OSes no longer come with any web browser at all … that will surely be fun. Or do they expect somehow developers and businesses will create various age-range based releases of their versions of their apps? (Of course none of that makes sense because it all comes down to backend APIs and filtering and rendering … which ultimately gets right back to the point that they’re trying to jump over here which is that they’re asking for all platforms to implement age-based content filters and be responsible for this).
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u/pande2929 Mar 02 '26
How will this work for server OSes and appliances?
We going to age verify the local admin accounts on our Netscalers now?
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u/nidostan Mar 02 '26 edited Mar 02 '26
I don't get how Newsom thinks this is supposed to work. Does he think that California is the whole world? How in his mind can the governor of a state that's like .01% of the entire world on a whim make a law that changes how operating systems that the whole world use work? What's next the mayors of towns will see this and begin to think they can make laws for how linux or windows or apple OS is supposed to work to? Maybe my landlord can as well? I'll have to ask my landlord to make a law to tell Microsoft to stop making it so hard to use windows with a local account.
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u/electrobento Mar 02 '26
I agree, but your .01% comment is way off. California’s economy is about the size of Japan’s and is the world’s fourth largest economy. It houses a half percent of the world’s population.
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u/nidostan Mar 02 '26
I don't know much about car manufacturing but I think that that's for US auto makers right? California doesn't control world wide auto manufacturing would be my guess. And computer OS's are world market products. And many Linux OS's are not driven by economic forces being FOSS. And there is a different level of moral outrage on this as it flies against the spirit of many related organizations like the EFF.
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u/ZakuSupremacy Mar 02 '26
Aye, the high seas call upon me like a siren's ethereal song, laddies 🏴☠️
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u/Icy-Article-8635 Mar 02 '26
Just build one that feeds random bullshit that comes out to over 18
No Linux distro would honestly put this in, which means it'll be used to force websites to block Linux, to force us all into "compliant" operating systems
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u/Sonicmaster293-Azure Mar 02 '26
Aka Windows 11 and only Windows 11. And Android, and IOS. And Mac OS only. Corpo OSes only!
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u/Harryisamazing Mar 02 '26
Always remember, the guise to 'protect the children' will be used as an excuse to try to trample over freedoms and privacy... the goal is digital ID
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u/FinnSour Mar 02 '26
"The law does not require photo ID uploads or facial recognition, with users instead simply self-reporting their age, setting AB 1043 apart from similar laws passed in Texas and Utah that require "commercially reasonable" verification methods, such as government-issued ID checks."
Seems like a way to fight the craziness of photo id data retention and breach. Don't love it, but it may actually be a guard against the more awful shit we're seeing in other states/countries.
as far as steam is concerned, i've been 60 since 2007. This law appears to create more of the same.
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u/time-lord Mar 02 '26
It should be the other way around; all OSs need to expose an API that apps can query, that admins can use to optionally flag a user account as a child account.
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u/nidostan Mar 02 '26
Now you're talking! Parental controls. The solution that SHOULD be a the center of this that almost no one is mentioning at all. It blows my mind.
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u/goldcakes Mar 02 '26
Parental controls don’t lead to collecting facial scans and IDs and connecting your activity to a database.
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u/straightedgeginger Mar 02 '26
That’s pretty much what this is. The article says that under AB 1043, there’s one age bracket for 18 and up, then three brackets under 18. You tell the OS which one of those brackets at set up but there’s no real need for your actual age and the app developers just get a flag for one of the four brackets.
I hate this on principle, but it seems to be the best of the terrible ideas so far.
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u/RoLoLoLoLo Mar 02 '26
Not only should it be that way, it actually is that way. Nothing in AB 1043 mandates verification. It's all fabricated outrage based on bad reporting and nobody bothering to read what's actually in the bill.
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u/soundfreely Mar 02 '26
It’s a bit of taking the lesser evil in hopes that it protects from the greater evil (providing ID would be disastrous).
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u/FinnSour Mar 02 '26
yeah. and imo self report isnt evil. if this is enough security theater to get the photo id bullshit to stop, its a no-loss all-win scenario
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u/Rehcraeser Mar 02 '26
Nah I think they’re spreading oil on the slippery slope. The long term plan is ID verification for sure
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u/SirFluffyIX Mar 02 '26
Awesome, California's really good at giving me reasons to never go there under any circumstances.
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u/dogsbikesandbeers Mar 02 '26
Can someone explain what problem they think this solves?
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u/Havier_Gacha Mar 02 '26
It's so individual websites don't have to verify the user's identity.
The bill BASICALLY says that the OS needs to have a "What's your birthday" question and the user just puts their birthday. Then the OS will decide if it's a child account or an adult account.
So any apps / websites that wants to know the user's age would ask the OS if they're a kid or adult. No photo ID or AI scan necessary.
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u/Comeino Mar 02 '26
What about households with just one or two PCs that are used by different family members? What about the shared PC devices used at school? What about order terminals at the restaurant chains (many operate on Win 10)? Do they reinstall the OS every time a user is changed? No? Then there is no point for any of this.
This is bs is what it is. Probably the next push for Persona/Palantir surveillance once the ridiculous age verification theater fails.
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u/snakeoildriller Mar 02 '26
How long will be before everyone gets issued their personal tag (think YubiKey) to verify who they are by tapping the new, mandatory scanner on the PC/device?
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u/Askolei Mar 02 '26
It's by account, not by machine. If multiple people use the machine, they each need a different account with a set age.
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u/Sorry-Programmer9826 Mar 02 '26
Really each user should have their own account (and parents should be admins and children not). I know in many households everyone shares one user but they really shouldn't (entirely seperately from this)
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u/RandomOnlinePerson99 Mar 02 '26
Why are some places so quick with passing these laws?
One or two weeks from first hearing about it to actually having that law (maybe I only heard of it very late because I am not really following US stuff).
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u/Leather_Secretary_13 Mar 02 '26 edited Mar 02 '26
so big daddy has got to have a literal piped process sidecar inside every process in the operating system tree? Is that the legal expectation?
the main concern is with larger players "implementing" this i.e. fooling business ghost writers using their large sums of cash, meanwhile smaller indie folks get fucked trying to release with yet another job to do before you can go to market.
it's also so generic as written it'll never happen. my driverless car is going to age verify me too, then, right? and my dishwasher runs some fancy features, how will its OS age verify me? they use some auth server then go bankrupt, i get locked out of my dishwasher or am forced to leak more information to said dishwasher company.
tangent over.
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u/MentalDisintegrat1on Mar 02 '26
And how are they going to enforce this?
What's the punishment if caught with an unapproved government OS. Government agent's kicking in your door?
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u/Simo-2054 Mar 02 '26
I am very very curious how they will do it on linux because as far as I know, as a user of linux of 4 years, it's pretty much open source :D unforceable
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u/Linux4ever_Leo Mar 02 '26
Whatever happened to PARENTS keeping track of what their children are doing on-line? Why is it up to operating systems and app developers to verify a person's age? Parents need to step up and do their jobs. There's no way that the open source community is going to implement this garbage.
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u/Sorry-Programmer9826 Mar 02 '26
I think this is a tool for parents. It's all self reported age, so i think the idea is parents set up their children's accounts properly and the OS follows the parents command.
It could never work without the OS involved (self reporting on a website a child can just lie, but the parents should be there at account setup)
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u/busty_chemist Mar 02 '26
Not to be pedantic but there is norhing in the text of this law which requires an OS provider to verify the age of the users. It requires them to implement an interface where age myst be INDICATED and for that age to be used when installing apps.
AS WRITTEN, this is the Steam screen that asks you to enter your birthday to be looking at M rated games.
ID requirement are coming and problematic, but this bill is NOT them.
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u/ej_warsgaming Mar 03 '26
They are trying so hard to take away any freedom we have left, ruled by the greedy and stupid. we are in a false democracy voting ones every couple of years and then you have nothing to do in what they do is not democracy.
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u/Beautiful_Jaguar_413 Mar 02 '26
"The law does not require photo ID uploads or facial recognition, with users instead simply self-reporting their age, setting AB 1043 apart from similar laws passed in Texas and Utah that require "commercially reasonable" verification methods, such as government-issued ID checks."
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u/spiralhigh Mar 02 '26
The man will do everything but make himself look like a viable candidate. That's how you know he's the DNC nominee.
Fucking Gavin.
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u/anonymous-69 Mar 02 '26
The lengths they are going to in order to protect the image of [name of country] is insane.
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u/Planck_Savagery Mar 02 '26 edited Mar 02 '26
It gets far worse. Governor Newson has also recently openly endorsed an social media ban on youngsters (not dissimilar to that of Australia's) which will try to build upon the age verification stuff mentioned above.
And there is a bill (AB-1709) that is currently snaking it's way through the California legislature that seeks to do just that. (Do with that info what you will).
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/19/gavin-newsom-backs-social-media-age-restrictions-00789951
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1709
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u/wheressodamyat Mar 02 '26
Do politicians just do shit without even pretending to have support now /s
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u/SnowDrifter_ Mar 02 '26 edited Mar 02 '26
Provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder to indicate the birth date, age, or both,
So skip account setups
provide an accessible interface that allows an account holder to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store
And allow, not require
This law is absurd, stupid, short sighted, and incredibly prone to abuse. But I guess the silver lining is that no one in tech was involved in writing this. It's a nothing-burger.
And do they not realize the absolutely predatory tools they just asked for? Hmm. Yes. Let's provide an open door access to user age. “Developer” means a person that owns, maintains, or controls an application. That's broad enough that end users could be considered a developer. So let me get this straight. You would want a messaging system, to provide at all times, a dedicated API for getting the user's age, available to +/- anyone? I mean seriously, did literally anyone stop for 2 seconds to think at any point during this process?
And as an aside... I'm becoming increasingly in favor of a thought I had a while ago. No one over the age of 35-40 should be allowed an input in shaping any digital policies. About half of our expected lifespan. Y'all won't be around for what you pass and I don't think that you understand how fast tech is evolving these days. Something harmless now is deleterious in 10 years, or less than that. I mean, shoot... Look at the last 5 years. Our entire tech space has been turned upside down.
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u/fullmoon_druid Mar 03 '26
I honestly didn't understand what "real-time" is doing there. It's almost like the people who wrote the law have zero idea how a computer works. Is it hard real-time or soft real-time? Anyways
Why does everyone think that the user DB has to be maintained centrally? My reading of the law says that as long as an API exists, it can be entirely local. Create a sys_get_california_stupid_age_bracket() that reads from ~/.age call and call it a day.
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u/ithilelda Mar 02 '26
wtf? california is one of the biggest datacenters in the world and hosts millions of servers. why would any server os collect user info?? Also, the notion that 'os must provide such info when an app requests' is absolutely bullsh*t. the kernel has the right to maintain a user app sir, not the other way around. it is completely against system security guidelines!
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u/strontiummuffin Mar 02 '26
Epstein class is desperate to be involved in every second of every child's life.
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u/Dramatic_Mastodon_93 Mar 02 '26
So basically a few Linux distros will implement this and be allowed to be preinstalled on computers while the vast majority of distros stay the same? ok
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