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Age Verification Laws Are Multiplying Like a Virus, and Your Linux Computer Might be Next (itsfoss.com)

submitted 4 hours ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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As of today, about half of all U.S. states have some form of age verification law around. Nine of those were passed in 2025 alone, covering everything from adult content sites to social media platforms to app stores.

Right now, California's Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043) is all the rage right now, which targets not only websites and apps but also operating systems. Come January 1, 2027, every OS provider must collect a user's age at account setup and provide that data to app developers via a real-time API.

Colorado is also working on a near-identical bill, which we covered earlier.

The EFF's year-end review put it more bluntly: 2025 was "the year states chose surveillance over safety." The foundation's concern, which I concur with, is, where does this stop? Self-reported birthday today, government ID tomorrow? There appears to be no limit to these laws' overreach.

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[–] rimu@piefed.social 8 points 1 hour ago

The thing about doing age verification at the OS level is the user could just install a crack that rewrites the necessary code. It'll take some heavy DRM type stuff to block that. Possibly hardware support, like a specialised TPM.

No way can that be standardised and then rolled out quickly. If they rush it then it'll be some proprietary power grab.

The alternative is each website and app does it separately which will be spotty and provide endless security breaches.

It'll be a shitshow either way.