this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
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California introduces age verification law for all operating systems, including Linux and SteamOS — user age verified during OS account setup (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 1 day ago by Amoxtli@thelemmy.club to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 1 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

Many users below are going off on rants about the police state fining them as end-users for user breeches (which is not any part of this law).

In addition, putting my age as 'over 18' in a box when i set up a login affects me in any way other than 'drastically'.

Eg: greenahimada with 51 upvotes 2 down.

For everyone trying to figure out how this would be enforced, it's not about being proactively enforced. (and data collection is 99% of it)

(Untrue)

It's about adding a double-tap "Well, these people also violated our age verification law, so they have to pay a fine," added to any incident where it's convenient to add this in. If a minor sends another minor a snap that would trigger CP laws, and one of the phones isn't age verified correctly, fine to the parents and hands up in the air "We tried!" A minor is involved in torrenting movies? "Look, kids using illegal OS! Fine to the parents!"

(Untrue)

This is how laws work across a lot of corrupt developing countries.

(.. Rant continues).

[–] recked_wralph@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

It isn’t mandating you affirm you’re older than 18. It’s asking explicitly for your age or your birthday.

While the API then would take that data to transmit your age bracket to other systems.

This might not be drastically burdensome on an individual workstation, I’ll stand corrected on that. And it’s not disclosing your actual birthdate to anyone either (though I still feel like it should be my choice whether or not to store that information on my personal device).

In either case, we started with this “affirm your age” kind of law on various kinds of restricted websites (pornography and alcohol) and it’s easy to just lie. So now that is now morphing into more invasive age verification strategies.

I view this law as easily circumvented theater that has the aside effect of being a slippery slope toward more aggressive anti-privacy systems in the future.