Keep that tinfoil hat close, I have a feeling Digital identification laws and ReadID technologies are actually moving the internet away from user anonymity, enabling a framework where users can be tied to real-world identities and easily sanctioned.

Make a post on the internet that someone objects to? boom, you just lost access to all your bank accounts.

I mean people connected to Peter Thiel are already bragging how they would love to do that

It's physically impossible to "outlaw Linux". That would mean outlawing the entirety of "The Cloud™".

Why wouldn’t they?

Why? There are other countries with similar laws. It's not always (only) about the USA.

I'm not so sure. Probably they will block Linux users from certain sites. Not exactly what I'd call a win.

You're exempt from the service too probably.

I'm old enough to remember the Leisure Suit Larry series that used age verification by asking questions that kids probably wouldn't know (obviously this was long before the internet).

Game over. User wins.

Death knell.

A new malaphor minted in the wild!

The two expressions you merged were:

• death knell for (thing)
• the final nail in the coffin for (something)

Linux users are incredible in their belief that issues of privacy, security, or data autonomy will push the masses away from what they're used to (OSX/Windows, Facebook/Reddit, etc) and towards better options (Linux, Lemmy, Mastodon, etc)

No, mate, absolutely nothing is gonna happen to Windows. It's gonna be perfectly fine. If we're lucky, there will be a 1-3% dip in user base towards Linux, but there's exactly 0% chance for a mass exodus that would make the upper management stop and think for a second.