This is Zuckerberg doing this via Meta:

https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_billion_in_nonprofit_grants_and_45/

Unidentified users are worth way less than users that they can link to an identity, a law like this passing would massively increase the value of Meta's user base to advertisers and data brokers.

'Protecting the children' is a long used way to shut down dissenting voices ("Why does xxxx want to put our children in danger?!!!").

Besides obviously being Meta pushing for these, people should start paying attention to the politicians pushing them.

We should not forget these names.

I hope this just manifests as a transition from "I lied about my age to steam, Minecraft and pornhub" to "I let my OS lie about my age to steam, Minecraft and pornhub."

But I get the fear that they're going to take it too far and require ID, especially since the feds are a thousand times worse than the state governments in question.

What is to stop everyone from lying? I would enter 1/1/1900 if ever forced to.

To take the voice of the other side

Age verification is a thing that's becoming more important

It's expensive for all the companies if they have to do age verification, apple and Microsoft are huge so they can easily absorb the cost, so if we make those companies do it, it takes the load off the other companies

It's not that they're open source hostile, it's that they're open source blind. I think they're also using corporate versions of windows so they don't get the worst of it, so they're not incentivised to find alternatives

Linux is going to have a lot of trouble funding ID checks in the handful of jurisdictions where it's necessary

I wonder if Linux should be presented as business software (since most Linux installations are servers) that should not be bound by that law, what does a server care about the age of the worker who set it up or the company that owns it

As a European, would it be enough for me to use a distribution that is not from the US? So they would not have to implement age verification at operating system level. All the service (such as Flatpak in example) would still work without verification, right? Can I escape the US law as a European user?

All of these sorts of laws are designed to do two things:

1. Destroy privacy

2. Destroy Free Software (because inevitable end result will be enforcement via DRM, obviously)

That's why it's vitally important to stand united against them, and bootlicking class traitors like Lennart Poettering need to be bitch-slapped into either standing with us or fucking off out of Linux development entirely.

If it's actually "age verification" as quoted, not "age recording" then it's significantly worse than the state-level bills.

Oops, all fascism!

The Epstein class wants to know which users are minors.

So this is going to have to include basically everything , cars, airplanes, teledildonics .

How is this ever going to be enforceable?

So that's what the TPM chip is for?

How do I get off the shit show?

Also might this apply to headless servers too?

Don't you ever forget who is behind this https://youtu.be/Yd7j_u-wPoM

Woah, did the media learn something from the California bill? That was only reported very much on after it had already passed. Now this is getting significant coverage when nothing except introduction has happened yet (and let us hope it stays that way).