GoKawiilOpinion A new wave of age verification laws requires kids and teenagers to register before they can use a computer.
When I was a teenager, I was forbidden to look at Playboy Magazine. I just wanted to read the articles and interviews (Cough, Cough). No, seriously, I did, but I also wanted to look at the photos. Guess what? Although I was told not to, I read Playboy anyway. Here we are, decades later, and people are still trying, and failing, to prevent young people from seeing and reading forbidden fruit. I never thought, though, that 21st-century prudes would block young people from using operating systems! But here we are. Lucky us.
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As my colleague Liam Proven reports, several states in the US are now demanding that operating system vendors collect and store the age or date of birth for each user account. Now, for Apple and Microsoft, it's no big deal. Microsoft, for instance, requires Windows 11 users to have a Microsoft account, and Apple, while claiming it's a privacy-first platform, still examines every photo you take with Apple's Enhanced Visual Search.
It's a different story with Linux and the other open source operating systems, like the BSDs. They have always been about empowering their users to do anything they want, within the confines of their licenses, anyway, anytime they want, no matter whether they're five or ninety-five.
Big Brother is only going to get worse. With the US Congress advancing its own App Store Accountability Act, and more state lawmakers floating copycat bills, OS‑level age verification is poised to become a standard part of how Americans set up phones, tablets and PCs within the next few years. Happy, happy, joy, joy.
This is not just another example of stupid American tricks. The European Union (EU) has guidelines for protecting minors that could cause trouble, too. In addition, Brazil already has an age-verification law for operating systems.
As for the UK, operating systems aren't targeted yet, but the powers that be are pushing for stricter social networking rules for the under-16 set. At least, so far, only Australia among Western nations has a complete ban on social networks for young people. Since the Aussies are wondering if teenagers should be banned from GitHub, I have to wonder if operating systems will be next.
So it is that the FreeBSD distribution MidnightBSD has already added a clause to its license, "California residents are not authorized to use MidnightBSD for desktop use in the state of California effective January 1, 2027." They're not alone. Adenix GNU/Linux, a Debian-based distro, isn't going along either. Its founder, J. Mazzullo, has declared that his distro "will NOT have any age checks and that they are not for use in regions with OS age verification laws." Meanwhile, David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), creator of the new Omarchy Linux distro, simply calls the new California law, "Unenforceable."
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