this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2026
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I forgot the name, but I saw a BSD distro state that they are going to block users in California when this law gets put into place. I hope that more OSs do the same. Especially Windows, it could be devastating to California's economy and make them, along with other states and countries, reconsider their decisions on age verification.
I don't live in California but I'm interested in seeing if there are any other OSs that will be blocking California users. I'm probably fine to just continue using Linux Mint but I'm open to trying other distros/OSs in order to participate in this protest if Linux Mint doesn't.
In my opinion, it is foolish and shortsighted of these developers to just block the state and move on. (I do live in Cali but hear me out)
Whether people like it or not we are stuck with this law now. A law that leaves all of the implementation details up in the air. The big corporations, Microsoft and Apple, are not going to be pulling out of California. Do we really want to leave all the power to determine how this system works? Leave the 4th largest economy in the world entirely in their hands?
If we ignore what is going on here then we will give up our chance to even propose a minimal acceptable solution to this law. One that does not require ID or face scans.
I desperately hope that the linux foundation is taking this seriously and is already looking at implementing a solution.
This law aims to place at least some of the responsibility back onto the parents that allow their children to run wild on the internet. Is the law perfect? Absolutely not. Would I repeal it if I could? Yes, of course. But this is the hand we are dealt.
(also it is midnightbsd)
I know that we do need better regulations for protecting children online but I don't think we're ever going to get that. It seems like the government that we have now just wants to have full control over everyone. In fact, the FTC made a statement saying that they're basically giving companies a loophole that allows them to partially ignore COPPA, which is one of the best protections children had online. It's obvious that they have no interest in protecting children online, if they're making statements like that.
Just to reiterate I do not think this law is good and I would get rid of it in an instant but...
I don't really see this as a law to protect children. I see this as a law that focuses on the parents. The parents become liable under this law if they circumvent the system and their child is hurt. If developers decide to flaunt this law and ignore the signals then they would be liable.
So if you don't have children this law should effectively not affect you other than you might need to choose which age bracket you are in. Which sounds like such a small price to pay for making parents take responsibility over their children on the internet.
I mean, as long as they don't require an ID that's fine I guess, even though what they're proposing can be easily circumvented. But my biggest, and everyone else's, concern is that, as with what's been going on with age verification, it's possible that it'll just snowball into something worse. It doesn't help that there are people, like me, that currently can't get IDs. There are already several websites that I have to use through a VPN, so if these age verification laws keep getting worse, people like me might completely lose the ability to use the internet entirely, unless they make getting IDs easier.
I'm sorry that you have to deal with that. IDs should be as easy as reasonable to get. (fucking SAVE act).
You are right, this could be used as a stepping stone towards gathering IDs and the deanonymization of the internet. We (Cali residents) need to make sure that we contact our reps and are heard. Voice our concerns with this law in its current form and that we will be up in arms if they go any closer towards ID verification being required.
It depends on how the system is implemented. It is entirely possible that MS will implement it with ID verification or face scans, since the law does not forbid them from doing that. But that is why the open source community/linux foundation need to make sure that we put forward a reasonable solution rather than just "forcing" users in Cali to go back to using windows.