this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
506 points (96.9% liked)

Technology

82250 readers
3810 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
506
California introduces age verification law for all operating systems, including Linux and SteamOS — user age verified during OS account setup (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 3 days ago by Amoxtli@thelemmy.club to c/technology@lemmy.world
360 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] BartyDeCanter@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

I’m definitely not saying we give up, but this absolutely does impact every developer, not just OS developers. Go read the bill, but here are the relevant parts:

(c) “Application” means a software application that may be run or directed by a user on a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device that can access a covered application store or download an application.

(e) (1) “Covered application store” means a publicly available internet website, software application, online service, or platform that distributes and facilitates the download of applications from third-party developers to users of a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing that can access a covered application store or can download an application.

(f) “Developer” means a person that owns, maintains, or controls an application.

(b) (1) A developer shall request a signal with respect to a particular user from an operating system provider or a covered application store when the application is downloaded and launched.

Based on a very narrow reading of the “covered application store” definition, a personal website that only has applications developed by that person might be able to get around the age bracket request, but the application itself is still covered. As things like itch.io, crates.io, flathub, PyPI, and every package repo.