* This approach is the _most consistent_ with retaining anonymity on the internet, while actually helping parents with their issues. If any age-relevant gatekeeping needs to be made on the internet at all, this is the one I find acceptable.

* this is because the act very specifically does NOT require age _verification_ ie using third-parties to verify whether the claimed age is correct. Rather, it is piggybacking on the baked-in assumption, that parents will set up the device for their kids, indicating on first install what the age/DoB is, then handing over the device -a setting which can, presumably, only be modified with parental consent

* yes, there are edge cases, esp in OSS, and yes, it would be nice to iron those out -but the risk = probability x impact calculus on this is very very low.

* If retaining anonymity on the internet is of value to you, don't let the perfect be the enemy of good enough.

> Section 1798.500(e)(1) states:

“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.

So… DNS servers are “covered application stores”, right? As is PyPI or GitHub or any other such service. S3 and such, too — lots of facilitating going on.

And I’m wondering… lots of things are general purpose computers. Are servers covered? How about embedded systems? Lots of embedded systems are quite general purpose.

edit: Yikes, whoever wrote the text of the law seems to have failed to think at all.

> (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.

The developer shall request? Not the application? So if I write an application and you download it and run it on an operating system, then I need to personally ask your OS how old you are? This makes no sense.

> (2) (A) A developer that receives a signal pursuant to this title shall be deemed to have actual knowledge of the age range of the user to whom that signal pertains across all platforms of the application and points of access of the application even if the developer willfully disregards the signal.

Did they forget to make this conditional on getting g the right answer? If I develop an application used by a 12-year-old and the OS says the user is 18+ (which surely will happen all the time even if no one lies because computers have multiple users), and the OS answers my query, then courts are directed to deem that I have actual knowledge that the user is under 13? Excuse me?

I hope this is a wakeup call for the linux community: if you don’t wanna get choked out by bad legislation, you have to get politically organized.

(The issue of "primary owner of the device" being the most problematic.)

Equally the concept of "app store" is different for different OS's. iOS and Android are clear. Mac and Windows are mostly "download and run from website" (although both want to pivot to appstore, with varying degrees of success.)

Then we need to wonder if yum and apt are stores, given that they aren't actually owned by "linux".

In truth though it kinda doesn't matter. It's trivial to add an "age" field to account creation. It's trivial for users to enter any date they like. So on the one hand it's easy for OS makers to comply, it's easy for users to lie.

Presumably if the law could have mandated age checks then would have, so I'm not even sure thus is slippery slope. Most minors don't have photo ID. Most desktop hardware doesn't have a camera (at the time of account creation.)

This feels like performative law-making. Vague language. Unenforceable user participation.

First, let's admit the push for age verification laws isn't a partisan or ideological thing. It's a global trend. This California law has bipartisan sponsorship and only major org opponent is the evil G [1]. While age verification is unpopular in tech community, I imagine a lot of average adult voters agree that limiting children's access to wilder parts of the Internet is a good thing.

On this premise, the discussion is then who should be responsible for age verification. The traditional model is to require app developers / website owners to gatekeep -- like the Texas and Ohio laws that require PornHub to verify users' IDs. But such model put too much burden on small developers, and it's a privacy nightmare to have to share your PII with random apps.

This is why we see this new model. States started to believe it seems more viable to dump the responsibility on big tech / platforms. A newer Texas law is adopt this model (on top the traditional model) to require app stores to verify user age (but was recently blocked by court) [2]. And this California law pretty much also takes this model -- the OS (thinking as iOS / Android / Windows with app store) shall obtain the user age and provide "a signal regarding the users age bracket to applications available in a covered application store".

While many people here are concerning open-source OSes, and the language do cover all OSes -- my intuition is no lawmaker had ever think about them and they were not the target.

[1] https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab...

[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/05/big-tech-won-in-tex...

When it comes to technology, parents will always, always be years behind their kids. The kids will find a way to circumvent all these controls that the laws are trying to force technology providers into implementing.

These laws won't result in less violence, lower drug use, more opportunity, or closer, more tight knit communities.

None of that addresses "if you get unlucky and some prosecutor decides to help his career by prosecuting you as an enabler-of-child-inappropriate-whatever-it-is". YOLOing away one's freedom on "probably" seems risky, and there is no reward to be had for doing it.

The only sane solution is to simply add "not for use in california" to all OSs, until California gets its collective head out of its collective rectum.

If you work on any programming project at all in any capacity:

- Are you confident your work doesn't fall afoul of this?

- Are you confident they won't decide to come after you anyway for insane political, bureaucratic or "seeing-like-a-state" dysfunctions?

- Are you willing to bet millions of dollars in potential fines that your answers to the previous two questions are correct?

California is kind of strange - on the one hand giving rise to open source; on the other hand being a lobbyist's paradise.

Now what would happen after that?

First oses would have to implement the above in a way that could not be bypassed, pretty much impossible if the child has access to the device.

Then you would need to require that websites honor that token or any similar token no matter how it was implemented ... https MITM etc. good luck with that.

Finally once all the implementation and enforcement hurdles are complete every website out there would immediately know that the user browsing was a child and all the trackers and ad networks on the web would immediately start targeting those users because children are marks.

Now you need even more laws and regulations to protect the children from being targeted by advertising companies, and good luck with enforcing that.