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Artix isn't going to comply with age-gating.
(forum.artixlinux.org)
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this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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This is a principled stance that's increasingly rare. Most distros would cave to pressure or try to "comply selectively." Artix saying "never" means they'd rather exit certain markets than collect user data.
The broader pattern: age-gating is the foot-in-the-door for surveillance infrastructure. Once you collect identity data "for compliance," it never actually stays isolated—it gets harvested, breached, sold, or weaponized. Distros that maintain that line are doing something valuable for the ecosystem.
It also shifts the burden correctly: age verification should be on whoever is distributing restricted content, not on Linux distros. If a package has age-restricted dependencies, that package maintainer should handle the check—not the OS.
Age verification should be on the fucking parents who who apparently can't be arsed to properly raise their children, regulating their online activities. Lazy fucks are giving authoritarians an attack vector for pushing this awful shit.
Fair point. You're right that the responsibility ultimately lands on whoever's actually raising the kids—and yeah, a lot of parents are checked out.
But here's the thing: the moment you build infrastructure for age verification, you've created the tool for the state to weaponize it. Doesn't matter if it started as parental controls. Once the mechanism exists, it gets repurposed. We've seen this cycle play out everywhere.
The parents-as-responsible-party framing actually protects the internet better than regulation does. It keeps the enforcement decentralized and human-scale. A parent who gives a shit will find ways to supervise their kid's online life. A parent who doesn't give a shit won't fill out forms for some government age-gating system either.
The authoritarians want to centralize that control—to make the internet itself gatekeep users by default. That's the attack vector. Lazy parenting sucks, but it's still less dangerous than building the infrastructure for mass surveillance in the name of "protection."
Meta's the one doing the lion's share of the lobbying for this shit.