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How Linux developers defeated the new OS age-verification laws
(blazetrends.com)
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this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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Linux
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It's unenforceable on Linux. A Linux user can simply remove or modify any code running on their machine. Fedora, Debian, and Arch can't make a user verify their age any more than they can force you to use Gnome. It's kinda the whole point of FOSS.
There is a very easy way to force linux users to enforce this. However, I won't give it away here, because as far as I can tell the current law makers are clueless.
And I don't want to give them clues.
I'm already seeing that in a year or two, we're getting blocked on websites or electron applications because of age verification just like in android with Google Play Services. Like use age verification software or get blocked for 99% the internet.
They don't even need to turn it into law.
Honestly the faster they try to lock us out of the web the sooner we can get a second, freer web with card games and prostitution.
So just like the old net before Google, Meta and Amazon :)
"Like putting too much air in a balloon!"
That may be my favorite line from the whole show
Blackjack and hookers for 500 please
Whatever device based verification those websites or electron apps were communicating with can be spoofed in a system where you have complete control.
Games are cracked in weeks at most, don't you think that whatever secure communication is established won't be cracked lightning fast by the whole FOSS community? Once the "secure communication" between local apps is broken, a third package can mitm that shit easily. It's a local environment.
Our current law makers are still debating if freeing the slaves was a good idea. That's how far behind they are.
Behind or ahead? Maybe we shouldn't respect the laws they make?
I am very glad that you have strategically selected which parts of your mind to lose.
I'm going to argue that you share it because one thing you can count on is very determined nerds to defeat it.
Every time legislators tried to enforce some sort of dystopian thing, developers saw it as damage and routed around it.
You're not wrong, security through obscurity eventually fails. In this case however, time counts, the longer it can be cut off, the more chance of some sanity returning, of backlash building politically. The time to route around is after a law is made, preferably as flawed a law as possible.
My fellow lemming, your lawmakers are not on here don’t worry.
I don’t see any real way, unless they’re going to require age verification to connect to the internet in the first place.
And that's the whole point of the amendment to that law. Their congress critters were enlightened on the futility of such an endeavor. Next is California.
but systemd has dooomed us all
waaaaaahh!
Are you referring to the userd field? That would mean nothing if the user has total control on what can be written there.