Technology

42458 readers

369 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

alyaza@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org

gyrfalcon@beehaw.org

rs5th@beehaw.org

coldredlight@beehaw.org

SemioticStandard@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@kbin.social

remington@beehaw.org

252

Age Verification Laws Are Multiplying Like a Virus, and Your Linux Computer Might be Next (itsfoss.com)

submitted 2 days ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

77 comments fedilink hide all child comments

As of today, about half of all U.S. states have some form of age verification law around. Nine of those were passed in 2025 alone, covering everything from adult content sites to social media platforms to app stores.

Right now, California's Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043) is all the rage right now, which targets not only websites and apps but also operating systems. Come January 1, 2027, every OS provider must collect a user's age at account setup and provide that data to app developers via a real-time API.

Colorado is also working on a near-identical bill, which we covered earlier.

The EFF's year-end review put it more bluntly: 2025 was "the year states chose surveillance over safety." The foundation's concern, which I concur with, is, where does this stop? Self-reported birthday today, government ID tomorrow? There appears to be no limit to these laws' overreach.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Who the hell is "selling" Linux?

[–] TehPers@beehaw.org 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Red Hat.

The other distros? No idea.

[–] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I knew someone was going to come back with Red Hat. I just didn't expect it to be you!

[–] TehPers@beehaw.org 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Hey even I use Linux daily.

Actually, I'm not really sure why "even I" should be shocking. I write code for a living. Surely I should be using Linux once in a while.

Anyway RHEL is probably the only Linux distro I can think of that costs money and comes with support. The major cloud providers sometimes have their own Linux distros they use as well (looking at you, Amazon) and you can argue they are selling Linux, but not as directly as RHEL does.

[–] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'd like to go back to KDE Neon, but it doesn't play nice with thermals on my Surface.

(and I totally expect you to be a Linux user ... why haven't you bragged about using Arch yet?)

[–] TehPers@beehaw.org 1 points 1 day ago

why haven't you bragged about using Arch yet?

Well Manjaro is Arch-based, but it feels like cheating to say that. Anyway, I used Manjaro, btw.