Listen to me carefully an important distinction regarding how local laws operate in a global context (Specially as opensource dont sell or distrobute software in these states they they have online dowloads for all around the world, this is not a commercial entity. California’s or other statelaws cannot impose requirements on software developers around the world, especially for free and open-source software like Linux. Only those users and entities within California who wish to utilize specific functionalities impacted by the law will need to comply and in this regard its the states affected them self that need to implement this kind of functions not the distro’s, so i dont know why some distros starting to act on this at all its mind blowing ignorant of them.
The actual law requires the OS provider to know the actual age of the account holder and turn around and interpret that for anything that needs the information.
There is something seriously wrong with requiring an OS to harvest information from its users and regurgitate it on command to states or vendors. That has to violate all sorts of privacy rights in all sorts of places even if the data is supposedly obscured.
IMHO, the most important thing if Fedora takes this path, is how to disable it, turn it off, trick it, other otherwise remove/expunge it from my peecee. Just my two cents… YMMV
So much for “It’s your OS”, eh?
EDIT: or even lie to it 
I’ll assume all the risk… Thank You Very Much!
I’m a little skeptical that this will end up being implemented. It smells like California has run up against some sort of improper search and seizure laws with regard to some data collection efforts that they want to implement for whatever reason and they are trying to circumvent the law by forcing non-government institutions to do their dirty work. Generally speaking, I don’t believe they can legally circumvent those laws in that way (unless the non-government institutions willingly comply). California may well threaten the companies within an inch of their life, but legally, I think they are quite toothless in regards to what they can do to actually force a company’s compliance with their data collection desires.
I’ll leave comments about Cali to the peanut gallery and/or Statler and Waldorf.
- There’s no commercial entity that California (or any other state) could target to force global compliance.
- Linux exists as a freely downloadable, open-source project, not a product sold through stores or services in any specific jurisdiction.
- The only way a law could “touch” Linux would be indirectly — through companies that bundle it into commercial products and sell them in a regulated territory
would the root user also be required to have an age associated to it?
The solution is peaceful non-compliance.
In order to do so effectively, we must take the brunt of this and own up to our standards people. It takes strength not subservience.
We must block the state from open source tech entirely. Send a clear message and run zero risk of violating laws. BLOCK THE ENTIRE STATE, Military AS WELL!!! A CLEAR, CONCISE MESSAGE!
Confifi
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
While I’m sure I could be convinced some level of age gatekeeping (in good faith) could be a good thing. This seems like quite a massive over reach and possibly the product of lobbying by bad faith orgs.
A little surprising California of all states is going along with this being that its such a large tech hub state. Would think that they’d have a lot of tech elites to weigh in on this (Maybe that’s exactly why it’s happening?)
What if the option could end up beneficial? Setting a younger OS age might block ads everywhere, and apps probably aren’t allowed to collect as-much telemetry from children 
Setting Windows to Philippines was a cool trick to disable Cortana years ago 
I won’t say “never” because that’s a pet peeve of mine (and I’m making an effort to not say it), but I can approximate: there is a less than 1.0% chance of me ever having to be with children, near children, around children or children in my orbit. It would be a rare thing for sure. I would expect there would be a snowball making its way in a highly unlikely place…
This is why I said I would 100% assume the risk: they don’t take into consideration people who don’t or will not have any children near/around/in their life. It’s a simple non-issue for some…
That’s how these apparatchiks roll.
… Not on servers for the most part… 
I’m just going to ignore it for as long as possible and fake the verification on the local device when forced to. What choice do I have? Mean like I’m in Canada anyway I have time.
In the meantime I’m just going to create a firewall rule in my router to block addresses in California USA
Do you guys realize how easily the rich and privileged can corral people they don’t like with these online systems that we need for everything we do? They could obscure or somehow deny that you have age verification and make it look like your operating an illegal computer so they can hack you. Go to your windows computer and check it out if the little two digit country code is deleted from the login accounts file nobody can legally do or even respond to security problems on your PC because they don’t know if it’s being hacked by law enforcement.
And IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME.
Nations and companies everywhere are not ready to reliably provide any login services. Most of the server rooms aren’t even on a secured premises with locks and alarms. Their corralling people into a bad situation.
WHAT SPECIAL LAWS DO THEY HAVE TO PROTECT AGE VERIFICATION DATA FROM BEING REMOTELY OR LOCALLY TAMPERED WITH AT THE SERVER?
I want to bring to the attention of the Fedora Team, that a Law similar to the California’s Digital Age Assurance Act has also passed in Brazil. It will require Operating System and Internet Application Store providers to implement age verification measures. This law enters into effect in two weeks, on March 17.
Law 15.211/25, also known as the Child and Adolescent Digital Statute is a broader law than the California’s Digital Age Assurance Act, and it regulates a lot of things related to the protection of children and adolescents in digital environments. Including social networks, loot boxes, data privacy, age verification, gambling, advertising, etc…
Article 12 of the law is the one that stipulates the provisions required of Operating System and Internet Application Store providers. Here’s my translation (IANAL) from the original Portuguese text of this Law’s article:
Art. 12. Providers of internet application stores and device operating systems must:
- take proportional, auditable, and technically secure measures to assess the age or age group of users, observing the principles set forth in Article 6 of Law No. 13,709 of August 14, 2018 (General Personal Data Protection Law);
- allow parents or legal guardians to configure voluntary parental supervision mechanisms and to actively supervise the access of children and adolescents to applications and content; and
- enable, through a secure Application Programming Interface (API) guided by privacy by default, the provision of age signals to internet application providers, exclusively for the purposes of this Law and with adequate technical safeguards.
Paragraph 1. The provision of age signals via APIs must adhere to the principle of data minimization, prohibiting any continuous, automated, and unrestricted sharing of the personal data of children and adolescents.
Paragraph 2. Authorization for children and adolescents to download applications will depend on the free and informed consent of their parents or legal guardians, provided in accordance with current legislation, respecting their developing maturity, and prohibiting the presumption of authorization in the absence of a response from the parents or legal guardians.
Paragraph 3. An act of the Executive Branch will regulate the minimum transparency, security, and interoperability requirements for the age verification and parental supervision mechanisms adopted by operating systems and application stores.
Here is a more in-depth explanation of the other aspects of this Law:
As a Brazilian citizen and a Fedora user I want to know if any measures will be taken to comply with this law and if so what will these measures be and how will it affect Fedora.