California has already passed a bill requiring operating systems (!) to require age verification:
and Colorado appears to be next in line:
So: from an everyday-human standpoint, I understand why these exist. Lawmakers are thinking of an OS as something like Windows - a prepacked system that owes its existence to a single legal entity that can be held accountable.
From a practical standpoint, however, I do not see how such a thing can be reconciled with the fact that Linux From Scratch exists:
Or Tails exists:
It says something about how far we have fallen that our lawmakers don't even seem to have considered the fact that every computer is still a Turing complete Von Neumann machine. That software companies have gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent us from genuinely owning either our software or hardware (aided and abetted by, among other things, the United States federal government) doesn't change that fact.
How *exactly* is an age verification mandate supposed to work when it is AND WILL ALWAYS BE possible to build your own OS from scratch? Or to run a live OS? And to run either of those without ever allowing the device to communicate with another device - in fact, to build a device that doesn't even have the capacity to communicate with another device?
I know that in practice, this is going to constrain a lot of people. The average person is 100 percent end user these days. But in practice, it can never possibly constrain everyone, because the limits of the technology itself don't allow for it. And as much as I understand the realities of most people's interactions with computers in 2026, my mind still can't wrap itself around the fact that we are passing laws that *actually cannot ever be enforced.* This is like prohibiting water from flowing downhill.
As the memes once said, I cannot even.
(Related: Pretty sure it's a COPPA violation to require age verification, too. Because if you tell the OS you're under 13, then as soon as the OS sends that signal to an "app store," it has revealed information about a minor. Which COPPA purportedly prohibits.)
--