A new California law says all operating systems, including Linux, need to have some form of age verification at account setup

The government of California is implementing a law that requires operating system providers to implement some form of age verification into their account setup procedures.

Assembly Bill No. 1043 was approved by California governor Gavin Newsom in October of last year, and becomes active on January 1, 2027 (via The Lunduke Journal). The bill states, among other factors, that "An operating system provider shall do all of the following:"

"(1) Provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store.

"(2) Provide a developer who has requested a signal with respect to a particular user with a digital signal via a reasonably consistent real-time application programming interface that identifies, at a minimum, which of the following categories pertains to the user."

The categories are broken into four sections: users under 13 years of age, over 13 years of age under 16, at least 16 years of age and under 18, and "at least 18 years of age."

In essence, while the bill doesn't seem to require the most egregious forms of age verification (face scans or similar), it does require OS providers to collect age verification of some form at the account/user creation stage—and to be able to pass a segmented version of that information to outside developers upon request.

That's likely no big deal for Windows, which already requires you to enter your date of birth during the Microsoft Account setup procedure. However, the idea that all operating system providers need to comply (in California) has drawn a fair degree of ire from certain Linux communities.

"This is basically impossible for California to enforce" says CatoDomine on the Linuxmint subreddit. "Even if Linux Mint decides to add some kind of age verification, to comply with CA law, there's no reason anyone would choose that version."

Comment from r/linuxmint

"It's more likely they will put a disclaimer on their website: "not for use in California."

Looking at the wider picture, however, mandatory age verification appears to be a growing trend. The UK government's current implementation under the Online Safety Act has come under heavy fire for privacy concerns, while platforms like Discord have received similar critique for their face-scanning age verification efforts, not least because of associations with companies that may not be using the collected data for mere age-confirmation purposes.

And while this implementation is California-specific, it does speak to a wider desire from governments to enforce age verification on a legal level—even if in this case, it seems virtually impossible to effectively enact.