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.
This is not going to work people will distribute linux distros on mesh networks like libremesh or meshtastic networks.
I don’t think Meshtastic would work for that with a 200char limit.
Usenet and torrents otoh, already can’t stop that. Not to mention lying is still a thing. I’m 136 years old so I should know.
Me and the other 99% of Steam users allegedly born on January 1st agree with you
I said that people would use mesh networks like meshtastic or libremesh. Not those exact mesh networks.
Fair enough