ageless linux
Age verification requirements for operating systems are a bad idea promoted by people desperate to avoid dealing with technological complexity. They deliberately choose to mislead instead of doing the hard work. They willfully disinform us for crass political reasons.
Let's first be honest about who is behind this effort. In fact, Meta (parent of Facebook, Insta, threads, etc.) is worried that pressure to regulate social media will continue to build and result in action under a future Democrat-run Washington. They do not want to be forced to control their platform in terms of content, and are not willing to limit access to it by being gatekeepers. Their plan is to push that responsibility, the need for which is compelled by their predatory product, onto operating system vendors.
The consequences of this idea are terrifying for cellphone use, which is already highly problematic. Unless you're able to install an OS like GrapheneOS on your phone, you're age-locked there. Phone much more closely correspond to people too - on average each person has roughly one phone. The issue here is that as an owner of a phone who pays a cellular provider for service will not be able to use most apps. They won't be able to get apps from the app store unless their phone broadcasts an age range of the user.
Other operating systems are even more problematic. Consider "computers" or computing devices. First of all, most of these are not personal computers. Most of these "computers" in the world today are just devices. The system that regulates chemical flow in the water treatment plant, the robot dog kids toy, in-vehicle entertainment systems, home routers, the medical imaging devices at your hospital, your smart fucking toaster oven with built-in AI assist running an outdated version of toasterOS linux. Everything, everywhere has "computers", they run our building security systems, or water distribution systems, our electrical grids, and so on.
The point is, very few "computers" in this world are personal computers. So who TF is supposed to age-verify for a IoT device that monitors water flows, or an MRI scanner? All this just to force the identities of PC users. Yet most PCs are not used by a single user, are they? How many desktop computers are sitting at the reception area of an oncology wing, or used by a wait staff to track restaurant orders, or sit in computer labs for training, or in research labs to monitor tests and equipment, and so on. Even among the few computers that are actually "user devices" most of these are shared. Tablets get shared by siblings in a home, business computers get used by staff, etc. Families, the one and only group that is targeted here, do often have desktops and tablets - and they tend to be shared. So this whole idea that a device can be linked to a specific identity is not just misguided and morally corrupt, it is technically illiterate and once again demonstrates the utter incompetence and genuine lack of concern by our elected officials. Fuck them all, throw all of these technological surveillance-mongers out of office!
But that's not enough. Stop being an accomplice. Stop using Microsoft Windows, they are not on your side. They are survielling you, and lobbying state and federal legislatures to do things that are not in your best interest. Install linux and learn to use it, and stop making excuses for being lazy. It is not as technically difficult as Windows, it runs better and you don't have to put up with the rotten offerings being pushed on us by Apple and Google and Microsoft. Same goes for commercial linux offerings like Ubuntu.
If you're not willing to take small steps for your freedom, guess what? You don't deserve it. Don't complain when you've lost the rest of it, and pretend that you weren't complicit in your own demise.