OK this is a stupid question, but why have Linux projects (apparently) fallen over themselves to comply with an age-recording statute in a single US state (albeit a large one), when those projects have been failing for decades to respect national and even international law regarding disability?
#accessibility #disability #linux #FreeSoftware #fascism #AgeVerification #infantilism
Because it's not a single state, not even a single country. I think this video about systemd is elucidating:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5AcreFk40U
Watch until the end, because the last message is important.
I thought the Colorado situation was ongoing. But that doesn't invalidate my point that some statutes are given rapid attention and others, which are designed to help minorities are not.
Oh, and at the risk of being snarky, I note with amusement that a response to a point about accessibility is a youtube video. Honey, it is wasted on me.
These age-verification laws are getting promoted by Meta, in their ongoing efforts to evade culpability for content moderation & to eliminate privacy as a civil right.
https://www.gadgetreview.com/reddit-user-uncovers-who-is-behind-metas-2b-lobbying-for-invasive-age-verification-tech
https://fortune.com/2026/03/02/social-media-companies-age-verification-addiction-privacy-concerns/
https://thedeepdive.ca/who-pushes-age-verification-bills/
Meta never abided by child protection laws before. Why now?
https://archive.is/ZyajL
https://winbuzzer.com/2026/03/18/reddit-user-uncovers-meta-2b-lobbying-age-verification-xcxwbn/
They want to be able to sell ads adjacent to CSAM content for the Epstein Class & not face the type of repercussions ...
1/
My guess?
Linux developers may have patrons that they don't want to irritate.
My observation is that swift unemployment in a day job follows when a FOSS developer fails to fall in line.
@ tante@ tldr.nettime.org is just one example I can cite.
Age verification is getting unprecedented levels of support from funded mass malign influence campaigns.
@Npars01 @iaruffell @ammdias There's no need to guess: Linux developers that are trying to address this are concerned about legal exposure.
Ultimately, if CA decided to bring suit against one of the vendors or projects, the law would *probably* be overturned, etc. But that costs a ton of money that vendors don't want to spend and projects do not have. The EFF has said that they believe the law will apply to the distributions, regardless of whether they are based in CA or not.
I'm a bit concerned about the frenzy over this: it seems to have originated with a right-wing personality and is taking on a tone similar to the anti-Mono and anti-systemd brigading that was particularly nasty. And people are turning on FOSS developers in a particularly nasty way now. It's not helpful, and it's not conducive to solving these problems. Disagreeing with the way projects/distributions are handling it is fine, of course -- but people should be able to argue without slinging hate at people at the first sign of disagreement. We should be better than that.
From what I've seen so far, none of the proposed ways to comply with the CA age-verification requirement are even difficult to disable.
There is too much badness going on right now for this kind of vicious infighting.
Note: I wrote about all this here: https://lwn.net/Articles/1062112/
@iaruffell @Npars01 @ammdias Sorry, but no; I've seen a fair amount of hostility being thrown around in the last week or so on this topic. Hate is appropriate.
As far as age verification vs. a11y, I don't think this is anywhere near an "apples to apples" comparison.
Accessibility is a problem on Linux, no doubt, and there's not enough being done there.
However: it's unclear to me what legal requirements are not being followed *and* whether they apply to volunteer projects. The thing that has caused a lot of concern with the age-verification stuff is that it clearly is meant to apply to anything that looks like an OS.
Secondly, we're talking orders of magnitude difference in addressing a11y versus a single "supply a user's age bracket" requirement. Implementing a simple API vs. the work across the stack to improve a11y are two very, very different things. I'm sure you must know this, so it's odd that you would try to juxtapose the two as a good faith question.
If a state or national government were suddenly requiring specific a11y requirements that obviously applied to distributions like Fedora and Debian, then I expect we'd be seeing discussions about the implications. As far as I know, they are not.
I've followed a11y discussions around Linux for a long time; I can't recall anyone suggesting that there were *legal* requirements that were not being met. ISTM that, by now, somebody would've gone after vendors like Red Hat for commercial workstation products if that were the case.
I don't mean in any way to dismiss concerns about a11y on the desktop, but the two are not seriously comparable.
Sigh. You do realise, of course, that accessibility requirements will affect a significant part of the population, esp. as they age.
And that the development of the Linux accessibility stack was in part a response to the expanding legal frameworks. I remember the discussions. That momentum was not sustained.
These are serious points, and I find it troubling that you don't see their significance
Your dismissal of accessibility as of less importance makes my point..
I'm not dismissing accessibility. It is becoming even more critical as the population of the G7 ages.
I'm describing the head space of those in the industry who have always ignored the needs of the vulnerable, in favor of currying favor with The Moneyed.
Tech leadership spends so much time with petrostate despots, bigoted billionaires, & misogynistic white supremacists like Epstein, it's not surprising that those attitudes carry forward into their design philosophy.
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