There was a law passed I guess in California requiring OSes to add a bunch of stuff that breaks privacy preservation. It shouldn't really have legal reach if none of the Arch devs live in California and if Arch is willing to spend the money like DHH to fight Cali if necessary. It's probably intended to stop children from seeing pornography. But, I have no children and no need for any security problems that added code brings. There's ways to handle this stuff where it's the responsibility of the parents to pay $10 to some company that filters their internet of porn. There's various open source services for doing this on your network if you're concerned about your 13 year old finding Jenna Jameson.
I do think if you comply with the law that leads to a fork attack on Arch, which might be successful. My guess is DHH's branch becomes the main. Your users definitely do not want to have to deal with a bunch of security and privacy issues this law will almost definitely add to Arch. It might be bad for the Linux kernel security as well. A bunch of these laws around computer system verification causes extreme problems for end users who are committing no crimes. There's a documented list of exploits for various network hardware products out there from laws requiring stuff like back doors for law enforcement. This is bad for Arch if you comply with that law. On Sat, Mar 7, 2026 at 4:16 PM Ralf Mardorf <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, 2026-03-07 at 18:28 +0000, Some Guy called wrote: > > Will Arch Linux add age verification to comply with Californian laws? > > > > Looking forward to your answer! > > Hi, > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_laws_in_the_United_States > > Isn't this about social media garbage that feeds children one trashy > video after another via algorithms, pornography, fake news, etc.? > > I'm not a lawyer, and I've only skimmed the wiki very, very > superficially, but children should be encouraged to learn computer > skills through Arch forums, even if it means they sometimes spend a > little too much time sitting in front of the screen. > > Regards, > Ralf >
