Governments around the world are currently attempting to implement strict online child safety measures, fundamentally changing how everyday devices connect to the internet. As part of this push, lawmakers are looking past individual apps and targeting the underlying operating systems. They want the OS itself to verify a user’s age during initial setup. Colorado lawmakers […]

The coordinated effort worked. When lawmakers finalized Colorado SB26-051, they added Section 6-30-105(e) to the text. This specific clause waives compliance for operating systems and applications distributed under licenses that allow copying, modifying, and redistributing without platform-imposed technical restrictions. Why the Section 6-30-105(e) Exemption Protects Decentralized Tech

This exemption establishes a formal legislative precedent for the tech industry. It legally shields free and open-source operating systems from hardware-level age attestation laws that closed ecosystems like iOS and Windows will soon have to follow.

  • badgermurphy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    20 hours ago

    That’s true and I bet its a big part of the plan. The good parts for us about that approach, though, is that the bad technology is baked into the services, not the user’s software, and the system depends on the tech oligopoly remaining. Laws are more durable than trends, so maybe that could be better for online privacy long-term, because the oligopoly will eventually break up. If we’re real lucky, some of them won’t survive the AI bubble aftermath enough to participate in this.