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Colorado proposing Bill to move age verification to Operating System rather than web site
(www.biometricupdate.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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This is getting ridiculous.
Linux is the only reasonable choice anymore.
Linux won't be legal in Colorado if they pass this. You'll need an account with some age-policing, ID-reporting corporation to be able to use a computing device.
How do they imagine they could enforce this though? Presumably quite selectively, based on the user's political leanings.
The courts should strike it down, I don't have faith they will side with the constitution, but it's clearly unconstititional and beyond the authority of the state as well, in the realm of interstate commerce which is explicitly given to the feds, whom can't be trusted either obviously.
But the 1st amendment is clearly invalidating this, forcing people to identify themselves to groups that will record everything they say or do and sell it to everyone, including the government, that will chill speech, and groups will punish people for their speech.
Too bad scotus is all in on punishing people for speech though.
Not defend Democrats too much here, but they clearly have far less of a habit of doling out enforcement based on political leanings than the Republicans, even if they do enforce things quite selectively when it comes to actual leftists while letting Nazis run around with seeming impunity.
Colorado has been a solidly Blue state since the end of the W. Bush years, and even then, it was pretty split down the middle with just over half of the votes going to Bush. It's honestly been mostly-Blue-dominated since 1992. (Lauren Boebert notwithstanding)
Further, the two main sponsors of the bill are both Democrats. This genuinely seems to me to be another example of "heart in the right place but don't know what the fuck they're actually doing" which seems common for the tech illiterate and often for Democrats in general.
Once again, not saying Democrats aren't guilty of selective enforcement, just pointing out that they're far less likely to do so (or at least less likely to do so against conservatives, for genuine leftists it seems up for debate).
Now, that also means nothing in context to how other politicians can use this kind of legislation negatively, even if the writers and sponsors truly have the best of intentions. Democrats had the best intentions when it came to the PATRIOT Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security as well, and way back then folks like me were saying "this seems pretty dangerous, especially if we ever have a despot take control of the country and the levers for these tools" which clearly has come to pass.
How do you know what their intentions were?
Well, not all of them, obviously. Yet, for example, I tend to think Joe Biden actually did have good intentions considering the bulk of the PATRIOT Act was based on his prior legislation in the 90s, his Omnibus Counterterrorism Act. It's worth noting this was in response to a wave of US homegrown right-wing white nationalist radicalism and terrorism in the 1990's such as Waco and Ruby Ridge. The Oklahoma City Bombing would happen a month after this bill first appeared. Considering the shitstorm we're in regarding virulent white nationalist terrorism, I kind of think back when he first wrote it that it wasn't such a bad idea.
People who were more clearly war hawks like Hillary Clinton? Probably a lot less likely to have had great intentions.
Yet others, like Ron Wyden, who has been a consistent critic of the out of control national security state and voted against military intervention in Iraq in 2002 also voted for the PATRIOT Act. He also spent a great deal of time trying to amend the PATRIOT Act as well.
And as much as Democrats drink from the same well of corporate funding as Republicans, I wouldn't say the majority of the party is outright evil or don't care what happens to their constituents. Schumer obviously doesn't give a fuck, but I also don't think he's actually representative of the party as a whole as much as he just has power in a party that puts seniority over merit in intraparty politics.
It's easy to forget how much shock and terror 9/11 really did put into people which colored how quickly they foolishly signed off on the PATRIOT Act.
You lost all credibility early on in your first statement, to anyone living in reality paying attention, your analysis is worth nothing.
The left was saying that the PATRIOT Act was a bad idea from day one, just like we were with the Iraq War. People keep ignoring the left (or dismiss us as paranoid) and we keep getting proven right over and over and over again.
No shit, I was one of those people. I just don't ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity, being out of touch, and not thinking through long-term political consequences. Once again, the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act was largely in response to white nationalist home-grown terrorism, which not having squashed that in the 90s is literally part of why we have the problems we have to day with a white nationalist government. Still didn't make it great, but I have a lot more sympathy for its origins in that era.
Are they going to check people's PCs at the state borders as they move in then?
What is in the actual bill? I haven't read any of this but if it was just a year of birth box at local signup then this could actually be pretty good. A sort of halfway between local only parental controls & age-policing, ID-reporting corporations.
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/SB26-051
Here's a summary, but the text of the actual bill can be gotten by clicking on "Recent Bill (PDF)"
This looks like self-reporting. ie: no third party ID snooping badness. Am I missing something?
Not really, the microsoft asshole that coded systemd wants chips on hardware for linux just like 10/11. He's going to help fuck linux the same way they fucked windows.
Systemd is so much easier to use, absolutely was not a mistake.
Bro Poettering worked for Microsoft for four years after working for Red Hat for fourteen and then left to create Amutable, and no offense, but I don't see his goals for Amutable to be about trying to force everyone to use his solution as much as giving groups who use massive numbers of Linux servers an option for something they can more securely lock down and ensure hasn't been fucked with. I don't think he's out here building a desktop distribution and telling end-users they need it for security.
This is just FUD fearmongering, especially considering how small the company is. He isn't forcing the entire ecosystem to adopt his ideas.
If you want to trust the pedomericans, that's your problem.
Dude, Poettering is literally Guatemalan by birth, grew up in Brazil, and lives in Germany. Amutable is based out of fucking Berlin!
Stop reaching.
"Guys will do literally anything but ~~go to therapy~~ use systemd."
And who is he working for ? The pedomericans.
Show me who on the board of Amutable is who he is "working" for, since he's one of the founders, and most of the people involved are European, or show me the funding for Amutable that's coming from these "pedomericans" you claim or seriously shut the fuck up. Because none of what you're saying makes a lick of sense.
You don't have to like or use the tools these people create. Are you forced to use systemd? No, there are alternatives. There's valid criticisms (of which there are many for Poettering) and then there's whatever horseshit you're peddling here.
Dude you sound like a Republican talking about china being behind everything. It's time to fucking reassess and touch some fucking grass.
You might need help. If you're unwilling to seek help, then at least learn to code and, you know, read the code.