Around the US, a number of state legislatures have passed, or ar working to pass, various laws which would require people to “verify” their ages such that those under different ages would find themselves excluded from some or all computer and Internet access.
It all started, of course, with Internet pornography. That’s the easiest sector to boost an “it’s for the chillllllllllldren” propaganda campaign for.
It quickly escalated to social media platforms because woke rightists agree with woke leftists that the wrong words constitute violence and must be controlled “for the chillllllllllldren” (they just disagree on which words are the wrong words), and because many parents are willing to hand off their job of supervising their kids to the state, expanding the base of support for government controls.
Because California is the “authoritarian law idea? Hold my beer!” state, governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation last October which requires operating system providers to collect age information on each new user account, and provide an API that lets Internet platforms and app developers access that information so as to exclude users Gavin Newsom doesn’t think should be using those platforms and apps.
It’s almost, but not quite, funny.
It’s almost funny because it won’t take the chillllllllllldren in question more than a few minutes to figure out ways around this kind of thing. “Age verification” laws are, and always have been, political fantasy, as you know yourself if you were ever a 19-year-old college student who used a fake ID to get into a nightclub.
It’s not quite funny because it isn’t, and never was, about “the chillllllllllldren.”
There’s an old and accurate saying in the right to keep and bear arms community: “Gun control isn’t about guns, it’s about control.” Victim disarmament (“gun control”) laws only control the behavior of those who obey laws. Those who don’t care about the government’s background check and waiting period requirements will still get guns. The people who do obey laws? They get to endure the inconvenience and endangerment, all so that politicians feel like their rings have been sufficiently kissed.
Unfortunately, lots of people obey even evil and idiotic laws. Equally unfortunately, the big players in any given industry usually find it easier and cheaper to just comply with, rather than contest, those evil and idiotic laws.
Which means that even though these “age verification” laws won’t be more than a minor inconvenience to the 13-year-old who wants to view porn, gamble, post mean tweets, the average computer user will once again just do as our rulers say, and maybe even convince himself or herself it’s “for the chillllllllllldren.” Society will become generally a little less free and a little more controlled.
All, however, is not lost. In addition to fake IDs for “age verification,” Virtual Private Networks to connect to sites/apps from areas without such laws, etc., one major computer operating system family inherently puts itself beyond the reach of those laws.
That operating system family is called Linux. It comes in hundreds of flavors (“distributions”), most of which are at least as easy to acquire, install, configure, use, and maintain as the bigger players (Microsoft Windows and Apple MacOS). Most “distributions” are built and maintained by communities of volunteers, and many of those communities have already announced they won’t comply with California’s law or others like it.
If you’re not interested in being an obedient serf, give Linux a look. And take a moment to thank the cypherpunks, hacktivists, Linux developers, and other freedom warriors who’ve been fighting — and beating — government control over encryption, cryptocurrency, and everything else for decades now.
Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.
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