California wants to build a surveillance layer into every device its residents touch. Assembly Bill 1043, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom and taking effect January 1, 2027, requires every operating system provider to collect age information from users at account setup and broadcast that data to app developers through a real-time API.
Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux distributions, Valve’s SteamOS: if it runs an operating system, it’s covered by this overreaching law.
The proposals are particularly dumb for open-source Linux operating systems. Linux exists specifically because some people want computing that doesn’t surveil them. That’s not incidental to why the platform exists; it’s foundational.
Distributions like Arch, Debian, and Gentoo have no centralized account infrastructure by design. Users download ISOs from mirrors, modify source code freely, and run systems that report to nobody.
Hellbound and Down 