Ubuntu Planning Mandatory Age Verification

egorfine 39 points 17 comments March 03, 2026
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Discussion Highlights (9 comments)

pixl97

Dear Ubuntu: Go fuck yourself.

Zekio

Any linux distro that implements it, will probably lose all desktop users

replooda

What's next? Redirecting local searches to Amaz... oh.

elitistphoenix

Let's post the mailing list link directly? https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2026-March/04...

graypegg

Protecting the impressionable from snaps and Canonical is of utmost importance.

csense

Here's my suggestion for an implementation strategy: - Keep the "Next" button greyed out until you add three forms of identification. - Ask the user to take photos of their 3 forms of ID with a webcam. Ask the user to hold them in increasingly bizarre poses -- left hand, right hand, woven between your fingers, behind your ear, between your toes. - Add an "accessibility" button. This button pops up a text box that advises you if you can't comply because you don't have hands, ears, feet or whatever (hey, some people don't and that's perfectly fine!) you can just use a picture of somebody else's body parts, and helpfully provides a menu of AI-generated pictures of human ears, hands, etc. for you to copy-paste. - To preserve privacy, send the actual photos to /dev/null. - The "verify the photo of my ID" button should check whether random.random() > 0.8. On average the user will require 5 tries per photo, or 15 tries total. - Add a checkbox that says "I am not in the state of California". Upon clicking this checkbox the "Next" button becomes not grayed out and you can proceed without completing the identity checking process. - If the user does not seem to have a webcam installed, all UI elements are grayed out except the "I am not in the state of California" checkbox. - If the user is installing via command line, say "Are you in the state of California [y/n]?" If the answer does not start with 'N' or 'n', it will simply repeat the question. - The list of acceptable identification shall be: Driver's license, learner's permit, Social Security card, library card, school identification, Boy / Girl Scout membership card, school yearbook photo, Burger King Kid's Club membership card, utility bill, ISP bill, Burger King receipt, Mahalo Rewards card, any receipt paid via credit card, birthday card, a photo of a printout of any email from OnlyFans, a photo of a DNS TXT record containing the string "CALIFORNIA", a photo of your X account with a blue check mark.

bravetraveler

Community planning another derivative

rlpb

Anybody can become an Ubuntu developer. This is one such Ubuntu developer discussing possible implementation of a law that affects them across multiple distributions in good faith while trying to respect privacy and maintaining users' ultimate control of their Free Software based operating systems. Ubuntu has made no decision here. This is essentially one contributor seeking consensus on what sort of contribution in relation to this law might be acceptable to multiple projects. It is very far from "Ubuntu Planning <X>" and exactly how community driven projects are supposed to work. Comments disparaging Ubuntu have fallen for Lunduke's clickbait in their ignorance.

fecalprinter26

Government‑issued age‑verification tokens for offline computers are going to be hilarious. I hope they come in suppository form factor.

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