Age Verification Mandate at OS Level

[eeickmeyer]

Ubuntu's response to California's Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043)

Over the past couple of days, there has been a lot of commentary about Ubuntu and how it’ll respond to California’s new Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043), which will require operating systems to collect age information at account setup and expose an age “signal” to eligible applications from 2027. Canonical is aware of the legislation and is reviewing it internally with legal counsel, but there are currently no concrete plans on how, or even whether, Ubuntu will change in response. The recen…

Ubuntu must not implement OS-level age verification or age signaling in any form

As I stated in my previous post, Canonical is still working this out with its legal department. While I appreciate your point of view, and why you might be alarmed by the apparent direction - none of that work in the installer/systemd/etc. has been done by Canonical - it’s been done by an external contributor, and we have no intention of considering implementations until we’ve had a chance to consider our actual policy on how or if we respond to the legislation.