I am of the belief that age verification laws are multiplying like a virus; these have seemingly popped up out of nowhere and are being lobbied for hard by many politicians and lawmakers.
Brazil's Digital Statute of the Child and Adolescent takes effect on March 17, 2026, and explicitly names operating systems and app stores as entities that must implement age verification.
California's Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043), signed in October 2025 and effective January 1, 2027, requires OS providers to collect age data at account setup and pipe it to every app via a real-time API.
Colorado's Senate Bill 26-051, which passed the state Senate on March 3 with a 28-7 vote, would mandate the same and is currently awaiting a House vote before being set in stone.
They say they are doing it to protect the children; I think that is performative. Now we have a popular open source project outright banning people from using its offering just because they live in a region that has mandated age verification.
Age verification excludes
MidnightBSD, a FreeBSD-based desktop operating system, has quietly updated its README to reflect a new geographic restriction. The project has added a clause that bars residents of any country, state, or territory with OS-level age verification mandates from using MidnightBSD.
It is not a blanket ban but is directly tied to the existence of these laws, meaning the list grows as more regions pass similar legislation.
As it stands right now, it reads:
Residents of any countries, states or territories that require age verification for operating systems, are not authorized to use MidnightBSD. This list currently includes Brazil, effective March 17, 2026, California, effective January 1, 2027, and will include Colorado, Illinois and New York provided they pass their currently proposed legislation.
The project also urges anyone affected by this restriction to write to their local representatives and push for these laws to be repealed or replaced.
MidnightBSD has been around since 2006, when Lucas Holt forked it from FreeBSD 6.1 to build a desktop-oriented BSD for everyday users. It ships with Xfce and its own package manager, mport, targeting i386 and amd64 hardware.
It is a small, community-driven project with no corporate backing. The fines these laws carry, up to $7,500 per minor for intentional violations, are a serious risk for a team this size.
I wonder, though, how this would actually be enforced; maybe the official website and download mirrors for MidnightBSD will be out of reach for people in those regions. Of course, a tech-savvy crowd who uses MidnightBSD will know how to bypass such an embargo.
It makes you wonder how effective such age verification laws are. Oh wait, some of these so-called public servants are also pushing for VPNs to be banned.
Such a nice coincidence. 🙂
Suggested Read 📖: How Linux and BSD Distros Are Responding to the New Age Verification Laws
Abhishek Prakash
