@tracyanne Here is a nice article for you on that topic: 10 (Not So) Hidden Dangers of Age Verification | Electronic Frontier Foundation
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Thanks @philm yes I was aware of those dangers. Everyone should read that.
Age-verification mandates create barriers along lines of race, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, immigration status, and socioeconomic class. While these requirements threaten everyone’s privacy and free-speech rights, they fall heaviest on communities already facing systemic obstacles.
You cannot (yet) post live links – that will change as a matter of course after a interacting with the forum and other users; posting possible solutions to member issues, even “Likes” (use of emoji) contributes to the interaction.
Once the forum software (Discourse) establishes that a new member is not a “fly-by-night”, “one-hit-wonder”, “spammer” or the like, and appears to be a genuine contributor, the limits are lifted automatically.
However, in the meantime, there are workarounds to most initial forum limitations – for example, a full URL can be posted in this format;
https://forum.manjaro.org
which allows others to easily copy/paste the URL if they wish. 
With this same workaround, it’s then possible to use external services such as snipboard or paste.photos (examples only) to include images/screenshots – only the URL needs to be returned to the forum – again, members can copy/paste the URL if they wish.
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Over here they have this “BankID” used all over the place which does not work on Linux, due to the idiots issuing that piece of crap decided to exclude Linux and only allow Windows, Mac, Android and IOS. There was a Linux driver for it years ago, but they removed it later. Upon asking why, “almost nobody uses Linux”.
I have a suspicion that if they implement those laws here, and they go with that “BankID” thing, Linux will be defunct, unless somebody can convince the company (owned by the banks) to issue drivers for Linux, or some competing thing can be invented. The Linux community over here I believe has tried, and failed.
Are we sure this idea didn’t come out of Redmond somewhere? It sounds suspiciously like something those people would invent. They want world domination after all.
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That part wasn’t necessary, it’s poorly worded and insulting to a new user who is raising a valid point.
You should know that new members can’t post links (and probably haven’t found out how to bypass that yet) - If you’d looked you would’ve found sources.
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As it is, it’s completely useless. It’s no different from the question “are you 18 years old” on the site. And since they don’t like such a feature, the likely goal here is to create a precedent and then tighten the rules. So it is either an attempt to do something by people who know nothing in this field or still a desire to collect user data. for the children (of course).
As an option, they can then make this way of verification the only one and, in principle, prevent people from accessing a site or service if the system does not support this feature.
Because otherwise, Linux/Windows users will simply cut this feature.
Also, I heard news that they wants to check files and message for certain groups, again to protect children https://brusselssignal.eu/2025/08/eu-chat-control-law-is-a-step-towards-mass-surveillance/
I think this is the fifth or sixth time one or another is pushing for this in the EU within the last decade. Especially Europol is pushing for it hard. I can already see the weariness setting in on people fighting against this. The “I have nothing to hide”-crowd doesn’t make it any easier. Should just do a bot that posts: “Ok, why don’t you post your account credentials to all services here then?” after all those posts. Yeah, it’s snide and ineffective, but I’m running out of ideas what to do. It at least gives me a small measure of satisfaction.
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Suggestions to publish all your photos and correspondence publicly, usually more effective. In any case, we are moving away from the original topic of discussion, just decided to briefly revisit this topic too.
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It is entirely about making everything transparent to the extent that the Authorities have no barriers…
Privacy is trivialized - you don’t need privacy unless you have something to hide, what are you doing wrong that you need to hide?
Yet you can’t tell people this story, you must tell them that you’re trying to save their children from a horrible death.
Thailand is an Authoritarian regime, and we see it here - when my son would go out to play people would criticise me for letting him run after birds next to the pool (OMG he might fall in) or climb down a wall (OMG he might fall down) or run into traffic…
However, now he’s 14 and I can trust him. Most people here treat their 14 year old kids like toddlers.
With Governments, it’s about power and money - they don’t care much about protecting people, but they care to have the power to protect the oligarchs… the oligarchs that want to make more money selling you music and movies 
I remember building a vinyl collection in the early '80s (and being robbed of it). Excessive verification enforcement will simply take us back to those times when things were way more expensive than they are now… because everything that can be controlled is going to be controlled for their benefit.
Any benefits we see are purely incidental. I’ll protect my own family, thank you.
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There is an economic angle to this: Failing to provide the age verification mechanism leads to a fine of (up to) 7.500$. As far as I understand Manjaro is a German GmbH. Its mostly a European project and probably not very popular in the US. But assume there are 100 Majaro users in California and there is no age verification implemented in Manjaro. Just in theory this would allow California to fine Manjaro GmbH with 750.000$. Not sure if they could enforce this on a German GmbH.
Its also a question on how to deal with this if one travels to California for professional reasons. Suppose I take my Manjaro laptop with me and I don’t have age verification on my laptop. If I hook up on a local network they could easily see that I do not comply with the local law. What happens then? I guess they could fine me and Manjaro GmbH?
From what I understood, the idea was that certain services would request information from the operating system and the user would decide whether to pass it on or not, it is doubtful that a penalty will follow for refusal. At least I haven’t seen any mention of this process being automated.
Also, I don’t think it will apply to users, the penalty is most likely meant to scare developers.
Since we’re talking about systems that aren’t sold for money, and don’t have official representation in this state I don’t think they will apply any sanctions, maybe restrict the work of the site on their territory .Also, I don’t think that in the conversation about open operating systems, the developer bears any responsibility for user actions
I am also scared as a user: e.g. if I don’t comply with the age verification network access could be denied for me.
Well, it would be amusing to see how in a country where everyone is shouting for freedom, people are not allowed to go online without verifying their age. I think it’s unlikely, for some services maybe, but I don’t think it is for the whole Internet.
In the current wording of the law, this is too useless and blurry. I think it will be adjusted several times.
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Which is why I am immediately suspicious of anything that is presented as “For The Children”.
Especially when you look at what is being proposed, you can almost immediately see that as a means of protecting children it is likely ineffective, but as a base for something quite egregious, it’s perfect.
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Not Manjaro itself. There is Manjaro, the Arch-derived and community-developed not-for-profit GNU/Linux distribution, and there is the Manjaro GmbH, which is a German company with commercial objectives.
I seriously doubt it, considering that Europe primarily leans towards privacy protection — and regularly clashes with Silicon Valley over that. If I’m correctly interpreting this insane proposal from California, Colorado, et al, then this would rather be the exact opposite of what Europe’s privacy laws dictate.
Furthermore, given that Manjaro — like Arch — is an Open-Source community endeavor, whom are they going to hold responsible? Manjaro, the distribution, is not a commercial product sold by Manjaro, the GmbH. Manjaro, the GmbH, sells hardware with Manjaro, the community operating system, preinstalled.
The bottom line — at least, in my opinion, and bear in mind that it is only my opinion, with the information I have at the moment — is that, yes, this new legislation is worrisome and ridiculous, but at the same time, that they cannot touch us.
It is most likely targeted at commercially offered operating systems for consumerist appliances, i.e. MS-Windows, macOS (and derivatives) and Android.
From the technical vantage, it doesn’t even make any sense at all with regard to UNIX-style multi-user operating systems, and GNU/Linux is a multi-user operating system from the UNIX family.
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There premise here is the availability of a application store. This is technically not the same as a repository/mirror, or at least there is no ’ transaction’ taking place from there a signal can be sent and no receiver to receive it. This seems to be writen for the operating systems where app stores & these kinds of rules can be applied and enforced.
Exactly my train of thinking.
Since the governance of the technology is in the hands of organizations that do not have the interest of the user of the technology as the main goal and as @Ben states (and I agree with)
In the end non-compliant might become criminal, so only criminals have age privacy.
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And now we know and understand why Microsoft has been pushing mandatory online accounts…
The decline and and obliteration of Western Society is real and the US is taking the lead!
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I don’t think Microsoft would be having any other incentives regarding their push for online accounts than greed and corporate control via vendor lock-in. They’ve been playing that game for decades already.
That I cannot disagree with, and that has also already been in the making for decades. 
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Probably.