Notice: ECA Digital – Law No. 15,211/2025 might affect users of Brazil by 17.03.2026

Announcements
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Going into effect on 17.03.2026 using Manjaro Linux in Brazil will most likely change. With the new law, Brazil wants to protect Children and Adolescents from unwanted content and other dangers found on the Internet and social medias.

The Digital Statute for Children and Adolescents (ECA Digital – Law No.
15,211/2025) represents a historic milestone in Brazil’s commitment to the full protection of children and adolescents in the digital environment. The result of a broad process of listening and collective construction, the law arises from dialogue among government, civil society, academia, and international organizations, establishing itself as one of the first pieces of legislation in the world to set clear duties and shared responsibility among digital platforms, families, and the State in safeguarding the best interests of children and adolescents on the internet.

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We are in close relationship with our friends in Brazil, BigLinux, which are currently working on some possible solutions on their end. So far some recommendations are discussed:

  • including a dialog box when opening Calamares, a message stating that the system must be installed by an adult responsible for its maintenance, and that if the system is to be used by a minor, the responsible adult must configure a restricted account without sudo access and disable permission to use Flatpak for that user
  • create a user creation interface that already has the option for accounts for minors with these restrictions

There will be discussions about the law within the Brazil FOSS community, as this law might be difficult to apply to Linux distributions, as it is a much freer environment with a huge diversity of distributions, and trying to go much beyond a message warning that the system must be administered by someone of legal age would violate the LGPD, which is very similar to the European GDPR.

I’m not a lawyer, hence this is for informational purposes and no legal advise on how to comply to this given law.

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Discussions regarding the Manjaro 2.0 Manifesto
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Hello, Philm!
We, the BigLinux team, have been closely following the discussions around the ECA Digital Law (Law No. 15,211/2025) and its potential impact on Linux distributions in Brazil. With that in mind, we’ve developed a native, local-first solution to help parents and guardians create safer digital environments for children and adolescents.

Introducing BigLinux Parental Controls , a suite of parental control tools built for Linux. It enables:

  • Creating supervised accounts with restrictions on apps, screen time, and web browsing.
  • Enforcing restrictions using ACLs, PAM time rules, and DNS-based filtering.
  • Keeping all settings locally on the device, with no cloud uploads.
  • Providing a user-friendly and accessible interface built with GTK4 and libadwaita.

The solution is already available in our GitHub repository and can be adapted for other distributions, such as Manjaro. It was designed with compliance in mind, aligning with the principles of the ECA Digital, the UK Children’s Code, and the EU Digital Services Act, ensuring that legal requirements are met in a practical and technical way.

If you’d like to implement something similar in Manjaro, we’d be happy to collaborate! The code is open-source and available here:
:link: GitHub - biglinux/big-parental-controls · GitHub

We’re happy to discuss this further and exchange ideas on how we can support the community.

Best regards,
BigLinux Team

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Will Manjaro implement age verification?
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Excellent!

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the problem if this law (imo) is that its extremly poorly written, it looks like the people who wrote it didnt understood a single thing about technology

its so vague that it says “every device capable of connecting to the internet” this means what? i will have to verify my age to use my security camera?

other problem, but this time good for us, is that the verification method is very vague, so maybe we will not need any sort of ID verification or AI facescan

i really hope things turn well with this stupid law, im really not looking straightforward to putting my ID to use my computer lmao

please biglinux and manjaro save us loll

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Of course they don’t. They’re politicians.

It’s the only job in the world that doesn’t require any qualifications, so what did you expect? :smiling_face_with_horns:

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yeah fair lol

i read the law and it makes me mad, you can see that the people really didnt understood anything about tech, luckly this give us some loopholes we can use to make the “age check” simple and straightforward without requiring an ID or smth, the problem is that this data needs to be shared with the brazilian government, im not sure how distros that work in a community-driven way like arch will deal with that, at least i know for sure canonical, red hat, and system76 will implement this infraestructure since theyre companies that can afford that, but for other distros i really dont know how things will go, arch32 already geolocked brazil and california due to the laws

only good thing about this law is that it bans lootboxes for games that arent 18+ lol

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Actually, System76 is not going to go along with it. They’re already negotiating in the US. :backhand_index_pointing_down:

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Oh that is cool
Its a good idea to exclude open source software from the bill, could work well with the brazilian version too if they ever try to negotiate it here

i hope they do lol

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Yes, this is a favorable development given that these laws were written by legislators who have no subject matter expertise in technology.

CO SB26-051 was drafted and sponsored by democratic Sen. Matt Ball, and Rep. Amy Paschal. Based on a reading, it was very clear that they did not understand technology or operating systems whatsoever. Nor do they understand how many preexisting embedded devices such a law would now make theoretically in violation of such a law. This is especially problematic for small IoT devices, routers, printers, and many commercial embedded systems where most have partly closed source firmwares and eventually are never updated after a rather brief lifespan, despite being in use for 10+ years in many cases.

It’s also very disheartening to see how these state representatives completely ignored their constituents, many of whom are progressive Dems and independents who very clearly support privacy protection, and would be completely against this foolish law.

Given the attached written public comments to the 1st reading of the bill, the vast majority of them were in opposition, and only one suggested to amend. Many others in the Labor
& Technology Committee voiced opposition as well, much more than those who spoke in favor of it.

The groups who testified in support of the bill were only one, made by a Mr. Kouri Marshall (representing “Chamber of Progress”).

However, despite this very vocal opposition, the bill managed to make it out of committee and was hurriedly pushed through and put to a vote without time for much of any further discussion in the state senate. This was because most of the time in that day’s session had already been taken up by other items, and so this one snuck by very quickly.
Notably, most of that day’s time had already been used by Republican representatives speaking out in opposition to another gun control bill. :face_exhaling:

Based on listening to the recording of the legislative session where the OS age verification bill was passed, it slipped by without any further comment, thanks to being pushed towards the end of the day, and the clerk only asking for verbal “NO” votes and assuming anyone silent was a “YES”. :facepalm:

This is one of the worst and most foolish laws ever passed in the state of CO. It will have the exact opposite effect than they intended, only serving to make age data more available to AdTech companies, and those who might use it for nefarious purposes. The data will be abused, and children will now be targeted by these companies and anyone who can gain access to the data, which if web browsers start offering it up to any 3rd party website, it’s then going to basically be given out to anyone. The only way to truly “protect the children” here would be to never collect such info, and to never allow it to be given to untrusted third party websites at all.

It’s a good sign that we’re seeing such vocal pushback from System76 and others now… this bill snuck by and needs to be repealed.

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That’s a feature, not a bug.

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If I may chime in regarding these so called Laws. First, only God can make laws, all civil governments can do is make rules.

These “laws” are not made for no reason, in a typical God forsaken Republic, someone lobbies to have these laws passed. It is usually a lobbying group that is hired to have these laws pushed through.

So the question is, who is behind the lobbying for these laws? I can guarantee it is the PC industry, and I include MR Slop in that group.

These laws are written in such a way that if any one gains a little traction, they will knock down with these laws.

To understand why this is all being done, you need to understand that the world has reached peak production, in fact many say that around 2008-2010 is when we really reached peak production world wide. We have too many things and companies need to make more and more things, but there is a finite number of consumers.

And here is the point, the number of consumers world wide is declining, the West is in depopulation mode and the only way to survive is by creating artificial shortages and deleting competition, why do you think that 50% of small businesses were shut down during COVID?

The PC industry is at the mercy of Mr Slop, so they need to get rid of old PC’s, make the new ones unserviceable, and keep people buying every two years, or even better for them, subscriptions.

The point is these laws are NOT arbitrary, there is a purpose to it and you must understand it.

There is an old adage in the political realm, “create a cause and run against it’s effects”

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If you walk into court and tell the judge that “only GOD can make laws” I want to be in that room. I expect things will NOT go well for you!

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Meta.

I’ll find the article, as soon as I can.

Here’s one.

Here’s another.

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Well done… and remember, Bookface is a Government entity disguised as a social media co.

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There are more articles, I first saw it in my RSS feed, but it was easier to search on line.

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You guys (to whom the hat may fit) must stop with the conspiracy theories and get a bit more information on the matter. There’s a real reason why so many countries are limiting access to some type of online services to minors. Whether the laws/rules are well written or not, that’s a different discussion. Yes, many or most politicians don’t know sh*t about tech and don’t get informed before proposing legislation, but it doesn’t mean they are simply someone’s puppet. The problem is deeper than that.

In Portugal, schools prohibited smartphones up to the 9th grade. Schools do have some flexibility on the rule. On my daughter’s school smartphones are completely prohibited. I’m glad because I can see the results. Now that she’s on 5th grade I got her a basic mobile phone (no internet) and she doesn’t have to deal with pressure from her peers to get a smartphone. She still uses one at home, she uses my ex-wife’s or my social media accounts, but having one for her is very different. That will come later on her adolescence. This is a real problem and that book explains it very well, with real world data on the subject. It isn’t just someone’s opinion.

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Links above. :backhand_index_pointing_up:

Meta isn’t pushing these laws for the benefit of Children. There is, at a minimum, a Financial gain for them.

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Are you sure you got the news right? Meta is trying not to abiding age verification laws and forcing the OS to do it. This is a way for them to not invest money into changing their own platform, because children are probably the largest consumer group of Instagram, for example, and they don’t want to lose them. By the way, that’s also in the book I linked.

EDIT: From the article:

The “child safety” rhetoric masks a competitive strategy that shifts liability from platforms to operating system makers.

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That’s right Meta is behind the forcing of the OS to ask for DOB for age verification.

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Yes, but that’s not why those laws are being proposed. Meta is getting ahead and avoiding being targeted by these laws.

EDIT: you can say that these laws will have certain kind of direction because of lobbying, but lobbying is not at their source. That’s what I mean.