RakuOS stance on Age Verification
August 9, 2026 · Announcements
Illinois just signed HB 5511 the "Children's Online Social Media Safety Act" into law. Buried inside the child-safety framing is a mandate that goes far beyond social media: by January 1, 2028, operating systems themselves have to build in an age-signal interface, collect an age category at account setup, and hand that signal to any app that asks for it. Not a website. Not an app. The operating system.
And Illinois isn't an outlier it's one data point in a global trend. This is happening everywhere, all at once, and we think it's worth saying plainly why an operating system should not be part of it.
This is a global pattern, not a US quirk
United States: Utah, Texas, and Louisiana already have app-store-level age-verification laws in effect as of January 2026. California's Digital Age Assurance Act, which places obligations directly on OS providers, follows in 2027. Illinois' HB 5511 pushes it further, OS-level age signals with a 2028 deadline. Ohio, Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Kansas, Mississippi, New Hampshire, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia, and West Virginia all have similar bills moving. Vermont's Age-Appropriate Design Code arrives in 2027. Federally, the App Store Accountability Act (H.R. 3149 / S.1586) is sitting in Congress and would nationalize app-store-level age checks while preempting state law.
United Kingdom: The Online Safety Act has required "highly effective" age assurance since July 2025 Ofcom's approved methods include photo-ID matching, facial age estimation, and mobile-network checks. In June 2026 the UK government went further, announcing a social media ban for under-16s, enforceable from spring 2027.
European Union: The European Commission is pushing a bloc-wide age-verification app, tied to the Digital Services Act and the upcoming EU Digital Identity Wallet, with member states urged to roll it out by the end of 2026. It's pitched as "privacy-focused," but it's still a mandatory age-checking layer sitting between you and the internet, backed by a digital-identity infrastructure that didn't exist a few years ago.
Australia: Introduced the world's first nationwide under-16 social media ban in December 2025, with platforms required to actively detect and deactivate underage accounts or face fines up to AU$49.5 million.
Platform-level rollout is already happening: Google's Play Age Signals API is already live and returning age-range/verification signals for users in Brazil and, as of May 2026, new Texas accounts a preview of exactly the OS/platform-level plumbing these laws are demanding everywhere else.
Different countries, different legal traditions, same destination: age identity checks pushed down out of individual websites and apps, into the platform, and now into the operating system itself.
Why this is a terrible idea, not just an inconvenient one
It doesn't work the way anyone claims. An OS-level "age signal" is either trivially spoofable (in which case it does nothing to actually protect a minor) or it's backed by real identity verification (in which case every adult now has a government-adjacent ID check baked into their computer, phone, or laptop just to use it). There is no version of this that threads the needle.
It centralizes identity data with exactly the wrong parties. Instead of one sketchy age-gate on one website you can choose not to visit, you get a permanent, OS-level identity signal that every app on the device gets to query, a single point of failure for every app you run, forever, on every device you own, wired into whatever digital-identity infrastructure your country decides to attach it to (a state ID database today, an EU Digital Identity Wallet tomorrow).
It's a Trojan horse for locking down general-purpose computing. Once "the OS reports who you are to apps that ask" is normal, it's a very short walk to "the OS only runs apps that are signed/approved/age-rated by an app store", because open, sideloaded, and self-built software (the entire category RakuOS lives in) doesn't fit an age-signal API designed around Apple's and Google's app stores. Linux distros, F-Droid, Flathub, your own compiled binaries, none of that maps cleanly onto a compliance regime built for walled gardens. Laws like this get written with the app-store duopoly in mind. They are not designed with an OS like ours in mind, and that's not an accident.
What RakuOS will actually do
We will not build this in voluntarily. No RakuOS release will ship OS-level age-verification hooks ahead of a legal mandate. We're not going to pre-comply with a law that hasn't reached us, in a jurisdiction we may not even be shipped in, on the theory that it's coming eventually.
If a jurisdiction we ship into eventually forces our hand, we will do the bare legal minimum, nothing more. No aggressive identity verification, no biometric age estimation, no phoning home to a third-party verification service by default. Whatever the narrowest technically-compliant implementation is, that's what we'll ship, not the version a lobbyist-friendly "best practice" guide recommends.
And it will be open source, like everything else in RakuOS. You will be able to read the code, verify exactly what data it collects (if any) and where it goes, and disable it. An OS-level age check that you can't audit or turn off is a surveillance feature wearing a child-safety costume. One you can inspect and switch off is, at minimum, honest about what it is. That's the line we're not willing to cross regardless of which country's legislature draws it for us.
The actual fix already exists, and it isn't this
Nothing about any of these laws improves child safety in a way that per-platform, opt-in parental controls don't already do better, without turning every adult's OS into an ID checkpoint. If lawmakers want to help parents, tools for that already exist. What's being built instead, across three continents at once, is infrastructure for identity-gated computing, using kids as the justification.
What to actually do about it
These laws pass because most people never contact their legislators about them. The loudest voices in the room are lobbyists and "won't someone think of the children" testimony; legislators hear silence from everyone else and assume nobody cares. That stops being true the moment enough constituents make noise and elected officials, wherever they sit, care about one thing above the rest: getting re-elected (or, in parliamentary systems, keeping their party's seat). A flood of constituents saying "I will vote against you over this" moves votes in a way that op-eds never do.
United States, Illinois: HB 5511 is signed, but rule making and legal challenges are still ahead. Contact your state legislators and push for repeal or narrowing before the 2028 deadline:
- Find your Illinois state senator/representative: https://www.ilga.gov/members/FindMyLegislator
United States, everywhere else: check whether your state has a similar bill moving (Ohio, Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Kansas, Mississippi, New Hampshire, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia, West Virginia, and more) and show up against it:
- Find your state legislature and reps: https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials
United States, federal: H.R. 3149 and S.1586 (App Store Accountability Act) are both in Congress right now:
- Find your U.S. House Representative: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
- Find your U.S. Senators: https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
- Track the bills: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/3149 · https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/1586
United Kingdom: the under-16 social media ban takes effect spring 2027, write to your MP about it now, while implementation details are still being worked out:
- Find and contact your MP: https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/contact-an-mp-or-lord/contact-your-mp
European Union: the bloc-wide age-verification app and Digital Identity Wallet rollout is being decided by the Commission and member states through the end of 2026, contact your MEP:
- Find your MEP: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/home
Australia: the under-16 ban is already law, if you want it narrowed or reconsidered, contact your federal MP or Senator:
- Find your federal representative: https://www.aph.gov.au/Senators_and_Members
Say it plainly whoever you write to: you did not ask for your operating system to verify your age, you don't want it, and you will remember who voted for it.
Sources:
- Illinois Passes Social Media Age-Assurance Bill (HB 5511) — Recording Law: https://my.ilga.gov/Legislation/BillStatus?DocTypeID=HB&DocNum=5511&GAID=18&LegID=167486
- State lawmakers advance bill requiring age verification on all online devices — Evanston RoundTable: https://evanstonroundtable.com/2026/04/16/state-lawmakers-advance-bill-requiring-age-verification-on-all-online-devices-and-websites/
- Texas and Louisiana Join Growing Trend of State Age Verification Laws for App Stores — Orrick: https://www.orrick.com/en/Insights/2025/07/Texas-and-Louisiana-Join-Growing-Trend-of-State-Age-Verification-Laws-for-App-Stores
- New App Store Accountability Laws in 2026 — Taft Privacy & Data Security Insights: https://www.privacyanddatasecurityinsight.com/2025/12/new-app-store-accountability-laws-in-2026-if-your-business-has-an-app-read-on/
- H.R.3149 — App Store Accountability Act — Congress.gov: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/3149/text
- S.1586 — App Store Accountability Act — Congress.gov: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/1586/text
- The App Store Accountability Act Poses Serious Concerns for Privacy, Security, and Free Expression — New America: https://www.newamerica.org/insights/app-store-accountability-act-privacy-security-and-free-expression/
- Age assurance in 2026: what do digital businesses operating in the UK and EU need to know? — Lewis Silkin: https://www.lewissilkin.com/insights/2026/07/07/age-assurance-in-2026-what-do-digital-businesses-operating-in-the-uk-and-eu-need-to-know
- UK government draws legal line in the sand on social media age minimum — Biometric Update: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202607/uk-government-draws-legal-line-in-the-sand-on-social-media-age-minimum
- Age Verification Laws in 2026: Global Compliance Guide — Didit: https://didit.me/blog/age-verification-laws-2026/
- Age Verification Laws by Country (2026): UK, EU, US, Australia — Age Once: https://www.ageonce.com/blog/age-verification-laws-by-country-2026
- The EU's Age Verification Efforts: Child Protection, Privacy, and Digital Identity — BISI: https://bisi.org.uk/reports/the-eus-age-verification-efforts-child-protection-privacy-and-digital-identity