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Maybe! But laws like California’s new law and the Texas law both are making it mandatory from a legal compliance point of view.

The direction of these restrictions is not “optional”

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It will be when everyone starts leaking from the big players. Age verification will make software development impossible or be impossible to implement without huge investment.

> Age verification will make software development impossible or be impossible to implement without huge investment.

Not really, you'll just be forced to use services from eg google or meta. And pay for them. And share user data.

Just because it's not openly shared does not mean that there aren't large databases of everything from working refresh keys to entire profiles indexed out there for the large services. Most data leaks and breaches don't get reported, or acknowledged, or are downplayed in their potential effect (but weirdly, also given more weight than they deserve since it becomes pointless to have so much data that doesn't add anything new to, say, a profile of a person)

And if my foss software doesnt implement those systems? Or someone downloads my foss software and removes those restrictions?

We will go back to the days of underground networks, offline if needed. NNCP, UUCP, and FIDO.

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