this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
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Many people here are going off on wild tangents over this. You should just read the law, it's only a couple thousand words of quite plain English.
Many here have taken completely incorrect assumptions from the title. This law is for developers, not users.
Summary:
The only problem I have with this is that it should only apply to commercial software (app stores and OS). Libre/FOS software should not have to police ages on their app stores, due to their far reduced budgets (often zero), developer time, and the nature of the software being generally anti-centralized and anti-surveillance-capitalism. Though I'd be fine with it for FOSS software distributed via commercial app stores, as long as they gave a longer lead time to implement (EG a couple of years).
It says that OS developers must track users or be fined, so they will track users.
The statute does not define:
What counts as "minimum"
How necessity is measured
Whether "minimum" refers to data fields, granularity, frequency, or retention
Whether metadata (e.g., device ID, timestamp, API call logs) is included or excluded
This legislature calls App Providers and developers to track people and barely even gives lipservice to what is allowed.
We don't want our OS's tied to our identities. This does not explicitly forbid that
Read the law (its barely 1000 words) because your claims are not substantiated by it.
I already read it. That's how i came up with what I wrote man.
You go re-read it and tell me
What counts as “minimum”
How necessity is measured
Whether “minimum” refers to data fields, granularity, frequency, or retention
They don't cover shit about ANY of that.
It literally explains the minimum as asking the user for their age, DOB, or both. It then says delopers may not ask for more than the minimum data.
Further, the law states that if a developer intentionally breaches any part of the law (which would include the requirements) there is a $7500 fine per impacted user, and injunctions. Accidental breaches are $2500 per user, and injuctions. These are very high penalties in context - someone like Microsoft would be on the hook for trillions, and as such, corpos will not be rushing to play fools and test the law by asking more than the bare minimum.
If this is confusing then please seek out one of the many legal blogs/videos covering it by lawyers because I can't break it down further than I already have.