Substack, Paywalls And Digital ID

The Agenda 2030 rollout continues unopposed, amidst all the fumblings of Clown World.

California’s New Law Forces Every Operating System to Track Your Age by 2027

h ttps://tech.yahoo.com/cybersecurity/articles/california-law-forces-every-operating-153357907.html

By Alex Barrientos for Gadget Review, 11 March 2026

California’s new Digital Age Assurance Act transforms child safety into the tech equivalent of airport security—well-intentioned but invasive for everyone. Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1043 on October 13, 2025, forcing operating system providers to collect users’ ages at setup and broadcast that data to apps through a “reasonably consistent real-time API.”

The law takes effect January 1, 2027, covering everything from Windows and iOS to obscure Linux distributions. Your favorite privacy-focused distro? Now legally required to ask when you were born and tell every app whether you’re under 13, 13-16, 16-18, or 18+. Penalties reach $7,500 per child for intentional violations.

Then again…

Segue

h ttps://reclaimthenet.org/brazil-enacts-age-verification-law-mandating-digital-id

22 September 2025

Brazil has enacted a new law that mandates age verification across digital platforms, setting the stage for a broader move toward digital identification and the erosion of online anonymity.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed the measure into law last week, framing it as a necessary tool to protect children.

However, embedded in the policy is a requirement for platforms to verify the age of all users through mechanisms that extend beyond self-declared age confirmation.

Called the “Adultization Bill” or “Digital ECA,” the law will take effect in 180 days and applies to social media, online games, and other digital services.

This includes blocking sexual exploitation, harassment, gambling, predatory advertising, and other forms of abuse.

But the most far-reaching element is the obligation for all platforms to adopt age checks that regulators are still defining. This opens the door to digital ID systems that would permanently tie users’ online activity to their real-world identity.

Brazil’s move follows a growing global trend. Governments in the United Kingdom, the European Union, individual states within the United States, and Australia are all pursuing age verification as a pathway to stronger regulation of the internet.

Penalties for noncompliance are steep, with fines reaching up to 10 percent of a company’s revenue in Brazil, capped at 10 million dollars per violation.

…that’s a lot of lower class. Brazil’s intent might be targeting ZOG NGOs or defending against color revolutions, rather than fleecing its Internet Service Providers.

Same end result for us, though, and notice it’s a punishment to be assessed against the website not the end user.

End segue

Privacy-by-design distributions must now implement surveillance features or risk California’s wrath.

Here’s where things get dystopian. Distributions like Arch and Debian intentionally avoid centralized accounts—that’s the whole point. These systems were built by people who reject surveillance capitalism, yet California demands they become participants.

As the Lunduke Journal noted, the impact on open-source is “terrifying.” Many distributions lack legal entities to fine, creating enforcement nightmares that could fragment the ecosystem.

The law passed unanimously (76-0 in the Assembly, 38-0 in the Senate), suggesting lawmakers didn’t grasp how this demolishes core principles of privacy-focused computing. Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, the bill’s author, claims it avoids constitutional issues by focusing on “age assurance” rather than content moderation. That’s like saying speed cameras aren’t about enforcement—just measurement.

California is a dictatorship under Gavin Newsom, ever since elections were ‘fortified’ during Covid with the removal of witnesses and paper trails. He doesn’t normally flex this strongly, so the actual suggestion is that he’s ready for any lawsuits. This law passed in October of last year and wasn’t remarked on until March, which may have something to do with that.

In recent years, the California legislature has been passing upwards of a thousand new laws per week. Nobody knows what’s legal anymore.

Microsoft and Apple adapt easily; hobbyist OS maintainers face compliance costs they can’t afford.

Both are already doing account verification, in fact. My next OS will be Linux just because I need an OS that can operate offline.

Corporate giants already collect user data and maintain account systems. Adding age verification barely registers as a development sprint. Meanwhile, the maintainer keeping FreeDOS alive in their spare time suddenly needs legal counsel and API documentation.

Even more absurdly, single-person projects like TempleOS—a biblical-themed OS with roughly twelve users worldwide—technically fall under this law’s scope.

The requirement creates a two-tier system where surveillance-friendly platforms thrive while privacy-respecting alternatives wither under compliance burdens. Self-declared ages might seem less intrusive than government ID checks, but they establish the infrastructure for future expansions. Newsom’s signing message already hints at “further refinement” coming in 2026.

The true tyranny here is on the far end, with the content hosts. Because all OS are presumed to be transmitting age verification, any website that doesn’t use the signal (or doesn’t demand to receive a signal) is presumed to be guilty of any exposure of minors to T&A, badthink and according to a couple reports out of the UK, me.

Up above, where it says “intentional violation”? Ignoring or not requesting the age verification is the proof of intent being discussed, and the burden doesn’t fall on the end user. It falls on the website business, as the Brazil article indicated.

Law enforcement is always more effective when they turn We the Inmate People against each other.

Smart money says VPNs and non-California accounts become the new normal, turning age verification into another game of digital IDs. California wanted to protect kids online—instead, it just made privacy harder for everyone else.

California likes to play the 800lb gorilla in the room of the North American economy, setting the de facto national standard whenever Congress can’t be pushed hard enough to impose the de jure. That is why, for two examples, California has special permission to host redundant agencies with the Feds such as OSHA and air quality, and why you see that Proposition 65 warning on everything. Anything without a Prop65 warning can’t be legally sold in CA, and nobody wants to forfeit that much market access.

Stick that in your Interstate Commerce Clause, Fedboys.

Now we get personal. Substack is headquartered in California and has already submitted to Digital ID agendas in UK & AUS, so the odds of them bucking this law are nil. That doesn’t mean my blog will be canceled; it means you won’t be allowed to read it! I won’t even be notified of what’s happening! And I’m hardly the only dissident on Substack these days.

I can handle top-down, external oppression. Humanity can & has endured that for centuries at a time. What I can’t handle is bottom-up, self-inflicted oppression. That’s why Covid hurt me as badly as it did, it was my friends & neighbors enforcing Regime mandates upon me; it’s why idiots adopting the lies of the Regime anger me more than the lies & liars themselves; and it’s why Digital ID is going to succeed:

Too many people already want it.

I don’t just mean Civnat G. Normie worrying about the chillldruuunz. I mean alt media personalities, dissident bloggers and similars who paywall their site! It’s gotten out of hand! Nothing online is as NOT-anonymous as money changing hands, however small the amount and whether it’s crypto. Even when mandatory subscribership is free, you have to be granted permission just to hear whoever talk.

THIS IS THE SAME MONETIZATION OF HUMAN SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AS THE DIGITAL ID AGENDA.

Substack encourages such paywalling but in their defense, they haven’t pressured me to impose it. Seems they don’t have to. It isn’t behavior that I understand or can tolerate. Why have a public blog if you want nobody but your friends to read it? The only times I put my blog on whitelist moderation are when I’m away from a computer for days. Never mind the idea of asking people to give me money for my ideas. I’m too proud to beg like that and don’t want BOTH the income tax men of California and the Feds, to have jurisdiction over my online existence.

Yes, some people put a lot of work into their blogs. Yes, they merit compensation for such effort. I’m one of them. BUT, I won’t monetize my interactions with my species. Being human must not be reduced to identity politics and financial transactions! If that means I don’t get paid what I deserve, so what. It’s all going to burn. Everybody talks about the incoming dollar collapse; am I the only one who believes it enough to NOT chase as many dollars as I can?

How many dissidents believe their own words?

How many dissidents say “our rulers play us against each other” then self-impose “Know Your Commenter” restrictions?

Demanding a membership application to my blog is the same thing as California ordering me to “demand proof of age”, it helps the Regime know who you are. The benefit of online socializing is the ability to reach people you never would have met otherwise, to anonymously discuss topics that ((certain people)) do not like, so save the “friends only” gatekeeping for meatspace where it matters.

Or, don’t pretend to oppose Digital ID. In point of fact, the announcements of Digital ID haven’t exactly gone viral these last few months, so… yeah. Why oppose the State gatekeeping your online presence when you gatekeep it yourself?

Postscript

Would anybody like the option of a mailing list? I archive my blog posts as PDFs, so it would be easy for me to email it to readers. That precludes commenting but gets around the censors of the hour.