Okay you are ready to take a stand for freedom!
You are going to use an OS that isn't going to bend the knee and comply with age verification laws. I solute you, comrade!
Here are the likely consequences of your choice:
The Feds aren't coming after you. You aren't going to be out on a watch list.
What will likely happen is that if you try to log into your Facebook account you will get a message that says "Your Operating System is not currently supported. Your user experience will be limited to Groups labeled "Everyone"."
That's basically it. Your personal user experience will be limited to "kid friendly" areas of the Internet. (Same with apps and games.)
That's the real driver of these laws. Facebook and other app producers know that the days where they can just shrug off child predators using their products is coming to and end. Regardless of your opinion on age verification is as a solution, child predators are a real world problem and it's not just the parents fault. The platforms have some responsibility too.
Which is exactly what Facebook and the others specifically don't want -responsibility for their own platforms. That's why they are pushing for these laws that off load their responsibility onto the OS makers. Then they can just say "Oh, we don't have any responsibility for this child being abused in our platform. We asked the OS what the user's age was and the OS reported 18+. What else could we have done?"
So, that's the consequence if you choose to use an OS that refuses to comply. You'll just be relegated to the kid friendly version of website, games, and applications.
(On the other hand, if your OS chooses to falsely report to a website or an app an age for a child that is abused, then the OS should also be held responsible. But at that point you can go ahead and blame the parents too for letting their child use an OS that isn't safe for them to use.)
You don't understand how this protects kids because you haven't been taught to think like a monster. That's okay. But I have had lots of training in child protection.
The way "grooming" online often works is to get the kid to a place where the predator can start blackmailing the kid, but that's a process. That often starts on chat apps. Those can be in video games or social media platforms, etc. The predators identify kids in the apps and then will start chatting with them. It will start off innocuous, talking about the game or whatever, but eventually it turns into the predator trapping the kid into a secret (it's always about secrets). The predator will ask the kid "Hey, want to see some porn?" or something like that. And of course a 13 or 14 year old kid is going to be interested in that. Then "don't tell your parents" always follows. Once they have agreed to the secret, the trap is set. The predator brings the kid darker and darker porn and makes the kid feel more and more guilty and uncomfortable. Eventually it turns into, "Send me photos of your self or I'll publish these chats" (or worse, like in person meetings).
This is why "This is the parent's responsibility" is cruel bull shit. Parents can't be everywhere all the time and these predators make sure they stay out of parents views. The parents are victims too.
Everyone that says "This isn't about protecting the kids" is half right. It's not really about protecting the kids, it's really about protecting Meta and other developers from liability. Users love private messengers, and internet companies love them too. But it's a problem for Internet companies because they are the dark corners that make the internet companies liable. And they do have a responsibility to protect users on their websites, and they can't just claim "we didn't know", because they damn well know.
So, their solution is to require the OS to record the user's age, even if that's just "18+". The websites can call the age from the OS, get the "verified age" (they really don't care what "verified" means, that's the OS maker's problem) and then open their doors to the customer. (If the kid is using their parent's account or what ever, the internet companies don't care. They did their due diligence.) But if the OS returns "<18" then the websites can lock down the user's account. They can automatically turn on parental controls, require a parent's consent, etc. Most importantly for child protection, they can turn off or very strictly limit private messaging (all of the online problems start with private messaging). They can basically do a lot of the things they are doing now, just off loading the liability onto the OS maker. Which, personally, I think is better for the parents too. It's much easier for parents to monitor the OS then it is for them to monitor hundreds of websites and games.
And Lemmy, Mastodon, and fediverse users (and especially hosts) should want this too. Hosts on the fediverse do not understand how much liability they are taking upon themselves (if they did, they wouldn't be hosting).