You can check their GitHub profile. If they are in https://github.com/googlers, then they are internally verified.

1. This California law doesn't require IDs. (Some states like TX do, but mainly for websites "harmful to minors"). 2. If I have to think through your examples -- purchasing cars and arms requires strict ID checks that go further than age verification. If a kid drove or use weapons owned by their parents, I'm mostly confident parents are liable in most jurisdictions. But I think I can guess out your concern -- 24x7 online tracking can be much more intrusive and terrifying than a one-time background check -- which I actually agree. 3. In fact, you can think this law exactly require OSes (thinking of as iOS/Android/Windows/macOS) to "give the tools to parents" -- being able to indicate that the user is a minor at OS level and expose that information to apps.

If you actually read this law, it does exactly the opposite to avoid every random app/website from having to do age verification (like traditional age verification laws requires). It requires that only the OS to ask the user's age (not even verify it). Individual apps should use the age buckets signaled by the OS.

I don't even get why people think lobbyists hijack the law. It might be too left/progressive/socialism/or whatever. But, basically, the only major org opponent of this law is Google: https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab...

And "not for use in Texas": https://legiscan.com/TX/text/SB2420/id/3237346

And "not for use in Louisiana": https://legis.la.gov/legis/Law.aspx?d=1428944

And maybe Brazil, Australia, Singapore and Utah as well (not checked): https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=f5zj08ey

Repost my comment in the other thread: I know this sounds absurd. But let me try not to be cynical and explain how we got here, according to what I understand:

First, let's admit the push for age verification laws isn't a partisan or ideological thing. It's a global trend. This California law has bipartisan sponsorship and only major org opponent is the evil G [1]. While age verification is unpopular in tech community, I imagine a lot of average adult voters agree that limiting children's access to wilder parts of the Internet is a good thing.

On this premise, the discussion is then who should be responsible for age verification. The traditional model is to require app developers / website owners to gatekeep -- like the Texas and Ohio laws that require PornHub to verify users' IDs. But such model put too much burden on small developers, and it's a privacy nightmare to have to share your PII with random apps.

This is why we see this new model. States started to believe it seems more viable to dump the responsibility on big tech / platforms. A newer Texas law is adopt this model (on top the traditional model) to require app stores to verify user age (but was recently blocked by court) [2]. And this California law pretty much also takes this model -- the OS (thinking as iOS / Android / Windows with app store) shall obtain the user age and provide "a signal regarding the users age bracket to applications available in a covered application store".

While many people here are concerning open-source OSes, and the language do cover all OSes -- my intuition is no lawmaker had ever think about them and they were not the target.

[1] https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab...

[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/05/big-tech-won-in-tex...