The services themselves will probably be made to ask for verification and your devices will answer through the age verification app. Since custom mobile OSs (or desktop Linux) won’t provide hardware attestation, the app won’t work on them and the websites will treat you as underage. The types of services that require age verification aren’t specific, they can change based on EU decisions so eventually people not using “approved” OSs may be locked out of most of the internet.

DDG for everything but especially searches in other countries (using the country toggle).

Google for images and super localized results.

Yandex for reverse image search (yes really).

This feels like such a waste but if there really aren’t any dumb tvs around anymore, oh well

Dumb tvs are still sold in some places. If it’s impossible to get a dumb TV and have a pc, at that point it makes more sense to get a simple monitor and use the pc as the smart device so you actually have full control. The android boxes you connect to tvs are not the epitome of privacy either.

What features does a smart TV provide when not connected to the internet? (serious question, I’ve never had a smart TV)

https://keepandroidopen.org/

There will be a hidden workflow but it will require a 24h cooldown period. Even worse, it relies on google services and can be changed whenever Google wants to cut out sideloading completely.

If smart glasses become mainstream you’ll have many people wearing them in public. And you can choose privacy respecting glasses but most people will not. So maybe let’s not make them mainstream.

And the phone number thing is already happening too. Google, discord and probably other stuff already ask for a phone number to prove you are a human when they flag your account.

Have you considered the possibility you are a robot? /s

There are other captcha providers. If only companies would start using them instead of Google.

That’s a big if though, considering that Chromebooks didn’t exactly take off either.

What is supposed to happen with desktops here? If they require a phone to pass the captcha on the desktop that is already a huge issue and many people will complain about that regardless of play services.

Some distros come with both pre-installed so you don’t really need to swap out anything. If it’s not pre-installed, I don’t know, you might be right and it won’t fix anything.

I’ve had issues with specific apps that just don’t support it, others that require installing more packages and others that I didn’t care enough to look into. That’s a significant enough number to take it into account when trying things.

Personal issues I’ve had and other questions I’ve seen online. It’s not necessarily wayland itself, it might be how other programs treat screen sharing in it. In any case it’s worth a try if it’s an easy change.

Does this actually cause compatibility issues? If not, no need to explain

This might be wrong but I think many of screen sharing related issues actually come from wayland. If you’re on wayland and can switch to X11 on your current system I’d try that first before deciding on a new distro.

Also OBS studio with the virtual camera extension lets you use its output as a camera input in other programs so you can pass literally anything to the camera.

Even if they don’t end up fully switching it doesn’t matter. Some might switch, some might try dual booting. But saying they are going to switch is free press and may convince more people to try it so that’s still a win.