Just what I want in my distro.
After weeks of debate, code to record user age was finally merged into the Linux world’s favorite system management daemon.
Pull request #40954 to the systemd project is titled “userdb: add birthDate field to JSON user records.” It’s a new function for the existing userdb service, which adds a field to hold the user’s date of birth:
Stores the user’s birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc.
The contents of the field will be protected from modification except by users with root privileges.
The change comes after the recent release of systemd 260 but unless it is reverted for some reason, it will be part of systemd 261. One of the justifications is to facilitate the new parental controls in Flatpak, which are still in the draft stage.
Down voting this title. For now.
What’s wrong with the title? It’s the article title.
Also, Beehaw has no downvotes, so you can downvote all you want on your instance if it makes you feel better, but it won’t federate the downvote.
I’m not afraid to let everyone know I was born on 1/1/1900
Literally fucking pointless
The contents of the field will be protected from modification except by users with root privileges.
Fucking nannystate bullshit.
Every initial setup is granted admin and therefore sudo/su group permissions which is root privilege.
So, yeah, pointless…
Write a cronjob to change the dob on each logrotate or every hour?
I mean, seriously … you expect fucking Linux users to not immediately find a workaround?
Garuda Linux will not implement any age verification measures, since Garuda Linux’s legal jurisdictions have no laws mandating age verification.
Yes. That’s how it should be, that on the Internet you only have to comply with laws where you or the servers you are hosting things on are based, and all other places can piss off when it comes to enforcing their laws.
And it’s how it mostly used to work, but we now live in this world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_and_indictment_of_Pavel_Durov
One of my childhood dreams was to run my own successful web forum. Now that we live in this world where that means countries might prosecute me because my users have been doing things that are illegal somewhere in the world, that dream is officially dead. >:(
Yet 4chan is still running
Unfortunately…
And the same contributor (From Credit Genie) submitted a PR on Arch install to make that field mandatory … Definitely not sus https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/pull/4290
It’s weird that this guy is pushing it with “it’s the law” justifications while claiming it’s so ineffective as to be harmless. If your justification is that it’s ineffective, why not just do nothing? That would be even more ineffective at collecting users’ dates of birth. Why be the guy who does something? He seems oddly eager and strangely confident that all the steps he’s taking to comply preemptively won’t be misused in future, by governments, corporations or hackers.
Dylan’s words in the PR:
After reading the bill text, this is the conclusion I came to - arch install is an OS installer, the law asks for users to provide birth date when installing an OS. Is that going to be hilariously pointless and ineffective? Yes.
I feel like he’s getting ahead of the work as a matter-of-fact. In other words, the law passed, Arch is used by Californians, they need measures to make sure they’re not breaking the law.
I don’t think protest even falls into it with these kind of people, even though a majority of us would jump on the chance to actively protest this law and these changes. I personally cannot wait to have this shit throw at me at the next Linux upgrade, just to pull something like what Ageless Linux does against it.
That’s why I was vehemently opposed to the hit piece that was attacking this guy personally, by a shit blogger who I will forever blacklist. Also, fuck the mod who submitted that hit piece to Lemmy.
