California and Colorado legislated that Linux distributions, being free and open-source, are exempt from the age verification in operating systems, unless they are proprietary like SteamOS (and Windows).
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@sortius @davidculley I don't know if that's news to you, but I was a child as well, so I know that. These tools cannot replace good parenting, but they can help. Is that too complicated for you?
@chefx @sortius @davidculley They don't help at all, you moron.
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@davidculley @schrotthaufen I think he already has. When that PR was filled folks went off both on Fedi and in the comments on GitHub. Very few of which seemed to get noticed, which is why I think he was too busy blocking people to actually read them.
@drwho @davidculley Yep. I @ mentioned him directly about it -> got blocked the same day. Which is why he won’t see me contemplating ordering him the book “IBM and the Holocaust”
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California and Colorado legislated that Linux distributions, being free and open-source, are exempt from the age verification in operating systems, unless they are proprietary like SteamOS (and Windows).
Too bad the systemd developers already complied with fascism in advance before the bills were even finalized.
Will Lennart Poettering and his followers now please remove the birthDate field from systemd?
P.S.: If you reply with any variation of "You need to calm down," I will block you.
Colorado and California age verification bills exempt open source operating systems
Remember all the ruckus with various US states introducing operating-system level age verification laws? Colorado and California thankfully exempt open source.
GamingOnLinux (www.gamingonlinux.com)
@davidculley has anyone posted the followup yet? https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/05/linux-and-open-source-getting-age-checking-exemptions-could-be-problematic/
Comparing age verification to anticheat seems apt
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@drwho @davidculley Yep. I @ mentioned him directly about it -> got blocked the same day. Which is why he won’t see me contemplating ordering him the book “IBM and the Holocaust”
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@chefx @davidculley It was specifically implemented to comply with age verification laws: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954
They have since claimed that LOL IT ONLY GECOS FIELD HUHDUH NOT COMPLYING WITH LAW but that is NOT why they implemented it (see the commit message!), and of all the ways to comply with age verification "mandates" storing the user's DoB in a database accessible to every program running on the same machine is about the worst route possible.
I was a fan of systemd before this, and spent a huge amount of time defending it from critics who didn't seem to understand what it does (and what it doesn't.) But it's clear it's not a community project, it's an IBM-Canonical one now, and it needs to be replaced.
@poundquerydotinfo @davidculley I know they state it's for age verification in the commit. I have read it. But I also agree with the commentors saying that this is definitely not a big privacy concern if you consider that every program can see your full home folder. Which probably contains your cv with even more info. Also the birthDate field is an optional field. So I think the field on its own is not a problem but an acceptable addition to the userdb.
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@poundquerydotinfo @davidculley I know they state it's for age verification in the commit. I have read it. But I also agree with the commentors saying that this is definitely not a big privacy concern if you consider that every program can see your full home folder. Which probably contains your cv with even more info. Also the birthDate field is an optional field. So I think the field on its own is not a problem but an acceptable addition to the userdb.
@chefx @davidculley It's literally giving your date of birth to any application that wants it, and in areas that mandate age verification or GNU/Linux based operating systems that don't have carve outs - SteamOS being a prime example - that's not an optional field any more.
It has been a hole that any application can access any file in your home directory for a while, which is why there's been a slow move towards sandboxing applications. But pointing that out is a prime example of whataboutism, especially as it's hardly the same thing - it's relatively difficult to write something that scans your entire home directory hoping to find a CV (which wouldn't even exist in the case of a minor) compared to writing something that quickly calls a system API to get your name and date of birth.
This field should not be in systemd, and it was put in for all the wrong reasons, and it was not discussed with the community, and when the community tried to undo the damage they refused to remove it, and then they lied about it. That's five strikes against it, and against the project in general.
The entire systemd project management is not to be trusted at this point.
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@chefx @davidculley It's literally giving your date of birth to any application that wants it, and in areas that mandate age verification or GNU/Linux based operating systems that don't have carve outs - SteamOS being a prime example - that's not an optional field any more.
It has been a hole that any application can access any file in your home directory for a while, which is why there's been a slow move towards sandboxing applications. But pointing that out is a prime example of whataboutism, especially as it's hardly the same thing - it's relatively difficult to write something that scans your entire home directory hoping to find a CV (which wouldn't even exist in the case of a minor) compared to writing something that quickly calls a system API to get your name and date of birth.
This field should not be in systemd, and it was put in for all the wrong reasons, and it was not discussed with the community, and when the community tried to undo the damage they refused to remove it, and then they lied about it. That's five strikes against it, and against the project in general.
The entire systemd project management is not to be trusted at this point.
@poundquerydotinfo @davidculley You are right on it being easy for a program to scan the birth date now, and that it was put there for the wrong reasons.
I have no idea about the lying about it? What happened there?
But I personally do not care about the field as long as it stays optional. I disagree and am against the US legislation and all other legislation about "age verification" because it is just ID verification / deanonymizing people. But I save my energy for whatever will be done for the Frontend. Because the part where you put your ID is the problem. And if you are just prompted to enter any date without verification then I won't care. -
@drwho @davidculley Yep. I @ mentioned him directly about it -> got blocked the same day. Which is why he won’t see me contemplating ordering him the book “IBM and the Holocaust”
@schrotthaufen @drwho Hehe, I mean we know where he works and the street address of his office.
We could send five or ten copies of "IBM and the Holocaust" to his office in Berlin.
(This is not a call for violence, threats or stalking.)
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@schrotthaufen @drwho Hehe, I mean we know where he works and the street address of his office.
We could send five or ten copies of "IBM and the Holocaust" to his office in Berlin.
(This is not a call for violence, threats or stalking.)
@davidculley @drwho That’s my thinking. It’s a genuinely informative, albeit hard to digest and unpleasant, book. And it’s only 27€
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@schrotthaufen @drwho Hehe, I mean we know where he works and the street address of his office.
We could send five or ten copies of "IBM and the Holocaust" to his office in Berlin.
(This is not a call for violence, threats or stalking.)
@davidculley @schrotthaufen I think that can be arranged.
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@davidculley has anyone posted the followup yet? https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/05/linux-and-open-source-getting-age-checking-exemptions-could-be-problematic/
Comparing age verification to anticheat seems apt
@beaiouns Sounds probable. After the introduction of the GDPR in 2018, there were lots of websites that wouldn't serve visitors from Europe. Similarly, they wouldn't serve Linux clients.
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@davidculley detect-fash is aging like fine wine
@millie Hehe, yeah, I wrote about it back then:
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@sortius @davidculley I don't know if that's news to you, but I was a child as well, so I know that. These tools cannot replace good parenting, but they can help. Is that too complicated for you?
@chefx @sortius In the interests of a reasoned discourse, I will now try to make a rebuttal statement about the 'helping part'.
These tools cannot replace good parenting, and they give the veneer of helping but in actuality it's just a fig-leaf that hoovers up data without actually helping.
There are plenty of tools already available to parents who want to restrict the internet in a sane fashion, we just collectively _can't be bothered to use them_; This isn't going to change that dynamic in the least.
It also smacks of "the cure is worse than the disease" syndrome; or boiling a frog. Choose your pithy aphorism.
I include myself in my glib dismissal of parents; I am a parent, and I am lucky enough to be able to say to my children: "The internet here has restrictions; if you can bypass what I've done; fill your boots". The challenge was not accepted (though now I think it might have been a fun arms race and learning opportunity for all involved).
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@millie Hehe, yeah, I wrote about it back then:
@davidculley there's more where that came from
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@chefx @sortius In the interests of a reasoned discourse, I will now try to make a rebuttal statement about the 'helping part'.
These tools cannot replace good parenting, and they give the veneer of helping but in actuality it's just a fig-leaf that hoovers up data without actually helping.
There are plenty of tools already available to parents who want to restrict the internet in a sane fashion, we just collectively _can't be bothered to use them_; This isn't going to change that dynamic in the least.
It also smacks of "the cure is worse than the disease" syndrome; or boiling a frog. Choose your pithy aphorism.
I include myself in my glib dismissal of parents; I am a parent, and I am lucky enough to be able to say to my children: "The internet here has restrictions; if you can bypass what I've done; fill your boots". The challenge was not accepted (though now I think it might have been a fun arms race and learning opportunity for all involved).
@QuotidianEnnui @sortius I get that, but I think a centralised place to make a child-account would be a nice thing for Linux. So that the software store can preselect available apps, etc.
Age brackets would probably make more sense though. -
@beaiouns Sounds probable. After the introduction of the GDPR in 2018, there were lots of websites that wouldn't serve visitors from Europe. Similarly, they wouldn't serve Linux clients.
@davidculley @beaiouns Are there any that won't serve Linux clients?
I have my experienced one or two websites who blocked EU IP's. -
@LukefromDC @davidculley @ashy Just because you have to create an account doesn't mean it's not foss.
You can in fact download all the sources for #RHEL yourself, guess who #centos came into existence?btw the birthday field doesn't have to be just for age verification, it could also be useful for parental control.
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Capitalism has destroyed the world and our future, possibly even the survival of our species.
The average Joe/Jane who still flies by airplane hasn't understood this yet. *Really* understood. But they will eventually, and then there will be riots. After even the so-called "middle class" loses its privileges and lives precariously. (There are only two classes: Those who have to work for money, and those who don't.)
Knowing anything about humanity, the Western "middle class" sadly won't do shit as long as it's only the Western "lower class" and the Global South that are living in precariousness. Change for the better will happen only after the Western "middle class" lives in precariousness too. They first need to burn their hands on the hot stove too.
That's what the capitalists are preparing for, by implementing fascism before the population becomes too unruly. Capitalists don't like people organizing against them in anonymity, planning how to end capitalism. The elite wants to know exactly who everyone is, and be able to control what you can post on the internet.
They get their foot into the door with "age verification", by dressing it as "protection of the children".
And the useful idiots are like, "It's only a column in a database." "I like it if it helps hiding porn from my child."
But folks are naive gullible idiots if they think it stops there, with their birth date. This needs to be nipped in the bud.
@davidculley I think that capitalists will try to keep the "middle class" as comfortable as possible, by reducing the need to revolt. The "middle class" has the possibility to 'afford' to buy books and knowledge against fascism and I am certain that the capitalists/fascists are going to prevent that, by burning books, paywalling the information and banning/prosectuting people from participating in sharing that knowledge. I am sure they are already doing this somewhere.
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@davidculley I think that capitalists will try to keep the "middle class" as comfortable as possible, by reducing the need to revolt. The "middle class" has the possibility to 'afford' to buy books and knowledge against fascism and I am certain that the capitalists/fascists are going to prevent that, by burning books, paywalling the information and banning/prosectuting people from participating in sharing that knowledge. I am sure they are already doing this somewhere.
@davidculley I have seen people stop their fight against capitalism as soon as things went comfortable and their "material conditions" improved. Certain actors in the leftist group that are more prominent are (Sadly) misdirecting the masses towards comfort, because the "class consciousness is not there yet", which I find is a silly excuse. Instead of teaching them and showing what the core issues are, they direct to short term wins.
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@davidculley I have seen people stop their fight against capitalism as soon as things went comfortable and their "material conditions" improved. Certain actors in the leftist group that are more prominent are (Sadly) misdirecting the masses towards comfort, because the "class consciousness is not there yet", which I find is a silly excuse. Instead of teaching them and showing what the core issues are, they direct to short term wins.
@davidculley Just like then when the DieLinke in Germany had the SPD/USPD and they tried to direct the masses towards capitalism, instead of liberation of it. Similar tactics are happening right now, both in Germany and in the USA. It's really hard to argue against those prominent figures, because they always slow down the arguments and view their moves as "safe". Comfort is not safe when capitalist control it. But these figures don't understand that, they rely on it...
