people on reddit are doing a whole lot of yapping about age verification in Linux

[zanagb@lgbtqia.space]

@jane @cas

Fine. We'll take the bait.

Here are some facts.

- SystemD (and most of FD.O) is an IBM product by virtue of the sheer weigh behind Red Hat's contributions to most to their codebases

- Most of the kernel patches are submited by IBM/RHEL, MicroSlop, Amazon, Google, Oracle, Meta employees.

- A lot of these "anti big tech", "for the children" surveilance laws are being lobbied by... These same companies who happen to be contributing most of the code to freedesktop dot org, and who own these very platforms.

- SystemD is the first project to rush to implement these surveilance specs.

These are just facts regarding the current situation.

This has nothing to do with the inane discourse unsavoury people and fascists alike love parroting ad nauseum, going against everything systemd has done due to being "monolithic corporate slop" and "not SysVInit"

And yet... Here we have a clear example of legitimate concerns being drowned by the wolf that cried "child" and their comrades trying to muddy the waters.

The corporate product with a lot of corporate weight behind it is the first to implement the corporate surveilance garbage onto its code way ahead of schedule.

... It is really not a conspiracy when you are seeing the thing happen in real time now is it?

[penguin42@mastodon.org.uk]

@pid_eins @cas I even have some sympathy for the big companies wanting to get this from the OS; they know there's no way that they can implement age verification on website access - kids will find a way arounf it and they'll still get blamed; this pushes the problem away from them.

[licomace@mastodon.social]

@cas
| Would you rather every desktop environment had its own way to store this data??

Uh, yes? Uniform implementation makes future grabs easier to conceive and therefore more likely.

As engineers, we all like nice, uniform solutions. Why? Easier to build on top of. Which in this case is something virtually no one wants.

[f4grx@chaos.social]

@ZanaGB @cas @jane @freya unfortunately.

[f4grx@chaos.social]

@cas the fud is on your part. Having this info available is just the first step. Laws mandating its value in http headers prior to accessing data is next.

[allpoints@mstdn.social]

@cas you nailed it in the last sentence when you said "if we need to have the crap" We don't need this crap and embedding it in the cancer that is systemd makes it even harder to cut out.

But hey, you do you. Bend the knee to whomever you like.

[jane@smolhaj.social]

@ZanaGB
Yes, Red Hat is a heavy weight in contributions but it's misleading to think in those terms.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Red_Hat_contributions

So we look at governance, I cant find the link for stuff so I'll just the first result in my search engine. https://www.x.org/wiki/BoardOfDirectors/

Do note, that it makes sense to view the stuff gnome is doing and the gnome foundation as completely different things.
https://handbook.gnome.org/governance.html#maintainers
https://www.bassi.io/articles/2025/08/03/governance-in-gnome/

systemd is probably the clearest example for cooperate involvement, as it's not a desktop only component.
https://systemd.io/GOVERNANCE/

systemd isn't the first project to rush. it's not a spec to provide that, it sadly passed in california. and it maps cleanly to existing gecos field for passwd so isn't a new thing for linux. /etc/passwd is probably readable by everyone, so already fingerprinting compatible.
i myself will just geoblock non-europe in the future if i make my distro public.

You wanna think about corporate linux desktop? We already have that, it's called chromebook, android and steamos. https://agelesslinux.org/distros.html

There are far worse things already around for years. Like forcing a data sim-card in combination with a microphone in your car. You should be scared for a widevine-like module in trustzone to ensure you verified your age with a government. Not seeing certain domains in emails of contributors as a big conspiracy by big tech. It's so much easier to just force compliance by saying that "disabling secure boot" and "rooting" is prohibited in a country, only compliant operating systems will be allowed.
https://compliancehub.wiki/brazil-age-verification-law-operating-systems/

[benjamineskola@hachyderm.io]

@cas Yeah absolutely. There are valid criticisms to make of systemd but this is not one of them.

People seem to want to just stick their heads in the sand which doesn’t really help the people who are in affected regions. Or, a slightly less generous interpretation is that people who aren’t affected want the people who *are* affected to do civil disobedience about it, in order to avoid having to think about it.

[lumiworx@mastodon.social]

@cas

I tried to make a new issue to ask about what steps they'd take to cover their asses when lawsuits start flying... and it was simply deleted. Not closed or answered, just ripped out.

A point that seems to go missing is that age verification is only effective when it's done at 'Point of Sale'. There is no reasonable way to enforce it without absolute and granular distinctions on a case by case basis.

It does not now, or at any point in time, belong at entry points like the OS itself.

[pak0st@fosstodon.org]

@cas imo the conflict is that Facebook lobbied like crazy to pass the hot potato further down the stack. They serve (target) the bad content, they are to be held liable and they don't want to deal with the complication - "it's not us, the OS should verify the age of the user!"

When you look at it from this angle, yeap, compliance with an overreach is not what comes to mind.

[pan@social.treehouse.systems]

@kkarhan @cas and money to be able to pay the fines (?

[kkarhan@infosec.space]

@pan @cas no, knowing that intellectual work cannot be forced out of someone and that such cyberfascism in any reasonable juristiction would start a civil war.