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Storing a users birthday is useful metadata anyway. I’m surprised it wasn’t stored before.
The age isn’t verified is any way. You can set it to the 1800s for all it cares
This is not very 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 of you.
Yeah like the email address and the full name of the user.
… What do you mean it’s blank for 99% of users?
your argument is an oxymoron. if the data is useful meta data, but the user can just put what ever they want as the date then it’s not storeing useful data. and that means id should not exist.
unless the point is to use it in the future where the user can’t enter what ever they want and thus legitimizes all the commotion.
It’s enablement.
Of what?
They ask for it to store a date today, ask for IDs the next. Heck they already want 3d printers to somehow identify if they’re printing parts that can be used in guns, but 3d printers don’t have that kind of computing power nor should they need that so odds are most companies will require an internet connection and upload to a central server to be analyzed. And thus privacy goes away unintentionally.
They aren’t “asking for a date”
The PR in question just adds a way to store a birth date. That’s it
But why are they?
To comply
Couldn’t reply to me pointing out that this was merged, and was stated to be explicitly to support age verification laws, so you had to lie about it as a meme instead.
Because thats what youre doing right now, lying and spreading misinformation. You can admit it.
The birth date field that was added can be used by age verification processes, but it’s not age verification itself.
It was added specifically for the purpose of two state laws and Brazil.
Trying to weasel it as “this doesnt implement it” is misinformation at best.
Okay.
How does it verify?sigh
How do these laws do anything to “protect children”? And since they dont actually do that, which you may already be aware of, what do you think their purpose is?
Then ask that question to yourself and think about whether the verification of an age is the issue with what’s going on here, and why people are angry with systemd maintainers merging something that houses PII, for no other stated reason or potential use case than a law that will have zero ability to “protect children”.
Edit: and to be clear, laws that currently exist in two states, CA & CO, as well as Brazil. Thats it.
Then ask that question to yourself and think about whether the verification of an age is the issue with what’s going on here
Verification is the issue. Or, rather, it would be if there was any verification here at all.
I could put 1970-01-01 in that field no problem. Systemd has asked for precisely 0 additional information from any of its users, because it neither asks you to fill it in nor verifies that what you filled it with is correct. Just like the real name and location fields that were already present, which, might I remind you, are also PII.
Systemd isn’t the problem here. The laws are a problem and pissing in systemd’s direction won’t change that.
Age verification could be a usecase. The PR in question just adds a optional date field labeled birth date. If you are mad about age verification (as you should be) feel free to direct your rage elsewhere.
Age verification could be a usecase.
ITS THE EXPRESS PURPOSE AS WRITTEN IN THE PR.
I will absolutely direct my anger and frustration where it belongs, which includes systemd along with the dumbasses pushing these laws.
As well as you for spreading misinformation. Make no mistake, its deserved.
It enables another dead brained dev to push it further
Little by little
It is just a arbitrary field. They could have a field for all sorts of questionable things and it wouldn’t bother me.
It is up to the people outside of systemd on how it gets used. Systemd is non political and will implement whatever features have a use case. They don’t control the distro.
source? i mean you went through the effort to post a meme about it at least include the relevant information
The source is the source: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/commit/acb6624fa19ddd68f9433fb0838db119fe18c3ed
Takes a birth date for the user in ISO 8601 calendar date format. The earliest representable year is 1900. If an empty string is passed the birth date is reset to unset.
That’s it. That’s all it does.
Whatever was discussed in the PR, the code does precisely nothing to implement any kind of verification. It’s just an optional birth date field, like tons of electronics have had forever.
So they’re introducing a system where a users age can be verified?
Hmm, if only there was a name for that.
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.
So they’re introducing a system where a users age can be verified?
No. They are not.
It is an optional field that does no semblance of checking its veracity. Again, like basically every bit of electronics has had forever.
It is literally for the act of verifying a users age.
Being the verifier instead of the requester doesn’t make it not age verification. It’s part and parcel.
I just don’t see how it’s any different than my Sony PSP having an optional birthday field. Or oldschool forums having one. It can’t possibly affect me, or anyone who’s concerned about it.
If systemd starts talking about bundling face scanners or whatever they actually need to verify someone’s age, and then tons of linux systems start requiring it, then I will be gravely concerned.
I don’t think anyone who read even the first paragraph of the article (at least the one i read) would say they are doing verification. They are simply adding a field for data to be housed if anyone wants to opt in. Instead of putting it in 20 different spots/apps it’s in one place that any third party can reference.
Nobody gives a fuck about your weaseling technicalities. The salient fact is that this change was made in order to “comply in advance” with totalitarian fuckery. It SIGNALS POLITICAL SUPPORT for it, and that’s not okay!
I don’t even know where this rumour came from.
It’s not a rumor, systemd merged a PR that explicitly said it was to allow handling the new age verification laws. Just because they aren’t actually verifying anything doesn’t mean that they didn’t merge code in direct support of the laws. And why in the world would this even be handled at systemd level anyway?
All of this was discussed in the PR.
Systemd is present on the vast majority of Linix systems so it made the most sense to put it in systemd. It is an optional field so it is up to applications and distros on weither to use it for something. Age verification laws are legally binding so compliance is not optional.
If you have a problem with age verification call your local lawmaker. Don’t attack a bunch of devs who somehow got stuck in the middle.
