Add a required birth date prompt (YYYY-MM-DD) to the user creation flow, stored as a systemd userdb JSON drop-in at /etc/userdb/<user>.user on the target system.

Motivation

Recent age verification laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc. require platforms to verify user age. Collecting birth date at install time ensures Arch Linux is compliant with these regulations.

This is just a pull request, no changes yet.

The pull-request discussion thread has been locked, just like it happened for the similar thread in Systemd, owing to the amount of negative comments…

      • ExoticCherryPigeon@piefed.social
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        10 hours ago

        Fair enough that’s pretty surprising, so even Arch is not safe from lunatics… That is disappointing. As a Manjaro user, I am likely to pick up their changes via both systemd and since Manjaro is Arch based… Sad and disappointed by useful morons who have no fucking clue.

      • underscores@lemmy.zip
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        14 hours ago

        it’s so strange to me that he tried to add age verification scripting changes in archinstall. isn’t that the wrong place systemd makes sense but I’m puzzled by the archinstall pr

        • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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          11 hours ago

          The thing that’s frustrating is that if the age verification laws weren’t there and they wanted to add a birthday field it wouldn’t seem bad. Details about the human using the account like first and last name are already stored. All you really need is username. But because it’s explicitly in reaction to age verification laws we have to be skeptical about adding it.

          • Avicenna@programming.dev
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            2 hours ago

            The timing makes me even more suspicious. Of all the times one could added this field, this is probably singularly the worst one. Right after discussions of mandatory age check? Seriously?

            • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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              1 hour ago

              You don’t need to be suspicious, they’re explicitly adding it because of that. They said as much. Look at what they wrote under “Motivation.”

              • Avicenna@programming.dev
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                37 minutes ago

                I sort of get the feeling of something more than just complying with the possible future age verification law. I feel like it has intent do damage and distrupt the community.

                • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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                  26 minutes ago

                  I feel this law has the intent to damage and disrupt things in general, yes. Parental controls have existed for ages but lawmakers don’t seem interested in them. For example, all the porn bans, rather than forcing sites to use some sort of self tagging system that parental controls could easily see (like some response header) they just want them to take IDs. All of it is a push to forcing people to always be online transparently with their real identity well known.

            • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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              10 hours ago

              You’re saying that in a post age verification world though, my whole point is that if this were there before it wouldn’t seem bad. I’m not saying we should add it now because it would’ve been fine before.