- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
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This is getting blown way out of proportion.
What’s being described right now is just an optional date-of-birth field. It doesn’t block installation, it doesn’t require verification, and it doesn’t change how the OS actually works. It just exists, and you can ignore it entirely.
The leap to “this is step one toward needing a passport to install an OS” is a classic slippery slope. It jumps from a harmless, non-enforced field straight to full identity verification with no actual mechanism connecting the two.
More importantly, this ignores how Linux works at a fundamental level.
Linux is open source, which means the code is public and can be modified by anyone. If any distribution ever tried to enforce something invasive like identity checks, that code would be stripped out almost immediately and redistributed as a fork. People already fork distributions over far smaller disagreements than this, and users would migrate just as quickly.
For this scenario people are worried about to actually happen, the entire ecosystem would have to move in lockstep and the community would have to abandon one of its core principles overnight. That’s not a realistic outcome.
Being skeptical of regulation is reasonable. Treating this like the beginning of mandatory identity verification at the OS level, especially in the Linux world, just isn’t grounded in how the technology or the community actually operates.
What is the use case for that field? I do not see it as being used as anything else than a stepping stone towards age verification.
this is the correct way to frame this issue. it serves no purpose other than to support things that are further down a slope
I wonder if a fork becomes successful, or if traditional init based systems make a comeback
enterprise users obviously won’t give a shit about any of this
is a classic slippery slope
Were have you been the last few years or so? We’re not just “going down” one slippery slope after another, we’re speeding down them.
It’s giving an inch. We shouldn’t be doing that. We should be fighting tooth an nail against every single aggression against our privacy. They’ve already taken far too much.
with mass adoption of enshitification. and with the world in general. calling things a slippery slope fallacy is a long and losing gamble.
if the field was put in because of a law, then it’s for a reason, if the data isn’t important, or enforced, then it is useless and should not have been added.
Commentary like this is exactly what grinds my gears.
This isn’t analysis, it’s implication, conjecture, and conspiracy framed as insight.
The age verification laws are objectively bad. They do nothing meaningful to protect children, degrade the quality of the internet, and hand more authority to a government that already has too much.
But your line of argument is also flawed. I’ve already stated my position clearly. Repeating “it’s probably worse” adds nothing of substance.
More importantly, the fundamental architecture of Linux makes this entire premise irrelevant. It is open source and inherently resistant to centralized control. Governments can pass whatever laws they want; they cannot meaningfully enforce them at the system level in an ecosystem designed to be forked, modified, and redistributed at will.
the laws are bad, and you can push fighting for anonymity and freedom down the road because letting the camel stick its nose under the tent don’t bother anyone, and it’s too easy to just ignore…. but the laws are made for a purpose, and they will change. and uh oh, the camel has flipped the tent, you can’t fight to remove it because now systems are built around it being there. now it’s a much harder fight because we didn’t fight when it was easy.
again after seeing everything that has happened you call sounding the alarm for this as a slippery slope… i am sorry, but i question either your motives, or your foresight.
I wonder if it was put in for the same reason CA passed a self-reporting law recently. I wonder if it’s an attempt to repel through malicious compliance far worse age verification that’s forced at a federal (US) level.
If that is the case, explain why is it being implemented in the heat of mass age verification? What is the motive?
The motive is mass government surveillance obviously.
But like with many things in our government federally and statewide, these people don’t actually understand how the technology functions. They can make all the laws that they want and Linux will still remain an open source software.
Thanks for the explanation. What you have described is not different to the manner in which I understand the situation as well.
My concern is that (despite your good intentions) your previous comment may have the unintended effect of making light of the situation we are all in.
The ‘field’ we have the privilege to ignore now id a mandatory requirement for a passport and iris scan tomorrow.
My first thought is to not sit still and accept the new law - rather, to empower everybody here to write to their legislators to block or reverse these gross violations of privacy. May Linux developers have already expressed willful non-compliance to the law. Show we not get behind these developers and organisations (like the EFF) and demand a repeal?
I however apologise if I have misunderstood your intent. But one thing is for sure, if we do not put up a fight at present, then the future is already lost.
Dawg. That’s what I’m saying. There’s nothing to fight against. The fundamental architecture of Linux prohibits age verification completely.
The devs adding in the birthday field was the simplest way to placate this new law. They know there’s going to be a fork where it is removed.
In this instance the new law will destroy itself. I doubt there will even be any enforcement of it.
We’re worrying about the wrong thing dude. This is a non-issue.
“The fundamental architecture of Linux prohibits age verification completely”…until the next law erodes that privilege altogether.
I hope you are right. And for all our sakes, I really hope I am wrong.
My hate of SystemD is further justified! And you all just called me gray haired and not willing to update with the times!
Remember when they said “relax, it’s just an init system, no biggie”? Pepperidge farm remembers.
My date of birth is FU/CK/YOU
YOU-FU-CK is the better format and this is not debatable.
This guy fucks
I prefer the ISO format
FU/CK/YOOU
An init system does not need to know my personal details; it’s for starting programs in a specific order just fuck off with this shit. You don’t even have to capitulate to this stuff and these freaks are out here doing it preemptively like they expect a fucking pat on the head for being first in line to dive tongue first on to that boot.
Systemd isn’t an init system. Systemd-init is an init system and it is a part of the systemd suite.
It has been sold as just an init system to people who argued it’s a Katamari Damacy. We now know who was right.
Whatever the fuck it is it doesn’t need to know how old I am to do its job.
It already has fields for personal information, though, and they’re every bit as sensitive as your birthdate. realName, emailAddress, location, and timezone are already in there. The important part is that they’re all optional, and you don’t have to fill them in at all, or can fill them in with fake data. The system still serves you, not some outside party.
But the timing of it does have a lot of people freaking out about it.
I now fear it will one day be required for services on the internet (as it is by a recent law in California). I want to make that less likely, and more difficult to implement.
Having a principle the majority do not have and refusing to participate means being another step further out of society.
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It doesn’t need to know your age. It just provides a way to take a note of your birth date, only if you want to. The system already has a place to write your name and home address. All are optional and practically nobody uses them.
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And it still doesn’t, the blank space does not need to be filled
…until it becomes a requirement to be filled.
And then one can simply remove the requirement for it to be filled, because it’s open source software.
It doesn’t know how old are you, it just remembers a date you tell it. You can give your birthday, but you can choose any other day
This is step 1.
Final step: Scan your passport to verify and populate the date of birth field.
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tell me you have only a passing understanding of how modern linux is architected without telling me you have only a passing understanding of how modern linux is architected
Enlighten us then. Why would an operating system management tool need to know the age of its user?
because whilst systemd-initd is the part that everyone is generally aware of, that’s linked to systemd-logind so that processes can be started as different users… process init, session management, and user management are intertwined
they don’t have to be for sure - sysv init proves that - but in modern linux, they are and that comes with a load of benefits
https://deepwiki.com/systemd/systemd/6-user-and-session-management
I get that systemd also manages user data. I still fail to see how it needs that DoB.
because theyre being pragmatic… laws are starting to be introduced around the globe for parental controls - whatever that means in each jurisdiction. given that, there needs to be options available to people wanting to, or required to comply with said laws… the best place to do that is in a user record, as an optional field… extensible user records, in modern linux, are stored in systemd
it needs it in a similar manner to how it needs location, email, real name, etc: it doesn’t functionally need it, but it’s a place to store the metadata associated with a user such that other applications can use it
Honestly idk why people are so mad at the wrong people. They are doing this for concern of following the laws that are being passed in many jurisdictions. Some of which required “operating systems” to store date of birth that apps can access. What that means and what even is an OS is heavily up to debate.
Either way people need to call their lawmakers and be mad at those passing these laws.
Why would it need to know your real name?
It doesn’t. It just needs some name to display on the welcome screen and doesn’t know what else to call it.
Welcome screen? Systemd doesn’t have a welcome screen. And even if it did, why would it need anything other than username?
Why does it need a field for location and email?
Because back in the 60s and 70s, people wanted to know whose print jobs were running and where the printed documents should be delivered.
So over 40 years before systemd was initially released?
I’m hearing a whole lot of mental gymnastics from both of y’all to explain away the “okay” fields while demonizing the (optional) “evil” fields.
What service should handle it instead?
Why is it need at all??
NONE
Because it’s going to be a legal requirement, with fines of $7000 per affected underage user, which will instantly bankrupt the US-based non-profit representing Debian, Arch and others, and kill off community-maintained Linux.
Do note: The legal requirement is NOT for age verification. Only for having a field where you as the admin can enter whatever the fuck you want.If you don’t agree with the law, good. Neither do I. But the devs aren’t the ones to apply pressure to, here.
They’re forced to do this to keep the lights on, and they’ve implemented it in a way that keeps you as the admin in full control.-
Literally no one forced them to do that yet. They just decided to get on their knees preemptively and start licking boots
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Open source software has maintainers all around the world. Why the fuck would the rest of the world care about this fucked up law coming from ONE state?
Again, no one is forced to do anything. And if I was a maintainer on FOSS where I would be forced to implement something like this, I would just stop contributing to that project.
Fuck everyone going along with this state surveillance bullshit.
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It takes a long while for a PR to make it into the distros. The law goes into effect in less than a year.
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The organization distributing donations to the various distros (Software In The Public Interest) sits in the US and needs to follow US law in order to not be shut down.
Without them, Debian, Arch, LibreOffice, Systemd and dozens of others have no more funding.
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Why doesn’t Debian do it instead of systemd? Let the distros decide on the plan of action, this is clearly not something that systemd has to decide. The people maintaining systemd are leveraging the fact that their shite software runs on more than 95% of Linux machines. That is an abuse of power. What is weird too is compliance ahead of time. Compliance ahead of time makes sense with cars, but software can be updated immediately when necessary.
Debian takes the source code from upstream systemd and creates their own deb package. They’re free to leave out the date field.
Sounds like a reason to start a riot.
It is just a field. What it contains, if anything at all, is irrelevant.
This is step 1.
Final step: Scan your passport to verify and populate the date of birth field.
I remember when this happened for the real name, email and phone number fields.
Slippery slope fallacy
fallacy fallacy
I’m sure you think you’re smart dropping a short, “insightful” three word post. But you might have missed the constant falling down we’ve been having in every possible places these last few years. It’s not a fallacy when it turns out to be a series of fulfilled plans.
Discord. Microsoft.
It’s not a fallacy if it’s an actual slippery slope.
Patrick is that you?
Every step towards making people feel at ease giving personal information away, makes the next one easier.
Everyone should set it to 1970-01-01.
In other news there has been a massive uptick in Boomers converting to Linux…
My go to is usually 1978-09-21
Ive been born since 1900-01-01 for a long time now.
Most people are born on the same date their whole life.
Me too!
Although someone (steam maybe? I don’t remember) updated their system and won’t take it anymore. So now it’s 1930-01-01.
You should try it. It’s like I’m 30 years younger!
0001-01-01
I’m old.
Born just in time to not be able to be a nazi!
Yes, I know the Hitler Youth existed…but I don’t hold that against those (at the time) children. They were being conditioned to support a system they didn’t understand.
I figure anyone younger than 20 is too young to be blamed for all that crap. The brain stops developing at age 23. So I don’t expect an 8 year old to hold a very good grasp on international politics and wars. Especially in an age where an hour nightly AM radio broadcast, and a daily morning newspaper were your only source for news.
The brain stops developing at age 23.
No it doesn’t. The brain continues to develop and change throughout the lifetime of the organism.
happily updates its birthdate to 2018-01-01 you can’t blame me now. Take that, woke people.
The tech nerds should be setting theirs to 1970-01-01 at 00:00 UTC.
Why
That’s the Unix Epoch. The time and date in Linux and Unix is the number of seconds since then.
That’s the default time when the CMOS battery is dead and the RTC is reset.
It is the beginning of cataclysm-simulation_67
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Ex microslop employee and self appointed systemd emperor Lennart poettering decided to roll that back and proceed
The contents of the field will be protected from modification except by users with root privileges.
sudo my age to a thousand years then; no, thank you very very much
*run0 since its systemd
or just don’t set it
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No thanks, not the distro I will be using.
Systemd isn’t a distro, it’s an init and bootstrapper that underlies several distros
they easily might have meant that the distro they will be using has declared they will not implement this
That was very, very likely what the parent comment meant. The correction was unnecessary.
If the hyperventilators could read that would be a very good point.
Look it’s mr. Fort Lauderdale again^
. Fort Lauderdale
You know this is a California law we are talking about right?
I guess when everything is a 7th dimensional alien invasion to you, little things like geography don’t matter.
How do I come back at someone calling me a fed? Fuck, I don’t have any good arguments pro compliance … Guess I’m going to show how stupid and crazy they are by being a pedant Haha, that’ll show 'em
^you probably
How do I come back at someone pointing out i can’t/don’t read and am hyperventilating over laws that don’t exist outside of my mind? Call everyone a fed.
~ Litterally you & Alex Jones
laws that don’t exist outside of my mind
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/ab-1043s-internet-age-gates-hurt-everyone
I don’t know about you but this looks pretty real to me? Are you going to tell me that there is no AB 1043. Maybe you are trapped in a solipsistic world where this sort of encroachment doesn’t exist.
I know what you are going to say next, “Have you yourself ever seen the curvature of the Ear-”, but let me stop you for a sec and tell you that when you think everything is Alex Jones, you should maybe look at yourself and ask the question “Maybe I am Alex Jones?”
I’m a Debian guy so I’ll set mine to April 28, 1973.
1930-01-01, done. But this shouldn’t be a requirement to begin with either.
good thing it’s entirely optional then!
I meant wouldn’t be a requirement for the operating system to have built into it.
