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.
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Yeah, thats not age verification…
Name: Biggus Dickus DOB: 06/09/1969
I think I went to highschool with your wife…
Didn’t they shitcan the age verification thing in systemd and they fire the guy who put it in? Or was that just a joke post?
It is not age verification
It could be used as part of a age verification system but it isn’t by itself age verification. You are doing the equivalent of calling a set of tires a car.
And it can be used to verify how old you are.
How?
This is the part I’m hung up on. What actually physically happens to make me enter my real birthday in the systemd user field, and verify it’s actually my birthday?
January 1 1900 has been my official online birthday forever.
I guess the idea is that your parents store the date and you don’t get root access (or you store the date for your kids and don’t give them root access).
I was born on January 1st, whichever year before 2000 that I first click on.
Right? I’m not scrolling that far down. Somewhere within the last 18 years is good enough.
How does it verify anything if it’s not proven in any way?
It doesn’t verify how old you are, it verified that you entered a certain set of numbers at some point.
It can’t actually be used to verify anything. As implemented, it just reports whatever you entered. It’s just as valid as those birthday fields on websites that cater to users that share a 1st of January birthday.
I think we all know where we are headed
The best kind of age verification
Its only age verification if you set it up.
Not even that
There is no verification what so ever. If anything it might be an age check
My dog could make an account if he could just enter a birthday.
It’s the verification part of age verification that is the issue.
question: do california, colorado, or brazil’s laws have any teeth?
what is the penalty if i lie? (a) and am an adult? (b) and am a minor? [i don’t really care but for completeness sake]
also, you know those websites that ask for your age so you can see the vidya trailers? will this bypass that so i can just see the redband or am i going to have to put in 1/1/1970 TWICE GODSDAMMIT
I better question in terms of the teeth of the laws is, are there any real consequences to an operating system provider just ignoring them and not providing any kind of age verification in their software whatsoever?
The question I assume will get answered soon enough by GrapheneOS since they have told everyone asking for OS age verification to go pound sand.
Only penalty in this law is for OS makers that didn’t include such rules in the OS, paying per affected child.
and who is the os maker…??
In my head, your first word sounded like Dwight Schrute
It hasn’t passed in Colorado
Do you also feel compelled to provide your true name on the “user name” field?
Do and I’m tired of pretending I don’t
How is a field you can introduce used to verify anything? There’s no “verification” if you choose to put whatever you want.
Or what, do you consider the field that shows up when clicking some games on steam where you just scroll the year 40 down and click whatever, age “verification”? Cuz it isn’t.
Having a date field so that parents can define their kids’ age in for non root accounts on Linux so the system, in a potential future, automatically limits access to some stuff is useful, and yet there’s no age verification being done there, besides the parents themselves knowing that what they inputted is truthful.
They literally said it’s to address the laws in the PR.
It’s one step toward addressing the laws, but systemd isn’t going to implement the remaining steps to have actual age verification.
But they did what the laws (Californian, Colorado’s and basically every other, except for the New York’s and Texan) required them to do.
And then expand in the further discussion that the field has further use besides compliance, and that even if it complies that a field that you can control whenever is not real verification. Please don’t be a headline Andy. I’ve also been one, but if I’m to dive in comments and write about it I usually give it a read, specially if I reference the content of the post.
I’m not a headline Andy. They literally said, in the PR, that it was also to address these laws. It is not a slippery slope fallacy when they’re citing it as a reason. It’s part of the fucking motivation. It’s part of the reason it exists in the first place.
Just because you are too young/naive to understand how this kind of shit turns over in the real world, and/or too illiterate to read PR comments, doesn’t magically make all the people upset about it alarmists.
Yes, and the laws (so far) are exactly that: you input an age, and provide that age to applications that want it. No further identity verification or anything.
I don’t like the law for the precedent but as it stands it’s a harmless, potentially even useful feature.
Because it will not be enough.
Because they will come back and say “look at this loophole”
“Think of the children” you’ll all say as you agree to give your government authority to determine what information you can or cannot access as “age appropriate” completely ignorant of what you’re handing over.
This would be fine if it was just for you, but you’re trying to give my control over my system and what I can access away from me because you’re too short-sighted to see what comes after volunteer age reporting. And when that still doesn’t save the children, which it won’t, because it is NEVER ABOUT THE FUCKING CHILDREN ITS ALWAYS ABOUT CONTROL, you’ll tell me again that it’s just another little minor infraction. It’s just a little bit more than volunteer reporting.
Afterall, won’t someone please think of the children?!
This is a law FOR PARENTS.
It’s not a law for children, it doesn’t target to protect children from up, but to give parents the tools to set the age of the kids themselves.
Do you have any proof that those systems were created for control? You sure have if you express your opinions with such confidence.
I can’t reconcile the fact that the entire discussion is about how we can control, based on user age settings at the OS level, the content people can access and you asking me what my proof is that the system is being created for control.
I really don’t know how to respond because it’s self evident, isn’t it? It’s there in the law? Why else add the tag to the user? Like… I just…what? Of course it’s for fucking control. There’s no other reason to have it.
As for a more broad general “the government wants to control”…I just… Look around? DMCA is a prime example. Or read people that are smarter than me about it.
They even say why I’m the message
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.
Now I can hear you already. “But EFF says age verification is the real evil and this isn’t verification! It’s just a text tag any root user can change!”
And that’s where I’m saying it isn’t. Now. But it will be. Who is pushing for this? Do you think they’ll be okay with a giant Linux loophole? Or will they try to close it? Is that not always the typical pattern with laws? Pass it then patch the loopholes.
We’ve gone from “click to prove you’re 18” to “provide a date” to “provide an id” to “make the OS and other apps verify.”
Why should I ever assume that it will stop at a simple plain text annotation? The slippery slope is documented. It’s real.
Uh. It’s your computer. Input whatever you want there, idk.
I vehemently disagree with age verification policies fyi, but we also need to recognise that this is not age “verification”. I would never truthfully surrender my personal data in my computer lmao. The name and surname fields in my pc are “fushuan” and “lmao” for God’s sake.
This would be fine if it was just for you, but you’re trying to give my control over my system and what I can access away from me because you’re too short-sighted to see what comes after volunteer age reporting. …
Wait, did you write your actual name, surname and email in your computer? Cuz those are required fields in there too. You aren’t losing any control of your computer if they ask you to write A date on a field of your user profile. You are root on your computer, no? It’s your system as you said it, no? Maybe you are the short-sighted one? You are allowed to input that you were born in 420-06-09, no one is gonna stop you, you are root.
Is there a government push to verify my name and email before I can access content or is there a government push to have age verification be at the OS level? Could maybe that be a meaningful differentiator that makes “lul r u still using ur real name? Fucking Idiot” response not relevant?
I understand the technical differences and that we can just put a bullshit date format passing value there. I’m not fucking stupid.
My objection is that it is step 0. Before you can have an OS verify to meet government mandated verificaiton, you must create the value store.
My objection is that we’re entertaining putting in the infrastructure that enables actual verification.
You know what else enables actual verification? Having electricity. I know it sounds stupid and me being condescending, but I really want to drive home the idea that something being a step to potentially doing age verification doesn’t make it inherently bad. As presented, having that field also opens up the possibility for parents to be able to set a non root account for their kids and be able to control their access in an easier way.
As is, being a locally enforced data point, is something that can enable giving more control to parents without surrendering anything to governments. That’s a a positive thing that I’m sure many parents would like, being able to enable “kid mode” in the OS level for their kids, in a way where the parents are the ones with the agency to do it.
Idk, I feel like demonizing things for their potential bad future is not the best way to approach technology. Raise warnings, address immediate concerns, and put stoppers when actual issues arise. That’s how I like to operate.
And I never said it was inherently bad.
It’s the context. It’s the context. It’s the context. It’s the context.
Please engage with me and the arguments i am making - not imagined narrow slices. This isn’t a high school debate where you get points for speed and word count.
Let me restate: In the context of governments actively seeking to restrict access to information on the Internet, I think implementing ANY infrastructure that move towards the government’s ability to achieve their censorship is bad and shouldn’t be done.
I’m not saying there’s no benefit to adding a plain text date field to user information. I’m not saying it’s the end of the world now. I’m not saying it’s verification.
I’m saying use this as a point to stand up and fight and say “NO, You have no authority over the information I can access. And we should not give in because ‘for the children is a lie’ and they’re not actually trying to protect children while our government is RUN BY LITERAL CHILD FUCKERS.”
To actually verify, need not able modify after verify by id or similar.
But root always able to modify. So cannot work.
picking november 5 1955 because it’s a fixed point in time
01/01/1900
Because I like chaos.
1970-01-01 necause it is 0
how can i stop the government?
This is getting really old, really damn fast.
And so are the users, according to the age verification field
Luckiky we can track that now!
Well it’s only going to get worse as more states start pushing for it.
We can either make a stand and kick up a fuss now or lose a free internet
Maybe…I misinterpreted your post. I think I’m on your side actually 😄
Absolutely against the DoB addition, yep.
