Please keep the discussion polite, and don't get too much carried away into trying to convince others of your own ideas. Exchange is less than that. And sometimes, less is more. Thanks in advance.
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2026
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less is more.
alias less=more
"How can less be more? More is more."
- Yngwie Malmsteen
Just realized that even if there is no mechanism to get the exact date from any of these age tracking systems, they'll be able to infer the exact dates by just looking at when the user/device transitions to the next bracket. Then they'll know the birthday for the start of that bracket falls somewhere between the last check and the current one.
Though maybe that data can be poisoned by making it transition backwards occasionally, so it looks like the user is editing their age older and back or something. But, on the other hand, a lack of data or poisoned data is going to be a flag on its own at some point (if not already).
01/01/1970 about to be a real popular birthdate.
Imagine being that poor motherfucker born 1 jan 1970. No one will ever believe you, and you cannot get your json file.
Not sure it will, as it would have to be able to handle users older than that, so wouldn't have a reason for the default age to be that. Also depends on the UI (like my steam bday is something like jan 1 1900 because that's the default age already entered).
I was thinking it's less about using a "zero date" and more about the Linux/Unix community protesting the change by coding a well-known date.
Can I make myself old enough to slow down my operating system?
New wave of OpenBSD users incoming. Good.
Non GPL software isn't an answer to freedom restrictions
It’s not like OpenBSD is exempt from the law. If they aren’t implementing some version of it, they are just hoping no one enforces anything.
Unlike Linux, OpenBSD is not under US jurisdiction.
Linux is not an operating system, it's just the kernel and has no concept of users/accounts or logging in to anything.
A great many Linux-based distros ("operating systems") are not under US jurisdiction.
Linux is not an operating system
Please do not start the "GNU/Linux" pedantry now.
many Linux-based distros (“operating systems”) are not under US jurisdiction
Repackaging US software - and Linux-the-kernel and much of Linux-the-userland is, obviously, US software - in Europe does not suddenly make US jurisdiction go away.
Are you trolling?
Linus is european.
It’s still an operating system. Not implementing something is saying “this OS is not to be used in a country / state with age verification laws” Basically baring anyone in california or wherever implements these laws from using the OS in a legal way. I suspect most of these OS’s (even ones that are not “under US jurisdiction”) are going to eventually do something like when you install it asks where you are located and if its in a location where age verification is required it installs the age verification system.
Pottering is in there saying he doesn't care enough about this, practicing whataboutism, and asking Claude to review the code for him. gg Pottering.
It's funny seeing the few people who came in and started evangelizing about it get muted and booted, they completely deserve to be ignored and mocked alongside anyone bitching about this PR here.
Nothing about this looks bad, they are putting an optional dob right next to an already optional full name and email. People are losing their mind about it when an even more intrusive piece of data already exists in the same place. Idk about any of you losers, but I can't think of any time I've been asked to provide my actual name or email on a systemd machine. Maybe some optional field from a distro installer that the distro decided to ask for, not systemd itself. Their only concern with this is giving it a place of live that's appropriately secure, but you'd think they were the bad guys reading people yapping about it.
As soon as this actually becomes a thing I'm setting it to April 1st year zero like everyone else with a functioning brain will and not crying about it in a PR like some no-life activist.
There's a big difference. Name and email fields were agreed upon by the community itself because they might be useful. This is not decided by the community, it's enforced. What if the law asked for a mandatory "skin colour" field? Yeah no problem, right? let's comply, after all we can put any colour we like there.
But we must look not just at what's happening now, we must look at what happens later. What if the next law enforces actual 3rd-party age verification? "It shouldn't be a problem for you Linux people, you already have an API in place after all".
What if the next law enforces actual 3rd-party age verification?
You complain to your lawmakers and make them change the law.
Shitting on systemd or the maintainers does exactly nothing
Again, it has nothing to do with systemd, and they aren't enforcing anything. You're just making shit up to get angry at. They are only providing a place to put the information that users (distro providers) can collect (or not collect) and use however they want. You should be grateful systemd is doing this because I can't imagine how ridiculous whatever solution all the lazy activists complaining about it would think up. It would ofc be no solution because the only thing those people can do is performative outrage from the top of the Dunning Kruger curve. If the next law enforces verification it still won't be systemd's problem because the only thing forcing end users to provide that info will be the distro providers, not systemd.
Also just because it's such an hilariously vapid argument against this PR, I fully endorse and support systemd adding a skin color data field. No distro will ask me to set it, no program will try to read it, and I will make it "kumquat".
Blaming software for COMPLIANCE with the law is STUPID, people. I expected some of you would be more intelligent.
Sorry but that's a stupid comment. What are you, 5 years old not to know how many countries pushed one "law without any real consequence" after another, until people suddenly wondered "how did we get in this hell"? And how many battles the people behind "software" have battled against unjust situations?
Coding has been ruled as free speech. Forcing this into code is no different imho than being forced to say Trump is the greatest and I love him!! anytime you wanted to speak.
I'd be fascinated to see how the US would be if it were completely legal to do basically anything as long as it was triggered through code.
You cam write code that does almost anything, execution is a different thing.
I hope no one of them uses steam or visits adult websites that makes them enter their birthdate or tick "Are you 18+/21+?" checkboxes. So much spyware on the web that is impossible to circumvent, my god
I'm sure many trackers and indicators can already figure out your date of birth depending on which web services you've used
Just make NosystemD and fork it with only that removed.
Another patch should be added to rename "Systemd" into "Surveillanced".
The corresponding surveillancectl would go well with it lol
If this will indeed be implemented, that is finally an objectively good reason for the haters. I wonder how distros will deal with this.
I'm not so technical, but my understanding this won't be systemd enforcing it, as much as offering a common storage and retrieval method for the Distros.
Please correct me if mistaken
You are correct. Similar to how /etc/passwd used in all Linux distros has had mostly neglected "GECOS" field for full name and phone number for decades. I am yet to hear of SMS validation done against such phone numbers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecos_field
Why not extend the GECOS field? I haven't seen the conversation but assuming it has to do with access control. By putting it in passwd/shadow you're limited by filesystem permissions on the whole file, meaning it becomes impossible or annoying to do selective disclosure to certain user/process without bolting some service similar to what systemd is doing on top.
Lots of references to discussion and alternative proposals are tracked by Kicksecure/Whonix: https://www.kicksecure.com/wiki/Age-api
I haven't looked into this b/c, frankly, this at a low place on my current emergencies list, but sounds plausible.
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues
Seems there is a bug in the code.
We should make sure they are aware.
It's time to fork. Not github please. Anyone who's had approved contributions to it or something closely related can take over systemd. systemfd?
You go first.