this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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It'll be too late by that point. Way way way too late.
Then its already to late. We are well past the point of fighting for freedom and privacy on the net. Hell we let the net be bought up and controlled by 5 companies. And people happily use them and complain about big tech on reddit. Lime WTF.
I doubt those changes would be PRed, merged, updated in my distro and somehow automatically pushed to my system in the blink of an eye. This isn't Microslop we're talking about who can force-push intransparent "fuck your settings" at the drop of a hat, and I'm certainly going to be much more wary of upcoming updates now. This isn't my point of objection (yet - mandatory entry would be), but definitely a point of caution.
If they stick to malicious "here, you can ask for a date, but we can't guarantee which date, if any, you'll get" compliance, that isn't perfect, but it'll be good enough to make a joke out of tracking the date at all.
Besides, just this change being minor would be no reason not to keep pushing back against the law and airing our discontent about the direction they're heading in, because the direction is definitely concerning.
Your real name and location data have been stored in UNIX/Linux for over 60 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecos_field
realName and location have been fields in systemd since the beginning.
Were you panicking about this before social media told you to be afraid?
IF you entered that info. And it wasn't being used by applications to enable surveillance laws. It's a false equivalency.
The birthDate field is optional. As userdb as a whole.
Age verification isn't optional (at least in the jurisdictions in question, and for now).
It's like talking to a wall with these people.
What do you mean with "these people"?
All I say is that no one forces you to enter a value in an optional part oft the systemd project (not to be confused with systemd, the init process).
By "these people", I mean people who just don't get it.
You fail to make your point and when someone points out the failure of rationality, you just say 'you just don't get it'.
I think maybe 'you just don't get' how to support your position.
Maybe I'm just frustrated with the discussion. Plenty of other people have explained the position very eloquently, but it still falls on deaf ears.
I'm completely with you on age verification. It's pointless and harmful.
I'm not with anyone who supports a harassment campaign on a developer.