this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2026
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That's there point, with this websites will just know the users age, before it was the users choice: "are you 18 or over?" But now it will be: "I know you're 37.567 years old" user has no idea. Maybe we should add religion and skin color too
"You have selected 'Caucasian Christian'. Permanent light mode has been activated and you can no longer look up porn on Sunday.
You have selected "Arabic Muslim", sensor access has automatically been granted to determine when you are facing Mecca. If you have too many friendly fire incidents in CoD, the US will deploy reaper drones to your IRL GPS location.
On a more serious note:
There's been a lot of talk about protecting kids, but none about protecting grandma from scams and AI misinformation if her systemd age field indicates she's 65 or older. Why is that? Is it because kids don't have rights, so who cares if by protecting them we prevent them from developing a shred of digital literacy? Or is it because the over 65's can vote and kids can't?
The idea of storing age in the OS is that end programs don't actually access it directly. They get age ranges, like child/adult, not the actual birthdate. In theory, it's much more private than uploading your id and photo to every random website/app that you use.
If they age or birthdate is there it could leak, regardless of the API.
there is no such thing as privacy when sharing private information, that's accessible remotely.
leaks can and will occur. but more importantly this will be used to create digital associations between inviduals and Their online presence, just like all the other digital identity laws have.
it protects no one, as getting around it is easy as lying. while intentionally harming adults that comply out of necessity.
there is a reason people are jumping ship from privacy invading services already...
the solution is holding parents (and the child) responsible for the action of their childrens actions and not trying to create industry wide privacy invasion for bad actors to use. what's next, gold stars for Linux users to wear?
Cookies already exist and there is countless leakage (both intentional and unintentional...). Like most things, you are not as private and protected as you seem to think you are. Just because a website is asking you to tell it (which is mostly for compliance, not knowledge) doesn't mean they already know that you said you were 250 years old but your shopping habits suggest you are actually in your 20s and live in Detroit and really enjoy pegging.
To my knowledge, very few nations tie laws or access to that slippery slope fallacy. And parents generally have those same traits (at least while the kid is living with them). So I am not seeing much benefit from this?
And if/when we reach the point where that is the case? Uhm... I don't think companies and software will be given anywhere near as much freedom to say "Sure, we'll comply so that we can be eligible for these contracts" or "No, we won't comply so that we can market ourselves as protecting people"
That doesn't seem like a great argument for doing something that further reduces privacy and protection.
The point is that, without third party verification (which I am vehemently opposed to), it changes absolutely nothing. So it is just people whining about "freedoms" they don't even have.
And... there actually are arguments that it is good to tear down the security/privacy theatre so that people can make informed decisions and understand their actual exposure and risks.
A good example of this is that I am REALLY happy that we, as a society, have seen a drastic shift between calling things "Private Messages" and instead calling them "Direct Messages". The former implies that only you and the recipient can see them. The latter does away with that and people rapidly learn (and communicate) that site owners and often mods can see everything you send along those avenues.
Semantics
Privacy is a human right and I have a choice to who an d which third party collects my data. My own computer with software I build myself doesn’t need mandated age gates.
Only if you actually understand what information you are and aren't exposing about yourself in your every day activities.
Which... yeah, does really feel like understanding the meaning of a text/concept. So... spot on?
Amazing what you can do to protect yourself
Like one, don’t give your information to the machine
can't expose what doesn't exist. if a site asks for age verification, stop using it and find a alternative that respects privacy.
your OS starts asking for your identity information, to share with everyone that pokes a open API, it's time to jump OSs...
privacy is something you make a best effort to avoid creating obvious methods of exploiting. you don't share your credit card numbers with every email too, just because they say they cannot prove it was your card on file?
identity is personal online, no one is entitled to it unless you choose to share it. otherwise it's a invasion of privacy.
want to protect kids? educate them and keep them off tiktok/social media by fining the parents when they are identified.
fined twice? treat the kid like you would any other time a theft of service occurs.
This is being baked in because of US law. I wouldn't be surprised if the US made some federal laws requiring your religion in the near future.
There's a big difference between data collection and government mandated identification.
And that is why it is a slippery slope fallacy. Eventually, superpowers are going to want to have access to your machines (they already do, but mostly in isolated cases). So any kind of data storage and overrides should be destroyed. So let's go shred our hard drives and remove the concept of sudo/root access?
Also, I will just add on that it is more than just the US that is increasingly pushing for age verification.
People can run secure systems that share minimal info. This requires all systems to store and share specific info. So you're making it illegal to have a private system. Sure most people don't, but now you're making it illegal. You think that's okay because we don't have good privacy laws right now? You want to give up?
And those generally aren't the machines you want to connect to the internet and use for all your everyday browsing.
Specific, unverified, info. That you are already sharing in most of the situations where it is being asked for.
A lot of things are illegal. Without the third party verification requirement, you are perfectly fine to hardcode that to say you were born on June 9th, 1969 by default. And that complies with the California legislation (last I read through it).
No. I want people to actually understand what is going on so that they can actually protect themselves.
How do you want people to protect themselves?
That is really going to depend on what your actual risk is. There are a decent number of articles and videos out there that go into what journalists have to do and... they are generally ahead of the curve on stuff like that.
But what people SHOULD do is to gain an understanding of what is actually going on. This entire debacle REALLY feels like a mix of people being mislead as to what the California legislature actually is (whether for Views or more nefarious reasons) combined with making it abundantly clear that they know absolutely nothing about their current risks.
Like, you telling pornhub you are over 18 is not telling PornhubCorp anything they don't already know from all the other cookies and fingerprints you are carrying everywhere. Hell, a lot of services are dedicated to tracking by IP to get around incognito mode and even caching to get around VPNs (although, most don't have to bother since people have been trained to just put EVERYTHING through a vpn so that it doesn't matter in the first place). They are literally just ticking a checkbox in the hope of not getting blocked by more payment processors.
So if you truly care about protecting your age? Have multiple devices. Learn how to split your traffic based upon device to get around many fingerprinting techniques. Figure out where to sit at Starbucks so that you have your back to a wall but don't look like a pervert. And so forth.
Rather than freaking out and throwing tantrums because people are trying to inform you about how little a self-reported age at the OS level that can be requested matters.
One fun bit of paranoia. I am sure most people are aware of the "Abnormal behavior has been detected from your IP. Please click here and then do some ML training to prove you are human" prompts that tend to come up on shared connections or if you have too many adblockers running.
Understand a lot of that is you "consenting" to have even more of your specific cookies checked (which is what happens when they "verify" you without a test). But a few years back there was an excellent paper that actually used how you perform on the ML training to further fingerprint you. The person at 1.2.3.4 with these cookies who is probably color blind is distinguished from the person at 1.2.3.4 with most of the same cookies (everyone loves going to Dildos R Us) but gets confused over whether a hotel shuttle is a bus.
And that all goes towards making sure they know exactly who you are and what ads (and trackers) to use.
Can I ask you to explain your point, "age doesn't matter, your digital footprint carries over?" You mention solutions to protect yourself from the digital footprint carry over, but this law would just make it easier to overcome those solutions.
Now instead of having to figure out the various unique patterns of accessing the internet to determine info about you, you just tell them your age (or that you're an adult, whatever) on those systems directly.
I also think it's a bit disingenuous to call 'this is the first step towards something worse' a slippery slope when that is exactly how the creeping erosion of privacy has gone in the US historically, but especially the last few decades.
You acknowledge that a lot of people don't fully understand how to protect themselves (and offer solutions that require more money, time, and education to accomplish) and in the same breath that is why it's okay that we make data collection easier.
I know this probably comes across as accusatory, but I really don't mean it that way. I'm genuinely trying to understand what your perspective is.
I... didn't say that? Not sure if you replied to the wrong person?
But I'll try to respond to what I can?
Assuming we are referring to the California legislature (I believe most/all of the US legislature if on the same grounds. The proposed EU "framework"s are very different), there is no requirement for third party verification.
It is literally the same check we already have. "Enter a random ass date that is more than 18 years ago". This doesn't "overcome" anything and, arguably, is a good law to get on the books so that you can say "Something is being done" before all the legislature and "frameworks" that want to be built around third party verification and "digital passports" do gain traction.
All of this is already happening and HAS already happened. You know all those stories about how google knows you are pregnant before you miss your first period? You know how you can quite often just click "verify you are human" and it processes without making you generate training data?
Hell, you know how targeted ads are a thing?
All of that is the same thing. It is about building profiles that tend to be so ridiculously specific that it isn't even "This user connecting from Norway actually lives in the US and is from Cleveland" and is more "Oh, this is Oswald Harvey using his nordvpn subscription that he got with a discount from a Spiffing Brit video. He tends to favor the endpoints that are 25% down the list"
Both of which speak towards why people need to educate themselves to understand what information is already out there.
Yes? I am sorry that protecting your privacy takes effort? I am sure that if you pay a random sponsor on an LTT video that they'll claim to do everything for you?
Like... I really don't know what to tell you?
Oh whoops, if I did, my bad. That's what I was understanding your comment about "it's literally the same check we already have" to be. You're saying there are already age checks for certain sites (and analysis of your web traffic and associated data being sold) and that this is no different, if I understand correctly. It is worth pointing out that while the California law requires no verification, the New York law potentially requires more than just a declaration of age. It's worse elsewhere in the world.
Right, but you see how this is also a bad thing right? Given that the FBI has now spoken about buying this data and uses it to target people, I would think that we would all want better privacy protections, not fewer.
I don't see how that should sway opinion about this being a good or a bad thing. It's a bad thing for everyone, right?
No, I am saying that. I was saying that calling this a slippery slope doesn't feel like it is based in the history of privacy erosion. I'd love to learn more about the original sin in all of this, but just because it isn't the first step doesn't mean we shouldn't fight against consolidated, government-mandated privacy violations, right?
I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm not complaining that it's difficult. I'm asking why we don't try and just fix the problem instead of letting something like this slide by because there are other, similar issues.
Correct-ish.
I would amend that to be "All of this information is already out there and you provide it, without thinking, often multiple times per day". But with the added caveat that this ONLY changes if a third party verification is required.
To my knowledge (and skimming what I can find), the New York bill also does not require third party verification. At least, as of 2025-S8102A.
But yes, fully agree regarding the rest of the world. People get EXTRA pissy if you point out the EU isn't magically doing exactly what they want it to do and always siding with "consumers" but... the frameworks and legislature being pushed through there are deeply alarming.
Do not expect companies (and company adjacent) orgs to protect your rights.
But also? The FBI doesn't need to "buy this data". They can just buy the same marketing data everyone already has on them (unless you go above and beyond to obfuscate that).
And this legislature has absolutely zero bearing on any of that.
No, it is not. Like I pointed out above: We always say "parents should watch what their kids are watching so that I can keep getting my goon on with tiktok" and all that nonsense. And do you know what the first step to ACTUALLY protecting kids online is? That's right. Restricting accounts based on age.
Adding a user provided birthdate to your account in systemd is no more dangerous than having a field for location or phone number. Having an API to fetch this from the OS IS concerning but is also very much in that realm of "This genuinely makes browsing the internet easier"as, depending on implementation, your computer can auto-verify you so you don't have to wipe the lube off your hand when you change sites.
And... its almost like those of us on open source OSes can maybe consider a way to go even farther with controlling what gets sent...
Correct. But I would bet my bottom dollar that at least a few of the folk insisting this is the evil US (fair) forcing their will upon the world don't realize their own governments might actually even be ahead of the game. Like apparently a bunch of live service games disabled chat in the UK in the past day or two?
Again, that privacy already eroded away years ago. Pretending otherwise is just lying to yourself and increasing your own risks.
The door to your home fell off and all your windows are shattered. Does it make ANY sense to freak out that your ex still has a key to your front door?
And that is why... it is more than a bit tinfoil hat but I really do wonder how much of this "outrage" is being intentionally stoked to distract from the very real concerns. If you actually care about your privacy then you need to educate yourself on what you should have been doing for years now. And consider getting on that.
Yes, let's try to fix it. Complaining about a single field being added to a user profile (that already has user provided location, phone number, email, etc) ain't it.
Focusing on the third party verification component.. is part of it.
But also understanding that all of this is out there and never coming back is more important.
One of the biggest con jobs facebook has ever done is to pretend that they let you delete your account. And they do. Except... not really. Because User 1234 who has the real name field of "Fred Jones" was deleted. But User 1235 "Daphne Blake" isn't and she has lots of pictures of her and Fred. And Old Man Wilkinson also has pictures of his home that some meddling potheads raided last month. So removing metadata from THEM would violate their digital rights.
So (simplifying), User 1234's "real name" field is indeed voided. But their profile remains the same so all associations with Daphne and Shaggy and all the mansions remain the same. Same with the knowledge that some blonde haired d-bag with an ascot went to school with Red Herring. And that he is related to Skip and Peggy Jones. And that his name is suspected to be "Fred Jones" for the purposes of making sure to protect his identity in case someone registers as him and can't provide ID to prove that.
But folk just fixate on "Delete your profile so that zuckerberg can't control you!" and ignore all that.
Because understanding things is hard.
I think I'm following what you mean. To me, though, (using your house analogy) it isn't that your ex has a key, it's that the government is demanding that your door remain open. Sure, it's already off the hinges, but it's a whole lot easier to put a door back on than to fight the government about it. It's not currently illegal to protect your data through extreme measures, but this is the beginning of laws that make it illegal. That is why this is worth fighting over to me. What's more, I can hate and fight against more than one thing, so it's not a huge issue to be against this.
And sure, all this data is out there, but that isn't true for future generations. Old data becomes stale. It just seems like such a defeatist attitude to me to cede ground on this, especially when the laws you mentioned actually being worried about would use this as precedent. It's certainly easier to argue for an ID requirement when you have the data on millions of users lying about their age and use it as justification for a more controlled implementation.
But either way, I think I need to step away here. I feel like I understand you, I just disagree and to continue beyond this without doing more reading on the topic, laws, and trends won't really help, I think (the last I saw for the New York law was that determining what was an adequate attempt to verify age was fell on the AG, who seemed to be leaning towards third party verification. I'm already out of date with developments there).
It's not "ceding ground". It is picking and choosing battles.
What does adding a DOB field to a user account do? Absolutely nothing that the Location, Email, Phone Number. whatever fields didn't already do.
What does adding libraries to fetch cost us? Yes, I dislike that on principle. But it provides an OS functionality that is genuinely useful (age restricting accounts) and... it is one that I can work around should I ever need to.
What does it get us? It is an immediate response to "There is no way for parents to protect their children from this vile content" because... it is exactly that. It is an immediate response to "We can't manage school systems" and "We want to provide a way to lock this down but those evil OSes won't let us".
Versus "holding the line" and ceding absolutely nothing... and then getting blindsided because this is a feature downstream companies actually want. So rather than implement it their way with all the hooks into remote databases at the systemd level, it is instead a wrapper for
useraddcommands.They don't need a precedent. They are already pushing their own (often more restrictive) laws.
And that is what EVERYONE should be doing. Understand what is being demanded. Understand what is being done. And understand what the actual meaningful impact is.