this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
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I'll be upset when a cloud-connected Linux component prevents the system from working unless the real name and birth date fields have been verified
until then, this is just as inert as the real name field which has been there for decades, and far less useful for surveillance than the real name field which has been there for decades
Except this field has been implemented explicitly for this age verification laws. If this was for some random birthday greeting when you open terminal, i think fewer people would be up in arms. context is everything.
if this moron implements compliance with laws that record a birthday today, what is stopping him adding 3rd party verification of id tomorrow? So far his track record is corporate bootlicker. You cannot trust projects where this guy is a contributer to
Whats wrong with Age verification? its fine to verify age, the problem with the age verification laws is the issue of how age is being verified. In this case its fine because its local first and privacy respecting.
Age verification requires doxxing yourself in order to actually work, and if it doesn't require doxxing yourself then it won't work and it can be bypassed, so pointless capitulation granting ease into more authoritarian forms in the future. You don't see why any actually functional age verification is a problem while fascists are trying to control all the digital architecture?
No it doesnt. If I ask are you 18 and you reply no/yes that is verifying your age without doxing you. This field is for when the user is NOT admin on the machine. This field would be filled out by the parent when they're setting up their kids machine.
What is the point of a field like this if you can literally put anything in it you want? Your not verifying anything. The next logical step is to add proof.
That isn't the next logical step for systemd, which is what this post is about.
The reason systemd stores this information is that systemd stores user information and this is user information.
If some future application comes along that wants to require age verification and use that field to store the data, then you can simply choose to not install it. Problem solved.
Removing birthDate doesn't stop these programs from existing. If there isn't a birthDate field then they can simply decide that they're going to store the birthdate in the user's 'location' field instead and it would work perfectly fine. Are you going to remove the location field too? All of the text fields?
Adding a specific birthDate field is simply recognizing that this software exists (which, it does) and that systemd is the logical place to store user metadata (which it is).
If you don't like the software that will do age verification then don't install that software.