Someone Forked Systemd to Strip Out Its Age Verification Support : technology

[–] albert_inkman@lemmy.world 1 points 19 minutes ago

The DOB field is different from name and address because it is a fixed attribute that never changes. Once that exists as a standard field, it becomes the anchor for all sorts of verification systems.

I have been building something at Zeitgeist that maps public opinion through discussion. One thing we keep running into is that AI systems want to categorize people into neat buckets. They will say "users under 18" vs "over 18" and move on. But real human disagreement does not work that way. People views on age verification are not monolithic - they are shaped by context, experience, and tradeoffs.

We are seeing this play out everywhere now. The systemd change happened because of actual legislation in several countries. It is not theoretical anymore. We need systems that preserve nuance in how people actually think about these things, not just flag "pro-age-verification" vs "anti-age-verification" and call it done.

[–] rizzothesmall@sh.itjust.works 8 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Optional dob field added to distro
Stupid people freak tf out

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 4 points 43 minutes ago

In an ideal world, even that optional DOB field would have been blocked. Your first instinct on seeing techbros wanting to surveil us shouldn't be "how we can comply", but "how can I fight it".

[–] Samsy@lemmy.ml 8 points 6 hours ago

I'm not into this, but is it the nerd version of releasing forks and torches?

[–] nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

I didn't realize age verification had been put in yet? holy shit tat was fast

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago

Well not really, they added a field so that they could store date of birth in the way they have a field to store "real name".

So you can be sure my birthday is 4/20/1969 as sure as you can be that my name is Bimbo Baggins.

Note that for the California law at least, this is "good enough" and the OS never actually has to validate anything. In practice a person without admin access could have their birthdate out of control, well, until they run a patched browser that skips asking systemd and just always sends a desired bracket...

It kind of works to keep kids under 13 sending the signal with parental administration, but doesn't do anything for more resourceful people you tend to find over 13.

[–] Charlxmagne@lemmy.world 9 points 9 hours ago

Okay I've said this so many times but (open source) code is speech and thus protected by free speech laws. Also idk if anyone's noticed but it's pretty obvious ID verification is for mass surveillance and obbo purposes. Now why would this apply to software that we already know doesn't spy on you? Until now, proprietary software and big tech platforms already spied on you, but it could - to an extent be pseudonymised. This isn't about spying on people, they already do that, it's about removing pseudonymisation - instead of your data being stored under: User #2044820 it'll be your full govt name and address leaving no room for doubt or plausible deniability.

It is by every metric, useless to provide ID verification for software that collects no data, at best it would just give them a better idea of the demographic. Also it's literally open source, the GPL prohibits disallowing people from forking/editing it and it prohibits restrictions on the way in which it can be edited, which is legally binding.

[–] BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world 41 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

There's no age verification in systemd. That field doesn't verify anything

[–] iglou@programming.dev 4 points 4 hours ago

But my clickbait!

[–] favoredponcho@lemmy.zip 2 points 7 hours ago

Called it

[–] Tarambor@lemmy.world 8 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (2 children)

FUCK THERE IS A WHOLE LOT OF STUPID USING LINUX. Lots of tin foil hat wearing morons making mountains out of molehills.There was no age verification support added. All that happened is a DOB field was put in so people can add their date of birth IF THEY CHOOSE TO so it can appear in their user account. It isn't uploaded to anyone, it's not checked by anyone, it is not mandatory to complete and you can leave the field blank.

[–] Fjdybank@lemmy.ca 37 points 12 hours ago (6 children)

Hard disagree. This represents the pot getting turned up on the frog.

I acknowledge you are factually correct. However, once this field exists, it enables later reference and/or mandatory dependencies.

There is no positive use case , but lots of possibly negative use cases. For that reason, it shouldn't exist.

[–] Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 1 points 47 minutes ago (1 children)

However, once this field exists, it enables later reference and/or mandatory dependencies

Yeah, this is a devious plan that has been going on for years, when they added the realName field!

[–] Fjdybank@lemmy.ca 2 points 39 minutes ago

I get it, but I believe it to be a false equivalence. This change is not happening in isolation. There is currently a general trend towards de-anonymising users, and this DOB field is a step in that direction.

The only real question is, do I want my computer storing more, or less, personally identifying information. Given that I don't trust the intended use, or ANY use which is later enabled by this, my answer is 'less'.

[–] iglou@programming.dev 3 points 4 hours ago

Do you really draw the line at a date of birth field, when every linux system has fields for full name and address for every user account?

[–] cmhe@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

You do know that this is a slippery slope argument, right?

You would have to demonstrate that there is an intention there to require third party services to validate the age of users using Linux... Or that there is an intention to do so by systemd and the broader open source developers.

I don't think it will be easily possible to lock out every Linux system from the internet that doesn't implement some kind of hardware DRM mechanism to make sure that the user cannot just change the date of birth with root permissions.

[–] Fjdybank@lemmy.ca 2 points 35 minutes ago* (last edited 33 minutes ago)

I do understand that, but I think you are applying a post hoc rationalisation to the change. For example, examining the change through the lens of intended use - you can't - there is no such use of the field today - it's tomorrow's use that is potentially problematic. I don't want to wait until a bad actor applies the field, I want to stop the field from existing.

This change is not happening in isolation. There is currently a general trend towards de-anonymising users, and this DOB field is a step in that direction.

The only real question is, do I want my computer storing more, or less, personally identifying information. Given that I don't trust ANY use which may be later enabled by this change, my answer is 'less'.

[–] UltraBlack@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

How do commercial distros prevent getting blocked if not through this?

[–] Fjdybank@lemmy.ca 1 points 35 minutes ago

I think you might be replying to wrong conment

[–] goldman60@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I'm not really sure you can argue birthdate is the thin edge of the spear when the standard Linux user database already had fields for location, email, phone number, and real name. None of which have been used for anything up to this point, and systemd-homed is not as widely used.

[–] Fjdybank@lemmy.ca 1 points 34 minutes ago

I get it, but I believe it to be a false equivalence. This change is not happening in isolation. There is currently a general trend towards de-anonymising users, and this DOB field is a step in that direction.

The only real question is, do I want my computer storing more, or less, personally identifying information. Given that I don't trust the intended use, or ANY use which is later enabled by this, my answer is 'less'.

[–] dubyakay@lemmy.ca 2 points 10 hours ago

We are more than mere frogs in a pot though. We have made note of this. We outraged. We argued and counter argued. We will not forget so easily, no matter the view point on it.

If nothing comes of it, some of us can say "I've told you..."

If the next step gets implemented and the field becomes mandatory, some of us can say "See!! Froggies"

If it becomes mandatory and a further implementation also adds the framework to submit the data to some idp service, then we can get the pitchforks out.

[–] 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

FUCK THERE IS A WHOLE LOT OF STUPID USING LINUX

we wanted the year of the linux desktop... well the first raft of windows refugees seem to be a bunch of these overzealous privacy types who think they're now a bunch of 1337 h4x0rs because they figured out how to get an nvidia driver working on mint.... they have more paranoia than actual tech knowledge, and their only contribution to the community is sowing dissent, and shouting about something as trivial as an optional data field.

The debian subreddit is downvoting an actual DEBIAN DEVELOPER when they tried to explain the situation

If i put on my tin foil hat, i'd say these people are being deliberately influenced to sow chaos in foss communities

[–] Dathknight@discuss.tchncs.de 55 points 22 hours ago (3 children)

This is bs ...

Instead of fighting the laws and the people behind it, 'we' (as in 'the community') infight about some minor commit?

If the reason is data privacy, why not also remove 'realName', 'emailAdress' and 'location'? 🙄

[–] nuxi@lemmy.world 21 points 18 hours ago

They should also remove the phone number prompt that UNIX has had since before systemd even existed. Your phobe number is an optional part of the GECOS field and has been there for a very long time without anyone freaking out like this.

[–] Skankhunt420@sh.itjust.works 26 points 22 hours ago (8 children)

As far as I can tell the Name Email and location are all voluntarily provided by the user.

This is something that will be used whether you want it to or not (that makes it invasive) because of the laws around it (of course depending on where you are).

Having fields I can ignore as a user isn't the same as this guided attempt by lawmakers to eventually get you to give ID and retina scans just to use a computer.

This is step 1. That is why people are freaking out about it.

And I know systemd isn't doing this out of spite, but I do wish the scene would stand up for the user more... Just say no California or whatever other shit place decides to enact that and boom problem solved. Not their fault or problem anymore.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 8 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

As far as I can tell the Name Email and location are all voluntarily provided by the user.

So is birthDate.

This is something that will be used whether you want it to or not (that makes it invasive) because of the laws around it (of course depending on where you are).

How? First and most importantly, systemd doesn't do anything to enforce, require or verify the field.

Second, I control what is installed on my PC, that's the ENTIRE POINT of using a FOSS OS. The FREEDOM to install whatever I want, or not. If there is an application that is using that field to enforce some bs law, then I simply won't install it.

This isn't Windows, there isn't a Microsoft to force you to install software updates that you don't want. You're FREE to not install software that does things that you don't like. This includes any hypothetical future software that would require this field or validate this field.

[–] Skankhunt420@sh.itjust.works 5 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

You control what you install on your pc and I'd be willing to bet that whatever open source OS it is, probably uses Systemd. Unless you're a Unix person.

They have set this up in a way that yes, right now at 11:21pm UTC on March 24th it isn't being enforced or required.

But because of the replies of some of the maintainers in their github about this very merge they are suggesting that as soon as it becomes hard law, it will be enforced by them.

Particularly the part where one was replying to a system76 developer who mentioned that they are in talks with state legislators right now, that these proposed laws are very possibly going to be overturned, and that open source software might not even be required to do this at all and that we should give it more tim before we do something like this and the reply was:

"It is possible that California law will be changed. But similar ideas are popping up in other contexts and it's unlikely that they'll all go away. This implementation is fairly generic and useful for other things besides age verification, so we shouldn't decide whether to merge it or not based on a single law in any jurisdiction."

This suggests that they are doing this because of laws and ideas like this that are coming into play. And that they didn't want to wait on the confirmation of whether it was law or not, they did it anyway. Why? That's not very open. That isn't really taking a stand to support Linux or its users that is voluntarily getting ahead of the control mechanism that "similar ideas" are going to use.

They shouldn't have done this. In mine, and many, many other peoples opinions as well.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 5 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

You control what you install on your pc and I’d be willing to bet that whatever open source OS it is, probably uses Systemd.

They have set this up in a way that yes, right now at 11:21pm UTC on March 24th it isn’t being enforced or required.

It is using systemd, yes. It could be using openRC, sysvinit, runit, etc just as easily.

Systemd isn't a requirement for Linux. It is simply the most useful init system currently. If that ever stops being the case then changing init systems or entire even distros is a fairly trivial task. If systemd were ever to require me to submit to a 3rd party verification of my age I'd just use a different init system.

There is nothing that any open source project can do that would force me to keep using their software if I don't want to.

They shouldn’t have done this. In mine, and many, many other peoples opinions as well.

If your opinion represents a large group of people then you should have no trouble maintaining a fork.

[–] Skankhunt420@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 hours ago

You are right on that.

I hope that in the end this does end up all working out and I was just one of the crazy guys worried for no reason.

But either way I still think it is disappointing they did this so quickly and that they're using a US push in law be such a deciding factor in originally pushing for it. It felt like that was the same way when they banned Russian maintainers. The USA and especially specific states shouldn't have this much pull especially over open source community driven projects in my opinion.

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[–] Blemgo@lemmy.world 141 points 1 day ago (9 children)

I find that move extremely funny, since it's purely made for sensationalism and nothing else. I mean, if you hate how systems implemented age verification, then why don't you remove its identity verification too, i.e. also optional fields for stuff like your address an e-mail that most users don't even fill out.

There is no mechanism verifying what birth date you type in - you can type whatever date you want and systems doesn't care.

I'd say no matter where you stand with age verification, this is the best solution to handle the situation. After all, any and all age checks we have nowadays are a black box anyways. There is no real knowing how other systems are checking ages, and there is AFAIK no real government mandated rules on how it is verified. They could make you scan your ID's front, back, nuclear composition and dietary preferences and give you a result that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a proper age verification procedure.

If the government wants to introduce age verification, they have to do it themselves - build an API that handles the age verification, similar to how the digital ID in Germany works, as an example. If they want proper age verification, they also have to take the blame themselves if things go wrong.

[–] Skankhunt420@sh.itjust.works 21 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

You know I remember when age verification was a thing on porn sites.

No big deal, I was like 12 and could easily say "yupp, I was born April 20th, 1969" and there was no problem.

Now, in several states that has escalated to you showing your ID.

Do you think this is the end game? Systemd made it clear with this move that any kind of US law passed will be able to be honored by their architecture. They didn't take a stand that you would expect from pretty much the entire Linux community as a whole.

And see the funny part is where you talk about "if the government wants age verification they have to do it themselves" they pretty much do in USA its called your social security number. Banks, auto dealerships, landlords etc use it all the time and its very effective.

By not taking a strong stance against what is happening here you are paving the road brick by brick to having to provide full on SSN and very plausibly retina scans or something similar in the not so distant future before you can even login to your computer or phone.

I don't understand, how people here are missing that. Fuck we are on Lemmy because we see how shit worked with things like reddit and others. Things always escalate when control and greed are the primary motivators.

This will escalate. And when it does I want you to remember that people were rightfully making a HUGE FUCKING DEAL about when systemd started doing this because by then you will be able to see clearly how it led to whatever surveillance wet dream they are absolutely going to force on us. It will be clear, and this will be step 1 .

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[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 84 points 1 day ago (12 children)

My line in the sand is when a distro/app starts enforcing entry of birth date data. Having a database field to store it, or even an optional prompt for it isn't the point where I bin it.

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[–] Quazatron@lemmy.world 80 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Fork a project that you have a problem with;
Write a strong worded manifesto;
Revel in those sweet sweet internet clicks;
Try to gather a team of seasoned engineers to keep and evolve the project;
Most likely fail, look for the next controversy, repeat.

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[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 28 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Lots did. There are about a dotzend forks for this explicit purpose.

[–] db2@lemmy.world 11 points 15 hours ago

And in a month none will be active at all.

[–] tabular@lemmy.world 29 points 1 day ago

I can see it's just an optional text field but the ick isn't optional. It's leaning towards submission in comparison to resistance. I'm hoping such laws get repealed, rather than spread.

[–] yardratianSoma@lemmy.ca 58 points 1 day ago (22 children)

None of the id fields in the systemd db are required to be filled. This is useless. Simply don't put any personal info in, and bam, you're already liberated, from laws that aren't even in effect yet!

[–] GreatBlueHeron@lemmy.ca 27 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is perfectly logical and I agree. Except that this controversy has prompted me to go learn about Lennart Poettering. I've been using systemd forever and I like it - I like journald and remote journald, I like networkd, I even deleted cron off my systems and use systemd timers exclusively. I knew there was some controversy about Lennart, but I didn't really care. Now that I've read a bit about his background and, maybe more importantly, his new company - I don't have a good feeling for the future of systemd.

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