Mastodawn

A small set of people are merging changes to various Linux components to make sure every application knows your birth date.

This is being done rapidly by people with questionable justifications and being merged with no youth and few marginalized people involved.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/accountsservice/accountsservice/-/merge_requests/176#0b07c0cc4d49be119f65cdb2037440f56eed647a

user: Add BirthDate with polkit-gated GetBirthDate and SetBirthDate methods (!176) · Merge requests · accountsservice / accountsservice · GitLab

Summary Add a BirthDate field to the user account interface. For non-homed users, the value is stored...

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Artemysia 1d ago

@wwahammy why the fuck are people complying in advance? Where is the commitment to software freedom?

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Justin Fitzsimmons 1d ago

@artemis @wwahammy this isn't complying in advance, it's complying with the law. Which passed unanimously through the California assembly and senate and was signed into law by Gavin Newsom in 2025. It's not going to be repealed.

Open source projects do not have the type of budget that allows them to merely ignore the law and shrug off fines and legal fees.

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Artemysia 1d ago

@smn @wwahammy I don't understand how California gets to mandate this. People can download software from wherever they want. Host your project outside of California.

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Knut 🏳️‍🌈 🇳🇴🧸1d ago

@artemis @smn @wwahammy This whole OS age thing is beyond stupid. Do these politicians even know what an OS is for? This seems more like an issue to take to app developers like Grindr (which unless they have a pic and look 40 years old, we're not talking. Plenty of children on there). I know for me, who is highly allergic to kids, and very untrusting, verification on those sort of things would be a good thing. But not just so I can login to my Mac and use Logic and Xcode

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Muss das sein.1d ago

@praetor @artemis @smn @wwahammy it’s not beyond stupid. It’s beyond evil.

This is not about kids. This is about total surveillance.

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Eric Schultz 1d ago

@jnfrd @praetor @artemis @smn it's definitely evil but I also think it's pretty stupid. These legislators basically created a mess with an impractical bill which literally every one them thought was cut and dry.

The result is the same, of course.

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Knut 🏳️‍🌈 🇳🇴🧸

@wwahammy @jnfrd @artemis @smn it's really both. And it's really not practical. Like, I've decided to go down memory lane and do some C stuff. I might write my own OS. Oh, C-27 now has age verification, fine..ASSEMBLER! Oh, that has age verification too. Well, it's masochism but raw instructions it is....on a fucking 486. These things never go well for the people wanting them. In my 25 year career...the nerds always win. Always.