Possibly linuxYou guys fell for clickbait
peacefulpixelsource? i mean you went through the effort to post a meme about it at least include the relevant information
The source is the source: github.com/…/acb6624fa19ddd68f9433fb0838db119fe18…
Takes a birth date for the user in ISO 8601 calendar date format. The earliest representable year is 1900. If an empty string is passed the birth date is reset to unset.
That’s it. That’s all it does.
Whatever was discussed in the PR, the code does precisely nothing to implement any kind of verification. It’s just an optional birth date field, like tons of electronics have had forever.
I don’t think anyone who read even the first paragraph of the article (at least the one i read) would say they are doing verification. They are simply adding a field for data to be housed if anyone wants to opt in. Instead of putting it in 20 different spots/apps it’s in one place that any third party can reference.
it’s in one place that any third party can reference.
But why would I want that?
Even if you ignore the whole “this doesn’t verify anything” discussion, why would I want to give third parties easy access to personal and potentially sensitive information? I personally am not interested in simplifying data collection for corporate entities who definitely do not give a shit about the safety of my personal data, let alone hypothetical children. I do not know why this data collection needs or would be desired to be implemented within systemd, besides being a direct response to age verification laws saying its an OS providers responsibility to collect it. Arbitrary data collection by private entities is not “useful”. My personal data has no business being referenced by random asshats that ask for it. There are so few things in the world that “justify” needing my age that I would suggest it would be easier to make my birth date a permanent data point on my PC. Same goes for the other personal details that systemd already supports. Crazy to imagine anyone actually using those on a personal machine.
It is just a optional field
Be mad at lawmakers not developers who are trying to make the best of a shitty situation
I speak only for myself, but I’m not mad at any developers for following with this. I wish they wouldn’t, but I can’t blame them for following the law to protect themselves.
I still think this is bullshit and just going down the slippery slope. The next thing is “this value doesn’t do anything. Now we need a law that actually checks an ID!” And it just keeps getting worse and worse.
Don’t give them an inch on any of this bullshit. And by them, I do mean the governments trying these stupid laws that, at best, waste taxpayer money and valuable time spent on other worthwhile things.
It was also an option to not make a useless field. Not like this self reported dob is going to cut it for the existing age verification laws as is exists now. But I can be mad at people in a position of community production for not having a spine, too.
How is this supposed to be making the best of the situation anyway? It accomplished nothing but piss off the community and signify to authoritarians that open source developers are ready to bend over for them. Simply threaten unenforceable fines across the world and suddenly everything is hopeless. Better get ready to comply, its inevitable! Its pathetic. Ageless Linux might be performative bs, but at least its critical of this over reach instead of intentionally signalling compliance in advance.
caseyweederman“While our lawyers are fighting it in court, we decided to whip up the barest minimum viable proof of concept so that if it does come to pass, at least it’ll be on our terms, and not a rushed piece of easily-exploitable garbage pushed out at the last second” the systemd team, probably
That’s the question: would they fight it? From all I’ve seen so far, they wouldn’t.
I’m Jeremy from System76. We are in talks with legislators and there are likely to be amendments to the age verification bills, as well as conflicting requirements in different jurisdictions. It may even be the case that open source operating systems are exempted entirely. I detailed this on the xdg mailing list here:
https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/2026-March/014797.html
I have other concerns about this specific implementation. By relying on systemd, which is decidedly unportable to non-Linux operating systems, and not used across all Linux operating systems either, it will force at least one alternative implementation to exist. If these implementations end up having to collect jurisdiction specific requirements, that makes it much harder for complihttps://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954#issuecomment-4032221990
Yeah, I’ve read that discussion a few days ago. That specific post seemed reasonable, but that was a comment from outside the core systemd team, wasn’t it? As far as I understood all of this, different people took the decision to merge, without coordinating their efforts with those of the corporate linux distros (Pop!, Ubuntu, Red Hat/Fedora, (Open)SUSE).
NotSteve_Its a nullable field, chill. It’s exactly the same as a Linux distro installer asking for your first name for account setup and the moral outrage is genuinely embarrassing
Good system design doesn’t do things without me asking it to. I’ll gladly manually re enter my birth date for an external service if its required, which to be clear, should be as close to 0 times as possible. What, should I keep all my job application info in the initialization system too? Because a website I’m on might ask for it at some point? Don’t want to be too redundant.
Literally this field serves no purpose other than to build compliance with the surveillance state. No end user asked for this. Like I said, can’t imagine any end user making use of the existing systemd fields either. But those also didn’t get any attention because they weren’t made as a reaction to threats by a malicious regime.
You can if you want
You also could just ignoro it entirely as it is optional
lumpenproletariatSo they’re introducing a system where a users age can be verified?
Hmm, if only there was a name for that.
Stores the user’s birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws\
in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc.
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954
Guess
userdb: add birthDate field to JSON user records by dylanmtaylor · Pull Request #40954 · systemd/systemd
Stores the user's birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc. The xdg-desktop-portal project is addi...
So they’re introducing a system where a users age can be verified?
No. They are not.
It is an optional field that does no semblance of checking its veracity. Again, like basically every bit of electronics has had forever.
It is literally for the act of verifying a users age.
Being the verifier instead of the requester doesn’t make it not age verification. It’s part and parcel.
I just don’t see how it’s any different than my Sony PSP having an optional birthday field. Or oldschool forums having one. It can’t possibly affect me, or anyone who’s concerned about it.
If systemd starts talking about bundling face scanners or whatever they actually need to verify someone’s age, and then tons of linux systems start requiring it, then I will be gravely concerned.
it’s optional now but can be mandatory later? It literally takes a baby monkey’s brain to understand that.
Also this is literally in the PR:
Stores the user’s birth date for AGE VERIFICATION, as required by recent laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc.
userdb: add birthDate field to JSON user records by dylanmtaylor · Pull Request #40954 · systemd/systemd
Stores the user's birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc. The xdg-desktop-portal project is addi...