Mastodawn

Birthdate field under discussion also in Arch Linux

Birthdate field under discussion also in Arch Linux - Lemmy.ca

> Add a required birth date prompt (YYYY-MM-DD) to the user creation flow, stored as a systemd userdb JSON drop-in at /etc/userdb/<user>.user on the target system. > > Motivation > > Recent age verification laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc. require platforms to verify user age. Collecting birth date at install time ensures Arch Linux is compliant with these regulations. The pull-request discussion thread has been locked, just like it happened for the similar thread in Systemd, owing to the amount of negative comments…

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Solumbran 4d ago

I don’t know what people expect.

All big linux distros are going to be quickly a target, because the people who like age verification laws like that hate the idea of free software.

Putting a dummy, useless age input, is a good way to comply maliciously, and can be easily reverted if these stupid laws ever get removed.

It wouldn’t surprise me if obvious ways to bypass it appear a few seconds after the changes are validated.

The alternative is that these systems could be outawed in a lot of places, which would have a much more negative impact than an age field.

War is about knowing to take a hit to avoid defeat, sometimes.

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andioop 4d ago

I have no idea what to think because this sounds reasonable, but so do the arguments that it’s a slippery slope and complying now makes it easier to surveil us all later. (Yes, I know this is the name of a fallacy. I’m curious as to when is it a fallacy and when is it not. I can absolutely imagine people saying “slippery slope fallacy” and being right, I can also imagine a different situation where people say “slippery slope fallacy” to something and it happens exactly as the people whose claim is being denied with “slippery slope” fallacy said.)

I guess that is why controversial issues are controversial, no easy and obvious resolution?

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Cethin

A slippery slope isn’t always a fallacy. Yes, that is a specific name of a fallacy, which people commonly point out, but it is also the form of a valid logical argument. If there is support that this will happen, it isn’t a fallacy.

I this case, a user-entered field is useless to “protect children” (being generous and assuming this is the actual reason for the laws). Children will just lie, as they have been doing for decades. The state will point to this as the law not fulfilling its stated goals, so they’ll need to verify age through other means. Even if the goal isn’t surveillance of people, this is still likely to be the result logically. This means the slippery slope argument is valid.