@sarah @cmconseils may I remind you, that you already for about 12 years had fields for your real name, surname and exact location? Which were, same as this new DoB field, empty by default and 100% optional.
It's like you said "I feel unpleasant that this restaurant added green tea to their menu, even though I'll never order it, and nobody will force me to order it"
@sarah your "clone meat" is prime level bullshit.
SystemD has userDB. I encourage you to go through it.
This db has multiple optional fields, that are empty by default, and nobody is forcing you to fill them. Such as name, surname, location. Systemd doesn't prevent you from using your OS if you don't give it your name or location. And now they added a new optional field - date of birth. Want to fill it? Do it. Don't want? Don't do it. Or lie about your DoB. Who cares? Not systemd.
@sarah tell me, are you offended, that systemd has a field called "location"? Do you find it unpleasant? Does it make you uncomfortable? Is it dangerous, that you CAN fill it with any location you want, or not fill it at all?
If not, why are you offended about the Date of Birth field?
@leniwcowaty @sarah You keep talking about this age verification thing like it is a technical issue, but it is not -- this is a political issue.
Meta spent over $2,000,000,000 just to lobby for a global age verification law. California's implementation is just the test run, and soon most OS will make this "oh it is just an optional stuff things like this has always been on UserDB" a requirement to own and operate a PC.
That is the problem people are worried about. Not this your "you don't understand what you are talking about" shit, we are worried about how most of our systems will be illegal in the coming years, and how we may have to use the dark web to access the simplest if programs.
@leniwcowaty @sarah The "go be angry at lawmakers" redirect does not hold. Lawmakers mandate what infrastructure makes possible. You pointed at that mechanism yourself -- "if this field was there years ago nobody would blink." That is the normalization argument. The blinking is the point. The absence of blinking, once the field is universal and unremarkable, is what gives the law somewhere to land.
Nobody is angry at systemd for adding a field. The argument is that "it is just a field" is the wrong frame for evaluating what the field represents inside a specific regulatory moment, with Meta's $2,000,000,000 in lobbying behind it pushing toward exactly this kind of quiet, boring, already-present infrastructure. Technical triviality and political significance are not the same measurement. A thing can be both simple to implement and useful to mandate.
"Go be angry at distros implementing it" is also doing something strange -- distros that ship systemd ship UserDB. That is not a separate decision.
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Leniwcowaty 
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