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Store birth date in systemd for age verification

104 points by sadeshmukh

by ameixaseca

1 subcomments

From the pull request:
> 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 Brazilian law does NOT require this. This is a misconception, and likely based on an understanding of California's law being extrapolated to the Brazilian law.
They are almost complete opposites.
The Brazilian law (Lei 15.211/2025) puts the burden of age verification on *providers* of web platforms, app stores, or dumb terminals. Not on operational systems.
It also mentions "reasonable measurements" - which vary according to the type of content, platform, etc - and which are much less strict that anything written in California's or UK's laws regarding the same subject. It is far more based on individual risk assessment and purpose of the platforms themselves.
In all fairness, the Brazilian law is the most friendly to open source and the status quo. Even though I'm also worried about the long term results of this legislation, I'm somewhat relieved by the way it turned out.

by miohtama

2 subcomments

This should be the time for open-source developers to use their common sense to decide whether we should push back.
If California wants to create its own Protect the children operating system, it should bear the cost and responsibility for this alone, and not export any of the sketchy political agenda to the wider open source community.

by JellyYelly

1 subcomments

I don't mean to come across as a snob, or anything like that, but I find this PR really odd.
It's the authors first time contributing to this repo and it the feedback on the PR that was addressed is really odd, like some of it is super basic stuff, even if you're not familiar with the code base or the language.
Just an all round weird vibe.

by egorfine

1 subcomments

Given that:
* LP had zero objections to merging this commit into systemd [1];
* Amutable CEO is confident they have a very robust path to revenue [2];
* It is Facebook that pushes age verification laws all around the world;
I sense that his new startup is exactly what we are afraid of: a way to prevent reverting of these patch and then actually enforce the upcoming mandatory KYC to use the computer.
[1] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954#issuecomment-4...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46785048

by baldrunner2049

0 subcomment

I just don't get it, if this is of such great importance for whatever, why isn't planted in bios/uefi? why not work with the hardware providers instead of trashing entire open source communities? this just smells like something else entirely.

by monksy

1 subcomments

The author is not from the places where he claims that these are laws. The Californian law is not in effect.
Dylan M. Taylor's GH profile claims that he's from Durham, NC (which does not have this law). He also references to a draft to xdg-desktop-portal which has not been accepted. (Add parental controls to the Accounts portal: https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/pull/1922)
I'm asking:
- What is this guy's personal interest in pushing this through? (It seems non-neccessary and is questionable at what the end goal)
- Who's political agenda is he sponsoring for this?
- Is he getting financially incentivized to do this?

by egorfine

0 subcomment

I wonder who this https://github.com/dylanmtaylor guy is. Comes out of the blue and posts PRs into lots of open source repositories for this feature that should repulse every self-respecting human being.
And not only that, but he engages in communication with people in tickets and ignores all constructive criticism.

by dirtikiti

4 subcomments

"protecting" children by providing specific ages to data harvesters.
as per usual, liberal policy doing the exact opposite thing they claim it does.

by calvinmorrison

0 subcomment

This should fit lennarts hubris well.
This developer should be blacklisted from all open source projects, permanently.

by jprjr_

4 subcomments

I cannot express how disappointed I am to see open source projects giving in to complying with age attestation laws.
I feel like complying really undermines any first amendment arguments. Software is a first amendment protected form of expression, giving in before getting any actual threats from the state makes your participation seem voluntary.
Systemd's participation puts the entire world into compliance with a California law

by flykespice

1 subcomments

It's scary how much global surveillance is closing in to become a reality with states passing these lesgilations, in the name of "protecting children", but it just serves to collect citizent personal data...
And now they are creeping into open source projects too. What once was thought as the bastion of absolute freedom from the state

by sazz

0 subcomment

The hope that humanity has learned something from wasting its time clicking away completely useless cookie pop-ups on websites has probably died once and for all.

by mzajc

4 subcomments

Tangentially related, but does anyone know what Poettering's "cryptographically verifiable integrity" endeavor[0] is about yet?
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46784572

by fdghrtbrt

1 subcomments

Could someone clarify for a linux newbie like me... In practical terms, what does this mean? I'm on Debian so presumably Debian will eventually pick this update, and then what? When I upgrade my system I'll get a prompt asking for my date of birth?

by jmclnx

1 subcomments

Interesting solution and I really expected systemd would be were this age validation would be placed if distros what it.
But if this becomes a thing in Linux for the distro I use (doubtful), I will abandon Linux after 30+ years.
I am rather confident OpenBSD will ignore this law and I expect other BSDs will to. If not, back to DOS :)
Note, I have a BSD on a coupld of old laptops for testing reasons. I test what I write in the BSDs to help find issues, that works well.

by zoobab

0 subcomment

Instead of protesting, large corporations decided to ploy.
They cannot loose markets, like California or Brazil.

by bravetraveler

4 subcomments

Where can I drop a file to always return 1969

by petee

0 subcomment

I had to check the date; is not April yet

by btbuildem

0 subcomment

This is a dangerous precedent, and should be nipped in the bud, squashed, blended, spat on and flushed.
Acquiescing to (however veiled and excused) authoritarian overreach is not the way forward. The correct attitude towards this "Think of the Children but Really Think of the Advertisers' Profits" initiative is to let California (and other proponents) to figure out how they can do business without Linux or any other software that depends on it.
OSS is a bastion of freedom -- real freedom, freedom FROM, not American Freedom (freedom to abuse and exploit others). We must defend it. DO NOT COMPLY.

by nazgulsenpai

1 subcomments

Will unincorporated distros who don't comply be illegal to use in the areas passing these laws? This isn't "obscenity" -- isn't there a first amendment argument for these projects?

by anotherhadi

1 subcomments

Pretty good implementation imo

by wannabe_loser

0 subcomment

SystemD has been overreaching

by noobermin

2 subcomments

The context is that this is in response to California in the US potentially passing a law that requires age verification on the operating system level.

by acuozzo

0 subcomment

How would this work for multiuser accounts? Mu kids all share the same account on the family computer.

by icar

1 subcomments

Having this in userdb is not bad per se. We already have a bunch of PII in there.

by bibimsz

0 subcomment

i dont like this

by exabrial

0 subcomment

Thank you blue states for the stupidity.

by bmlzootown

0 subcomment

This is absolutely ridiculous.