: Flatpak may be next, and the lobbying behind it is raising eyebrows

Just what I want in my distro.

After weeks of debate, code to record user age was finally merged into the Linux world’s favorite system management daemon.

Pull request #40954 to the systemd project is titled “userdb: add birthDate field to JSON user records.” It’s a new function for the existing userdb service, which adds a field to hold the user’s date of birth:

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 contents of the field will be protected from modification except by users with root privileges.

The change comes after the recent release of systemd 260 but unless it is reverted for some reason, it will be part of systemd 261. One of the justifications is to facilitate the new parental controls in Flatpak, which are still in the draft stage.

  • Midnitte@beehaw.orgEnglish
    25·
    5 months ago

    Literally fucking pointless

    The contents of the field will be protected from modification except by users with root privileges.

    Fucking nannystate bullshit.

    • masterofn001@lemmy.ca
      9·
      5 months ago

      Every initial setup is granted admin and therefore sudo/su group permissions which is root privilege.

      So, yeah, pointless…

      Write a cronjob to change the dob on each logrotate or every hour?

      • Powderhorn@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
        5·
        5 months ago

        I mean, seriously … you expect fucking Linux users to not immediately find a workaround?

  • TehPers@beehaw.orgEnglish
    6·
    5 months ago

    Don’t worry. This will all get reverted real quick once it makes its way into a user prompt for headless installations. Imagine needing to pass a DOB in through stdin somehow every time you docker run ubuntu lol.

    • Powderhorn@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
      5·
      5 months ago

      I’m relatively certain that the junta would prefer all of us headless.

      Ubuntu not required.

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
    4·
    5 months ago

    Garuda Linux will not implement any age verification measures, since Garuda Linux’s legal jurisdictions have no laws mandating age verification.

    Yes. That’s how it should be, that on the Internet you only have to comply with laws where you or the servers you are hosting things on are based, and all other places can piss off when it comes to enforcing their laws.

    And it’s how it mostly used to work, but we now live in this world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_and_indictment_of_Pavel_Durov

    One of my childhood dreams was to run my own successful web forum. Now that we live in this world where that means countries might prosecute me because my users have been doing things that are illegal somewhere in the world, that dream is officially dead. >:(

    • TehPers@beehaw.orgEnglish
      31·
      5 months ago

      What’s wrong with the title? It’s the article title.

      Also, Beehaw has no downvotes, so you can downvote all you want on your instance if it makes you feel better, but it won’t federate the downvote.

      • uhmbah@lemmy.ca
        11·
        5 months ago

        “I disagree with all the drama being associated with an optional field. I reserve the right to ‘drama’ later should optional turn into mandatory”.