this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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I've only absorbed bits and pieces of the story, but allegedly there's an age verification push happening on Linux? What's the full story here?

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[–] cecilkorik@piefed.ca 5 points 55 minutes ago* (last edited 49 minutes ago)

A bunch of US states (and other western countries) are flirting with, passing or have already passed laws saying operating systems must implement "age verification" for the completely disingenuous purpose of "protecting the children" or the companies that make the Linux distros will be liable for infringement and severe penalties. This, naturally, makes many of the companies involved that make Linux distros really eager to implement age verification. Many of said companies are backed and funded by large, powerful tech companies who are lobbying for exactly this legislation because it makes life extremely difficult and uncertain for Linux users, while at the same time it makes life easier for them and their extremely child-unfriendly content platforms that they want to maintain the ability to manipulate children with and blame Linux when children get manipulated by it saying that Linux should've told them the user was a child and it was actually Linux's fault that the child got manipulated, not them.

Meanwhile, the users and maintainers of Linux itself, the systems that make up Linux, and even the maintainers and contributors to many Linux distros, who are real human people and not faceless corporations, think following unjustified laws is unjustified, see through this lobbying for the dishonest cop-out it is, think this is fucking garbage, and are telling the corpo scum to go fuck themselves with rusty knives. This is entirely appropriate and reasonable in this case.

Hope that helps explain what's going on.

[–] rosco385@lemmy.wtf 1 points 1 hour ago
[–] andyburke@fedia.io 9 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

~~They have changed course, thankfully:~~

https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/41179

edit: my mistake, I saw this briefly earlier today and thought it had been merged, not just closed.

[–] ozymandias117@lemmy.world 10 points 2 hours ago

They haven't, whatever your opinion on it...

Pottering responded no and closed it, stating it's just an optional field others can use how they please

[–] Qwel@sopuli.xyz 6 points 2 hours ago

Read the dam things you post >_<

[–] etchinghillside@reddthat.com 2 points 2 hours ago

Can you point to the part where the revert got merged?

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 32 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (4 children)

An optional field was added to the userdb to allow storing birthdate. That's it.

The systemd project merged a pull request adding a new birthDate field to the JSON user records managed by userdb in response to the age verification laws of California, Colorado, and Brazil.

This is the same record that already holds basic user metadata like realName, emailAddress, and location. The field stores a full date in YYYY-MM-DD format and can only be set by administrators, not by users themselves.

An optional field in the userdb JSON object. It's not a policy engine, not an API for apps. We just define the field, so that it's standardized iff [sic] people want to store the date there, but it's entirely optional.

--Lennart Poettering

https://itsfoss.com/news/systemd-age-verification/

[–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 21 points 4 hours ago (2 children)
[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 12 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Also, it wasn't a core maintainer who created the PR, which you want for something this sensitive.

[–] SatyrSack@quokk.au 4 points 4 hours ago

Why would it matter who it was that contributed the code?

[–] Godort@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 hours ago

It's just an extra field that was added to the UserDB. The methods used to access that information have not chaged AFAIK.

[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 15 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

entirely optional

Until its not. Rome wasnt destroyed in a day

[–] Solumbran@lemmy.world 0 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Yes, but the slippery slope is also a fallacy.

Caution is better than panic.

[–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 6 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

There's ample evidence there is an organised international push for these mass surveillance efforts in many countries all at once, do you deny this?

[–] ozymandias117@lemmy.world 5 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

I would argue, for now, this is malicious compliance from the open source community.

Adding an optional field in the UserDB to store an age covers the requirements of the law, without trying to help with the spirit of the law

But I do understand the boiling the frog side

[–] youcantreadthis@quokk.au 3 points 3 hours ago

Lets be cautious and remove the mechanism.

[–] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

iff [sic]

In case you are unaware, "iff" is short for "if and only if", i.e. bidirectional implication. It's not a typo.

[–] kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 hours ago

It is a word, but I don't think it's really applicable here. The standard exists even if no one wants to use it or ever does.

[–] Petter1@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Exactly, making it possible for admins (parents) to set up systems with rules based on age for their many children

[–] youcantreadthis@quokk.au 4 points 3 hours ago

They can install some parental controls from the package manager. This doesnot need to be in fucking systemd.

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Looks like Microsoft funds and maintains systemd so they can exert control over all the Linux bistros and force this shit in

[–] GreatBlueHeron@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Do you believe Microslop funds and maintains systemd because Lennart Poettering works there, or is there more to it than that?

If it's just that Poettering works there, you may be interested to know that he left in January this year.

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 2 points 1 hour ago

Lennart Poettering left Microsoft, not systemd

And they left for PR reasons, to literally appear not evil and to "build trust"

[–] solrize@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Some rando foolishly submitted a systemd patch and it got rejected after some back and forth. I think there's not much more to it so far.

[–] markz@suppo.fi 5 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

I read in another thread that it was merged

[–] solrize@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah there was some back and forth. It got approved by someone from Microsoft then unapproved by Lennart Poettering. Basically temporary kerfluffle. There's a writeup from yesterday, I think this: https://itsfoss.com/news/systemd-age-verification/

There's now an unpopulated field to hold a birthdate but it's not being used by anything. I guess that is sub-optimal though. This kind of thing if it's to exist at all should be on individual user accounts, not anything system-wide.

[–] ozymandias117@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

UserDB does hold data connected to individual user accounts