this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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You do know that this is a slippery slope argument, right?
You would have to demonstrate that there is an intention there to require third party services to validate the age of users using Linux... Or that there is an intention to do so by systemd and the broader open source developers.
I don't think it will be easily possible to lock out every Linux system from the internet that doesn't implement some kind of hardware DRM mechanism to make sure that the user cannot just change the date of birth with root permissions.
I do understand that, but I think you are applying a post hoc rationalisation to the change. For example, examining the change through the lens of intended use - you can't - there is no such use of the field today - it's tomorrow's use that is potentially problematic. I don't want to wait until a bad actor applies the field, I want to stop the field from existing.
This change is not happening in isolation. There is currently a general trend towards de-anonymising users, and this DOB field is a step in that direction.
The only real question is, do I want my computer storing more, or less, personally identifying information. Given that I don't trust ANY use which may be later enabled by this change, my answer is 'less'.