this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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Age checks creep into Linux as systemd gets a DOB field (www.theregister.com)
submitted 3 hours ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
17 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

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[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 9 minutes 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. >:(

[–] orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 11 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

This was my reply in another thread about this bullshit:

“It’s just a harmless field; what’s the big deal?”

The big deal is that it’s on the heels of age verification bullshit that fascists are pushing through with the help of tech bros, so that they can eventually push all of us into a scenario where we have zero privacy.

It’s not the adding of the field itself or the fact that it can be filled with nonsense. It’s the reasoning backing it.

“But it’s the law!”

Yeah, fucking and…? It’s a stupid mass surveillance law disguised as a protection, and per usual, it’s written like vague dog shit. This is the smallest part of the wedge. More will come of this and if developers like this keep volunteering themselves to help the fascists, we will all be fucked. Here’s an alternative approach: just don’t add this. You can fight back by not fucking implementing this. Easy.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 13 minutes ago

The big deal is that it’s on the heels of age verification bullshit that fascists are pushing through with the help of tech bros, so that they can eventually push all of us into a scenario where we have zero privacy.

That's a bit difficult to argue in a world where the most prominent of such laws was passed in California, where Democrats control the entire legislative process.

I have not looked up the voting record for it, but would suspect that, like most of the worst laws in the US, it was enthusiastically supported by both parties? Am I wrong about that?

[–] TehPers@beehaw.org 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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.org 1 points 19 minutes ago

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

Ubuntu not required.

[–] Midnitte@beehaw.org 16 points 2 hours ago

Literally fucking pointless

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

Fucking nannystate bullshit.

[–] xyro@morbier.foo 11 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

And the same contributor (From Credit Genie) submitted a PR on Arch install to make that field mandatory ... Definitely not sus https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/pull/4290

[–] org@lemmy.org 11 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Can’t wait for gender, race. Nothing could go wrong.

[–] django@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Add religion and assigned sex at birth.

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

And religion is a dropdown, christian default, no option for atheist.

[–] django@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 hour ago

ACAB

Assigned Christian At Birth

[–] guynamedzero@piefed.zeromedia.vip 4 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

When the time comes, I’ll make a script/systemd service that will periodically change the DoB field to a random value, so it’s effectively useless as it changes every few hours/minutes/(whatever I decide). If there’s enough interest, I’ll share it with everyone else on piefed/lemmy

[–] UnhingedStopa@sopuli.xyz 2 points 48 minutes ago

They will force you to verify it using your government info somehow after they "notice" it isn't working "as expected".

[–] kbal@fedia.io 4 points 2 hours ago

I always thought that having some kind of "kid-safe" mode for web browsers would be a good idea; there are some people who would use that. People whose age doesn't necessarily have much to do with it. Having a standard header sent to websites to indicate it and making some rules about what they're supposed to do when they see it would be feasible enough.

It seems so painfully obvious that having a "date of birth" field in systemd is the wrong way to do things and can only go nowhere or else lead to bad things.

[–] Penguincoder@beehaw.org 2 points 2 hours ago

I'm gonna sound like Prof Snape here, but Goddamnit Poettering!

[–] sexy_animal_fucker@kbin.melroy.org 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

The annoying people telling us not to use systemd were right all along