this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2026
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Storing a users birthday is useful metadata anyway. I'm surprised it wasn't stored before.
The age isn't verified is any way. You can set it to the 1800s for all it cares
This is not very 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 of you.
How does one enter an older DOB without causing an underflow?
Implement it as a s64 instead of a u64. Ugh, honestly. Back when it was a 32 bit integer it made sense to make it unsigned because we'd have run out of numbers by now otherwise. But as of the advent of 64 bit unix time values there's really no reason not to implement it as a signed value smh
It is stored as a json date string
That was a Unix Epoch joke
Yeah like the email address and the full name of the user.
... What do you mean it's blank for 99% of users?
Email address and name are actually useful for network environments of a system admin needs to know who is the user behind a process or something. How old the user is is complete useless.
Unless your system is for you and your kid, for example
Do you not know how old your child is?
Are you serious? I mean there's a lot of dumb shit in this thread but come on
And how is it useful then? Parental controls have existed for decades and you never had to give your age to Facebook, who is the main proponent of these laws in the US and has poured millions of dollars into their creation.
This isn't about protecting kids. It's about adding an additional fingerprint companies and governments can use to track and identify you and what you do with your system.
Providing a place to store and read data for minimal, nominal, non-invasive compliance with legislation so that people can protect themselves without harming anyone else
Things I have never said anything about:
That's what this is all about
You did say that it wasn't useless if you and your kid both use the same system, so my first thought for how it could be useful in any capacity outside of adhering to a law, which in the US at least (I'm not as well versed in the Brazilian, UK, or other variations) has in some versions very explicitly stated that the intent is for the OS to provide said age information to any app that requests it, was for group permissions on the different accounts on your system, which can just as easily be set up using other settings already available to you. I would consider that "protecting kids." If you meant that it was useful in some other way where you and your kid are using the same system, by all means, tell me.
As I said, I brought up the rest because that is the explicitly stated or easily inferred (in the case of increased fingerprinting of users for increased revenue) intent of the US versions of the law and "protect the children" is the tired old excuse being used by Facebook and the politicians in their employ.
Obviously, the data field equivalent of clicking the "I am 18 years or older" button is as non-invasive as you can really get, but it's blatantly obvious that this is merely the first step in what the corporations and governments actually want out of this, and adhering to it before the laws are even out merely sets the stage for them to refine their language and push further. Something this easy could be rolled out at any time. There's no need to comply before they have a leg to stand on. They won't be satisfied by this, and they certainly won't stop here.
I have mine set Β―β \β _β (β γβ )β _β /β Β―
Found the 1%!
How is that useful information? To what purpose?
Auto-filling those "you must be at least X old to access this content" inputs could be one? Eg Steam could skip that page directly when accessing 18+ games.
I suppose you could ask the same for the realName and location fields that are already in systemd.
There are jurisdictions where Steam has to explicitly ask every time you open an age-gated page, that's why they do it and haven't stored it before. That'll presumably not change.
They ask each time because they don't want to store the data themselves if they don't have to. With this, they wouldn't have to.
Who says what is and isn't 18+? Be specific
In this case the rating agencies do, which Valve then follows.
What's the appeals process like if something is misclassified, or if there's discrimination?
There's the PEGI complaints board where appeals or complaints can be lodged by consumers and publishers. Recently Balatro did so successfully, as the 18+ rating for gambling was overturned by PEGI.
Note that PEGI is the games industry regulating itself (to avoid governments from having to do so).
Name and email are useful for network admins to know what user is responsible for what process and location is used for timezone configuration. Autofill information can be get from the browser. What is next, systemd asking for credit card and full address?
Yeah this would have a pretty different reaction if it was the US social security number that was required by these laws. OK it's not verified yet and you're not required to enter it, but what motivation is there for mandating a field for a personal ID number?
The only use case is discrimination
compamys who want to de-microslop and still need feilds like that for whatever purpose
Don't forget the personalized ads! π«
your argument is an oxymoron. if the data is useful meta data, but the user can just put what ever they want as the date then itβs not storeing useful data. and that means it should not exist.
unless the point is to use it in the future where the user canβt enter what ever they want and thus legitimizes all the commotion.
You can also store an email there, so it can be found by other programs, but you can also leave it blank, or enter a fake email if you don't want your email to be stored.
Given the open nature of Linux, I find it hard to believe they can lock it down like that.
The point is to comply with the letter of a shitty law and avoid volunteer projects getting killed by lawsuits, while being useless for tracking purposes.
This law was written by Microsoft lobbyists so they can sue desktop Linux out of existence, and this PR prevents that.
How would they be able to sue systemd? Genuine question. As i understand it, it is a local law. How could they force open source projects to comply? If I am located in Europe, for example, how would they even try to sue me by "breaking" the law of an american state? And how would they stop people frlm still using the "illegal" software?
They'd sue the SPI.
then if it could be left blank or not a verifiable dateβ¦ it would not comply with the law making its existenceβ¦. worthless. unless it is to make it mandatory in the future
The law said the OS must have a method to enter an age at account creation and an API for applications to query it. The systemd PR satisfies that, so the SPI and anyone representing a distro that uses systemd is off the hook legally.
so the second step in enshitification then. seems to me nipping it in the bud seems the better play. best to just slap a βnot in californiaβ sticker on it and provide it the same as always.
at this point i dont treat peoples invocation of the slippery slope fallacy as coherent or honest based on historical evidence
Another datapoint for fingerprinting.
So don't provide it or give it a fake value.
Until the next update you'll defend demanding more data
Wrong. The earliest date you can set it to is 1900!!! π
You could also just not set it instead of using a nonsensical date