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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[–] 65 points 7 months ago* (21 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/

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  • [–] 38 points 7 months ago (5 children)
  • [–] 15 points 7 months ago (3 children)

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

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  • [–] 25 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    entirely optional

    Until its not. Rome wasnt destroyed in a day

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (4 children)

    Yes, but the slippery slope is also a fallacy.

    Caution is better than panic.

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  • [–] 23 points 7 months ago (2 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?

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  • [–] 16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months 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

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