93
I Spoke To The Developer Of The Systemd Birth Date PR - YouTube (www.youtube.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
202 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 13 points 7 months ago (9 children)

This field will NEVER affect you unless you choose to install software on your system that requires it.

If the field did not exist software could not be made to utilize it.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago* (1 child)

    Do you think that would prevent or discourage age verification software from existing? It's not as if a systemd user field is the only place a user's birthday could be stored.

    Realistically, age verification software that is seriously attempting age verification isn't even going to touch the systemd field, because why would it? The field could only be trusted if it is managed by an age verification service anyway, in which case the service could just as easily store the data outside of systemd.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    It would still exist. It would just use different methods. Such as the apps that need it asking for it themselves as they do now and you having to enter it into a prompt rather than querying some data store on your PC without your knowledge. Not that this IS actually age verification anyway so the entire discussion is moot.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    Who gets to decide what software should and should not be allowed to exist?

    If someone wanted to store a birthDate (and, evidence exists to say that they do) then the most logical place to store that user detail is with all of the other user details... in systemd.

    You can choose what you put on your system, that's the Free in FOSS. But, you cannot choose what other people put on their systems.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Its not leaving a lot of choice if it's part of systemd and I'd wager far more people do not want this than were asking for it. There's no benefit to it except for the government and corporations that want your data.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    The field doesn't do anything by itself. There is zero harm inflicted on people using systemd. There are probably lots of features of systemd that you don't want or use and the entire negative effect that you suffer is a few megabytes less free storage space.

    The only way the field would be used is if a person decided to use a different piece of software that wants a birthdate. If they don't choose to install such a program then the field is no more a danger than the realName or location fields. They have scary sounding labels but do absolutely nothing unless the user chooses to use them.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

    The only way the field would be used is if a person decided to use a different piece of software that wants a birthdate.

    It leave the door open for this to happen. A malicious software may not advertise that it is harvesting your demographic information. Now that this is in place it's one more thing we have to worry about when evaluating software. There is absolutely no reason to be storing PII in a centralized spot where anything and everything can request it. If I want an app to have any of that shit I'll enter it on a case by case basis.

    You can say "well don't put it in there" but what happens when big monopolistic corporations start requiring it to use some service of theirs that you don't have an alternative for? Now I have to maintain a separate PC for that shit? Fuck that.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    You can say "well don't put it in there" but what happens when big monopolistic corporations start requiring it to use some service of theirs that you don't have an alternative for? Now I have to maintain a separate PC for that shit? Fuck that.

    If you choose to use a service that requires age verification then that service will store your age verification information on your computer somewhere. If it is stored in systemd, malicious programs will be able to access it. If it is not stored in systemd, malicious programs will still be able to access it.

    If you choose to not use a service that requires age verification, then you will not store any age verification information on your computer to be stolen by malicious software. Even if systemd has a birthDate field you will not store any age verification information.

    The difference in these two scenarios is your choice to use age verification or not. The location where the data is stored doesn't change the scenario.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    The difference is using a centralized point on the OS that is designed to hand that info out to anyone that requests it, vs each app prompting the user and storing that info in a profile that is hopefully encrypted if they are doing things right and NOT designed to hand it out to anything else.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent