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Yes, right next to the fields for your full name and address, all of which are optional. It’s a total nothingburger.
Did you ignore the comment in the github where it, and I quote "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.". Yes it is optional NOW, but this is in preparation of laws that make it legally Mandatory. Don't down play this.
Miss me with this "slippery slope" BS.
Having a standardized place to store the DOB is a good thing and it should have been there even before these laws.
And if some users want to comply with those laws, then they should have a way to do it.
If anybody actually tries to make this a hard requirement (which isn't going to happen), then you can bitch about it at that time.
This. If someone would force it, people make a fork without that bullshit
California's AB-1043 already passed, so we get to bitch about it now. Thanks for your support.
Oh so you are now forced to fill in the field?
In California Jan 1st 2027, effectively yes. Please read AB-1043. All of this information is present there. It functionally forces any systemd‑based OS to populate it in order to comply with the law’s mandatory age‑collection requirements. It's literally in the bill. Next time, just fucking read it, damn. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043
How is that gonna work mechanically?
Also, the revision looks like it won't be forced
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Just like the room number when using the adduser command
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Could someone explain to me why numerous Linux development groups are jumping on board with this bullshit? This is I think the third such post I've read that a distro or however you call it, is integrating the age check. Since when does the Linux community get on board with Big Brother????
A surprising amount of people in the open source community lean alt-right including the lead dev of systemd, some of FUTO, and others like hyprland, etc. Others like the actual dev that committed the age field code to systemd state they are apolitical but in reality are actually enabling those that want to do harm.
This attack is no limited to "alt-right", it is across the political spectrum. Ex. there are plenty of lefty states implementing these laws.
Authoritarian is still authoritarianism whether it's from left or right.
(I'd also argue that software development is generally filled with leftists, I think the recent rise of prominent right-leaning developers is in reponse to many projects forgoing politically neutrality)
That's fair. Authoritarianism across the board is inherently anti-free and will give rise to enshittified or unsecure software given enough time. We're not only dealing with bigots that can't stand living on the same planet as others they don't understand, but also those that want strict authority and enforcement.
There's a breed of incel who benefits from power tripping in community projects. Think reddit mods.
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It’s sad because at some point, when mainstream browsers will actually rely on systemd for that, website will block you.
Given enough time and ressources, that age control will hit hard like DRM.
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It seems system ld is also enshittifying flatpaks. Those damned Gnome devs man, I can't.
Where is the patch to roll this back? I hope i can one day soon sudo apt install not-today-nazis
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this post was submitted on 23 May 2026
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