will not be immune if this kind of law becomes commonplace - they too will have to implement a similar mechanism.

Somehow I doubt that - as some have done - specifically stating "not for use in XYZ" will satisfy the "think of the children" crowd.

Why will they have to? What’s going to happen if they don’t? And if they do there will be patches and forks that remove it again

And why the hell is age verification being added to flatpack? The world is going to shit (well yea Rich, duh!)

> And why the hell is age verification being added to flatpack?

I spell it out in the article. Because of the US ASAA:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/1586

What would be the point of an open source OS checking age? Who is going to verify the age you enter into Fedora you downloaded for free and installed yourself is true?

Your mom.

The "think of the children" crowd need to watch their own sociopathic crib litter before worrying about me and my adult choices. Maybe the solution is for those parents to keep themselves and their children completely cut off from the Internet.

But isn't this what we need - on device age indication (not verification) for child accounts instead of wholesale privacy invasion for everyone in the name of age verification?

California's law just allows an age to be entered by the way, so systemd managed to get it wrong, which is shocking and has certainly never happened before. But because it's systemd we're stuck with it now.

would never pass on age checks to save their own arses.......... would they.......... would they................. would..... they ?

Plus it saves them the cost of actually verifying how old their addicts are.

(and given whats appearing on my farcebok feed, its becoming a sewer instead of a gutter with the amount of inflammatory AI slop thats being pumped out and then published by fakebook who are only too happy to take the money and run)

Well that’s the point isn’t it? Faecesbook spy yet another opportunity to take no responsibility for anything they do. And they’re bribing politicians to legalise their shitty lack of morals

Character 1: "Where can we put a DoB field which the community hates and doesn't fit any project's scope?"

Character 2: "systemd"

Quote: "....Stores the user's birth date for age verification....."

So...at Linux install time, the person doing the install (root?) needs to supply a birth date.

- How would this be verified? Machine is off-line! Yup...I was born on 1-Jan-1906!!!!!!

Machine still offline. Create new users. More fake "birth dates".

Machine goes online. What now? Linux distributions provide automation to check root and user birth dates? SURELY NOT! How?

This is a complete day-dream!

Linux needs a random-dob-inserter

How about August 6 1984. To tell them to "86" their 1984 attitude toward freedom.

Everyone should just use 1/1/1984.

Surely 1/1/1970? As that is Zero and therefore False.

This appears to be an exercise in box checking. The post says "birthDate is excluded from user_record_self_modifiable_fields(), so only administrators can set or change it via homectl". So if you install your system and have root then you can change it post-install or during the install. The only children affected by this would be those whose parents do the install for them and do not give them root access (for as long it takes them to work out how to gain root and change it themselves).

The California law is for a band.

This also directly breaks the GDPR, and so systemd cannot be used in Europe anymore.

Hurray! Go for it, Potty!

Presumably if the computer is not located in a region* with a law which requires a birth date, the field will be optional or disabled?

* Region also to be filled in by admin, then.

Please provide the legal theory by which you assert that the GDPR is being directly violated. I don't know what 'this' is in your second sentence because the context is ambiguous.

Whatever legal theory you provide, someone will probably say that you're a moron who doesn't understand the GDPR. As a moron who doesn't understand the GDPR, I can attest that I am not the AC who will inevitably call you one in a humorous attempt to implicate me for having written this paragraph. If you don't have a legal theory to back up your assertion, it's fine to admit that you don't. I don't like the opinions of unqualified (in the sense that you have not qualified yourself to me, not that you possess no qualifications with which to do so) individuals being represented as absolute facts.

I think that we're probably on the same side of the debate. I'm confused and tired, I don't want to read the GDPR again, and if you've got a solid argument then I'd like to use it myself.

G'night!

All this just confirms what I've long suspected -- the people making systemd haven't a clue what Linux is. Obviously, per Dunning-Kreuger, they'll consider themselves experts but if they stopped and looked at a real system then they'd understand that there are a lot of system "users" with only one or two actually being human. Its quite easy to add age as a user property but potentially rather pointless, especially if root can override it.

I'm prepared to add it just to shut people up. Its one of those things that you'll never win an argument about so just give 'em what they want. It will be an ongoing situation, though -- it will require constant patching as they realize it won't do what they think it should. We'll just have to roll with it until the focus, and accompanying battles, shift elsewhere. The urge to control "for your own good" is deeply embedded in some people, its what defines them, and handling them can waste a lot of energy.

BTW -- Speaking as a parent its actually far easier to teach the kids how to use stuff responsibly than to police their behavior around the clock. Kids are naturally curious so saying "you can't" is actually an open invitation for them to prove you wrong (and if they're a teenager then they're likely to succeed).

Is this a case of the systemd folk adding something to "just shut up people?" or is it their corporate influence showing?

So Linux stores the DOB in systemd, IOS elsewhere, Android elsewhere, WIndows elsewhere etc etc.

How does that DOB get to the end point internet based services, there is no standardized API like HTML within these laws.

So yeah, so every OS has it saved in a different location and now every application that needs it now needs to add in a IF THEN ELSE ELSE ELSE ELSE ... clause depending on the OS of the device. And what happens when it comes across Devuan...can you then no longer use that remote service to download stuff.

On top of this, someone needs to tag every app or using the exception rule, every app that is considered child inappropriate...who does this work...is their some government censor that does this?.

Sure some of the standard apps stores (apple/android) might be some of the way to this tagging but what of the LInux app stores. What of all the Linux apps that aren't in what is considered a "store" where you download the source and compile or off the beaten track OS'es like OpenIndiana?

Logic would say (not that politicians have logic) that kids run IOS or Android cause that's what runs on phones and that's where all the apps are. Maybe some kids run Windows on a tablet but sure as hell, kids are not running Linux on a phone (cause no apps) nor running Linux on a tablet or a PC (no apps).

So target the OS'es that 99.9% of the kids use and leave Linux, BSD etc alone.

Bluck

Yep, either target the app store, the app owners (looking at you, Facebook), or teach parents to assume some sort of parental responsibility!

I mean, let's take this to its logical conclusion:

All beaches closed off - gates available that allow those over a certain age access to the water.

The same for pavements and roads - it's bloody dangerous for a 2 year old to be walking down a pavement of a busy road on their own. Don't blame the parents! Fence off ALL roads, and close those that don't comply!

Obviously, ALL kettles, ovens, and hobs need this built in too - safety conscious parents adding childproof controls is just not good enough. EVERY kettle, oven and hob EVERYWHERE needs age verification!

Front seat car doors? Ditto.

The list goes on. And "if you don't agree, you must be a paedo."

HTML doesn't have a API. A common API isn't needed to implement dob_check (), or on Windows DobCheck().

The app store would send an additional field with the age, filtering would be done by the app store program on the computer (e.g. Linux Mint Software Manager).

MS and Apple certainly aren't rewriting each binary in the OS so it checks the age or messing around with WinGet to comply with the law, so why should Linux distros?

Linux is open source. Patches that make the system reply to an age query with "going on 99" will be trivial and popular.

We got here because workable policies that protect kids would cost sites like YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and all the porn sites way too much money. To protect kids from harmful contents these sites need to be liable for the damage and be forced to use strong identity for each user. Anything else is just politicians "doing something" about the problem.

> We got here because workable policies that protect kids would cost sites like YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and all the porn sites way too much money.

We got here because involved and attentive parenting would cost parents too much time they could have spent on sites like YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and all the porn sites.

these sites need to be liable for the damage and be forced to use strong identity for each user

The problem with that is that it hurts others. Examples of people who need there to not be "strong identity" include :

* People under repressive regimes who hold views not acceptable to that regime - which is rapidly looking like it includes the USA !

* People who are trying to stay alive when certain medical options are forbidden by law - think women forbidden from getting an abortion even though not doing so risks them dying

* People trying to get away from abusive relationships

* Whistleblowers

* and a few others that don't come to mind right now

Also, anything workable means handing over personal information to people who have no need to know it. Would you, for example, be happy to use an age verification scheme run by ... perhaps Palantir, as long as they pinky swear they won't use your information for anything other than age verification ? And even if the service is run by honest people, thing how many data breaches there have been lately ?

And then there's scope for government scope creep - it's age verification for porn sites today, what does it cover tomorrow ?

I'm still struggling to understand why people use their actual birth dates on (well really any) sites. I've always been a fan of 01/01/1970 :)

https://itsfoss.com/news/systemd-fork-strips-out-age-verification/

Someone Forked Systemd to Strip Out Its Age Verification Support

"new parental controls in Flatpak, which are still in the draft stage"

I misread that, appropriately enough, as 'daft phase'.

Can it handle BC dates?

And I am not sure which answer here is worse!

People are really overstating this. All this does is add a data field into a list of dozens of other entirely optional data fields. If you have a systemd-based distro then you already had an operating system with a data field to store your name, email and location. Those fields are all empty and you can fill them with whatever you want.

If you really think these laws will go away because you puff out your cheeks and cross your arms then you don't know anything about the real world. They're just trying to comply with the law in the most minimal way permissible.

As I posted in another comment to the another article,

"If distros add a restriction on who may install, then they are no longer free software. To be free software requires no restriction on use and distribution."

I wonder if this would count as a restriction on installing?

Does this mean every account should have root privileges in Linux? Anything else would be a restriction.

That's not what this is doing. Is anyone going to read the actual thing? It's just a data field. If you're unfortunate enough to live within one of these jurisdictions you enter any date into that field, if you're not you don't. Also, these attestation laws aren't about access to the operating system, they're about passing age attestation to applications that request it.

why the feck is flathub down lol