I Spoke To The Developer Of The Systemd Birth Date PR - YouTube
2mon 24d ago by lemmy.ml/u/Tenderizer78 in linux@lemmy.ml from www.youtube.com
Some of you need to watch this video, and hang your head in shame.
Dylan Taylor has been receiving constant harassment, including threats to his life and safety, for actions done collectively by SystemD. The article by Sam Bent was explictly mentioned as part of the harassment campaign, and rightfully so.
I don't think enough people realize that this is catastrophically bad. It'll discourage people from becoming open source developers, it'll discourage people from using Linux, and it'll discourage legislators from taking the Linux community seriously.
If you ever wished ill upon another human being for complying with a relatively inconsequential law, you are better off never touching a computer again. The Linux community has collectively gone so far beyond what is acceptable here.
I’m going to bullet my thoughts on this whole thing because I’m annoyed by the general response, and the implementation as well:
- I don’t wish harm on the dev and I don’t dislike them. I don’t even know them
- Death threats are ridiculous; that’s the working class attacking itself again
- That said, I want to know what compelled this dev to preemptively implement this field not in 1 but in 2 separate PRs
- Both the field and the law itself do not serve the user at all; it’s a bullshit vague law that is using children as cover—again (I’m old enough to know how this game works)
- I’ve always viewed Linux as the rebel among all of the corporate slop we have to constantly dodge, so it is super gross when I see changes in Linux that were made to appease laws built and pushed by fascist tech companies and governments
- Did the dev even open a line of discussion anywhere, or was the PR supposed to be used for that?
- What’s his motivation? Money? Fame? I’ve been a programmer for 20 years and I’d never jump on a chance to add something that aligns with laws I think are unethical dog shit—especially in the Linux space where the whole goal is to not be Windows
- I’m a bit frustrated with the casual “what’s the big deal?” mindset that a lot of people I’ve encountered have about this. Are we not living through the same timeline where the US has fallen under the control of a fascist regime that is being eagerly assisted by Meta, Apple, Microsoft and a ton of other massive corporations? How do people not see that this is the beginning of the wedge? And let’s say it peters out and nothing else happens. I’m not going to be ashamed of the fact that I was a squeaky wheel over it because I’ve seen how these things go. You follow the money and suddenly the bigger picture comes into focus. Why on earth a meager single little dev would implement this, unprompted, is just beyond my reasoning.
This reminds me of when Guillermo Rauch from Vercel praised Trump multiple times. Bro, you’re not Tim Cook. You’re not Ellison, Zuck, or Musk. You’re not even on their level. You’re not going to get on their radar. I have PTSD from fellow tech folks being weirdly aligned with fascism and this whole dumb thing is giving me that vibe again. I don’t think this is that 1:1, but this is like the metal scene. You have to dodge the fascists that seem to weirdly permeate corners of the culture. People that refuse and get annoyed by right-wing labels, but still help right-wing grifters, are their own unique brand of pathetic.
I'll be upset when a cloud-connected Linux component prevents the system from working unless the real name and birth date fields have been verified
until then, this is just as inert as the real name field which has been there for decades, and far less useful for surveillance than the real name field which has been there for decades
Except this field has been implemented explicitly for this age verification laws. If this was for some random birthday greeting when you open terminal, i think fewer people would be up in arms. context is everything.
if this moron implements compliance with laws that record a birthday today, what is stopping him adding 3rd party verification of id tomorrow? So far his track record is corporate bootlicker. You cannot trust projects where this guy is a contributer to
it would be very interesting to see that attempt
but Poettering has already said that functionality doesn't belong in systemd so I'm not sure where anyone would raise such a PR
seems like an Ubuntu/RedHat level distribution design to pull in a brand new age-verification / mass-surveillance component, or maybe modify an existing telemetry component
the birth date field only made it into systemd because it's user metadata that is consistent with what is already stored there, whereas surveillance does not
for now, at least
again, I'd be very interested to see what happens with follow-up PRs
Poettering closed the pr that was reverting this age field. What happens is adding more and more control in the future to conform to whatever idiotic laws someone might make. Should we then also implement a filter for what you type online to conform with Russian law about calling their war "SVO"? Its their law after all, so why not make the rest of the world conform? Its already years older then this age verification?
rejecting the revert is completely separate from accepting additional age-check / mass-surveillance PRs, you know this and you are being willfully ignorant
I would be very upset and very surprised if hypothetical follow-up PRs were merged into systemd, and I'm betting they will be rejected
How is it different? The ready acceptance of additional fields specifically for age verification is clearly proof enough that any further bullshit will be accepted just as quickly. PR description clearly outlines it is for the sole purpose of age verification...
What happens is adding more and more control in the future to conform to whatever idiotic laws someone might make.
Slippery slope
Should we then also implement a filter
Also?
There is no filter here so the comparison isn't valid.
If we're just playing hypotheticals, turn the situation around. What if some Russian state program was required to run on every machine and if it detected people not in compliance with the law it updated their location field to say 'jail'. Should we then remove the location field?
According to the guy doing birth date pr, we should pre-emptively comply, so yeah... how about enforcing bans on promotion of LGBT propaganda that has been law in Russia since 2013? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_rights_in_Russia#National_laws
The law subjects Russian citizens found guilty to fines of up to 5,000 roubles and public officials to fines of up to 50,000 roubles.[citation needed] Organisations or businesses will be fined up to 1 million rubles and be forced to cease operations for up to 90 days. Foreigners may be arrested and detained for up to 15 days then deported, as well as fined up to 100,000 rubles. Russian citizens who have used the Internet or media to promote "non-traditional relations" will be fined up to 100,000 rubles.
Oh I know, lets introduce a field that stores an array of your nationalities, so any app developer can request your nationalities and adequately fine you for spreading illegal content online if you are Russian citizen. After all you can do that using a linux machine, so we gotta identify this now too. And the law also applies to foreigners. This law has been in place far longer than California or BR one. Who gets to pick and mix which laws apply and which don't? But wait its okay its just an optional array, you don't have to use it...
Do you now see how insanely dumb this is? I am neither in Russia or USA, why should I have to put up with a censoring mechanism?
Oh I know, lets introduce a field that stores an array of your nationalities, so any app developer can request your nationalities and adequately fine you for spreading illegal content online if you are Russian citizen.
In this hypothetical situation, why are you choosing to install software that does this? This software could just as easily store the data in a flat text file in your .config directory, it doesn't need systemd in order to exist. Systemd choosing to not add those fields would not prevent the software from existing.
In any hypothetical situation where you're forced to use some hypothetical privacy invading software, that software would still be able to do everything exactly the same even if it has to store your information outside of systemd.
Not having a field in systemd doesn't mean that the data can't be stored, it just means that the data has to be stored in a text file instead.
Systemd also has fields to store your realName and location. That same hypothetical situation applies to that data too. Your REAL NAME gives much more information about you than your birthDate and the location field is big enough to store your exact GPS coordinates. Like birthDate, these fields are not a problem (they've existed since the 60s) if you don't install software that uses them.
If you don't want software that tracks your location, don't install software that tracks your location. If you don't want software that requires your real name, then don't install software that requires your real name.
If you don't want software that requires your birthDate for age verification, then don't install software that requires your birthDate for age verification.
In this hypothetical situation, why are you choosing to install software that does this?
Its not a hypothetical situation, it is happening, although right now to mobile phones and tablets if we stick with Russia example. Il let you envision what direction this is going to. But hey its a law. There are linux tablets out there, should maybe they add this pre-installed app?
By the way that law is there since 2025. Its pretty obvious that we should pre-emptively comply?
If you don’t want software that tracks your location, don’t install software that tracks your location. If you don’t want software that requires your real name, then don’t install software that requires your real name.
That is my plan when we know the position of other distributions, I will be moving to one that does not use systemd. My argument with this is that the reasons for this change are clearly to comply with local laws that don't affect majority of the system users. There is no need in this change to be global. It should not exist.
Its not a hypothetical situation, it is happening, although right now to mobile phones and tablets if we stick with Russia example. Il let you envision what direction this is going to. But hey its a law. There are linux tablets out there, should maybe they add this pre-installed app?
You haven't shown how this would be prevented if systemd didn't store birthDate.
You, and I, are no more affected by this field than we have been affected by the realName or location fields which have existed for decades. The field doesn't do anything unless you choose to run software that uses it.
If you're going to swap init systems because of this change then you understand my point about choice. If you think this field is bad, you can choose to not install systemd. If you use systemd and think the field is bad you can choose to not install software that uses the field.
I think the age verification laws are pointless and damaging, but systemd isn't the battleground to fight that battle and, most importantly, people who are engaged in a harassment campaign against this developer are completely in the wrong.
what is stopping him
The pull request approval process? It's quite easy to recognize that one change is harmless and another is not. The slope is not THAT slippery.
I completely understand objecting to the systemd change, I also object, but acting like the fascists have already won is a bit crazy.
No, let's wait till we're at the bottom of the slope. Then start objecting.
As I said, I also object, but you have to realize you're literally just doing the slippery slope meme unironically. The part that makes it a fallacy is the unjustified assertion that more egregious changes are the inevitable result of the first one, except the first one is materially harmless and in line with existing PII fields in userdb. It's completely reasonable to expect systemd to go no further than it already has.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
It is slippery, I have described the process UK is taken here https://piefed.social/comment/10693725
Age verification laws: slippery slope. Sure. I agree.
Adding optional age field to systemd userdb: not slippery. Systemd isn't being weaponized as an age verification suite. It's just not happening.
Whats wrong with Age verification? its fine to verify age, the problem with the age verification laws is the issue of how age is being verified. In this case its fine because its local first and privacy respecting.
Age verification requires doxxing yourself in order to actually work, and if it doesn't require doxxing yourself then it won't work and it can be bypassed, so pointless capitulation granting ease into more authoritarian forms in the future. You don't see why any actually functional age verification is a problem while fascists are trying to control all the digital architecture?
No it doesnt. If I ask are you 18 and you reply no/yes that is verifying your age without doxing you. This field is for when the user is NOT admin on the machine. This field would be filled out by the parent when they're setting up their kids machine.
What is the point of a field like this if you can literally put anything in it you want? Your not verifying anything. The next logical step is to add proof.
If you're a user that requires age verification (IE a child) then you cant just add it. Your parent will be the root user controlling your account.
What is the point of a field like this if you can literally put anything in it you want? Your not verifying anything. The next logical step is to add proof.
That isn't the next logical step for systemd, which is what this post is about.
The reason systemd stores this information is that systemd stores user information and this is user information.
If some future application comes along that wants to require age verification and use that field to store the data, then you can simply choose to not install it. Problem solved.
Removing birthDate doesn't stop these programs from existing. If there isn't a birthDate field then they can simply decide that they're going to store the birthdate in the user's 'location' field instead and it would work perfectly fine. Are you going to remove the location field too? All of the text fields?
Adding a specific birthDate field is simply recognizing that this software exists (which, it does) and that systemd is the logical place to store user metadata (which it is).
If you don't like the software that will do age verification then don't install that software.
Like I said, any actually FUNCTIONAL age verification. Your example verifies absolutely nothing.
How does that verify nothing? It provides perfectly fine age verification.
Its not suitable for proving your age. Its adding a field which is a stepping stone to future gating and more control over something that isn't even applicable to most of the users of the system.
Why not then add a live filter to ensure that you don't call Putler's war in Ukraine and call it "SVO" as you are supposed to? Its the law over there and many years older than this one. People already have gone to prison for not complying with it. But hey lets make that a part of linux too. Its law after all... Do you see how stupid it is to blindly comply to something that doesn't even apply to you?
How is it not suitable? If I setup my kids age and an app wants to use the portal to check if he is over 18 and it returns no. That suitable age verification and its privacy respecting. Which is what is being suggested.
There are already parental control packages exist in the Linux infrastructure which are not tied to low level modules such as systemd https://github.com/biglinux/big-parental-controlsif you want, you can install it. Its fork is available in the Arch ecosystem for example that mentions it complies with the BR implementation (https://github.com/jersobh/arch-parental-controls)
- This is entirely optional package that claims to be privacy orientated (I haven't tried it) that a system administrator can install if they wish.
- My router, an Asus one has parental controls settings already
- My ISP router, bog standard one has parental controls settings already
- My ISP account has parental controls settings already at account level, if Ia m not technical enough, I can call them and ask them to set it up
- My phone provider has parental controls
Why do I need MORE parental controls shoved down my throat when I do not desire it nor wish for it? But this time in a core component of alot of linux distributions.
Oh and before you tell me "but ExoticCherryPigeon, its an optional field", sure, but here is the example of the slippery slope curtsey of UK:
Take a look at the history of this act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_age_verification_in_the_United_Kingdom
We are now at the point where I need to use a CC to tell some 3rd party that I want a wank.
And what else is happening now? They are suing websites not based in UK! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023#Enforcement,but that's not all, although not at the law stage, there are some talks about also now restricting VPN's https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/uk-government-says-it-may-age-restrict-or-limit-childrens-vpn-use-following-new-consultation.
A lot of websites also not based in UK jurisdiction have simply self censored UK users before they get ISP level blocked.
If this is not an example of a slippery slope, I don't know what is!
TL;DR tools already exist, we do not need more tools that will be a privacy nightmare
Why do I need MORE parental controls shoved down my throat when I do not desire it nor wish for it? But this time in a core component of alot of linux distributions.
You don't and you don't have any parental controls being shoved down your throat, you have a JSON field that you can choose to enter data in or not. It does not control anything, it is not validated by anything (outside of compliance with ISO 8601) and it is not required to be set to anything.
Who controls what is installed on your system? If it is you, then you can save yourself from parental control software by not installing parental control software.
So when application developer such as Discord (an example) builds on top of these age controls and decides to not allow access to channels which are marked 13+?
What do you expect will happen?
I expect that they will store your birthDate in their own way and not use systemd as they are not a Linux native application.
You get to choose if you install Discord and you get to choose if you are going to submit to their age verification.
This is true if the birthDate field exists in systemd or not.
They DO have a linux native client though, and the whole idea of using systemd according to the PR author IS because application developers can then request this information from user profile
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954
The xdg-desktop-portal project is adding an age verification portal
(flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal#1922) that needs a data source for the user's age.
userdb already stores personal metadata (emailAddress, realName, location)
so birthDate is a natural fit.
Discord does not use Linux user metadata to store information about your Discord account. Because the application is cross platform, they store information about you in their own systems, not in systemd. Their age verification is implemented completely independent of systemd and doesn't rely on the birthDate field.
It's also software that you can choose to not install.
I dont care about some slopcoded week old project. This is not a serious alternative.
What else could the point of these fields be?
Don't be logical. You're supposed to cry fascist and hurl slippery-slope fallacies like this is the Reichstag Fire.
This guy social medias
What’s his motivation? Money? Fame?
Why does anybody submit changes to any project? Probably a wide variety of reasons.
I’ve been a programmer for 20 years and I’d never jump on a chance to add something that aligns with laws I think are unethical dog shit—especially in the Linux space where the whole goal is to not be Windows
I hope that you can see that there are people who see this addition as being not a big deal: optional field, no verification, GECOS fields already storing 'realName', 'location', etc.
It doesn't seem like a huge stretch to understand why a person would submit a simple update when they don't think it's of world changing significance.
I’m a bit frustrated with the casual “what’s the big deal?” mindset that a lot of people I’ve encountered have about this.
I'm one of those people so maybe I can help.
Are we not living through the same timeline where the US has fallen under the control of a fascist regime that is being eagerly assisted by Meta, Apple, Microsoft and a ton of other massive corporations?
Yes, we are. That's why I don't use their software or services. The major, and most important, reason why this isn't a big deal to me is that Apple, Meta and Microsoft don't choose the software that is part of my system. We're not in commercial software land, this is the FOSS world. Here, I get to choose what happens on my system because I am the one in completely control.
If a project decides that I have to submit to age verification then I simply won't use their project, it's just that simple. But, that is not what is happening here. There is no verification of any sort, nor is the operation of systemd affected by this field in ANY way.
I don't buy the slippery slope argument that's being presented around this topic which makes the change seem like the beginning of fascisim or the end of privacy or whatever other hyperbolic situations that people are breathlessly inventing to justify their outrage.
We already have fields to store personal data and those fields are optional and rarely used. They exist because they are needed in some cases and in the cases where they are not needed they do not do anything. The birthDate field is exactly the same as the realName field in that sense. It only does something if you choose to install software that uses it.
This field will NEVER affect you unless you choose to install software on your system that requires it.
What's happening here is that people are treating this single JSON field as a stand-in for age verification. It is not. If someone wants to meaningfully fight age verification laws then they need to involve themselves in politics instead of social media brigading and harassment campaigns against developers.
In my view, this 'situation' exists because it allows hoards of people to appear to be 'doing something' without actually doing anything. It's low effort activisim. People find it much easier to write self-righteous and hyperbolic comments and to get into internet fights than to do the hard work required to affect the politicians and laws that are passed.
On top of this we have the signal boosting effect of trend following, clickbait-driven sites and content creators looking to boost ad revenue by playing up outrage and drama.
I disagree with these laws, but this is not the hill where the battle is being fought. It is a pointless distraction and one that is being used to actively target a person for harm.
Nothing is going to happen on your system unless you choose to let it happen. No software update by any project will ever change this.
The only thing that will change it, and the thing that people should focus on, are the laws in the places where they live.
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.
I ve got a feeling he wont change his mind. This kind of people are just too optimistic
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Death threats are understamdable cause his move makes damage to huge amount of people. It is like a terrorism
Are we not living through the same timeline where the US has fallen under the control of a fascist regime that is being eagerly assisted by Meta, Apple, Microsoft and a ton of other massive corporations?
Because the real fight is not on the internet or computers.
It's one battlefront of many, and a fairly significant one. As we've become on online society, computer software has come to encode human rights to expression and privacy. Those rights are worth fighting for.
What I’ve learned is that it’s basically impossible to convince people that the only real way to solve this is violent revolution.
Given your lack of history of violent revolution (I'm assuming), I'd guess it's because you look like a hypocrite for sitting behind a keyboard and telling others to do something you're not willing to do yourself.
I’ve already spent years of my life in activism (the actual kind where you do work and try to build community, inevitably get added to watch lists, etc) trying to motivate others. I’ve helped with Food Not Bombs, etc. I’ve done a decent amount of “walk the walk” but I’ve also got a life to live. The US is deep into a propaganda hole that I’m afraid is gonna take a long time to climb out of and people have goldfish brains. I don’t really care how I come off to folks on the internet.
Well, you come off like you're promoting violence.
Not promoting it. I’m just not shoving my head in the sand about what needs to be done to remove a regime that only seems to speak in violence. The same exact shit we faced with the Nazis. You can’t vote away fascism.
The real fight is on multiple fronts.
People protesting (legally and peacefully) have been targeted based on social media accounts. This is closing the gap to allow similar fascist behavior on an even more personal level.
People protesting (legally and peacefully) have been targeted based on social media accounts.
Yes, this is bad. People should not be targeted because of what they wrote.
This is closing the gap to allow similar fascist behavior on an even more personal level.
On a personal level.
Yeah, that would be bad. Kind of like a targeted harassment campaign of a person because of what they wrote.
It's one thing to be against age verification or software that does age verification or platforms that require age verification. That isn't what is happening here.
That fight is political, this is an engineering problem.
You could argue that this enables age verification, it doesn't. Age verification software can exist without this field, it could store your birthdate in .config/EvilAgeVerificationApp/userinfo.txt.
The field is an optional entry, systemd doesn't require it or verify it. It is simply the most logical place, from an engineering perspective, to store the data.
But it probably realistically has to be organized on it, since that is the global communication network..
On a completely unrelated, off-topic note. Here is the same person talking about Google's new "advanced workflow" for "sideloading apps" on Android.
The title of his blog post is "Google's New Android Sideloading Flow Is a Fair Trade"...Figures.
You mention the title but not the content of the essay. Did you read it?
Edit: At first glance, the article seemed actually well-meant. Didn't have the context of how bootlickery it was.
TL;DR is that he says his initial reaction was "frustration" but then he goes on to parrot everything Google said to justify this.
For example,
57% of adults worldwide experienced a scam in 2025
It is to protect people from scammers. It isn't aimed at power users (Sounds very much like "It is to protect the children. This isn't aimed at power users").
There is no mention of https://keepandroidopen.org/and what it means for developers of free and open android applications.
There is no mention of statements made by developers of applications like F-droid, Obtainium and Newpipe who have openly said that they do not agree with this step from Google.
There is no mention of how this can potentially demotivate individual android app developers and drive them away from the platform entirely (here is an example of this).
There is also no mention of how most of these malware, adware and nagware infested apps used by scammers are ironically on Google's own Play Store.
Other that that, no. I'm sure I did not read the content of his essay carefully enough. More importantly, my opinion doesn't matter. I'm just a reactionary idiot. But I wonder what the developers of those free and open source applications on F-droid, applications that cannot be installed via the Play Store (but their scammy fake versions can be), will react to this being called a "fair trade".
57% of adults worldwide experienced a scam in 2025
Sure. I experienced a scam and I told them to "fuck off".
That's not 57% fell for a scam, or 57% of android users got scammed by "side loaded" software. It's cherry picking a stat just justify a monopolistic practice.
Wow. Thanks for clearing that up. That was the first time I heard about the "advanced flow" and the criticism surrounding it.
Sure seems like a useful idiot at best.
Typical it doesn't effect me so why are they doing it. You said your selff 57% is a huge number. And they hopefully can reduce that. People on here secerly underestimate the average person let alone the half of the people who are below average.
Why so many fucking bootlickers??????????
There is so many in the world it is actually crazy
You would think FOSS overall would be inherently leftist but apparently not lmfao
I don't think enough people realize that this is catastrophically bad. It'll discourage people from becoming open source developers, it'll discourage people from using Linux, and it'll discourage legislators from taking the Linux community seriously.
Sure, but personally, I don't want a linux community that's driven by corporate needs and governments that have been paid off by them. I don't view it as a catastrophe, if that's the version of "the linux community" that we lose.
None of that is to say that harassing devs is correct. It's not, and never is. Harassing anyone with death threats and dogpiling is not on. But if we take that out of the picture, negative pushback that drives away devs that would otherwise have helped implement universal age gating isn't something I'm terribly upset over, because I don't want the version of community they're taking us towards
this version IS the community and they're not taking us anywhere where we weren't already going.
linux is a much a product of our society as are other things like pop culture and capitalism. corporations of all sizes and reaches (ie red hat, ibm, google, facebook, etc.) have always steered the path and decided upon the development trends that linux has always taken and the only people who could have prevented or mitigated further centralized enshitification (aka the linux kernel developers group) bent over backwards to comply with the american government's overreach when they kicked out russian developers.
age verification is just the next step into this overreach and it too is being driving from the same corporate/government source that forced us all to accepting things like systemd or libvirt/kvm (facebook for the former and red hat for the latter) to service their profit motives.
like american politics, it's still possible to reverse the trend; but also like american politics; it requires a greater deal of collectivist action that westerners are unwilling to risk out of fear of losing their own tiny piece of the pie.
[the linux kernel developers group] bent over backwards to comply with the american government’s overreach when they kicked out russian developers.
I though that was mostly due to Linus being a typical Russia-hating Finn, but I never investigated.
i also wouldn't put this past him given the reactionary tendencies he's demonstrated in the past; but i suspect that a threat of non-compliance == treason from the federal government probably had a bigger impact.
and if you've ever had the displeasure of working for the federal government; you'll hear horror stories of how capricious and draconian the selective enforcement of treason can be.
a typical Russia-hating Finn
Russia seems to have that effect on their neighbours (until those neighbours get invaded, annexed, and the population dispersed, so the area can be called Russia. See Karelia and Ukraine for some recent and ongoing examples). So sure, could be that.
He sure was a big ol' dick about it I will admit. Saying anyone who disagreed was a bot or Russian troll really pissed me off at the time.
Its supposed to be open.
Yeah I'm not going to give this guy his desired victim role. He put a lot of effort into make privacy invading pull requests. Death threats and doxxing is too far but he deserves some insults.
No he doesn't. We need to focus our anger on the legislators/ lobbiers (Meta in this case).
You know it’s possible to do both, right?
Adding birthday fields is not privacy invading in itself.
Yes, of course. If you ignore current reality, then it's not privacy invading...
No, it literally just can't violate your privacy in any way. You have complete control over what, if anything, is placed in that field. No information about you can be gained or disclosed by virtue of the systemd change alone. You can think it's a bad change because it signals intent to follow a trend of supporting privacy-invading age verification, but you can't say this specific change in itself is privacy-invading.
You'd have complete control for now.
Don't give them an inch.
Systemd is free software. The four essential freedoms necessitate that you have complete control forever.
The only way that you could lose control is if your hardware manufacturer took away the ability for you to install your own operating system. But then the choice isn't going to be Windows or a Linux flavour personally blessed and tivoised by Lennart, it's going to be Windows or a brick.
I don't support the change. That's not my point. My point is that if we're going to argue the dev being threatened isn't a victim because he's actively harming privacy, we should be aware that the changes he proposed are not actually harming privacy at all.
What the hell else is it used for?
It's mostly not going to be used at all.
Then why is it necessary?
Adding a birthday field is not privacy invading in itself the same way brandishing a knife is not assault in itself.
Context matters. I've held knives before and it was completely inocuous. I've used knives to chop vegetables, to spread butter, to carve something out of wood, etc. If I pulled out a knife while in a heated argument with someone that'd be a whole other story, and I don't think "I was just holding the knife, is it illegal to hold knives now?" would exonerate me from accusations of intent or threat to assault someone.
In any other context adding a date of birth field would be inocuous. You're not required to use it after all. But in this context as I understand it, it is explicitly infrastructure for age verification, even if it is not age verification in itself.
If you have to fill them in, it is.
If you have to fill them in, it is.
If you don't have to fill them in, it isn't.
You don't have to fill them in, therefore it isn't. QED
You don't, and you don't have to fill them in with accurate information, so it isn't.
You don't, until you do.
If you have to fill them in, it is.
Thanks for letting us know you've done zero research. You don't have to fill it in just the same as you don't have to fill in the RealName and Email field.
Thanks for letting us know you're an ass.
It's not a software issue that requires research. It's a philosophical question of requiring something purely for authoritarian reasons and this is step one.
Well, It depends on where.
Unfortunately appeasement upwards has been taken advantage of over and over.
It’s logical to take a stance of ok what can we do to head off the bigger problem. But the truth is, over authoritative governments and tech businesses will overstep that rational offering. So appeasement needs to stop, and recognising this as the line is already occurring.
I am not gonna wish harm on the guy, but I really don't have a lot of sympathy for a techbro simp.
Yeah preemptive bootlicking before even getting sued is not a characteristic i love to see in a dev that works on one of the most important pieces of linux software.
When the Ai companys acted after this maxime, ignore laws until getting sued, there was a huge outrage but here everyone wants the same from open source companies and developers.
It seems that double Standards are fine after all.
actions done collectively by SystemD
Nope. It only needs one maintainer to do the PR
It'll discourage people from becoming open source developers
You know what will discourage Them more? Id verification
relatively inconsequential law
Give me your Id. Seriously, go and give me your ID with nothing blurred.
Give me your Id. Seriously, go and give me your ID with nothing blurred.
My age is 26.
That's not what they asked
I also want to see your passport and your original birth certificate
That’s not what they asked
Wrong. That is all that is asked in the Californian legislation.
That’s not what they asked
Yes, I know. I answered the question that reasonably follows from the context. Not their loaded question that assumes something which was not in the pull request.
I know a lot of people like to use the slippery slope fallacy here but even if that applies, you should limit your resistance to points where you actually have a leg to stand on. It's not like the government would find it much harder to jump straight to age verification without this age indication step. Going all-in now just does all manner of a disservice to the cause of digital privacy.
We'll deal with that when it happens. Not fighting against an imagined threat by using the slippery slope fallacy.
Start by fighting the New York one.
You are right that it was a loaded question, and you had a smart answer, but the implication of this "inconsequential" change represented by the current birthdate is of course more invasive identification later.
Otherwise why would they bother, because as it is now it is useless or inconsequential.
Otherwise why would they bother, because as it is now it is useless or inconsequential.
The leading theory is that this is to help companies in California comply with the child online privacy laws.
Ah, another smart answer.
They don't want to be correct, they want to be outraged.
This is the same Reddit-brained nonsense that ruined those communities.
I would like to live in a world that does not inspire outrage
Don't collaborate with fascists.
systemd maintainers rolling over and complying in advance somehow isn't even that surprising.
I don't get the "complying in advance" argument here. What would be an appropriate date for something like this to be accepted?
Well, the law doesn't come into effect until Jan 1st 2027, so you could delay until then at the latest. Or you wait a bit longer to see what the enforcement looks like and make the companies/politicians at least sweat a bit from any potential fallout. With GDPR some companies took a long time of dragging their feet to become compliant (partially because initial enforcement was lenient to give them time).
Right. I thin you are ignoring some complexity here. This developer added a field to store some optional data in systemd. That code needs to be tested, reviewed, debated, and eventually needs to be merged in. Those merges, at least with large projects, don't typically get added directly to main they get added to a release branch. That release branch then needs to be completed and merged where it will then be packaged. Then different distributions/installers need to add that field as a requirement to their code which typically goes through the same process. Then all those changes need to be packaged for release by the distros themselves.
So I'll ask again. Assuming that distros do not want to risk being fined and financially ruined. What is a appropriate time before January 1st 2027 to open this pull request in systemd?
This would also assume that we would like to propose a solution (for the data storage) early enough that distros do not all come up with their own implementations and leave PII strewn across the system.
Never. Let shit hit the fan if it has to. Fight back instead of swallowing the whole boot.
Legitimately the way various porn sites addressed similar laws is the way to go. Verification required in this state? "Well we're no longer serving this state's traffic at all, and conveniently here's the contact info of the government officials to blame, enjoy!"
Hi. Are you a maintainer of one of the distros that might be affected by this law? If you aren't then you have no standing to blindly tell them that they should not follow the law and risk fines that would ruin the funding for their project(s).
Bringing up porn sites is a false equivalency. Many of these laws do not require verification of ID or face scans as some are incorrectly claiming. They require a birthdate be entered during installation. The laws surrounding porn sites required 3rd party age verification which many of these sites said would not only crater their traffic from these states but also introduce a privacy nightmare which would also work against their business interests.
I imagine it feels quite righteous to drop maxims like this. I too am reminded everyday how glad I am not to have to live in a fascist state.
That said I think this sort of superficial dismissal is really unhelpful.
I think the vast majority of Linux users will agree we don't want to have to work with these laws but the reality is that we do. Far better we focus our efforts on minimising harm and promoting alternative mechanisms (e.g. zero-knowledge proofs).
Further I fear this righteousness actually serves to foster a toxic culture in the free software movement. And do you know what we call belligerent people who want to stifle dissent? Fascists!
He didn’t comply, he collaborated. It won’t deter anyone but pro fascist programmers from developing for Linux. Your defence of the indefensible says a lot about you, too.
Counterpoint: fuck this guy for complying with the technofascists in advance like the bootlicker he is.
We're demanding that the government we pay for respect basic human needs. Privacy is not a luxury. It's a need. They went to far with this shit so they can take the next mile. Fuck them all and fuck California's lawmakers for doing it. We should be sending them letters of discontent too.
Lawmakers and politicians in the US ruin everything more and more everyday.
complying with a relatively inconsequential law
This downplays the impact to privacy these laws can have but sure, personal harassment is bad.
Relatively inconsequential law? Relative to what?
It may be inconsequential in a literal sense if the law isn't enforced meaningfully, which is probably pretty likely. I don't really care what California law says and I doubt they'll try to convince me.
The law says an OS needs to have a way of entering a birth date.
Not the correct birth date, it doesn't need to allow checking it. Just any date.
That's inconsequential relative to basically everything else.
The law says an OS needs to have a way of entering a birth date. Not the correct birth date, it doesn’t need to allow checking it. Just any date.
Two problems:
- For how long the check will not be needed
and - what about every place outside California ?
Death threats.
Also, basically anything the Trump administration has done.
Tying everything on the internet to a government ID is the end goal here. That is what all the age verification laws are enabling, intentionally or not.
In a land of ICE forcefully deporting people and people losing their lives in foreign prisons or just for resisting a little, do you not think privacy is more important now than ever?
This man took a step on the road of removing all of our privacy, and the community shouted "WTF DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!?!".
The path to privacy is to log off.
That's quitter talk
Who the fuck upvoted this shit?
Death threats are far beyond unacceptable, but it's naive to think this policy is without consequence. It can take as few as 3 non-personal pieces of information (examples of personal: name, phone number, street address, SSN) to uniquely identify someone. Say the kind of car you drive, your employer, and your hair color. Together those are form a strong identifier, but now add age BY DEFAULT. Even a weak set becomes unique.
That is incredibly consequential. You could be implicated in a crime you didn't commit, protesting becomes impossible, and everything you do or say will ALWAYS follow you. The balance between citizen and government becomes irrevesibly skewed. Just because your computer will volunteer your age.
This issue should be the issue we care about the most.
first off, please announce that the video is from that brody clown so people can not click on that slop; needless to say, I ain't watched it so I don't know or care what points was made in it.
second, what OP is doing in OP and his bonehead comments is purposefully pushing a strawman argument, false dichotomy, red herring, and all the other logical fallacies in order to posture as a hero or whatever they got going on between their ears - if you're anti this bullshit "law" then you are also pro physically harming poor FOSS "contributors".
this fucking "contribution" shoulda been shot down like any other troll/bullshit plaguing every other FOSS project beset with ai bots and carma-farming typo-fixers and the like, and if by some mistake their "contribution" was accepted, here's a chance to reverse it.
cali ain't the world, which by and large ain't got no such idiocy on the books. and if it did, I wouldn't bootlick my way to submitting a patch to incorporate it; I would, in fact, oppose it any way I could.
that clown of a "contributor" has a history of simping for the backwardest ideas, antithetical to FOSS and I don't care one bit what he has to say on any one topic.
Needless to say, I ain’t watched it so I don’t know or care what points was made in it.
cali ain’t the world, which by and large ain’t got no such idiocy on the books. and if it did, I wouldn’t bootlick my way to submitting a patch to incorporate it; I would, in fact, oppose it any way I could. that clown of a “contributor” has a history of simping for the backwardest ideas, antithetical to FOSS and I don’t care one bit what he has to say on any one topic.
If you refuse to listen to the experience of the person the Linux community has been harassing, then don't comment.
what OP is doing in OP and his bonehead comments is purposefully pushing ... and all the other logical fallacies ... if you’re anti this bullshit “law” then you are also pro physically harming poor FOSS “contributors”.
Many Lemmy users have explicitly called for violence against Dylan Taylor, and many more have brought forwards implied calls to violence. The Lemmy community is broadly 50:50 on their support for said calls for the violence.
I'm commenting on your shitty takes. second, if you've spent decades (that's plural yo) on this planet, then you're familiar with the concept of a hyperbole. a hyperbole is a purposefully exaggerated statement in order to draw attention to the importance of an issue. e.g. I could eat a horse - no you couldn't, you're just mildly inconvenienced with what you think is hunger.
consequently, there's a distinction to be made between actual calls to violence (of which I haven't seen any on this platform) and vividly voicing disgust and anger.
Excellent. Just having his face out there will discourage him for good, once he gets the backlash.
There is a special guillotine for this wannabe parasite.
A mistake without regret must be punished. They are not kids acting silly. I don’t feel comfortable with a foot on my neck, even when that foot isn’t pressing very hard.
What you are really asking is how far will people go to defend freedom? Look at history, my friend.
He didn’t have to do this. If he wants to do his part to make everyone else’s life worse, then he will have to face the consequences for it.
Nah useful idiots like this deserve the shit they’ll get.
Some more for the "I haven't seen any calls to violence" crowd.
he should have chilled the fuck out over deepthroating boots as soon as he saw them. Fuck around , find out.
What I’ve learned is that it’s basically impossible to convince people that the only real way to solve this is violent revolution.
I’m glad to hear he’s getting his shit fucked, maybe he’ll roll back the commit.
EDIT : This fucker is lucky with the amount of hate he’s getting, there’s plenty of people who hate his guts over what he did, and didn’t personally reach out to yell some sense into him
I guess he should try his hardest to get his bootlicking commit rolled back
The Lemmy community is broadly 50:50 on their support for said calls for the violence.
-
There's astroturfing. Careful with judging community vibes by obviously votes but also comments.
-
There is more to "The Lemmy community" than what's on display on .ml.
When you discover the reason for his bootlicking you will be ashamed of your words and deeds.
I'm out of the loop; what's his reason?
Something about complying with new laws in California and North Korea I think.
Something? You think? You were talking like you knew
I think he needed an /s at the end if the original comment.
The DPRK has nothing to do with this.
Are you suggesting that Linux doesn’t attempt to comply to local laws?
That’s a serious question, by the way, not trying to ragebait you.
So they added a date of birth field. Not technically doing anything wrong but a concerning direction morally. If it wasn't for the fash / authoritarian bullshit in the world that field wouldn't be a problem.
However, the question is how should the Linux community respond. Rather than grabbing pitch forks we should do what the Linux community does best. Support the alternatives, be it a fork or a replacement stack.
I'm watching for what lands and becomes popular. It seems inevitable that Devs in countries that aren't forcing ID checks will build what we need. I hope to see either a fork of systemd free from redhat influence (always suspicious of large corps), or a true set of alternatives that can realistically replace the systemd stack.
The community will drive the change. Put down your pitch forks, pick up your keyboard yourself, or just support the good Devs instead.
I expect someone will just make a systemd patcher package that removes the field and provides clean error handling for anything that tries to use it.
You're not going to get something complying with Californian law out of Brazil (for example), so you're talking about diverging. California can have it's own version. Sadly that pushes burden onto maintainers that may not be interested in dealing with the pain.
The engineering mindset is to have it support both use models, but that is explicitly what people don't want. Hidden features which enable authorities to enforce toxic concepts.
The engineering mindset is to have it support both use models, but that is explicitly what people don’t want. Hidden features which enable authorities to enforce toxic concepts.
What toxic concepts can authorities enforce with your birthDate that they could not already enforce with your realName?
This is a question that nobody has an answer to.
The entire premise of this argument is that adding birthDate allows for some new kind of oppression not previously possible and so it should be fought or else someone will use it in a bad way.
Except, if that were true, these hypothetical evil forces could already have access to your REALNAME and LOCATION. Both of which are fields that have existed since the 60s.
That hasn't happened, those fields, like birthDate were added to allow support for some use cases and outside of those uses cases (which, you have to choose to implement because you are in complete control over your system in the FOSS world) the fields are completely optional and not used.
I don't care if that optional field exists in the config. Implement age verification if you want, just don't make it mandatory. My working laptop with Ubuntu has fingerprint verification, which I can disable. I didn't even know about this functionality before. If this stays in systemd like this, then whatever
Enabling fascists hardly makes him a victim
Nor does it prevent him from being one
Yeah the fact that this "guy" wouldn't be on video or audio even with the guy interviewing him and only did DMs furthers my suspicion that this dude is straight up a bot or a group of people working for a company.
Seriously, has anyone ever seen or heard this person? He has a blog and stuff where he parrots Google talking points and the like.
Weird doing an interview all by DMs honestly.
People normally don't want to record video of themselves while actively being lynched. The ones that do are the exception, not the norm. Hell, most people don't even want to do that as part of a job application.
And in the first place, there's no reason to suspect this is a bot. There's nothing abnormal about any of this, with laws mandating age indication and someone suggesting adding an age field alongside the user's full name and email address to the user.json.
Yeah both are good points actually you're probably right
Plenty of distros out there that don't use systemd
If they don't have an age signal they won't be able to access social media or Youtube.
They won't be deciding to just do without California.
I just started using Linux Mint 22. Does that use systemd?
Yes
I wished worse things for Epstein class members.
I can agree with that this insignificant pawn should be left alone, lobbyists from Meta though....
I don't think enough developers realize that the majority of users does not want this. They're acting exactly like the legislators: "we don't give a shit about what the people think".
The legislators won't take the Linux community seriously, because the developers aren't taking the community seriously either.
The majority of users do not care, and even if they did it's still not the user's place to demand the FOSS developers listen to them. That aside, this is an issue of personal attacks and harassment directed at an individual developer, the project is another matter.
Harassment of an individual developer, or anyone really, is grossly immoral, counterproductive, and reflects poorly on the Linux and Lemmy community.
I was with you, particularly with your anti-violence stance, until this comment.
The answer to disagreements in the Linux world has been to fork a project or make your own. This is different, neither devs nor users will have a say if these various laws are instituted.
The majority of users do not care, and even if they did it's still not the user's place to demand the FOSS developers listen to them.
Linux is not a megacorporation. It is an array of different interests that still manage to get lots of interesting stuff done, even with those differences.
This was not a cool thing to say.
FOSS developers have the right to ignore people who are making demands that are unreasonable or not in line with their vision.
Oh, come on. Pretending that foss devs have no connection to users or the community is not a take based in reality. The Linux world is full of changes made or reversed by community sentiment, even for bigger players like Canonical.
The very core of Foss is allowing popular and useful projects to gain momentum by appealing to users. Sure, you can fork a project or start your own, but that independence of the devs is rooted in community support to go do what you want.
And I'll repeat myself: this is different, foss devs and users both will not have the option to just "go do their own thing" if these laws all become reality.
I never thought the PR was a big deal to begin with. That's sad to hear that he's receiving death threats. Can whoever's doing that chill the fuck out?
he should have chilled the fuck out over deepthroating boots as soon as he saw them. Fuck around , find out.
Threatening anyone with harm because you disagree with them is horrible. Things have gone too far on the internet. If we just ran after everyone who we disagree with then we wouldn’t have civilization left.
It's not just a simple disagreement. They are allowing invasion of our privacy. If he didn't want people pissed at him he shouldn't have folded. We are dealing with government overreach on every front. Now is not the time to be giving up ground. I don't think he deserves death threats but if he's not with us he's against us.
Damn people like you really think that you can negotiate with traitors
i think subset of people online who are vocally upset about his code contributions (and harassing him, committing fraud, and so on) are ignorant to the actual charges in the PRs and only read the headline and assume he’s shoving ID verification down our throats. I primarily blame media outlets and social media accounts trying to capitalize on this outrage over nothing.
Some of us are old enough and have seen enough to KNOW this is not the end of this. They start with little non things like this (age attestation), see how the population takes it, and when they are sure a majority are onboard with this "Not really invasive, voluntary thing" they change it up to be more invasive and non voluntary(age verification). No, this guy shouldn't be getting death threats, that is stupid, but he should hang his head in shame for complying in advance. The more we fight this, the longer it will take. I am sad the youth of today will never see the web I did.
Honest question: are you sure this thinking is not a slippery slope fallacy?
You seem to imply that adding self age attestation inherently necessitates ID verification.
I do not agree with this line of thinking. Instead, I reason that this PR was merged because it is not harmful, and a potential future PR implementing ID verification would not be merged. These are two separate things (PRs/merges), which are not in any way tied to each other causually.
I see it more as a boiling frog, look at California/Colorado/Brazil and I think NY is getting in on it as well, then there is the UK/Australia starting points. The Gov'ts and meta etc are looking for buy in. As the discussion dies down after attestation you will see them try to take another step to submitting actual ID (you have the infra in place, just add this API...) give it a year or so after we've moved on to another subject
Any time "they" cry Maude's line "Won't someone PLEASE think of the children!" the children's safety is the furthest thing from their mind. I hope I am wrong, but I have seen too much stuff like this to hold my breath. The more we fight every step the longer it will take to come into effect and we can hope for more buy in, from the less educated on this invasion of privacy of the population, to the resistance instead of acquiescing in advance. Linux distros are the last stand against it from major OSes, Microslop/Apple/iOS/Android are all on board, no fight. There is at least 1 distro that changed their EULA to say that their OS is not to be used in California or Colorado and lists the date that the laws come into effect.
Instead, to ACTUALLY think of the children, parents should be using the built in Parental Controls available on all OSes to keep their children from going places they shouldn't. Getting into fantasy land here but, these controls should have simple to follow instructions so parents can easily set them up with no tech knowledge, simple access to curated blocklists (a great job for LLMs) so they can easily add an approved block list by age range, and in the case of phones the parental controls should block resetting of the phone to factory settings unless from the parental control settings.
I do not agree with this line of thinking. Instead, I reason that this PR was merged because it is not harmful, and a potential future PR implementing ID verification would not be merged. These are two separate things (PRs/merges), which are not in any way tied to each other causually.
PR vs Merge is a moot point here, I am looking at the bigger picture to see where these choices are leading. By itself the attestation is pointless as anyone can put anything they want, but it is step one - buy in. We should never just look at what is going on around us in isolation or the bigger picture will crush us all.
I hope I didn't ramble too much here and lose my focus.
I’m still not convinced there is a direct casual link between the merged attestation and some future surveillance. Your speculation that this is some deliberate political strategy for some gradual escalation from attestation to surveillance is not logical evidence, but some belief you have, which holds no weight in an argument; it stands that you have no concrete evidence against your logic being a slippery slope fallacy.
You did concede to my argument by admitting “by itself the attestation is pointless.” Good to know we agree that there is outrage over nothing.
By saying “PR vs merge is a moot point”, you’re running away from a logical/technical debate by being dismissive; you are openly stating you don’t care how the mechanics of these foss projects actually work. Again, you can have a speculative opinion, but that is not a logical argument.
When you argue parents should be using OS parental controls, you do know that that’s exactly what the systemd age attestation PR is building, right? It seems you’re fighting against the very infrastructure needed for your preferred solution.
Finally, you conflate local infrastructure with cloud APIs (vindicating my claim that people opposing this are ignorant to the actual code being merged): Systemd is a local init system. Connecting the local userdb age integer to an external, network reliant govt API is a monumental leap in implementation and architecture, not a simple “add this API” patch that can be quietly slipped in without the entire foss community noticing and revolting. The attestation PR, for instance, had around 200 comments, of back and fourth refining of implementation and discussion, before merge.
Maybe others really believe it's not "nothing" 😒
To be clear, I would also be outraged if some personal privacy nightmare got merged into foss projects I used.
However, adding an optional field to userdb for self reporting of age is definitely not a privacy concern. I honestly have not heard a valid argument against this addition of an optional field. Most are just appeals to emotion/outrage not grounded in the reality of what code was actually committed/merged.
What benefit is there to have it? The only purpose it serves is to create privacy concerns.
Benefits:
- avoids a fragmented, disorganized, DE level implementation of storing user age
- allows distros to choose to comply with law
I maintain that optional self reporting of age is not a privacy violation. Would you clarify: what specific privacy concerns does the merged systemd PR create? Be specific about the material consequences it has on the privacy of users.
How is having a centralized store of all your demographic information where any app can query it on your OS a privacy concern? Are you serious? Maybe people don't want to send their personal information to every single god damn thing that asks for it?
Example:
The Datastealingassholes app wants your data
Without this: You are prompted to enter your DOB in a field, decide fuck no, and that's that.
With this: They query the data store on your OS and they have whatever they want without input from you. Maybe the app is run by a bad actor trying to spy on you. They already have your DOB. It just confirmed for them that YOU are the person operating this PC.
Your example relies on some assumptions:
- User has chosen to opt into filling in their actual DOB (not some nonsense date)
- User has app installed that fetches the DOB from userdb
None of these assumptions are garunteed by the merged code into systemd. The following are optional, and not required as a result of the code merged into systemd:
- Merely setting data into the DOB field
- Attesting DOB honestly
- installing some prying application that queries
It’s possible to put your full first and last name into your user, so by your logic the first and last name fields of the user profile should not exist.
Did that help identify the absurdity of your argument?
It doesn't guarantee anything, but does open the door for it. Now that this functionality exists, apps are going to start using it and requiring it. It's now something we all have to worry about and compensate for going forward.
If you're not putting accurate information in there why have it at all? Why argue in favor of it? There is literally no benefit to having this shit other than to comply with a bullshit law that they could get around by simply blocking California users from downloading their OS (this wouldn't actually work because peer to peer exists, but it would eliminate the OS developers responsibility in the situation).
It’s possible to put your full first and last name into your user, so by your logic the first and last name fields of the user profile should not exist.
Agreed
why have it at all?
Despite all of us collectively agreeing that the law is dumb/flawed, the 40 M residents of Cali should have the liberty to be able to use distros that depend on systemd, legally. And, the developers of these distros using systmed (whether you interpret the law to see them as OS providers or not) want to be able to provide these distros legally.
Now that this functionality exists, apps are going to start using it and requiring it
Yes, but not all apps. While the CA law mandates that app developers must use some API to get the age bracket, the merged code into systemd is not causually related to all apps actually implementing and using the API. Just because systemd merged this code does not inherently result in every single user application querying this, nor does it force you to install apps that do query the API. One may freely choose to not use apps that require it. If one needs an app that requires it, one may set a garbage DOB to their user. I don't see this as an issue. Do you?
It seems you disagree with the law (so do I) but are blaming the wrong person here (author of merged systemd code). I maintain that complying with the law is harmless, and thus it is beneficial to add this DOB field to the userdb json, because in all cases of some distro user using their computer, they are not compelled to compromise their personal privacy.
Despite all of us collectively agreeing that the law is dumb/flawed, the 40 M residents of Cali should have the liberty to be able to use distros that depend on systemd, legally. And, the developers of these distros using systmed (whether you interpret the law to see them as OS providers or not) want to be able to provide these distros legally.
Disagree, they should deal with the consequences of electing mentally deficient legislators. But even so. They could make a fork that meets californias requirements and leaves the rest of us out of it. No reason the whole god damn world should be dragged down with one shitty state.
Just because systemd merged this code does not inherently result in every single user application querying this, nor does it force you to install apps that do query the API. One may freely choose to not use apps that require it. If one needs an app that requires it, one may set a garbage DOB to their user. I don’t see this as an issue. Do you?
Not every app that does this will have a viable alternative that doesn't. And yes there is an issue, putting in a fake DOB isn't a sure bet because what if some of the apps that you must use that start utilizing this API are comparing their info against yours for some kind of verification purpose, while you also must use another app that uses it that you do not want to provide your DOB to? You can't have it both ways with this system.
No he's not shoving ID verification.
He added an optional birth date field to the user database. Along side things like name and location.
Nothing checks the date entered, and nothing enforces it's use.
plonk
+1 for the wayback machine ;-)
I'm glad to hear he's getting his shit fucked, maybe he'll roll back the commit.
EDIT : This fucker is lucky with the amount of hate he's getting, there's plenty of people who hate his guts over what he did, and didn't personally reach out to yell some sense into him
Imagine seeing a bullshit fascist vaguely-worded and practically unenforceable law in a single state that doesn't go into affect for another year and immediately rolling over and swallowing the boot.
Same dude also vehemently defends Google's anti-sideloading bullshit, no surprise there.
Fuck this fascist.
Can someone explain why it isn't just a boolean that say is adult or something like that? Maybe I misunderstood but it seems like the new California law would approve that.
But I would rather the parents to use parent control.
If the system stores the actual age, that means they could automatically change said boolean.
Also the California law requires users be divided into one of four age brackets. Not just adult/not-adult.
And besides it's just common sense that systemD have an age field. They already have a name field.
And people down voted me when I called out the Sam Bent blog post for what it is. A hit piece.
Nah this guy sucks. Obviously death threats are over the line but making his life uncomfortable is the least the Judas Iscariot of Linux deserves. We don’t need devs like this anyways, I hope he steps away from the project forever.
Obviously death threats are over the line but making his life uncomfortable is the least the Judas Iscariot of Linux deserves.
Harassment is over the line.
Do you really think that people on the Internet will show restraint and 'only' harass the person without taking it too far?
No, because there are crazy people online. Supporting any kind of mob harassment is supporting death threats and violence because they inevitably follow once the mob is large enough.
Hey, abusing his position as a maintainer is absolutely abusing that social contract, so he does lose some protection that social contract afforded.
He should be uncomfortable, not afraid for his life.
Grow up.
He is married. You're projecting.
100% agree.
P. S. Keep the downvotes coming. You only prove the point of the post with your toxicity.
It's really a toxic community.
It's a toxic subject.
The people commenting here on this subject are not people I see commenting here with any regularity. These are outside trolls, bots and people who love getting high on outrage.
If you ever wished ill upon another human being
You should have stopped here, because no reason is ever a good reason for wishing ill upon another human being, no matter the argument.
People harassing and doxxing are rotten inside, no matter the reason.
for complying with a relatively inconsequential law
No, just no, it's not inconsequential and it's not the entire world, as usual US thinks they're the only country in the world, other countries exist that don't have such a law.
Just stop using systemd, it's even more effective than acting like a coward keyboard warrior.
You should have stopped here, because no reason is ever a good reason for wishing ill upon another human being, no matter the argument.
What?
So, whatever I do, it won't be a reason for you to wish ill on me? I can burn down your house (maybe with your dog/cat/family inside) and you won't wish ill on me? I am a human being, so there is no reason for you to ever wish ill on me, right?
I can burn down your house (maybe with your dog/cat/family inside) and you won’t wish ill on me?
I would call the police and have you arrested for sure, I would never think you should die for it.
Thanks :)
Yeah it's disheartening to see how many in this thread are in favor of violence, especially in a case like this where there are much better answers to what's happening.
No one is forcing you to use a distro that uses systemd
Threats against a developer, no matter whether he’s a chud or not; is unacceptable, unhinged behavior. You have a remedy that isn’t harassment. Just don’t use his software
No one is forcing you
They absolutely forced the changes upon us.
You are free to switch distros
"You are free to use increasingly niche technology until you're marginalized out of existence or give in and lick the boot"
Parental controls on linux are a good thing. This is a fine privacy respecting implementation. People are overreacting.
Parental controls already exist in linux, they are entirely optional to those who want them, we do not need those controls to be rolled out to every user!
Not to mention
- My router, an Asus one has parental controls settings already
- My ISP router, bog standard one has parental controls settings already
- My ISP account has parental controls settings already at account level, if Ia m not technical enough, I can call them and ask them to set it up
- My phone provider has parental controls
this is entirely optional. Just because they exist doesnt mean they can be improved. The ones currently available do not cover this usecase. The use case being a locally installed application wants to check if the user is 18 before showing them something.
You do realise you can easily restrict who can run what applications (or terminal commands) by using guid? So you can easily restrict a child account being able to execute applications or games already? And you know what, this method does not rely on application developer implementing any kind of age gatekeeping using DOB field... Its generic to all distributions even ones that don't use systemd. This is why this change is dumb and not needed.
You can even use it to restrict access to terminal commands such as curl so children cannot download something they shouldn't...
You realise some applications have a mix of content right?
Right so mixed content steam already has parental controls specifically with an allow list
GOG provides individually installed games, so you can control its access with guid
Content players pretty much all have child accounts
Even locally hosted ones, like Plex already have parental controls built-in (mostly via allow lists)
What other kinds of mixed content applications are there that already do not have some kind of parental controls implemented which are likely to actually make use of this?
I am honestly struggling to find specific examples of the types of applications which have mixed content, don't have parental controls or at least allow lists built in and are likely to actually implement this change. Again you are relying on developers to actually make use of this field, and outside of corporate applications (which imo are already likely to have some kind of content controls), I am struggling here to see why an indie developer would bother?
Sir, this is a Lemmy.ml thread.
Reasonable, considered responses are not welcome here.