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.
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.
I dunno the exact law, but I’d differentiate based on whether the law in place is bad, or good (in my opinion). Maybe the guys doing the “double standard” also think like this.
So you say that opinion and subjective classification of good or bad is the only valid measurement?
That is the issue with double standard, everyone has their own subjective viewpoint of good or bad, of morality, of which laws to ignore and which to follow. And a lot of really bad things are done all the time in the name of good and moral reasons!
Why make any law at all if only personal, subjectiv morallity matters?
This one is a very old debate, and you are taking my opinion to an extreme. Not that I think it’s particularly offensive or anything.
This question is rhetorical: would you uphold racial segregation laws because they are the law?
There are many takes one what one should do.
I don’t think the changes in question are “upholding” any law, but rather giving system admins and software devs a convenient/predefined way to attempt to comply with the law if they choose. “Upholding” the law would be requiring the field to be filled or checked.
That said, to your point, if someone proposed a race field “so that devs can implement segregation if they choose,” I’d find that reprehensible even though it doesn’t do anything on its own. Similarly, I object to the systemd change.
I would fight the law itself, not single persons.
I’m not US and my country doesn’t have such a law, can’t fight foreign laws.
I’m not fighting the dev either and I don’t approve harassment, I’m just switching to non-systemd distro, that’s the best message anyone can send against this.
I agree in principle. Thankfully, the law is not “in place” in the US yet, there’s still time to amend, repeal, etc., so we are not in trouble for now.
Ofc, John Brown would disagree with you, but he is extreme by today’s standards.
A better example would be the many people who try to block policemen from evicting people from rented apartments (mostly old/sick people who cannot pay). Ofc, one could pay for one being evicted, but that would just strengthen the landlord.
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.
so far
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 know just does all manner of a disservice to the cause of digital privacy.
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.
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
what follows from context is you giving them your ID and birth certificate so he knows you aren’t lying about your age.
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.
except they are literally eroding privacy as we speak in this slope we have been slipping down on for a decade or two at this point, as if this is happening in a vacuum.
we can be mad at multiple things at once, especially when they are all part of the same effort.
Common right wing pattern:
- I do a fascist thing
- people call me a piece of shit
- I feel threatened
Replies like these are toxic as fuck.
He feels threatened because people are explicitly threatening him.
it’s easy to solve the problem: don’t be a piece of shit.
You are already failing at that. Suggesting that he deserves the death threats because he did something you don’t agree with.
Nope, you are making that up, I never suggested that. I simply recognized the pattern: that dude is a nobody that did a rage-bait to get his 15 minutes of fame. And people like you are just helping, nobody is going to kill that idiot for this thing.
I seriously wonder if the death threats aren’t a false flag. Someone really wants to put more attention to this guy instead of people who have agency in actual decisions. Even the maintainers of repos that accepted his PRs should receive more attention than him.
I think it’s just a rage bait started by that guy only, but if the argument wasn’t so extremely niche it would get some momentum, like that dumb video about the Somali childcare of a month ago. Someone prominent on the right would retweet the guy crying that “the violent left are trying to kill meee!”. But I think the story will just fade away, in here and Reddit.
Nope, you are making that up, I never suggested that.
Words carry more weight than their explicit meaning. I’ll leave you with one sentence to put what you said in perspective.
“She could’ve prevented it by not walking home alone at night wearing such provocative clothing”.
that dude is a nobody that did a rage-bait to get his 15 minutes of fame
I think the analogy of the example sentence applies perfectly to this sentence too. You’re basically saying “he was asking for it” and no, he wasn’t. He so obviously wasn’t.
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 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 very depressing.
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 no have the option to just “go do their own thing” if these laws all become reality.
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?
Sir, this is a Lemmy.ml thread.
Reasonable, considered responses are not welcome here.
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?
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???
You would think FOSS overall would be inherently leftist but apparently not lmfao
There is so many in the world it is actually crazy
Relatively inconsequential law? Relative to what?
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.
Who the fuck upvoted this shit?
That’s quitter talk
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.
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 ?
- For how long the check will not be needed
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?
No matter the argument
you would define burning someone’s house down as an argument? wild lol
What the commenter said, was precisely accurate. You should not wish harm on someone over an argument. It only ever leads to escalation.
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.
I don’t think they like pacifists lol. I’m with you, mate.
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 reason is ever a good reason for wishing ill upon another human being, no matter the argument.
I can think of a few humans that deserve I’ll wished upon them.
I can think of a lot.
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.
plonk
+1 for the wayback machine ;-)
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.
I don’t wish Dylan harm, and I’m not doing anything to him. I also believe nobody here is sending threats. If you saw the video, you probably noticed that it contained a screenshot from 4chan. 4chan users have been known for terrible behaviour and they are fascists, who also oppose this change. I’m almost completely sure that they are the ones doing the bullying, not users from here.
I’d prefer if the age verification landscape would be fragmented an unusable, compared to systemd offering it in a consistent manner. Websites will use the offered APIs and will use it for extending fingerprinting. No, fake birth dates won’t save you. Even the disabled canvas API is used for fingerprinting. It just shouldn’t be exposed at all. Not that it matters because every other OS will comply and desktop linux is negligible.
The arguments presented in the video won’t convince anyone who bully people on the internet. They are most often fash and they believe that only power matters. Bullying is exerting power over people, and if they succeed in bullying them into reverting the change, they will be satisfied. Not that I think it will achieve anything, but they do. They follow Carl Schmitt’s teachings.
On “better ways to make a change”: If somebody doesn’t live in the US, and lives in sort of a dictatorship, they can neither affect murican lawmaking nor do their govt listen to anyone other than a few. If this age attestation/verification shit comes into place, their only choice here would be to go and not install systemd-userdb (or use linux without systemd). The disabled API would probably break even more websites than disabling 3rd party javascript. Their govt could also use the fingerprinting to spy more on citizens (they prolly already do).
As a thought experiment: please recommend them a better way than bullying. No, not living in a shithole country is not an option. No, they don’t have the spare money to found/donate to an existing org that fights against this. Also, companies pushing this would just outspend them.
There’s also the aspect of corporate influence over linux. It directs changes in order to further business interest over normal users’ interests. Personally, I prefer companies be out of linux and would accept lower-quality things. But also, I think the ones most hurt by these laws are the system integrators (mentioned in the video), who actually need to do things that align with normal users’ interests.
On the parental control thing: yes, age things could be used for it, but the parents know better than the computer, and user settings would be preferable (for example, kid should be able to this and that program, open this site, but not others). I think it shouldn’t be the websites who decide. Yes, parenting takes a lot of time, but we can’t substitute it with automatated fence-building.
As a thought experiment: please recommend them a better way than bullying
We could:
- reject the PR: no, because it’s already accepted by the lead.
- try to argue with the project maintainers: already failed. This is systemd we’re talking about. They are used to just plowing on regardless of what the wider community thinks.
- reject the software: systemd is fundamental to a lot of systems, so this is very painful.
It’s not hard to see why people have resorted to bullying. It’s not right, but there’s no way to make your voice heard. OSS development is not a democracy. It’s a do-ocracy. Those that d"do" dictate. Fine when the developer is aligned with the users. Chaos otherwise.
You missed this option:
- Ignore the feature and don’t use it.
systemd is quite modular. For example, if you abhor systemd-resolved (not at unreasonable stance) it’s NBD to disable it.
Recently (<1 year?) I frequently see the notion that software is “tainted” by having been touched by Bad. I find this a bit silly. Especially if it’s from a user who’s not even spending time in the codebase.
If the law creates this new API, nobody will be able to get away without leaking PII to the web (I think it will have a javascript API). 1970 jan 1 identifies *nix users, 1900 jan 1, even an “unset” will leak info on people, etc. entropy and shit. Websites will also try to use the API. One could set the function to crash JS, or disable all JS, but that already breaks 90% of the web. One could also: either not install userdb (like I do), or install a non-systemd linux, but those still will leak “unset” or “API disabled”.
There’s no getting away from this, it really is the law that we should push back against. Unfortunately it’s a fight currently only Americans and Brazilians can participate in properly. Donations won’t work well, govts these days often clamp down on NGOs because they often get money internationally, and therefore, they are “foreign interference” etc.
“user is likely accessing service from a *nix device” isn’t PII. of course anything can be used for fingerprinting, but this type of “leak” is about as insignificant as it gets. It’s not what most people would consider a violation of their privacy.
I agree with most of what you said, however, I’m not worried about most people. I’m more worried about people who are trying to act against tracking. Maybe I shouldn’t, and we cannot “personal responsibility” our way out of this, but I still haven’t processed that loss.
I’m also not worried about “user is likely accessing service from a *nix device” in itself. It’s hard to say how insignificant this particular bit is. I’ll prolly need to spoof this info, too.
The systemd change is fairly insignificant, yes. That the xdg-desktop-portal people will implement this is more worrying. I’m also worried that the systemd addition will be used as “proof” that the linux landscape is perfectly capable of adding age attestation and verification, and therefore they will dismiss any possibly amendment to the US bills and the EU wouldn’t even consider adding an exception.
A good response. Informative, mature, and well thought out.
I don’t wish Dylan harm, and I’m not doing anything to him. I also believe nobody here is sending threats.
True, but publicly wishing ill upon someone for something as trivial as this (i.e. something with zero basis in the real world) is extremely toxic. The odds are slim he’d ever be seen on Lemmy, saying the kinds of things some people here have been saying publicly demonstrates a tremendous lack of empathy and maturity. And that this community is so accepting of those kinds of words is a real problem.
There’s also the Sam Bent article, that was posted here on Lemmy. That’s probably the most directly harmful thing someone’s done. By sharing that article it’s possible someone here was inspired to harass him, and even though nobody probably did the risk is non-zero.
I also believe nobody here is sending threats.
I wouldn’t be so sure of your tribe. 19 users so far upvoted a comment with among other concerning bits:
if you’re anti this bullshit “law” then you are also pro physically harming poor FOSS “contributors”.
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.
If you have to fill them in, it is.
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.
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
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.
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.
What the hell else is it used for?
It’s mostly not going to be used at all.
Then why is it necessary?
You’d have complete control for now.
Don’t give them an inch.
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.
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.
Well, It depends on where.
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.
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
