I Spoke To The Dev Behind The Systemd Birth Date Change
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Today I spoke with the developer who introduced the PR to Systemd which added in a birth date field to userdb which spawned a massive drama and much worse as...

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.

  • Auth@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    16 hours ago

    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.

    • ExoticCherryPigeon@piefed.socialEnglish
      5·
      10 hours ago

      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-controls if 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

      • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
        1·
        6 hours ago

        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.

        • ExoticCherryPigeon@piefed.socialEnglish
          1·
          5 hours ago

          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?

          • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
            1·
            5 hours ago

            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.

            • ExoticCherryPigeon@piefed.socialEnglish
              2·
              5 hours ago

              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.

              • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
                1·
                5 hours ago

                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.