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I Spoke To The Dev Behind The Systemd Birth Date Change - YouTube (www.youtube.com)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/linux@lemmy.world
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[–] 23 points 5 months ago (2 children)

A developer submitted a PR code change for systemd userdb.

My proposals (that's really what PRs are) are to implement a solution that meets the regulatory requirements in several jurisdictions by providing a way to store a self-reported birthdate locally on the machine. These laws also require that this date is collected during account creation (hence why I made PRs against installers) and you can enter any value here, even January 1st, 1900. There is no proof required, no ID scanning, and no external tracking. Nor do I have any desire for that to ever change.

Apparently the developer is confirmed to be just a regular guy. He thinks it'd be worse if every desktop environment implements their own solution to comply with these laws. He's against the various laws related to this incident.

As a fallout for submitting this pull request, he has been extensively harassed. His personal information being repeatedly posted online; his information used to sign up to a lot of sites, groups, churches, car dealerships, ordering food for him; threats of murder; regular textual harassment.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    He thinks it'd be worse if every desktop environment implements their own solution to comply with these laws.

    Sure he has a point there, but putting it in systemd means there will need to be at least one other implementation for systems that don't use systemd...

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Are you suggesting that we should put this field in the kernel instead.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    I'm not suggesting anything specific. But the point of rushing to implement your way into software A to prevent each software having their own implementation does not make sense to me. This is not a proper way to standardise. There are many months left to make a proposal that works for everyone.

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  • [–] -3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Deserves, the change is garbage, it affects so few people and now the rest of us have this option to be forced to use it at a later date. garbage human. Most of linux users will not be touched by any of this garbage law. i am rather militant over this

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    But you don't have to use it dumbass. There is no requirement to fill it in. Funny though how you've never apparently had a problem with the RealName field that's been in there for years.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    But you don't have to use it dumbass. There is no requirement to fill it in.

    No shit, that's not the point. The point is that in the future they will make it a requirement. Is there something more specific you need help understanding?

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago* (1 child)

    No requirement today, what about tomorrow? What is happening with age verification in UK?

    You need to prove you are an adult usually via CC when you want a wank

    So kids and adults started to use VPNs

    So now the government is considering forcing VPN's to also perform age verification

    What is next? Do you need more examples of how this is idiotic? Do you know the reason why no one is up in arms about the RealName? Because it was not implemented specifically to facilitate age verification where as this change is purely and specifically to be used for this purpose and no other. Go read the actual PR.

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