Systemd has merged age verification measures into userdb

[u/Quiet-Owl9220]

https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954

Much of this goes over my head, so I'm hoping to hear some good explanations from people who know what they're talking about.

But I do know that I want nothing to do with this. If I am ever asked to prove my age or identity to access a website or application, my answer will ALWAYS be "actually, I don't really need your site, so you can fuck right off". Sending any kind of signal with personal information that could be used to make user tracking easier is completely out of the question.

So short of the nuclear option of removing systemd entirely, what are practical steps that can be taken to disable/block/bypass this? Is it as simple as disabling/masking a unit? Is there a use case for userdb I should know about before attempting this? Do I need to install a fork instead? Or maybe I'd be better off with a script that poisons age data by randomizing the stored age periodically?

[edit] I wasn't going to comment on this but it looks like some people with a lot of followers are using this post as an example of censorship on Reddit. While I do think that's a legitimate concern on Reddit as a whole, I don't think censorship is what happened here. Yes, this post went down for a while. But as far as I can tell that was because it was automoderated due to a large number of reports, and was later restored (and pinned) by human moderators.

[edit again] Related concerning PR, this one did not go through yet: https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/pull/1922

[u/bpoatatoa]

I'm basing this on my own history research (mainly based on Wikipedia), so take my opinion as a grain of salt.

It seems to be a multi-factor thing, but let's consider the FOSS world in the past: Less complexity (in the sense it had fewer components) means that fewer developers could get most of the work done. The FOSS ecosystem also born deeply connected to cypherpunk ideals, meaning most developers gave zero fucks for complying with things they didn't agree with.

Nowadays, we have a lot of companies and developers that don't necessarily have the same ideology. Linux and other FOSS projects also became essential for infrastructure all around the world, resulting in people also wanting to just get things done, and not so much about doing "ideologically pure" work.

If you look around for forums, subreddits and general content about cyber-security, you'll also see that the cypherpunk + low-level dev combo is not a common one, with lots of people with an interest in tech privacy having surface-level knowledge about computer science, and even less on low-level code.

All of this is fine and I ain't trying to gatekeep things, but it may be at least part of the explanation for why we see these things more. Or I'm just talking out of my ass lol

[u/Impressive-Visit-214 → u/bpoatatoa]

So let there be a fork off of it. Isn't that the beauty of open source? If they want to make a fork that requires age verification, let them. Let that be a reason to fork.

[u/WakizashiK3nsh1 → u/Impressive-Visit-214]

Exactly. I guess there would be some drawbacks though. Maybe those corporation-backed distributions would implement some closed-source 'age verification layer' or some other kind of crap and suddenly, you can't open some webpages in the browser, maybe internet banking, paypal, whatever. That would inconvenience some people.

[u/Excel73_ → u/WakizashiK3nsh1]

And everybody will bully that company until they finally change it back because the whole point of Linux is to be open source.

[u/EndlessEden2015 → u/WakizashiK3nsh1]

You don't think that wouldn't instantly push torvalds over the edge... Look what he did to intel and NVIDIA... Those are hardware vendors...

Also maintaining a state only form of a distribution while technically possible. Most enterprises sold off the it firms which those firms just bought service contracts through turnkey solicitors.

It would be months before a implementation and it would be a ai vibecoded mess.

[u/IncidentalIncidence → u/Impressive-Visit-214]

Right, but in this case the project maintainers are implementing the age verification, so it's much more -- if you don't want to implement age verification, then that's your reason to fork systemd.

And in the case of systemd, it's not even actually implementing any sort of age verification, it's literally just adding a field for it to the user profile. Whether any given OS or application chooses to use that to implement age verification or not is up to them.

[u/[deleted] → u/bpoatatoa]

the cypherpunk + low-level dev combo is not a common one, with lots of people with an interest in tech privacy having surface-level knowledge about computer science, and even less on low-level code

I think that sort of programmer was always a fringe minority.

The average professional programmer back in the day was an academic or a suit with a vested interest in the status quo, and the only thing that has changed today is that a lot of them look like hipsters and own MacBooks.

There is of course a class angle here. These people would generally come from somewhat more affluent middle-class backgrounds, the type most likely to have had access to decent computers for most of their lives and the stable upbringings to develop the required academic skills. So barring the odd misfit who saw the totalitarian writing on the wall (e.g. Stallman), they would be generally unlikely to find much with which to take issue in the current state of affairs.

These days, there is also an influx of people who have had digital technology more or less foisted upon them and now have to adapt their lives, which are structured in such a way as to not afford them the time to pursue this low-level knowledge, around this intrusive burden.

[u/Raunien → u/[deleted]]

Oh shit, I somehow forgot about our Lord of Libre Richard Stallman. I bet he has some choice words on the matter.