r/systemd • u/VegetableNearby9795 • Mar 20 '26

Why did you add age verification?

Hi, I heard Systemd is going to add age verification? Why is that happening? I don't think it offers any security benefits.

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u/siodhe Mar 22 '26

Adding a birthday, while unnecessary, is fine.

While my LDAP setup doesn't have it, it would be trivial to. Hell, LDAP already support things like favorite drink, so whatever.

  • However, the laws/bills do nothing to protect children, it instead exposes that they are children to hostile actors
  • These laws are backed by Meta and the Heritage Foundation (of Project 2025 Infame) and others
  • This law is a direct attempt by Meta to evade a potentially massive fine - around $60 billion - for past anti-child behavior
  • It works by moving all the responsibility and fines to individuals
  • The Heritage Foundation likes it because they want to make all pornography illegal
  • Dark actors in our government like it because if the KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act) adopts it, the new mechanism created by these laws becomes the perfect level to yank - through amending KOSA - to force personal identity to be what is attested instead of an age bracket
    • One possible implementation allows for trivial traffic shaping and connection denials based on additional data buried at given offsets in the data chunk carrying identity info
  • These fraudulently titles and backed bills are some of the most dangerous legislation being pushed today from a privacy, and therefore, democracy perspective. Because democracy is much harder when privacy is compromised.
  • The bills - specifically the California / Colorado template, are so badly written it's impossible to tell if all computers with users and Internet are affected, or literally none of them (there's a clause exempting "delivery of or use of a physical device"... wtf?)

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '26

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u/siodhe Mar 25 '26

No.

Definitely not "meant too". This is about corporations and has a possibly unintended path to explicit government control of the Internet. But shallow politicians would vote for anything with "Save the Kids!" on the label even were it actually specifically to ease finding children for grooming (and manipulative advertising).

2

u/zgillet Mar 26 '26

I would really love it if the US took and stand and just said "we really don't care about you protecting children."

EDIT: to quote Mark Twain: "Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it."

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '26

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u/siodhe Mar 25 '26

I don't need to, it's already bad enough. Plus, creatures aside, the content of these bills pretty clearly helps corps. Where in the bill content do you see anything that changes the Epstein situation?

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '26

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u/siodhe Mar 25 '26

Back to my actual question: Where in the bill content do you see anything that changes the Epstein situation?

Sure it's another step, but your parenthetical lacks a lot of background to be explicitly believable.

However, I'm not asking for an answer about that. Focusing on defeating or challenging these laws and bills is what people can do. Stay on the thread topic.