Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

https://cybrkyd.com/post/age-verification-on-systemd-and-flatpak/

by londonanon • 4 months ago

147 133 4 months ago

lschueller• 4 months ago

Quite spooky imaging that apple might create by that a fully verified pii database for half of gen z and every coming gen users

mtndew4brkfst• 4 months ago

Why would it be more spooky if Apple in particular did this vs all the other hardware vendors that ship a pre-installed OS?

stephbook2• 4 months ago

They know this about every user.

They have access to every message you send. They know where your device is at every time of day. Your name is all over the entries in your wallet, be they tickets, SF bus ticket or.. your credit cards.

jmclnx• 4 months ago

This is a no win situation and I think systemd is making this change too early. But I have read that field is optional.

But my main concern with this is applications like Firefox will eventually require this systemd age specific field and a standard systemd function to call. That means this age field will need to be populated and thus locking out the *BSDs and non-systemd Linux.

If that happens, this makes the systemd critics 100% right, systemd is being forced upon all distros by various upstream applocations.

Bender• 4 months ago

My gaming machines that I do not browse the web with have systemd (CachyOS) but my daily drivers do not. Should a website lock me out because I don't have some age API then in my view the problem has solved itself. The website has effectively blocked itself without me having to given the one and only correct way to age gate a site in my view is with the RTA header [1] that would trigger parental controls if optionally enabled on ones device. Every other path that involves exchanging data whether verified or not, anonymized or not can only lead to future evil shenanigans.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46152074

logicchains• 4 months ago

But my main concern with this is applications like Firefox will eventually require this systemd age specific field and a standard systemd function to call. That means this age field will need to be populated and this locking out the *BSDs and non-systemd Linux.

The risk is real, and the solution is to move away from systemd now, not wait until it's too late. Whatever conveniences it brings over other init systems are certainly not enough to justify giving up online anonymity forever.

skydhash• 4 months ago

Whatever conveniences it brings over other init systems

You see people rave about the greatness of systemd, then they turn to deploy their applications using Docker and some s6 config.

nout2• 4 months ago

It's interesting that the package managers become choke points that can be used for government overreach. Luckily Linux is open source so I expect there will be options that just don't do this from principle.

Otherwise my Intel NUC server with Debian is 2 years old, so I expect the honest age would be 2 years? I may have parts for some old PCs to put together that could get adult software I guess...

awesome_dude• 4 months ago

For me, the big issue is going to be mobile devices (phones, and tablets to a lesser degree)

I've already had it up to my back teeth with Google arbitrarily updating things such that the on/off button was hijacked, preventing me from switch the device off, instead triggering an interaction with freaking Gemini (what sort of IDIOT thought doing that to a device was a good idea)

I'm seriously trying to find a way to no longer run Apple or Google OS based phones - which puts me in the "Linux" or "Graphene" market

nout2• 4 months ago

I think more folks are now interested in the "Linux" or "Graphene" market and since the phone hardware development is not as rapid as it used to be (from 1yr cycle to more than 2yr cycle), I think this gives more stability and wiggle room for folks to do Linux and/or Graphene. I'm patiently waiting for what happens with the Motorola + Graphene integration/plan. If they provide good hardware + preinstalled Graphene, I'd buy it.

Shank• 4 months ago

It seems incredibly silly to me that this is being rushed into systemd and other linux components. I understand Apple making changes, and even Canonical, but systemd is not run by one corporation and there is no reason to adhere to a badly written law. Why play along with the charade? If root is root, the "age verification" field does not make any sense.

Why are these changes being made on a worldwide basis when the laws that have been introduced are a relatively small fraction of the world? California isn't going to go after individual systemd maintainers. Will California go after Torvalds? I doubt it. Apple? Surely, but this is, quite frankly, a ridiculous thing to even suggest for inclusion into these setups.

nine_k• 4 months ago

systemd is not run by one corporation

Two corporations, e.g. Canonical and Red Hat, might suffice.

I hope everybody remembers how systemd was thrust upon the community by having Gnome largely depend on it. This was mostly done by efforts of Red Hat, and that sufficed.

ChocolateGod• 4 months ago

IIRC all that's been done is a field has been added to store the user date of birth and a protocol that can be used to retrieve said date.

That's it.

Cyph0n2• 4 months ago

Okay, but why do this now? If it’s such an important feature and unrelated to the barrage of legislation, why was this not implemented a few months or years ago?

lunar_rover• 4 months ago

California has both vendors and clients that are big enough to warrant immediate compliance. A very measurable chunk of Linux is from corporations, most major advancements are corporate backed in some way.

gizmo686• 4 months ago

Open source is driven by contributions. Most of the time, if someone wants a feature, implements the feature, and submits a reasonable PR to a project, that project will have the feature. In this case, the PR appears to have been written by someone who is not a regular SystemD contributor, and (through a bit of Googling) works for a FinTech company with no obvious interest. I can't comment on why that individual wanted to add support. However, once someone added support, the question for SystemD is not if it is worth implementing, but if it is worth merging. At this point, it becomes a simple case of "the most intolerant wins". For people who care about complying with CA style laws, this feature is critical. For people who don't care, this feature is fine. I doubt it will even make it on mosts lists of SystemD feature bloat that most people don't care about.

This is the same reason a bunch of the food in your pantry is certified kosher. No one is going to not buy something because it is kosher. But if paying a thousand dollars a year to put a small circle-u symbol on the back of your box can increase sales by 1% among observant Jews, most companies are going to do it.

jjmarr• 4 months ago

No one is going to not buy something because it is kosher. But if paying a thousand dollars a year to put a small circle-u symbol on the back of your box can increase sales by 1% among observant Jews, most companies are going to do it.

Contrary to perceived politics, many Muslims will eat kosher food because it's a superset of halal rules (excl. alcohol).

It's a globally consolidated certification through organizations like the Orthodox Union. This is unlike halal which is local and has many scammers offering to pencil whip compliance. This means many Muslims will prefer kosher to "halal" food to avoid due diligence on the certification agency.

To tie this into age-verification, companies and ecosystems will use the strictest method that makes them globally compliant. Consumers will prefer that convenience even in the presence of intense political beliefs.

A bank that uses seamless OS-level age checks everywhere will win against one asking manually in the jurisdictions it isn't required.

stackghost• 4 months ago

It seems incredibly silly to me that this is being rushed into systemd [...]

Making user-hostile changes seems exactly on-brand for systemd, to my mind.

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 4 months ago

Will my system believe me? And how about their system, whoever “they” are? If not, then what else will I need to do to prove my birth date and age? Who will check if root can’t be trusted? How will they check?

If they ever seize your computer, they can probably also tack on computer fraud charges

ekr____8• 4 months ago

OP is certainly right that a lot of this legislation is written in ways that are hard to interpret and that often seem like they would have undesirable side effects even under the assumption that the basic idea is good (whether that's actually true is a whole different question).

In the specific case of CA AB1043: (1) Systems are required to ask the user for their age and just trust whatever they say (2) Applications are required to query the system for the user's age range. Other enacted and proposed device-based age assurance mandates have different properties.

This post goes into quite a bit of detail about the various points of concern: https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/device-based-age-assuran...

AnthonyMouse4• 4 months ago

Systems are required to ask the user for their age and just trust whatever they say

If you're going to do anything like this, this is the thing they actually get right. It removes the inconvenience, privacy invasion, forced use of corporate verifiers with perverse incentives, etc. Meanwhile if the user is actually a child then their age is set by their parent.

Applications are required to query the system for the user's age range.

This is classic legislative stupidity. Applications are required to query the user's age range even if they contain no age-restricted content? Brilliant.

ekr____8• 4 months ago

> Systems are required to ask the user for their age and just trust whatever they say > This is the thing they actually get right. It removes the inconvenience, privacy invasion, forced use of corporate verifiers with perverse incentives, etc. Meanwhile if the user is actually a child then their age is set by their parent.

Well, maybe. For instance, if a child buys their own device they could set the age to whatever they want.

> Applications are required to query the system for the user's age range. > This is classic legislative stupidity. Applications are required to query the user's age range even if they contain no age-restricted content? Brilliant.

Note that AB1043 doesn't actually impose much in the way of requirements about age restricted content. Rather, the way it works is that the developer is then assumed to have "actual knowledge" of the user's age (See 1798.501(b)(2)(A)) and then has to behave accordingly in other age-restricted contexts.

gzread6• 4 months ago

This is classic legislative stupidity. Applications are required to query the user's age range even if they contain no age-restricted content? Brilliant.

This is classic programmer stupidity attempting to read the law in the stupidest possible way. No - if the application needs to know the user's age because of a content restriction, it shall query the system for that, instead of getting it some other way. Unlike computer code, laws are understood by humans in a context.

Aurornis• 4 months ago

I think this legislation is as dumb as everyone else does, but it also seems like the cheapest way for everyone to agree that we did something about the moral panic without actually giving up anything. It doesn’t do anything with ID or privacy or even actual verification. There’s no complicated auth dance to do with government services to verify our age tokens or whatever the latest Rube Goldberg machine “zero knowledge” age check proposal is.

I’ve been shocked at how many HN comments always come out in favor of age related legislation and heavy government regulation when the topic comes up. The pro-regulation commenters always seem to assume the age checks would never apply to them because they don’t have use TikTok or Facebook or other services, yet few realize that there aren’t going to be laws written in a way that only apply to a couple named companies you don’t use anyway. If we age verification laws then they’re going to be everywhere.

I personally hope this legislation dies and we can be done with this silly exercise, but if we’re stuck with age verification moral panic than a simple OS-level switch that we set once and then forget about seems like the least intrusive form of “age verification” we can get away with.

kmeisthax• 4 months ago

You're on the right path, but the "something" politicians want to do is specifically "regulate Facebook's patent harms to children". Facebook's counter-argument is: "we don't have a legally ironclad way to check user age, it should be Apple and Google's job". So the politicians want to write a law to make it Apple and Google's job to check age.

In other words, all of these age verification laws are here predominantly to indemnify Facebook from a growing wave of child endangerment lawsuits in a way that will ensure Facebook doesn't have to kick off even a single teen from their platforms. That's why the "verification" is just a date and an age range bucket.

My personal opinion is that these laws are stupid, but not harmful to Linux users, and that everyone angry at systemd for complying is shooting the wrong guy. Your real target is Facebook and you should be yelling at your local representative to make this bill not target Linux distros.

motbus32• 4 months ago

I think the writing has both intentions. Both implicate companies to comply as well for the mass to not defend. If it was not, there wouldn't be a guy on TV saying that there are 5000 possible pedo cases that are not being investigated and that's why they need it.

Anyone with more than 2 brain cells can put it together

ekr____8• 4 months ago

I personally hope this legislation dies and we can be done with this silly exercise, but if we’re stuck with age verification moral panic than a simple OS-level switch that we set once and then forget about seems like the least intrusive form of “age verification” we can get away with.

Just for clarification. CA AB1043 was signed back in 2025 and takes effect January 1 2027.

hypeatei2• 4 months ago

I disagree with your overall sentiment that this is benign because it's ineffectual in its current state. If anything, this is going to warm people up to the idea of government mandated prompts gathering personal information in their OS, and legislators in 2030 (or whenever) are going to say: "this isn't working, lets build on top of that prompt we already have and make it verify IDs"

In other words, I think this first bit of legislation had to be watered down to not receive too much backlash. This is the governments first plunge into mandating things on the frontend.

shevy-java3• 4 months ago

I’ve been shocked at how many HN comments always come out in favor of age related legislation and heavy government regulation when the topic comes up.

Where do you see that? HN is overwhelmingly critical of age sniffing.

pgt• 4 months ago

Fellow software engineers, what are we doing here? Why are we letting the EU / UK define the future of software?

looperhacks• 4 months ago

Maybe carefully read TFA - the age verification came from a Californian law

DrinkyBird• 4 months ago

1. The UK and EU are rather large markets that they don’t want to miss out on.

2. There are software engineers in the UK and EU.

3. This specific implementation by Apple is not actually required by any UK or EU law, to my knowledge.

4. This specifically is or will be required by the laws of some US states and other countries.

kgwxd• 4 months ago

1 Since when is Linux about marketing? And who is "they"?

2 Devs for companies can start working with proprietary OSes for the businesses they sell their soul to.

3 Who cares what apple is doing.

4 And systemd should not be liable for upholding any of them.

duskdozer2• 4 months ago

"Apolitical" technology

tombert2• 4 months ago

I've been running NixOS for awhile, which is very firmly integrated with systemd.

I wonder if it's time to try something like sixos or Guix SD.

htx80nerd• 4 months ago

Artix (Arch) and MX Linux (Debian) are very nice

tombert2• 4 months ago

Oh I only use distros that are declarative like NixOS.

I've run Arch in the past and I liked it just fine, but they are ultimately different than how I like running my computer.

Cyph0n2• 4 months ago

Setting aside the ridiculous nature of this move towards OS-level verification, NixOS (and Guix) is the last distro to worry about when it comes to age verification.

Why? Given the nature of how NixOS works (config-driven), the maintainers have plausible deniability: if push comes to shove, they can shift the burden to users and have them enable the age verification service as part of their NixOS config.

iamnothere2• 4 months ago

At least NixOS has signaled disinterest in this, and as an NL project it’s beyond CA legal reach. They also disable userdb by default, so this is irrelevant unless you enable it.

supliminal• 4 months ago

Is 9front impacted?

dwedge• 4 months ago

If these laws come in in their current form, it might be worth archiving ISOs like 9front because I'm sure at least one project will just close its doors

pharrington• 4 months ago

This is actually nuts. You can't even constantly implement "age verification" at the system level in a way that makes sense across world cultures.

The only sane way to do this is you were playing along with arbitrary legislative age-gaters would be to add a generic "additional user info" blob to the account fields, if it didn't already exist.

sunshine-o• 4 months ago

The story reads like an april fool.

For root to manage privileges in an OS, isn't a group the most straitforward way?

Can't flatpak read the groups of an user?

ur-whale• 4 months ago

Carry permit to operate a compiler is in our near future.

userbinator• 4 months ago

Richard Stallman's "Right to Read" is worth reading again, because it portrays a very similar scenario.

heavyset_go3• 4 months ago

Never forget what they did to encryption

motbus32• 4 months ago

I think you miss the point (But who am I)

the simple fact you sending the same signal over and over again, with all other signals your browser send, it will be another key to make you apart. They don't care if you lie. Important that you lie the same story every time.

And after having your dob, who could easily be a flag if you are less than 18, they could easily request your name, or a document number, but I think it will be much better, it will have some ISP and/or Device ID.

ekr____8• 4 months ago

It actually is more like a flag in most cases. Specifically, in the case of AB1043, you enter your age or your DOB but then the OS provides an age range (<13, 13-15, 16-17, 18+).

Also, while some bills do seem to require browsers to promulgate age data to websites (e.g., NY SB102A [0]), AB1043 does not. Rather, it requires the browser to read the age range just like any other app, but does't say anything about providing it to sites.

[0] https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S8102/amendm...

stevenalowe• 4 months ago

NO, DO NOT COMPLY WITH FORCED SPEECH

Might seem harmless now but it won’t next time, and you will have already capitulated

uyzstvqs• 4 months ago

People need to understand the difference between age indication and age verification. Two very different things. Age indication is a completely private and realistically as-effective alternative to the invasive age verification.

Age _indication_ means that when you set up your device or create a user account, you enter a date of birth for the user. The OS then provides a native API to return a user's age bracket (not full date-of-birth). If the user is a minor, the OS will require parental authentication in some way to modify the setting again. This can all be done completely offline. It works because parents almost always buy the devices used by children, and can enter the correct date-of-birth during setup.

Age _verification_ means that some online service has to verify your age, and collects a bunch of (meta)data in the process. This is highly problematic for privacy, security, and the open internet.

ekr____8• 4 months ago

I like the term "age indication". Thank you.

If I may nitpick, the conventional term for systems which attempt to determine the user's age is "age assurance". This covers a variety of techniques, which are typically broken down into:

* Age estimation, which is based on statistical models of some physical characteristic (e.g., facial age estimation).

* Age verification, which uses identity documents such as driver's licenses.

* Age inference, which tries to determine the user's age range from some identifier, e.g., by using your email address to see how old your account is.

These distinctions aren't perfect by any means, and it's not uncommon to see "age verification" used for all three of these together but more typically people are using "age assurance".

EmbarrassedHelp• 4 months ago

The issue though with "age indication" is that it creates an additional flag that can be used to fingerprint users. But it is infinitely preferable to any sort of age verification or age assurance.

heavyset_go3• 4 months ago

It's a distinction that hinges on one law from one state that doesn't reflect the reality of the dozens of laws in dozens of states, nor proposed federal legislation, that all require age verification via AI face scans and ID uploads.

That's to say, this distinction is meaningless unless you're planning on blocking every jurisdiction outside of California so you can just adhere to its age verification laws and no one else's.

Havoc• 4 months ago

That's just setting things up for a smoother slippery slope...

As appealing as the private part sounds I genuinely think it may make the situation worse here by facilitating the transition & muddying the waters

user39393822• 4 months ago

We all have opinions, mine is you’re just incredibly naïve if you don’t understand that these laws are a shim to establish an eventual chain that links TPM to your license to end anonymous Internet usage.

kelseyfrog• 4 months ago

Why reach for a slippery slope fallacy when plenty of other fallacies will do? Have you considered reworking your argument to use proof by assertion or even the moralistic fallacy[1]? You might get better milage out of those.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

txrx00007• 4 months ago

There are two things very very wrong with the California law, which you call "age indication".

1) The parental responsibility is given to the wrong people. You're basically being forced by law to give all apps and websites your child's age on request, and then trusting those online platforms to serve the right content (lol). It should be the other way around. The apps and websites should broadcast the age rating of their content, and the OS fetches that age rating, and decides whether the content is appropriate by comparing the age rating to the user's age. The user's age, or age bracket, or any information about the user at all, should not leave the user's computer.

2) The age API is not "completely private". It's a legally-mandated data point that can be used to track a user across apps and websites. We must reject all legally-mandated tracking data points because it sets the precedent for even more mandatory tracking to be added in the future. We should not be providing an API that makes it easier for web platforms to get their hands on user data!

For many years, certain tech companies, SIGs, and governments have fought against technologies that could enable real digital parenting, all while claiming to do the opposite and "protecting children". They craft a narrative to convince you that top-down digital surveillance and access-control is for your own good, but it's time we reject that and flip their narrative upside down: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47472805

heavyset_go3• 4 months ago

For many years, certain tech companies, SIGs, and governments have fought against technologies that could enable real digital parenting, all while claiming to do the opposite and "protecting children". They craft a narrative to convince you that top-down digital surveillance and access-control is for your own good, but it's time we reject that and flip their narrative upside down

The EFF has a good series related to this[1].

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/rep-finke-was-right-ag...

Ferret7446• 4 months ago

The apps and websites should broadcast the age rating of their content, and the OS fetches that age rating, and decides whether the content is appropriate by comparing the age rating to the user's age.

How would you make that happen? Many websites would not be subject to your jurisdiction.

ekr____8• 4 months ago

1) The parental responsibility is given to the wrong people. You're basically being forced by law to give all apps and websites your child's age on request, and then trusting those online platforms to serve the right content (lol). It should be the other way around. The apps and websites should broadcast the age rating of their content, and the OS fetches that age rating, and decides whether the content is appropriate by comparing the age rating to the user's age. The user's age, or age bracket, or any information about the user at all, should not leave the user's computer.

FWIW, this is not quite an accurate description of AB1043, in at least three respects:

1. Apps don't get your exact age, just an age range.

2. Websites don't get your age at all.

3. AB1043 itself doesn't mandate any content restrictions; it just says that the app now has "actual knowledge" of the user's age. That's not to say that there aren't other laws which require age-specific behaviors, but this particular one is pretty thi on this.

In addition, I certainly understand the position that the age range shouldn't leave the computer, but I'm not sure how well that works technically, assuming you want age-based content restrictions. First, a number of the behaviors that age assurance laws want to restrict are hard to implement client side. For example, the NY SAFE For Kids act forbids algorithmic feeds, and for obvious reasons that's a lot easier to do on the server. Second, even if you do have device-side filtering, it's hard to prevent the site/app from learning what age brackets are in place, because they can experimentally provide content with different age markings and see what's accepted and what's blocked. Cooper, Arnao, and I discuss this in some more detail on pp 39--42 of our report on Age Assurance: https://kgi.georgetown.edu/research-and-commentary/age-assur...

I'm not saying that this makes a material difference in how you should feel about AB 1043, just trying to clarify the technical situation.

packetlost3• 4 months ago

1. I don’t see how that’s better in any real way. You can infer the exact same information as querying the range and it makes dynamic behavior based on age range (ex. access to age restricted chat rooms as an obvious example) completely impossible.

2. Is it meaningfully more identifying than User-Agent? There’s dozens of other datapoints for uniquely identifying a user. If we get a few high profile lawsuits because advertising companies knowingly showed harmful ads to children, I’d consider it a win. Age is not that interesting of a data point.

miki123211• 4 months ago

If we accept the premise that age restrictions of any kind are good (which, just to be clear, I don't think we should), there are good reasons for tailoring your content based on the user's age.

Imagine you're a streaming service, trying to show a list of movies that a user can watch. If you can only communicate age restrictions to the OS, but can't actually check the users age, you have a choice of showing a list of movies that some users won't actually be able to watch, or a list of movies limited to those appropriate for all ages. Neither are great options.

If you can check the user's age bracket, you can actually tailor the list to what the user can realistically watch.

charcircuit• 4 months ago

Apps need to know the age of the user in order to follow the law. There will always need to be a way for apps to get the age of the user. If the OS does not give anything the apps will have to implement it themselves.

ddtaylor3• 4 months ago

A pointless slippery slope to attempt to stand on that points directly at the Overton Window being drawn around this.

dzikimarian3• 4 months ago

Is it? A lot of parents uses Family Link and similar solutions, which are way more invasive than that.

shevy-java3• 4 months ago

In both cases the operating system stores information it has zero business with.

gzread6• 4 months ago

The operating system already stores your full name. Isn't that a problem?

cmovq• 4 months ago

The OS then provides a native API to return a user's age bracket (not full date-of-birth)

Call the API every day, when the age bracket changes you can infer the date-of-birth.

rixed• 4 months ago

Most importantly, people need to understand how indication leads to verification.

fasterik• 4 months ago

The distinction doesn't matter in this case. The fundamental question is whether a government can compel a decentralized open-source project to change its codebase. If you believe code is speech, it's a violation of the right to free expression.

Even if you think adding "age indication" to a project is harmless, you have to consider the precedent this is setting for compelled speech in the future, potentially by regimes that you are not politically aligned with.

cyberge99• 4 months ago

Age verification in the OS is one milestone of a greater objective: removing anonymity on the internet

stephbook2• 4 months ago

how?

vaylian• 4 months ago

It establishes that operating systems have the necessary infrastructure to reveal information about their users in a standardized way to other systems on the internet.

Once that is established, it is easier for politicians to push for newer laws that add more features to reveal even more information. Politicians can propose any unrealistic law they want. But it is much easier for them, to convince a necessary majority, when there is technical infrastructure already in place. "We are already doing X, why don't we just also do Y?". Or: "Country A has already X, why don't we also do X?"

garganzol• 4 months ago

Let's restrict this plague to California/UK only. If Gulag wants to be a Gulag, let them be.

nephihaha• 4 months ago

It's a global project not a local one. It is linked directly to the digital ID programme and CBDC.

petre• 4 months ago

This is stupid. The age should be in the passwd gecos field or somewhere else in the user's config directory. Not in systemd. Unix-ike systems are multiuser. Now I wonder what age to put in the root, adm or games accounts.

ben-schaaf2• 4 months ago

Systemd actually manages /etc/passwd, /etc/group, /etc/shadow, etc. using a json database called userdb. Adding a field to systemd's userdb is how you add a gecos field.

jcgl2• 4 months ago

Look up systemd-userdb (the systemd component that added this field). Like the sibling comment said, this is basically equivalent to adding a GECOS field. A totally optional field.

renegat0x0• 4 months ago

Article asks what next. I know what's next.

It is similar with crypto wars. They try and try until they have backdoor everywhere.

About verification they will try to implement WEI on browsers, and verification on os.

It is a crusade to make you always identifiable. Companies and governments want it so much because it is so valuable to them, it adds so much power over people.

So what's next. They will move borders here, and there. Every year.

usrbinenv• 4 months ago

Of course, it's pretty easy to see through this: introduce law in a few states, but now every OS needs to comply and because it's hard to actually tell which country/state user is in, they'd just have to implement it for everyone. It will be verification through some third party. You can opt out, but then major websites will be forced to deny you access (by, for example, Cloudflare) unless your OS provides a verified and signed certificate of your age. Then it's done: nothing will be possible without an ID, which means no dissent will be tolerated.

shevy-java3• 4 months ago

Systemd gathering user data is evil.

gethly• 4 months ago

SystemD is now a spyware and therefore any Linux distribution that i using it. Period.

johnny22• 4 months ago

no it is not.. not yet anyways

self_awareness• 4 months ago

I wonder, why California law mandates systems that the rest of the world should use? Does California have such massive market?

duskdozer2• 4 months ago

The economy of the State of California is the largest in the United States, with a $4.048 trillion gross state product (GSP) as of 2024.[2] It is the largest sub-national economy in the world. If California were an independent nation, it would rank as the fourth largest economy in the world in nominal terms, behind Germany and ahead of Japan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California

So yeah it's pretty big.

dizhn• 4 months ago

Wondering which jurisdiction will be the first to make it a crime to enter false information in the age field for their kids.

_nobody• 4 months ago

One very disturbing consequence not discussed enough is that some American state law is suddenly supposed to be tolerated by the rest of the world just because they depend on open source software, which sees contributions from all around the world.

Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

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