Post B4Z4krfWx69pj2Xygi by cy@fedicy.us.to
 (DIR) More posts by cy@fedicy.us.to
 (DIR) Post #B4T2Gtnt5KoWnnHQ4u by wwahammy@social.treehouse.systems
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       A small set of people are merging changes to various Linux components to make sure every application knows your birth date.This is being done rapidly by people with unclear motivations and being merged with no youth and few marginalized people involved.https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/accountsservice/accountsservice/-/merge_requests/176#0b07c0cc4d49be119f65cdb2037440f56eed647a
       
 (DIR) Post #B4T4gHevjAy1w8K30K by wwahammy@social.treehouse.systems
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       @artemis I don't know why. And I'd say "why are people complying at all?".
       
 (DIR) Post #B4TdgU5T18dcsRZ8ro by wwahammy@social.treehouse.systems
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       In case anyone is unclear, since I hear he's also campaigning on this Linux age-gating trash:Bryan Lunduke is a fascist hatemonger. He represents the absolute worst in free software and I believe he should be ostracized from any and all parts of our community. He wants software freedom for himself and in the abstract but despises individuals expressing their freedom. He believes in a software freedom that is hollowed out and missing love.
       
 (DIR) Post #B4U1OfFjACAtC4OuI4 by feonixrift@x0r.be
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       @dalias @wwahammy @artemis This. Compliance can look like foot dragging and endless committee meetings about how exactly to comply with unclear and contradictory regulation. The Debian list posts noting that compliance in one jurisdiction could be violation in another are a great beginning of sitting down and engineering a feature to either death or satisfaction, which is what actual legal compliance looks like; ad-hoc implementations don't have enough lawyers involved to legally function.
       
 (DIR) Post #B4U1Ofd7lCtEMdLal6 by neal@social.gompa.me
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       @feonixrift @dalias @wwahammy @artemis It's not complying "in advance". The California thing is *law* now. Sure, other jurisdictions are in progress, but the time between now and the next Linux distribution releases before the January 1, 2027 date isn't that long.Everyone in the different community spaces that *do the work* are scrambling because being out of compliance is ludicrously expensive and there's not much time to be prepared. Even so, there *are* public discussions with patch review.
       
 (DIR) Post #B4U1Og1aIGSJaUn7su by neal@social.gompa.me
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       @feonixrift @dalias @wwahammy @artemis And as @soller has pointed out in multiple locations, unlike most doctrines, this one is fairly simple and written in plain language. It's pretty understandable what is required. We are also anticipating expansion of age verification laws in other jurisdictions (UK, Australia, France, Canada, etc.). But nobody is implementing anything that isn't law right now. And an implementation that exists also influences what laws can ask for in the future too.
       
 (DIR) Post #B4U1OgViUEYh5wtBqq by soller@floss.social
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       @neal @feonixrift @dalias @wwahammy @artemis I stated on the xdg mailing list that amendments are expected. We are working with Colorado legislators on language that would exclude effectively all open source operating systems and all embedded/server operating systems. This has a chance of making it to the California bill before it is effective.I had a chance to demand polkit access controls be implemented on the accountsservice change but the systemd userdb change did not get that implemented.
       
 (DIR) Post #B4U1OgusyegwM0fI5A by soller@floss.social
       1 likes, 1 repeats
       
       @neal @feonixrift @dalias @wwahammy @artemis My recommendation would be to wait on merging any of these changes at least until we see if an amendment excluding floss is accepted in Colorado, I'd hope to see it within two months. The intention of the bill's sponsors, as I have heard, is not to fine or take to court countless volunteer projects.The systemd change was particularly rushed. If it is used, it does nothing to protect PII from being read by a user's non-sandboxed applications.
       
 (DIR) Post #B4U1OhYEcMAQK34iPo by soller@floss.social
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       @neal @feonixrift @dalias @wwahammy @artemis https://fosstodon.org/@carlrichell/116261853481052659
       
 (DIR) Post #B4W6WfVcywRwOPOTmS by sammy@cherrykitten.gay
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       @neal @feonixrift @dalias @wwahammy @artemis complying immediately just because it's written in the law now while nobody is forcing you to comply yet is the definition of "complying in advance"nobody has actually threatened any enforcement or bans yet, they've just written down some meaningless shit
       
 (DIR) Post #B4XvNBxAn1LSwQTb1s by k3ym0@infosec.exchange
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       @wwahammy wtf… these are current maintainers???
       
 (DIR) Post #B4XvNCRexfjQSyjwY4 by wwahammy@social.treehouse.systems
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       @k3ym0 some are. systemd already merged a corresponding change from the same contributor.
       
 (DIR) Post #B4XvNCifwPLJJkhX4S by k3ym0@infosec.exchange
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       @wwahammy can’t we fork it prior to that commit and maintain a separate fork?
       
 (DIR) Post #B4XvNCvRAxYDxKfixk by wwahammy@social.treehouse.systems
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       @k3ym0 could it be done theoretically? Sure. But on systemd, that'd be a huge task to maintain. And the systemd folks say "oh, this PR is just an optional part of the user account system, we're just making a common API for anyone who wants to add it for any reason".They build the tracks and plead innocence as to what is in the trains.
       
 (DIR) Post #B4XvNDMNYn6NItHExM by hasani@my-spaces.social
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       @wwahammy @k3ym0 Aaaand this is the kind of shit that was brought up when SystemD came to being. That Pottering (RedHat) just did whatever they wanted and forced changes across the entire FOSS ecosystem.And Lennart blocking the merge to revert the merge is just icing on the fucking cake.And here we are yet again getting a feature pushed across the ecosystem without debate or consensus, driven by a small group of devs  with commit access
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Z4X7dylEfnDVGhyy by OctaviaConAmore@cutie.city
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       @wwahammy @burnoutqueen the sheer number of bootlickers that have the boot well down their throats in your replies is kinda horrifying :psyduck_sweat: and what's worse, they're evidently exhibitionists who want the rest of us to see how well they can suck boot :ditto_yikes:
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Z4aG281dGI6a3jYe by nazokiyoubinbou@urusai.social
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       @wwahammy I just realized what the scariest thing about this truly is.  It's not even just that they're doing all this.  It's how FAST they're pushing it through while ignoring any and all opposition.  Like basically a lot of people already have it on their systems right now probably just from automatic or frequent manual updates.This one person in particular seems to have made it a crusade to put age-gating into Linux and is doing PRs all over the place in a hurry, many of which are just being evaluated by Claude rather than real humans (well, I guess a big XZ-style exploit but even worse has been found in this process.)  Just like that, a thing that invades user privacy to comply in advance with a law in one very specific area that can't legally be applied to people outside it is in.
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Z4cSgZxGQXvQ1xUO by deutrino@mstdn.io
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       @nazokiyoubinbou
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Z4dUGvXhw58OWNOK by etchedpixels@mastodon.social
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       @wwahammy so fork it and just swap it out for your  systemd-deshittified. Just be careful because if you really deshittified systemd I am not sure how much would be left 😁
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Z4dyWD5RzCwTu0NU by mcv@friendica.opensocial.space
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       I really don't understand why people are upset about this particular PR. Yes, the age verification law is stupid, but this is by far the best way to handle it. It's optional, and puts users in control. Other age verification schemes have involved privacy-invading measures like uploading id documents or facial scanning, both of which are completely unacceptable.Putting the user in control is good. Parents can enter a birthdate on the accounts for their children without compromising their child's identity. And that's the only thing that really matters.There are people who complain that this is unreliable, but what existing age verification is more reliable than this? The only other acceptable method is for governments to provide an online e-ID service where a user's age can be verified anonymously, and I haven't heard of any government providing that yet. Failing that, this sounds to me like the only way to do it.
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Z4dyhCQamDUZ2mVU by deutrino@mstdn.io
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       @mcv "That's the true believer pattern. The argument is ideological, so persuasion is off the table. He read the laws, decided compliance was the correct response, and went to work. Every objection the community raised went nowhere: that this enables surveillance infrastructure, that lying is trivially easy, that the laws themselves are unconstitutional overreach. He'd already accepted the law as legitimate and moved to implementation."
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Z4ebfnVjpQNVgiEi by deutrino@mstdn.io
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       @OctaviaConAmore @wwahammy @burnoutqueen@todon.nl I've been discussing this exact phenomenon elsewhere, it's unreal how many are crawling out of the woodwork. it's part of a larger trend I've seen vastly accelerate since 2024 even among friends I've known for decades. a close friend who was deeply skeptical of concentrated power & state overreach just told me last week he wants to uninstall Signal bc a spyware app he installed to save 10% on car insurance conflicts with the battery optimization settings
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Z4gf9zW8RRlvn7Qm by CjMalone@en.osm.town
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       @wwahammy > Nobody is a fan of these laws, but not following the laws has huge implications in any project that would like to have any company contribute to it and puts the maintainers in a position where they are unnecessarily liable.Ignoring laws is a key and vital part of living in society.
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Z4gz7BKI4tf0d9pQ by DiogoConstantino@masto.pt
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       @CjMalone @wwahammy fighting laws is made with democratic participation and courts, not with software.
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Z4gzM4QvzIPBb32G by deutrino@mstdn.io
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @DiogoConstantino @CjMalone @wwahammy :WSHHFANS:
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Z4iWC5p9SCXkevAm by cy@fedicy.us.to
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       The community pushed back hard on this one. The Arch maintainers are holding, Canonical backed away, and Artix Linux, the systemd-free Arch derivative, issued the clearest statement: they will never require any verification or ID. It's FOSS When someone opened a revert PR, Lennart closed it himself on March 19th. The birthDate field is in systemd and it's staying.It's funny because only Artix isn't actively enforcing this change. Arch are lying that they're holding (they're not). Canonical are lying that they're backing away (they're not). How can I tell? Both of them use systemd. Both of them require systemd. So anything that gets merged into systemd, they require, whether they want to or not.It's a fuggin disgrace to see people downstream of an important change saying "Oh no, no we aren't gonna comply with this nosirree," while forcing upstream compliance of it down our throats just by being useless tools.
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Z4jwEGVnTnZyLtmC by bohwaz@mamot.fr
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       @wwahammyAlso this is most likely illegal under gdpr as collecting personal data that is not required for the system to work is illegal. Only necessary data should be collected. So they just made systemd illegal in Europe. Good job.
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Z4krfWx69pj2Xygi by cy@fedicy.us.to
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       I don't suppose you could get a summarized list of this small set of people, including legal names and birthdates and "THESE ARE THE CORPORATE CREEPS ATTACKING LINUX PLEASE SLASH THEIR TIRES" on the top of the document? Asking for a friend
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Z4nkkh7neB8tL85Y by gullevek@famichiki.jp
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       @wwahammy @jwz In my life time we went from no computers to computers for everyone to tech lord controlled you don’t own anything but must rent everything way too fast. This is all fucking bullshit
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Z4pDTToywoVqzAOG by rootwyrm@weird.autos
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       @wwahammy these are definitely not unknown people. I guarantee you every single fucking one of them is a Meta or Google employee.
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Z4pU2SEiQlsxTK7s by wwahammy@social.treehouse.systems
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       @rootwyrm as far as I know, I don't think they are.
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Z4pUMf1aastcvSca by rootwyrm@weird.autos
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       @wwahammy there's no fucking way that these commits are not directly linked to Meta and their ilk. Absolutely none at all. These are the only companies besides IBM with the staff, and the only ones with the vested interest, as well as a LONG history of hiding, minimizing, or straight up lying about their involvement in things.If the IPs aren't from Meta's ASN, they're employees using their home connection again, something the company has ordered them to do for breaking the law for example.
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Z4r1bUvXuSH9b9RA by gnoll110@ruby.social
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       @wwahammy Ok, everyone, we're all born on 01-01-1970!
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Z4r1m8I0Pso8Ze0u by wwahammy@social.treehouse.systems
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       @gnoll110 I know that's a common attitude but in effect, kids who are honest get harmed by their computer. The operating system of a computer should never be designed to purposely harm you. I don't think that's the case anymore with Linux if this nonsense becomes a reality.