A small set of people are merging changes to various Linux components to make sure every application knows your birth date.
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@wwahammy lol, when I wrote that reply, I'd seen your username, but didn't read your display name until after I'd hit post.
Anyway, yes, yes you do write gud
@alice I really am impressed that I wrote something good enough for someone to share it with me unknowingly
I think I get some sort of angry FOSS activist sticker or something.
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@wwahammy Any distro or Linux app that asks me for my DOB will be uninstalled with extreme prejudice.
Seriously, I dont know a Linux user who wouldn't immediately remove the thumb drive of any distro that asked for this. I know Arch users aren't going to tolerate it.
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duh it's going to be hard. why are we giving up before trying? sometimes difficult things are achieved, and it's because people had a plan of action and didn't stop trying to push even when it looked bleak. I would have been trying something way earlier if I knew this was on the books. if you don't want to do anything, that's fine, personal choice and all. but lots of people are really mad. so what is our plan, what can we do for those of us ready to fight?
@crypticrainfall @wwahammy @smn I'm really regretting stepping away from FLOSS when I did. I hadn't realised just how urgent the issue was going to become. I feel like we've somewhat sleepwalked into this, despite the warnings from folks like Eben Moglen, because we trusted too much in democracy and underestimated the nefarious goals of corporations like Meta. And still the seriousness doesn't reach the general population. Literally nobody know on other platforms or irl talks about this; if I raise it, it's crickets. They just don't care.
( Edit: I hadn't realised Moglen was yet another problematic individual in the Free Software hierarchy. So that's unfortunate. )
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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 questionable justifications and being merged with no youth and few marginalized people involved.
If its stealing your birthdate off other apps, thats outrageous. If it asks for it in order to download, I'll never use the software. I don't give my birthdate to anyone but the IRS and my state voting office. Thats bad enough.
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I found this a good write-up https://www.sambent.com/the-engineer-who-tried-to-put-age-verification-into-linux-5/
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duh it's going to be hard. why are we giving up before trying? sometimes difficult things are achieved, and it's because people had a plan of action and didn't stop trying to push even when it looked bleak. I would have been trying something way earlier if I knew this was on the books. if you don't want to do anything, that's fine, personal choice and all. but lots of people are really mad. so what is our plan, what can we do for those of us ready to fight?
@crypticrainfall @wwahammy @smn well to begin with I'm going to see what the EFF have to say, and other freedom and privacy activists. They'll have been applying some expertise to the matter.
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So the age verification stuff is beyond terrible. But the systemd PR specifically seems like a weird one to get worked up about?
It does 2 things:
1) The schema-docs for the the userdb JSON, which already allows you to add arbitrary user-defined fields in addition to the pre-defined fields, now define an optional "birthDate" field to be to be a "YYYY-MM-DD" string.
2) Added a flag to `userdbctl` (edit: `homectl`, actually) to be able to set the field from that command, instead of having to edit the JSON some other way.Like, I already deal with multi-user systems where "hobbies" is a field in there. I don't see the harm in saying "If you wanna add a birthDate field, it should be 'YYYY-MM-DD' and not seconds-since-epoch or something".
The polkit stuff? Makes my gut churn.
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So the age verification stuff is beyond terrible. But the systemd PR specifically seems like a weird one to get worked up about?
It does 2 things:
1) The schema-docs for the the userdb JSON, which already allows you to add arbitrary user-defined fields in addition to the pre-defined fields, now define an optional "birthDate" field to be to be a "YYYY-MM-DD" string.
2) Added a flag to `userdbctl` (edit: `homectl`, actually) to be able to set the field from that command, instead of having to edit the JSON some other way.Like, I already deal with multi-user systems where "hobbies" is a field in there. I don't see the harm in saying "If you wanna add a birthDate field, it should be 'YYYY-MM-DD' and not seconds-since-epoch or something".
The polkit stuff? Makes my gut churn.
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If its stealing your birthdate off other apps, thats outrageous. If it asks for it in order to download, I'll never use the software. I don't give my birthdate to anyone but the IRS and my state voting office. Thats bad enough.
@oldoldcojote the OS asks at first boot and then would share the date (or a rough age) to every application on the system that asks.
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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 questionable justifications and being merged with no youth and few marginalized people involved.
@wwahammy Fork that shit.
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@wwahammy Fork that shit.
@flipper I mean, definitely could but defaults are a powerful thing in this world.
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@flipper I mean, definitely could but defaults are a powerful thing in this world.
@wwahammy It was meant to be a play on words, but I understand your very real and serious point.
California uber alles, as Jello Biafra would have said.
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@oldoldcojote the OS asks at first boot and then would share the date (or a rough age) to every application on the system that asks.
Will definitely put me off any linux if it goes forward. I use an older ubuntu now on more recent computers, was going to update. Now?
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@oldoldcojote the OS asks at first boot and then would share the date (or a rough age) to every application on the system that asks.
@wwahammy we need to start refusing to buy this immoral crap. And oust corporate worshippers from our open software. Thank you for helping to spread this info.
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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 questionable justifications and being merged with no youth and few marginalized people involved.
@wwahammy no sir, I don’t like it.
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@wwahammy no sir, I don’t like it.
@attentionspantherapy not really a Sir but no worries, I don't like it either.
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So that's clearly (scumbag) Dylan M. Taylor's intent and belief. But I think it is valid to separate them for the purpose of evaluating folks-other-than-Dylan; I don't think bluca did anything wrong by merging it (nor poettering for lgtm'ing it). I don't think it's valid to say "welp, systemd added age verification, I have to switch to a non-systemd OS now to avoid age verification."[1] I think it's totally valid for bluca and poettering to look at the PR and think "the author's motivation is bad, but this specific change is fine."
"They build the tracks and plead innocence as to what is in the trains." I feel that way about a lot of stuff, but... this is even more removed than that? There's no policy engine. "They approved a standard for the width of train tracks."?
[1]: There are plenty of valid reasons to prefer other init systems, but I don't think "birthDate" showing up in a json schema is one of them.
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So that's clearly (scumbag) Dylan M. Taylor's intent and belief. But I think it is valid to separate them for the purpose of evaluating folks-other-than-Dylan; I don't think bluca did anything wrong by merging it (nor poettering for lgtm'ing it). I don't think it's valid to say "welp, systemd added age verification, I have to switch to a non-systemd OS now to avoid age verification."[1] I think it's totally valid for bluca and poettering to look at the PR and think "the author's motivation is bad, but this specific change is fine."
"They build the tracks and plead innocence as to what is in the trains." I feel that way about a lot of stuff, but... this is even more removed than that? There's no policy engine. "They approved a standard for the width of train tracks."?
[1]: There are plenty of valid reasons to prefer other init systems, but I don't think "birthDate" showing up in a json schema is one of them.
As someone who was once noted on Wikipedia for maintaining a fork of systemd, I think this is a really silly reason for wanting to fork systemd.
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@lukeshu @k3ym0 I don't really see this as a case where forking would help anyways. The problem is that the default is supporting the system I oppose. If someone were to fork, which I agree would be kinda pointless anyways, that doesn't solve the original problem: soon, the default for the Linux desktop is for age-gating to be supported and that's bad.
