Possibly a relevant historical parallel on how this might happen (the differences are surface-level): https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2026/03/msg00359.html

I agree with most of what you said, however, I’m not worried about most people. I’m more worried about people who are trying to act against tracking. Maybe I shouldn’t, and we cannot “personal responsibility” our way out of this, but I still haven’t processed that loss.

I’m also not worried about “user is likely accessing service from a *nix device” in itself. It’s hard to say how insignificant this particular bit is. I’ll prolly need to spoof this info, too.

The systemd change is fairly insignificant, yes. That the xdg-desktop-portal people will implement this is more worrying. I’m also worried that the systemd addition will be used as “proof” that the linux landscape is perfectly capable of adding age attestation and verification, and therefore they will dismiss any possibly amendment to the US bills and the EU wouldn’t even consider adding an exception.

I agree in principle. Thankfully, the law is not “in place” in the US yet, there’s still time to amend, repeal, etc., so we are not in trouble for now.

Ofc, John Brown would disagree with you, but he is extreme by today’s standards.

A better example would be the many people who try to block policemen from evicting people from rented apartments (mostly old/sick people who cannot pay). Ofc, one could pay for one being evicted, but that would just strengthen the landlord.

This one is a very old debate, and you are taking my opinion to an extreme. Not that I think it’s particularly offensive or anything.

This question is rhetorical: would you uphold racial segregation laws because they are the law?

There are many takes one what one should do.

If the law creates this new API, nobody will be able to get away without leaking PII to the web (I think it will have a javascript API). 1970 jan 1 identifies *nix users, 1900 jan 1, even an “unset” will leak info on people, etc. entropy and shit. Websites will also try to use the API. One could set the function to crash JS, or disable all JS, but that already breaks 90% of the web. One could also: either not install userdb (like I do), or install a non-systemd linux, but those still will leak “unset” or “API disabled”.

There’s no getting away from this, it really is the law that we should push back against. Unfortunately it’s a fight currently only Americans and Brazilians can participate in properly. Donations won’t work well, govts these days often clamp down on NGOs because they often get money internationally, and therefore, they are “foreign interference” etc.

I think the discussion we should be having instead is engineering ethics.

I think Dylan’s letter clearly showed he isn’t really involved in “FOSS radical” circles and has the usual engineering mindset (that was described in the Sam Bent blogpost). Not that I personally blame him, engineering schools raise students for this, and the corporate structure further enforces it with the strict hierarchies where you do whatever management orders you to do. What’s important is that there are many devs who clearly aren’t tied into the ethics discussion part of engineering. There’s even research on engineers’ attitudes afaik, and its conclusion was that freshly graduated engineers’ first response was to implement changes without thinking about the ethics part, and after further prompting and discussion, they could be convinced that this change was bad and they need to push back.

I’ll leave a two links here so when people iwsh to read, they know where to find good stuff.

• Constructive Technology Criticism Annotated Syllabus - I know Medium sucks but the scribe.rip copy I saved suffers link rot
• Awesome critical tech reading list - you can just git clone it and read it without browser

I dunno the exact law, but I’d differentiate based on whether the law in place is bad, or good (in my opinion). Maybe the guys doing the “double standard” also think like this.

I don’t wish Dylan harm, and I’m not doing anything to him. I also believe nobody here is sending threats. If you saw the video, you probably noticed that it contained a screenshot from 4chan. 4chan users have been known for terrible behaviour and they are conspiracy-minded fascists, who also oppose this change (others fascists would like this as long as it’s not them being spied on). I’m almost completely sure that they are the ones doing the bullying, not users from here.

I’d prefer if the age verification landscape would be fragmented an unusable, compared to systemd offering it in a consistent manner. Websites will use the offered APIs and will use it for extending fingerprinting. No, fake birth dates won’t save you. Even the disabled canvas API is used for fingerprinting. It just shouldn’t be exposed at all. Not that it matters because every other OS will comply and desktop linux is negligible.

The arguments presented in the video won’t convince anyone who bully people on the internet. They are most often fash and they believe that only power matters. Bullying is exerting power over people, and if they succeed in bullying them into reverting the change, they will be satisfied. Not that I think it will achieve anything, but they do. They follow Carl Schmitt’s teachings.

On “better ways to make a change”: If somebody doesn’t live in the US, and lives in sort of a dictatorship, they can neither affect murican lawmaking nor do their govt listen to anyone other than a few. If this age attestation/verification shit comes into place, their only choice here would be to go and not install systemd-userdb (or use linux without systemd). The disabled API would probably break even more websites than disabling 3rd party javascript. Their govt could also use the fingerprinting to spy more on citizens (they prolly already do).

As a thought experiment: please recommend them a better way than bullying. No, not living in a shithole country is not an option. No, they don’t have the spare money to found/donate to an existing org that fights against this. Also, companies pushing this would just outspend them.

There’s also the aspect of corporate influence over linux. It directs changes in order to further business interest over normal users’ interests. Personally, I prefer companies be out of linux and would accept lower-quality things. But also, I think the ones most hurt by these laws are the system integrators (mentioned in the video), who actually need to do things that align with normal users’ interests.

On the parental control thing: yes, age things could be used for it, but the parents know better than the computer, and user settings would be preferable (for example, kid should be able to this and that program, open this site, but not others). I think it shouldn’t be the websites who decide. Yes, parenting takes a lot of time, but we can’t substitute it with automatated fence-building.

Edit: elaborate on "fascists.