Age Verification - Linux.org's Official Stance

[Rob]

Hey, this is our central thread for age verification discussion - whether it's about linux.org specifically or the broader Linux ecosystem. Any other threads on the topic will be removed.

Our stance is pretty simple - the internet should be free and we're not gonna ask you for your ID. Linux.org has always collected age at signup and that's as far as we're going with it.

Worth noting that California's law, which is what's got everyone fired up right now, isn't even real verification - it's just self reporting. Pick your age range, click submit. Any kid who wants around it will be around it in about 4 seconds.

These laws were written for TikTok, not a Linux forum.

This is your thread too - let us know what you think.

Some rules:

• keep it civil
• no politics beyond the topic itself
• discuss the issue not the people making the laws

 

[CaffeineAddict]

As always it all begins with small steps, until it becomes widely adopted and too late to resist.
Silencing us to not talk against obvious attempt at mass surveillance is wrong and I don't agree with this new rule, but I respect it.

the internet should be free and we're not gonna ask you for your ID. Linux.org has always collected age at signup and that's as far as we're going with it.

These laws were written for TikTok, not a Linux forum.

But the whole point isn't about linux.org at all, surveillance of users in general is pretty much what IT forums like this should be discussing, especially when a thing is new and trending.

Recently MS on its discord forbid users from calling MS Microslop, which is a derogatory term of its AI policies being pushed everywhere, threatening users with ban, but they achieved nothing except making the community even louder. (google about it, it's funny)

My understanding for closing threads was to avoid politics, but I see it as politics is an excuse just like so called "protection" of children.
If somebody starts to talk about politics it is their post that should be removed or user sanctioned instead of a whole thread and the subject.

 

[Rob]

If somebody starts to talk about politics it is their post that should be removed or user sanctioned instead of a whole thread and the subject.

Right - the issue was it became too granular - this or that distro.. each in its own thread. Starting over, we can discuss all of it in this thread.

Edit: There wasn't silencing, there were too many disjointed discussions. We talked about it internally and decided to make a stance with one thread and make that the place people could discuss the situation. I'm sorry if you felt ppl were being silenced.

 

[f33dm3bits]

My understanding for closing threads was to avoid politics, but I see it as politics is an excuse just like so called "protection" of children.
If somebody starts to talk about politics it is their post that should be removed or user sanctioned instead of a whole thread and the subject.

Yes that was actually the problem but as more topics were opened about it, it seems the topic can't be avoided. So we the staff discussed it and came to the conclusion there's no way of getting around it, with it being in one topic it's easier to moderate and control if things get out of hand as it not being all over the place since we don't have enough mods to deal with it being all over the place.

 

[CaffeineAddict]

We talked about it internally and decided to make a stance with one thread and make that the place people could discuss the situation. I'm sorry if you felt ppl were being silenced.

OK, this sounds reasonable, there were multiple threads in which I wanted to say something but couldn't because it was closed.

 

[f33dm3bits]

For those using systemD, you can run the following to disable the functionalities that were merged into SystemD for the Age fields that were merged as those are the services which use it.

sudo systemctl disable systemd-userdb-load-credentials.service systemd-userdbd.service systemd-userdbd.socket systemd-homed.service --now
sudo systemctl mask systemd-userdb-load-credentials.service systemd-userdbd.service systemd-userdbd.socket systemd-homed.service

I have had these disabled for a while now and everything is still working fine.

 

[Condobloke]

For those using systemD, you can run the following to disable the functionalities that were merged into SystemD for the Age fields that were merged

Is it possible to see exactly what was merged into systemd for the age fields ?

I must admit to having no idea what all that means.

 

[f33dm3bits]

Is it possible to see exactly what was merged into systemd for the age fields ?

It's an optional field which allows you to store a users age as an admin from my understanding and systemD has some other fields like that for other information, don't know much about it either.

userdb: add birthDate field to JSON user records by dylanmtaylor · Pull Request #40954 · systemd/systemd

Stores the user's birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc. The xdg-desktop-portal project is addi...

github.com

I must admit to having no idea what all that means.

I found somewhere that disabling those services should disable anything that has to do with those fields as well.

 

[Condobloke]

BTW....I consider it a smart move to make this the one and only thread re age verification and its ramifications----- and the ever changing subtleties of the topic....

I found somewhere that disabling those services should disable anything that has to do with those fields as well.

Just saw that post.
Good work, Maarten !

Some rules:

• keep it civil
• no politics beyond the topic itself
• discuss the issue not the people making the laws

Roger the above.

 

[Condobloke]

I ran the above code in post #6, with the following result:

condobloke@brian-desktop:~$ sudo systemctl disable systemd-userdb-load-credentials.service systemd-userdbd.service systemd-userdbd.socket systemd-homed.service --now
sudo systemctl mask systemd-userdb-load-credentials.service systemd-userdbd.service systemd-userdbd.socket systemd-homed.service
[sudo] password for condobloke:         
Failed to disable unit: Unit file systemd-userdb-load-credentials.service does not exist.
Unit systemd-userdb-load-credentials.service does not exist, proceeding anyway.
Unit systemd-userdbd.service does not exist, proceeding anyway.
Unit systemd-userdbd.socket does not exist, proceeding anyway.
Unit systemd-homed.service does not exist, proceeding anyway.
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/systemd-userdb-load-credentials.service → /dev/null.
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/systemd-userdbd.service → /dev/null.
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/systemd-userdbd.socket → /dev/null.
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/systemd-homed.service → /dev/null.
condobloke@brian-desktop:~$

 

[f33dm3bits]

I found somewhere that disabling those services should disable anything that has to do with those fields as well.

Age Verification - SystemD

Thank you for opening this for discussion. It’s good to hear CachyOS is not in a jurisdiction affected by this (yet), and therefore has no plans to force birth date entry on install (at this time). What things look like today, for CachyOS The SystemD PR adding the first steps towards age...

discuss.cachyos.org

 

[f33dm3bits]

I ran the above code in post #6, with the following result:

That stops the running services and prevents to from starting during next reboot. I haven't tried this on Mint but be sure to do a reboot to check if everything is still working for you fine on Mint after this change.

 

[f33dm3bits]

Failed to disable unit: Unit file systemd-userdb-load-credentials.service does not exist.

That one shows it doesn't exist. If you run the following you can check what services with userdb are installed on Linux Mint.

systemctl list-unit-files | grep userdb

Then disable the ones it does list.

 

[Condobloke]

Sorry I took so long, Maarten

condobloke@brian-desktop:~$ systemctl list-unit-files | grep userdb
systemd-userdb-load-credentials.service      masked          enabled
systemd-userdbd.service                      masked          enabled
systemd-userdbd.socket                       masked          enabled
condobloke@brian-desktop:~$

 

[f33dm3bits]

systemd-userdb-load-credentials.service masked enabled systemd-userdbd.service masked enabled systemd-userdbd.socket masked enabled

Looks like you have already done so, those are the same ones I have on Arch Linux.

 

[Condobloke]

So the fact that it says....masked....means they are disabled?.......yet it also says enabled at the end of the line......

 

[Condobloke]

As you can see...I am out of my depth here ! lol

 

[f33dm3bits]

So the fact that it says....masked....means they are disabled?.......yet it also says enabled at the end of the line......

If you do the following, you will see that the status is "inactive/dead".

systemctl status systemd-userdbd.socket

 

[MikeWalsh]

What amuses me is this:-

Given that no Linux distro insists on creating an online account as part of its initial set-up, how are the "powers that be" going to know who's using Linux? And more to the point, I don't quite see how their "requirement" is going to be enforced.....

Maybe I'm wrong in this assumption? I have to assume that this is primarily aimed at Windows / Mac users.....and anybody running iOS or Android on a smartphone. In other words, the "big four" well-known operating systems...

(shrug...)


Mike.

 

[Condobloke]

○ systemd-userdbd.socket
Loaded: masked (Reason: Unit systemd-userdbd.socket is masked.)
Active: inactive (dead)