this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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Add a required birth date prompt (YYYY-MM-DD) to the user creation flow, stored as a systemd userdb JSON drop-in at /etc/userdb/.user on the target system.

Motivation

Recent age verification laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc. require platforms to verify user age. Collecting birth date at install time ensures Arch Linux is compliant with these regulations.

This is just a pull request, no changes yet.

The pull-request discussion thread has been locked, just like it happened for the similar thread in Systemd, owing to the amount of negative comments...

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[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You don't need to be suspicious, they're explicitly adding it because of that. They said as much.

[–] Avicenna@programming.dev 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I sort of get the feeling of something more than just complying with the possible age verification law. I feel like it has intent do damage and distrupt the community.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I feel this law has the intent to damage and disrupt things in general, yes. Parental controls have existed for ages but lawmakers don't seem interested in them. For example, all the porn bans, rather than forcing sites to use some sort of self tagging system that parental controls could easily see (like some response header) they just want them to take IDs. All of it is a push to forcing people to always be online transparently with their real identity well known.

[–] Avicenna@programming.dev 1 points 11 hours ago

The law yes, it is also I think is a response to rising anger against billionaires. They want to make sure that they have the necessary systems in place when anger actually turns into action.

But I was talking about this person in particular. It feels like no one without a ulterior motive would try to get such a thing passed preemptively and so much like a coup. Even if this law passed in all states you could probably drag any requests to add such a verification for years and years without any actual sanctions. So why the rush to comply without exploring any other options?