this post was submitted on 13 May 2026
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Surveillance creep is once again striking in the age verification debate. This is happening at the FCC this time.

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[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 5 points 9 hours ago

How unexpected!

[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 3 points 8 hours ago

Papers are back! As in, "Where are your papers?".

[–] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 11 points 13 hours ago

Oh look, another attack on the freedom of speech that anonymity allows. Here's hoping "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore

[–] anarchiddy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 17 hours ago
[–] grue@lemmy.world 73 points 21 hours ago

The author gives the situation benefit of the doubt that it does not deserve. It is not "mutating" or "creeping;" the ABSOLUTELY INTENTIONAL, ORIGINAL PURPOSE is simply now becoming more and more obvious, even to the people who desperately want to pretend it isn't happening.

[–] reksas@sopuli.xyz 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

not the part of shadowrun i wanted to become reality

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

Where are the elves?

[–] turdas@suppo.fi 113 points 22 hours ago

Damn. Who could possibly have seen this coming?

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 48 points 22 hours ago
[–] alpha1beta@piefed.social 17 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

pretty soon we'll see an official spec for the header X-Current-User-Social-Security-Number

[–] YoSoySnekBoi@kbin.earth 8 points 13 hours ago

In plaintext

[–] aarch0x40@piefed.social 18 points 22 hours ago

Can I preorder my satellite linked shock collar?

[–] MrPnut@lemmy.world 7 points 19 hours ago

Of course it is

[–] Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Who chose the stock image for this? I haven't seen that style of phone since I had an LG Vue back in 2009.

[–] Pappabosley@lemmy.world 17 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

That's the phone you'll have to go back to using, to stop them identifying you. Their AI can't understand tech that old

[–] Flower@sh.itjust.works 4 points 12 hours ago

It has a sim card and a mac address. You'll be tracked.

[–] Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 21 hours ago

I'd rather die than use a membrane touch screen again.

[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 9 points 22 hours ago

Whoa, so can we stop using our social security numbers for everything yet?

[–] lambisio@feddit.cl 6 points 21 hours ago

always has been.jxl

[–] Bloomcole@lemmy.world -1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)
[–] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 0 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Ditch it and use mygov instead. cut out the proprietary middleman who charges everyone out their ass to implement it.

[–] Bloomcole@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

Belgian Mobile ID, een bedrijf dat in het leven geroepen werd door 4 grootbanken (Belfius, BNP Paribas Fortis, ING en KBC) en 3 telecomoperatoren (Proximus, Telenet, Orange) in ons land.

Right, really don't want to support any of those, even if it's free.

[–] meowmeow@quokk.au 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Told ya, you fucking systemd simps. It’s all a really fucking wet slope.

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (2 children)

systemd has nothing to do with this lmao, if you see this and immediately think "this wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t let systemd discuss putting an age field 2 months ago!!!!!1!" you are severely, severely misled. to stay nice.

[–] meowmeow@quokk.au -2 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

Hehe. The people who ignored systemd are the same people who don’t think any of this is a problem. The kind of people who can’t understand that you have to fight this kind of bullshit anytime it pops up or it eventually wins.

It just won.

[–] chunes@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

It was obvious from the start that enabling DRM and surveillance was the point of systemd all along.

[–] IHeartBadCode@fedia.io 8 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

I'm still trying to figure out how systemd has anything to do with this. Any configurable level user database could have implemented this. /etc/passwd has your "Real Name" in it as well. Finger protocol could have been selected to expose this. Literally there's dozens of different places the age thing could have been implemented. The maintainers of systemd decided to be the first. Hell, MidnightBSD just added a daemon to implement it.

Likewise if you're informed enough you also know there's a flag to explicitly block it and ways to patch it out. While I'm typically a Slackware and sysvinit type of person, there's nothing unique about systemd that enabled the shitty law California passed. And fi you really care about privacy, how about less gloat and more information about ways around it, like this fork.

You'll go a lot further educating folks how to get around the things you perceive as bad rather than whatever your original comment was. The entire point is to get people ... on your side.

[–] sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today 6 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

That the developers chose to add it at the same time as all the age verification stuff was starting is too much of a coincidence. It shows that some developers in important roles will go along with age verification. The systemd thing can be argued the way that it has been but it's the beginning of the slippery slope

[–] grue@lemmy.world 5 points 17 hours ago

Exactly. The point is not the technical details of the implementation. The point is that their act of capitulation endorsed the concept.

As Free Software developers, they had an ethical obligation to resist and they didn't.

[–] The_Decryptor@aussie.zone 4 points 17 hours ago

That the developers chose to add it at the same time as all the age verification stuff was starting is too much of a coincidence.

It'd be weird if they added it before the laws were passed, but not that strange to implement it afterwards, but before the deadline.

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

i guarantee you the lawmakers who pass this kind of awful law have no idea what systemd even is or what it does

blaming it (or "systemd simps") for this is a colossal waste of time. the surveillance society has been progressively installed in the imperial core ever since 9/11, age verification and what’s it turning into is a consequence of this, and systemd adding an age field is a consequence of that.

blaming systemd for this shit, even in part, is so bafflingly silly, such a ridiculous example of swapping cause and effect that i can’t imagine you’re doing it sincerely but apparently people agree with this???

that’s like blaming the small creek in your garden for the existence of the raging river upstream. idk.

[–] meowmeow@quokk.au 3 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

I’m blaming the PEOPLE who say “no biggie, just a number” who can’t seem to get it through their thick, dumb, argumentative skulls that these kind of things ALWAYS AND WITHOUT EXCEPTION lead to loss of privacy and more authoritarian laws.

There’s a big picture. Stop arguing the tiny points with me and SEE IT.

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 9 hours ago

Stop arguing the tiny points with me and SEE IT.

i agree, that’s why i think talking about systemd here (and arguing wether they want to implement this or not) is a massive distraction

anyways i’m gonna practice what i preach and stop talking about systemd now, enough bytes of online traffic have been spent on this

[–] MinFapper@startrek.website 0 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

You're shooting the messenger. Meta and others are lobbying governments hard for this. They're the ones causing you to lose your privacy. Not the volunteers that maintain systemd.

[–] meowmeow@quokk.au 0 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Then those volunteers can refuse. But they won’t, because they agree with this direction.

It’s plain as day. You’ll agree with me in a few years.

[–] Solumbran@lemmy.world -1 points 11 hours ago