I Spoke To The Dev Behind The Systemd Birth Date Change
www.youtube.com
Today I spoke with the developer who introduced the PR to Systemd which added in a birth date field to userdb which spawned a massive drama and much worse as...

Some of you need to watch this video, and hang your head in shame.

Dylan Taylor has been receiving constant harassment, including threats to his life and safety, for actions done collectively by SystemD. The article by Sam Bent was explictly mentioned as part of the harassment campaign, and rightfully so.

I don’t think enough people realize that this is catastrophically bad. It’ll discourage people from becoming open source developers, it’ll discourage people from using Linux, and it’ll discourage legislators from taking the Linux community seriously.

If you ever wished ill upon another human being for complying with a relatively inconsequential law, you are better off never touching a computer again. The Linux community has collectively gone so far beyond what is acceptable here.

  • ExoticCherryPigeon@piefed.socialEnglish
    2·
    2 hours ago

    There are already parental control packages exist in the Linux infrastructure which are not tied to low level modules such as systemd https://github.com/biglinux/big-parental-controls if you want, you can install it. Its fork is available in the Arch ecosystem for example that mentions it complies with the BR implementation (https://github.com/jersobh/arch-parental-controls)

    • This is entirely optional package that claims to be privacy orientated (I haven’t tried it) that a system administrator can install if they wish.
    • My router, an Asus one has parental controls settings already
    • My ISP router, bog standard one has parental controls settings already
    • My ISP account has parental controls settings already at account level, if Ia m not technical enough, I can call them and ask them to set it up
    • My phone provider has parental controls

    Why do I need MORE parental controls shoved down my throat when I do not desire it nor wish for it? But this time in a core component of alot of linux distributions.

    Oh and before you tell me “but ExoticCherryPigeon, its an optional field”, sure, but here is the example of the slippery slope curtsey of UK:

    Take a look at the history of this act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_age_verification_in_the_United_Kingdom
    We are now at the point where I need to use a CC to tell some 3rd party that I want a wank.

    And what else is happening now? They are suing websites not based in UK! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023#Enforcement, but that’s not all, although not at the law stage, there are some talks about also now restricting VPN’s https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/uk-government-says-it-may-age-restrict-or-limit-childrens-vpn-use-following-new-consultation.

    A lot of websites also not based in UK jurisdiction have simply self censored UK users before they get ISP level blocked.

    If this is not an example of a slippery slope, I don’t know what is!

    TL;DR tools already exist, we do not need more tools that will be a privacy nightmare