Birthdate field under discussion also in Arch Linux
2026-03-24 08:17 UTC
cross-posted from: lemmy.ca/post/62271746
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.
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…
Replies (2)
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@Aeri@lemmy.world 2026-03-24 19:54
Just make it default to 0-0-0000 and do zero validation, yeah it might seem weird that most of our users are thousands of years old but we’re too lazy to investigate.
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@spectrums_coherence@piefed.social 2026-03-27 12:36
I hope they make it very clear that setting this value is not recommended in most jurisdictions.