The optional birthDate field gives other projects a standardized data source for age verification compliance.

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Systemd has merged a pull request adding an optional `birthDate` field to its userdb JSON user records, responding to age verification laws in California, Colorado, and Brazil. The field, stored in YYYY-MM-DD format, can only be set by administrators and is not mandatory. Lennart Poettering clarified that systemd itself does nothing with the data — it simply standardizes the field so other projects like xdg-desktop-portal can build age verification compliance on top of it. A request to repeal the change was rejected, with Poettering noting widespread misunderstanding of the intent.

Systemd’s New Feature Brings Age Verification Option to Linux

I’m from EU not some dystopian, oligarchic country like US so I don’t have issues with this but I’m shocked who people in US voted to power

The title is clickbait. This only adds a field to user profile. User profile already has stuff like address or phone number.

Thank you, systemd team, for making me finally hate it enough to switch to a distro without it.

why the F did anyone develop this? Reject this shit.

I filed a bug against the repo saying that it’s illegal to capture personal information of minors and that they would be violating COPPA laws. They not only closed the bug, which isn’t surprising, but then actually deleted the bug, so it’s not visible to anyone.