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The Engineer Who Tried to Put Age Verification Into Linux
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this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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Genuine question, don’t we always say that we can change anything in the system on open source software like Linux and systemd etc? What’s stopping any of us from removing this age verification thing? Apps may break, true, but I’m sure there will be many one line scripts that replace that age verification with something that feeds it fake data?
Tbf simply following the development and criticizing bad design decisions is also one way to change opensource software no?
You could just put a fake date in at user setup from what I understand. It adds the field to the user database but there isn't any verification that that date is true
We were all born on 01/01/1970
I think it's blatantly obvious we weren't born on January 1970, year 1. January only has 30 days, not 1970.
Can't wait for us to be able to access ultra-porn by 2130
I’ve heard somewhere that they’ll require a constant api calls from each system to an external verification system that is even paid. I don’t remember where I read this but if that’s the case then we are fucking doomed.
"I’ve heard somewhere that they’ll require a constant api calls from each system to an external verification system that is even paid"
or what? you can't use the software store? most of the stuff on there is open source and you can compile it yourself
if it comes down to it you can just compile your own kernel that doesn't do that.
what about airgapped systems?
It just doesn't work
You have a valid point.
Someone could fork systemd.
Also, some major distros might decide to use the fork
There are a few forks already like https://github.com/Jeffrey-Sardina/systemd and more will pop up for sure. I will try to build it maybe at least I can help with some infra to build it + an AUR package.
I never doubted the forks for a freaking second. That’s why however I think about it, I feel like it won’t work with free open source. Unless the government burdens the app developers to make their apps require age verification to an external source then distribution will have to implement it. Not sure how this shit is going to pan out. Fuck Zuckerberg
IMO the benefit and curse is you could fork it, maintain it, patch it yourself, etc if you wanted, but then its a full time job keeping it up to date with changes. As others have pointed out, this is a decisive change, so a fork probably wouldn't be a solo project, but the bifurcation in development would be a large impact, slowing development in other fixes and features.
Then what's stopping you from rallying the contributors to treat the fork as the primary target for development instead?