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>.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.
This is just a pull request, no changes yet.
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…
I fully expect this person to not be even real and instead just another ai bot to push agenda for corporate scum
He’s the third highest contributor to archinstall.
https://github.com/dylanmtaylor
Still a dipshit but probably not a bot.
Fair enough that’s pretty surprising, so even Arch is not safe from lunatics… That is disappointing. As a Manjaro user, I am likely to pick up their changes via both systemd and since Manjaro is Arch based… Sad and disappointed by useful morons who have no fucking clue.
it’s so strange to me that he tried to add age verification scripting changes in archinstall. isn’t that the wrong place systemd makes sense but I’m puzzled by the archinstall pr
Not the wrong place if you want to comply with the law, as he explains in the PR comments, the law requires the installer to prompt for age when creating users.
The thing that’s frustrating is that if the age verification laws weren’t there and they wanted to add a birthday field it wouldn’t seem bad. Details about the human using the account like first and last name are already stored. All you really need is username. But because it’s explicitly in reaction to age verification laws we have to be skeptical about adding it.
The timing makes me even more suspicious. Of all the times one could added this field, this is probably singularly the worst one. Right after discussions of mandatory age check? Seriously?
You don’t need to be suspicious, they’re explicitly adding it because of that. They said as much. Look at what they wrote under “Motivation.”
I sort of get the feeling of something more than just complying with the possible future age verification law. I feel like it has intent do damage and distrupt the community.
I feel this law has the intent to damage and disrupt things in general, yes. Parental controls have existed for ages but lawmakers don’t seem interested in them. For example, all the porn bans, rather than forcing sites to use some sort of self tagging system that parental controls could easily see (like some response header) they just want them to take IDs. All of it is a push to forcing people to always be online transparently with their real identity well known.
The law yes, it is also I think is a response to rising anger against billionaires. They want to make sure that they have the necessary systems in place when anger actually turns into action.
But I was talking about this person in particular. It feels like no one without a ulterior motive would try to get such a thing passed preemptively and so much like a coup. Even if this law passed in all states you could probably drag any requests to add such a verification for years and years without any actual sanctions. So why the rush to comply without exploring any other options?
@JackbyDev @underscores Yes we do, because it is an erosion of our freedom.
You’re saying that in a post age verification world though, my whole point is that if this were there before it wouldn’t seem bad. I’m not saying we should add it now because it would’ve been fine before.
fascist cocks won’t suck themselves.