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…
And what would refusing a field do?
What needs to be done is basically a revolt against current governments and capitalism, not nitpicking every privacy-invading law that comes, and then waiting patiently for the next one to come.
You’d rather put a big target on linux systems for stupid fucks to label it as “the big danger for our kids” which would just bring nothing good.
You want to stop taking hits, then stop waiting for them and then pretend that dodging is the only solution.
I’m doing my part on that, you are invited to also do yours. But also do realize that “a revolt against current governments and capitalism” is a class action, not something that we can do by ourselves like patching an OS to remove age verification is.
And big linux groups cannot remove age verification as easily as users can, as a big group is likely to be sued while an individual isn’t as much.