Flatpak may be next, and the lobbying behind it is raising eyebrows
After weeks of debate, code to record user age was finally merged into the Linux world's favorite system management daemon.
Pull request #40954 to the systemd project is titled "userdb: add birthDate field to JSON user records." It's a new function for the existing userdb service, which adds a field to hold the user's date of birth:
Stores the user's birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc.
The contents of the field will be protected from modification except by users with root privileges.
The change comes after the recent release of systemd 260 but unless it is reverted for some reason, it will be part of systemd 261. One of the justifications is to facilitate the new parental controls in Flatpak, which are still in the draft stage.
The change comes after the various bits of new legislation to bring age checks into operating systems, which The Reg covered recently. We also reported on how System76 is pushing back against the legislation.
The ripples are still spreading across the Linux world.
GrapheneOS is a de-Googled version of Android for privacy-centric smartphones, which may appear on Motorola phones next year. The Canadian nonprofit behind the OS posted on X: "GrapheneOS will remain usable by anyone around the world without requiring personal information, identification or an account. GrapheneOS and our services will remain available internationally. If GrapheneOS devices can't be sold in a region due to their regulations, so be it."
Android doesn't use systemd, of course, but one of the other leading alternative phone OSes, postmarketOS, switched to it in 2024. We can't help but wonder if they regret the move yet.
Other distro communities may be starting to feel that way.
The Arch Linux ecosystem is quite broad, and some parts are not happy. One of the maintainers of the Arch-based Garuda Linux, which we tried a few years ago and rather liked, has posted a statement on age verification and the state of the community discourse in the distro's forums, saying:
However, they continue:
Garuda Linux will not implement any age verification measures, since Garuda Linux's legal jurisdictions have no laws mandating age verification.
They note:
Here, the Garuda folks are referring to the research from the TBOTE Project. This organization's research surfaced in a Reddit post and it is also mirroring its findings via Git, in its own repository, and also on GitHub.
Some of us [have] honestly been quite shocked at the way this conversation has been moving in the Linux community as a whole.
Distribution developers are being hounded at every corner for complying with these laws.
The TBOTE findings suggest that Meta is the biggest donor behind the lobbying for these age-verification laws and the App Store Accountability Act (ACCA). TBOTE claims it has directly traced more than $25 million, and that Meta could have spent upward of $2 billion on this over the last year. It also points to €10 million-plus spent lobbying in Europe.
In the US, the main group pushing for these laws is the relatively young Digital Childhood Alliance (DCA). As right-wing think tank the "Institute for Family Studies" reported a year ago, this was assembled by over 50 conservative groups. Six months later, in July 2025, Bloomberg also reported that Meta was funding the DCA. For such a young and small organization, the DCA certainly seems to have had a rapid and almost disproportionate impact.
The targets of the Linux community should be politicians and local representatives as well as a boycott of Meta and other organizations involved with pushing these laws, as well as encouraging others to do the same.
Meta's Facebook website is infamous for its stance on privacy and has been for many years. We are sure that Meta would never consider passing the buck on the important subject of protecting children online to OS vendors.
The direction of travel for systemd could be good news for systemd-free Arch variant Artix Linux, and indeed for other systemd-free distros from Adélie to Alpine to antiX. ®