this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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The biggest defense for this I see is:
Then, tell me, why bother adding this in the first place, exactly at the time governments are looking toward full control of everybody's computers? If it's that innocent and useless, either someone really likes throwing shit up, or it won't stop there.
And given the slate of other things that "didn't stop there" in the past few years, you know, it cost nothing to be cautious. Especially if it's "so useless you won't even notice it's there" after all.
Isn't it all the time?
It's there because systemd is the place that makes the most sense to store that kind of data.
Systemd stores user details.
This is a user detail.
So, storing it in systemd makes the most sense.
The alternative is having every individual program try to store data about the user in their own, non-interoperatble formats. That's a needless complication when systemd already stores user details
This field will not affect you unless you choose to let it. You get to pick what software is installed on your system. Unless you choose to use an application that validates your birthdate, the field does absolutely nothing.
For people who want to use birth date (say, maybe people with multiple kids) it makes way more sense to store that detail about the user along with every other detail about the user that's stored on the system.
The alternative is NOT to store that data system wide, NOT have it made easily available to anything in the first place, and NOT normalizing having all your personal data available at will to everything.
Are you really arguing about the convenience of having personal data available system wide when it's is absolutely irrelevant to 99.9% of running applications?
You can choose to not install applications that use birthDate. It's your system.
But, you cannot choose what other people want to install. It's their system.
There are applications which exist, that other people can choose to install, that require this field and systemd is the logical place to store that information.
If you don't like the applications that would use this field, and you don't want your system to store information in birthDate then there is absolutely nothing stopping you from doing that. You don't get to make that choice for other people, however.