A username field isn’t for your real name, it’s for a username and it has always been for that. Stop being intentionally obtuse.

What’s to stop them from using all of the required user fields and then running a background fingerprinting check and then using that fingerprint every single time you visit a site? It doesn’t have to be your real date of birth. What matters is that it’s a consistent info for your user account so that they can identify who you are. Obviously there are other ways to fingerprint a user, but this just makes it easier to do so, and it’s another unnecessary datapoint for “them” to use.

People are defending this with such fervor, too, that it really makes a person doubt whether they’re even arguing against actual humans. Like, I can see why people would be against general change or against privacy invasion, but why would someone care so much about defending a date of birth field?

Motor Bunny* don’t ask how I know…

Those arms might not be able to write about existential crises, but they certainly have them, trust me. Watching an arm stop loading for 30 seconds sitting there mid motion, then continue about its day, it almost makes wonder if we should be giving these things half hour breaks along with everyone else.