I tried to create an account but it keeps asking me to fill out google captchas (which won’t even load properly). I gave up

This is the only information I was able to find online: https://odrs.gnome.org/ and there seems to be no program to view this data, apart from gnome-software (which hides some of it). Feels very closed for an “open desktop rating system”.

People hear “free” and only think it refers to the price

Yes, that’s why I don’t like to use it either.

GNU-style free software

I don’t understand what you mean by that.

I push hard against proprietary software all the time.

That is good to hear, fellow soldier.

This is a good example of the “free as in freedom, not free beer” problem that “Lettuce eat lettuce” mentioned. In this context, “free” refers to the 4 essential freedoms as defined be the Free Software Foundation

More filters like the NSFW filter. “U.S. Politics” and “Elon Musk” filters would be nice

Doesn’t work with javascript disabled.

Agreed. I just finished reinstalling the operating system 👍

Removing batteries, right, this is still possible with laptops. Thanks, I didn’t think of that.

Ok thanks, I will try that

I did go into the BIOS earlier and it showed the correct time (just one hour off). Is this the clock that you are talking about or is there another clock that I should check? (sorry I don’t really know much about this stuff)

Ok, I will try doing that, thank you

The only setting I can find in my settings panel is automatic detection of my timezone, but that is turned off. Also, I have checked the time in my BIOS, and It’s only off by one hour.

Seems that this is not a common problem, I will probably go with @Strit’s advice and just hope that a reinstall will take care of things (Also, “maybe something on your network is sending incorrect time information” worries me in the same way as @Strit’s comment 😅️)

although in theory it should not mess up anything but system time.

Yes, I can’t see why this would explain my computer suddenly demanding that I must change my password, which is what I am most interested to know the reason for.

I am not familiar with ntp, I didn’t really change any date/time related settings or install any additional software. Also I suspect the BIOS to not be affected, since the date will be normal again after rebooting.

I was going to reinstall soon anyways, because I wanted to use full disk encryption. If the whole asking-to-change-password thing is just a random bug or a malicious activity, the reinstall would take care of that. But if it is a design choice or a common issue with either debian or GNOME (that can not easily be fixed), I might reconsider my choice of distro and desktop-environment, before doing the reinstall. I will wait a bit to see if anyone can identify the issue

I only remember this happening after locking my screen and later trying to unlock the screen again.

EDIT: I am not sure about how old the system is, but I would say definitely not older than 6 months.

Hey, it worked! thanks a lot :)