Will Lemmy instances be forced to verify users’
agesidentities?If they’re located in the UK, sure. But given how small Lemmy instances are, I assume they’ll fly under the radar.
Non-UK instances won’t be forced to do anything. The UK can’t do shit outside their borders, so as long as the instance’s operator doesn’t set foot into the country, all they can do is block the instance in the UK.
Was wondering about this, I’m in UK, I could just make my own instance, I’m the only user so I verify my own age, federate with everyone. All good? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I love that idea.
If you do, I’d like to know what kind of bandwidth and system usage it demands.
I’ve been wondering if a pi could do this for me and my few friends.
Well they can do shit - they can put out arrest warrants and fines, and possibly have the person extradited to the UK depending on the country.
they can put out arrest warrants and fines
Of course they can, but they’re unenforceable if the instance’s operator has no presence nor assets in the UK. That’s why I wrote “forced” in bold. They can issue shit, but that’s where it stops.
and possibly have the person extradited to the UK
According to Wikipedia, extradition requires that the crime is such in BOTH countries. So no, I don’t see that being an option here.
Right, but realistically this would be far too much work. Like, they would need to do the same for every digital sex worker who has ever spun up their own website. It’s just not feasible.
They could also instruct their ISPs to block the instance.
Oh certainly. But this is a lot less work than trying to extradite someone
I really don’t see that happening. The internet and the real people that build it tend to be innovative tinkerers and hackers. Things get built because there’s a need and someone tries to say they can’t. P2P, darknets, proxies, VPNs, heck the whole concept of the fediverse defies the idea of control by an external entity. So they may try, but the chances are slim it works.
I can only answer for dbzer0/anarchist.nexus but FUCK NO. We ain’t gonna do that shit lol. If we ever have trouble with the law in any country, we can always backup and move.
Ditto. We were contemplating a flash screen warning with links to VPNs and TOR for affected countries.
That’s how you troll them lol
That isn’t a legal way around the age verification laws.
👏🙌
Compliance depends on the instance. Pick an instance where the admin doesn’t give a dingo’s kidney, or an instance located in a country where the local law doesn’t require age verification.
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I’m waiting to see exactly how the UK plans to compel me, someone who lives outside the UK with a Lemmy server hosted outside the UK, to follow their rules.
If they find me non-compliant, they can block my site.
I struggle to understand, why do those sites block uk users? Are there really any “international regulations” that demand that if you don’t want to comply with whatever arbitrary rules some country set, you should stop serving users from that country?
Yes, there are - see GDPR as another example.
This is interesting, I did a bit of research and it seems, none of this is legally enforceable unless the company has EU presence. Basically EU just saying “we will do everything we can, but we can’t really do anything if you don’t have any operations on our land”.
The UK law says anyone found noncompliant will owe 10% of GLOBAL REVENUE in fines.
So companies don’t even want to deal with that bullshit
We are witnessing the next step along the way to a completely fragmented web. Sort of like the DataKrash, but in slow motion. This time, it’s driven by legislation instead of a single netrunner.
Hmm, do we know which countries will be exempt? I hadn’t thought about that…
Also, how will they enforce who can just ignore the requirement? Will they not take noncompliant websites down by nameservers or something?
I’ve only heard about UK, Australia and certain states in America. If you live in Kazakhstan next to Borat, you should be fine.
As always, EU is complicated, so we’ll have to wait and see how that works out.
Twitter / X started asking for age verification for adult content when browsed from EU. Works fine from Asia but you also need to set your account country to the one you’re browsing from.
So, if you can’t even use Xitter for porn is there anything left? What even is the propose of that site any more?
I don’t understand why anyone would ever use Twitter for porn in the first place lol. Porn sites exist……
I’ve been on Twitter for like 16 years now and porn has never been something I’ve seen or even thought to search for on there. It makes no sense.
Oh trust me, stuff you didn’t even imagine could exist can be found in that wretched hive of depravity and fornication. If you never click any of that, the algorithm won’t know how dirty your mind is. On the other hand, you could also do the exact opposite and click on everything horny. That will turn your whole feed into a wicked orgy. Let’s just say that it’s a surprisingly versatile site.
It’s still the biggest art posting platform. And I’m not even sure where art posters should migrate to… I mean sure it would be nice to have them scattered across different fediverse instances, but it would be nice for us, not for them. The main thing they get from X is massive algorithmic reach. You hit like on a Miku art and another artist with their Miku art immediately slips into your feed, you like it even more and you decide to check their profile and you like their other works and you subscribe. This kind of easy and efficient advertisement is something that doesn’t exist anywhere else outside of few centralized systems.
Why don’t art posters use y’know something dedicated to art or images and not microblogging?
Like DeviantArt or Tumblr, the two once popular with artists sites designed for them.
Pixiv, Fanbox, DeviantArt, Tumblr, etc, are also widely used. Very few people only use a single platform. I think Twitter is top 1 for expanding your audience not only because how well their feed algorithm works, but maybe also because all those focused platforms are used more by artists and less by viewers (or used less often by viewers), while Twitter being general-purpose is the one where more people who like to watch/discover arts but are not artists themselves, are. But there are other factors, like Twitter comments being better than Pixiv or DeviantArt comments, etc. Finally, if we return to the context of this discussion, I don’t think any of those dedicated platforms in any way solve the problem of age verification and that is why I wouldn’t recommend migrating to them in this context even if they were otherwise good for art.
Should Lemmy heavily incorporate hashtags, then? Hmm…
Nah. Mastodon can handle that.
PieFed has them.
There isn’t a global law about age verification they countries could be exempt of. It’s individual countries doing it.
And on top of that the laws are different from what I’ve seen, in the UK for example you have to fullfil certain criteria to fall under that law. But frankly it seems to be a mess in my opinion.
This is what an age verification service says about it:
https://www.yoti.com/blog/understanding-age-verification-online-safety-act/
In the UK the law is largely unenforceable. VPN usage has shot up since it came in and there was a reveal the houses of parliament are exempt from the requirement.
The internet safety law is impacting larger companies that profit from adult content such as red GIFs and pornhub.
Facebook hasn’t been called out yet despite the very obvious adult content in their reels.
Smaller sites are flying under the radar for now. Lemmy probably due to it’s distributed nature.
the houses of parliament are exempt from the requirement.
Of course, the jerks…
I’ve always said the only way to make this fair is for the big sites to publish viewing data
My instance just blocked UK users. Je suis francais maintenant, mate.
No, just like they don’t give a fuck about your privacy either. If any instance does get big enough then yeah it’s fucked.
From my end as a tiny instance with virtually no users I’m watching how enforcement goes on small systems like these.
If they start sending warnings I’ll just make browsing content required an account and close sign ups.
I’ve already gone through and ensured none of the communities carried has the NSFW tag. But that’s not really much in terms of protection.
If they start getting around to us I think it’ll mean fediverse users in the UK will either need to run their own instance or use a vpn. No way hobbyists can contract age verification.
I’ve been wondering what this would mean for my instance at [email protected] signups are closed, but users from other instances can post.
I think this is a real problem for the fediverse. Because I cannot imagine that ofcom will accept that “the home instanx should have moderated that” will be a defence. And here (and mayve for you) only I am moderating the content on my own instance. It’s not possible to moderate all the remote communities I carry.
Like I say. Once I see action (it will start with warnings) against smaller instances I’ll just lock things down to myself and existing users. But it will destroy the threadiverse in the UK.
I normally wouldn’t care at all and tell them to pound sand as I don’t live there and host somewhere else. However, I might move there in the near future as I do have the ability to do so. I might have to shut down if need be if it comes down to it or figure out how to block uk visitors.
I don’t think I’ll block any, but then I only have a few friends using my instance.
I’m in the odd boat that my server in in Australia (for the AU laws), but I call it a NZ instance - where I live
