I’ve been thinking. Every mainstream social media is age verificated now. But sites such as SomethingAwful, 4chan and the Fediverse weren’t. So why are we trying to populate it if the Fedi’ was popular too, we would ALSO be verificated and spywared (made up this word for this post’s sake)?
A lot of the laws aren’t limited by the size of the site, or whether or not it’s non-commercial, so instances with users in some places with age verification laws already do; Australia, Mississippi, and the UK (with the Online Safety Act) are three example. I haven’t heard of any examples of instances getting warnings about this yet – although a couple instances with content that might be considered unsuitable for minors have geoblocked the UK to avoid triggering the Online Safety Act – but it’s only a matter of time.
but it’s only a matter of time.
So we will all eventually have to be age-verified, Fedi or not, one time or another?
Not necessarily – I didn’t mean to sound defeatist! VPNs are a thing (although they’re talking about restricting them in the UK), and there will always be networks run by admins who risk breaking the laws, and at least in Australia teens seem to be quite good at getting around the age verification for their social media bans so we adults can probably figure out ways around it too. I just meant that fedi’s relatively-small size isn’t a protection, and some point some governments will start to go after fedi instances.
In general though I think we in fedi need to take a much more active role in fighting back against age verification bills and other attempts to surveil and censor the internet, rather than just hoping we can continue to fly below the radar. https://piefed.social/c/fediverse@piefed.social/p/2230542/how-can-fedi-help-fight-bad-internet-bills has some more thoughts on that.
Many sites are already using age verification as an excuse to block firewalls. Presumably the reducers wouldn’t but ……
I use Apple’s “Private Relay” so websites see a regional location rather than my actual ip and location. However oven been seeing more and more sites that block it as “firewalls are not allowed”
Great point!
The question is what are they to do if a kid starts their own instance. Will the kid get fined?
Well, the software is written and the network is ran by the people who use it. So we’d be age-verifying and spywaring ourselves!?
Age Verification laws, if they are ever enforced against the fediverse, will be enforced against instances, rather than the fediverse as a whole. So the federales will come for feddit.online, or lemmy.world or mastodon.social. The trouble is, to get the fediverse writ large taken down, you have to get every instance down all at once, otherwise the instances will just keep federating content between them. This seems impractical and kind of unlikely to succeed.
The beauty of the Fediverse. It’s distributed!
Then what’s to stop them from making a law forbidding doxxing-law-abiding instances from federating with instances that don’t force users to doxx themselves?
Perhaps they could. I’m just not clever enough to know how you would draft the legislation or enforce the law – how is a complaint instance supposed to identify a noncomplaint instance, short of checking everyone’s id again?
The key word being “instance” - they’d have a helluva time trying to take down the whole thing altogether. Much like pirate sites, chop one head off & two more will take its place. Communities will just migrate & reestablish footing elsewhere. If the feds do it enough, then backup plans will become automatic where instances back each other up.
Sure you can make the technology more resilient but if the enforcement is punitive enough then it won’t matter.
Which nation has what it takes to shut down 30,000+ Fediverse servers worldwide?
Which federal state has?
You really think Mississippi State Police can take down even only one Misskey or CherryPick server running in Japan?
In one description I saw, part of the criterion was algorithmic feeds i.e. viewer manipulation. Lemmy has a fairly wimpy form of that compared to something like Facebook, and it could be shut off entirely without any loss. If it were up to me I’d shut it off either way.
Technically, they all fall under those rules in places like the EU already, those rules just aren’t being enforced.
Long-term, the Fediverse isn’t a social media platform, the instances are platforms, and they just connect to each other. I’d only expect enforcement on the few instances that are “large”, like a million users in size or more.
If instances choose to comply, either by capping users or shutting down, it could be good for decentralization of the network.
Or if there’s a problem. Even the smallest instance is likely to face enforcement if some issue makes headlines. And law enforcement isn’t likely to care that it’s just one instance
This is completely wrong
Age Verification laws have nothing to do with Fediverse “popularity”
They have only to do with the political jurisdiction of your instance, and the political jurisdiction of you as a viewer
I’m pretty sure ze’s (accurately) talking about how many of the enacted age verification régimes only mandate it for platforms with certain amounts of monthly active users.
thats not how it works. there is no company. if your server tries to age gye me, i’ll just use another.
I’ll run my own is also an option.
Sure, if you want to be a criminal…
.uɐᴉlɐɹʇsn∀ uɐ ǝq oʇ ʇuǝɯǝɹᴉnbǝɹ ɐ sᴉ ʇɐɥ⊥
The way things are looking now, your only option might be a server in North Korea.
What law? Where? How could it even be enforced on something completely decentralized?
They could go after some locally hosted instances I guess but the federated platforms as a whole do not have a “home base” and trying to enforce such a rule would be difficult if not impossible in practice (never mind that age verification was never about protecting anybody).
From what I understood of how the federation works it would be rather difficult to enforce it if anyone can run their own instance.
It already did, in Australia. Aussie Zone adopted a unique way to verify us. We sent images to Molly (after Molly Ringwald) and that was enough for the federal government. Things like username at a pub. I’m old and have false teeth so I sent a pic of those.
No, they didn’t like it and they said so, but they found a way round that worked.
Why would it be named after an American and not after Molly Meldrum?
80s I think was the premise.
We sent images to Molly (after Molly Ringwald)
Who?
It was what they called their…whatever it is, I think it was an AI they used. I don’t know.
Huh. Can’t find about it by searching.
No worries. It definitely happened
I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Ringwald but nothing in the bio makes the reference make sense
Probably. Regulators usually care about reach, not architecture. If the Fediverse became genuinely mainstream, it would likely end up in the same political spotlight. The real difference is that federation makes compliance an instance by instance problem, not one global switch. That is much harder to enforce.
So, only the popular instance would get verification, not every one?
At present, most probably only those that appear on the regulatory radar in their own right.
Yes, that’s why the made the law. It’s supposed to stop any competition for the already privileged.
Legally it’s currently required if the instance is hosted under a jurisdiction with such laws.
Size or being mainstream doesn’t really matter with current legislations. All it takes is someone suing an instance over that and then owner would have troubles.
Selectively denouncing instances under these laws could basically dismantle the fediverse, specially if this laws end up being approved all across europe and north America.
That’s why you should probably take down your representative and put there someone who is not a moron.
Do these exist on Africa? Should someone make an african instance then?
Africa is not a country.
I said Africa to mean African countries in general, smartypants.
Yeah, well, you know, that question has been around for almost as long as the WWW: Which laws apply on the Internet, and how do you enforce them if they do?
Lots of politicians would like the answer to be: My country’s laws apply to all websites that can be accessed in my country. If they violate them, my country’s government should be able to fine them, order ISPs to block access to them, arrest people associated with them, maybe even more…
But if that’s the case, then cannot countries like the PRC, Thailand, Iran, North Korea, etc. also do those things? Can we claim they are doing something illegitimate when they do, when self-described liberal democratic republics do them too? Can the Internet even work at all if everyone constantly has to comply with all countries’ laws, most of which they don’t know about?
The business model of mainstream social media companies is that they are ultimately part of the advertising industry. They need some kind of legal presence everywhere that they have customers (advertisers). That legal presence can be fined like any other company, and that is how most laws are currently enforced against them. But those that don’t can do this https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c624330lg1ko or even this https://www.techdirt.com/2025/09/05/when-trolls-take-on-tyrants-4chan-and-kiwi-farms-sue-the-uk-over-extraterritorial-censorship/ and then what do governments do?
