The question is prompted by the age verification app that the EU has just presented.
Some EU countries want to ban social media for young people. If that were to happen, what then?
Implement portable actors and tell them to get bent
It’s easy. I would stop going to those servers who want to spy on me. I don’t have time to waste on such bullshit. I would read more books and still have fun.
Is it implemented the same way beer company websites ask for your age?
I would be completely fine with this version of it.
I would only ever sign up for an instance that is not subject to it, or does not comply, or at least maliciously complies. And by malicious compliance I mean something where it’s implemented in such a “buggy” way that it’s easy to bypass.
But really I’d just go for instances hosted outside the EU.
How on earth would the EU possibly do this given the entire structure is defederated?
They likely don’t even know what Lemmy is.
Good point. European governments keep churning out the digital regulation, but have hardly any qualified people to enforce them. That has protected the Fediverse, so far.
But a straight age-gating requirement would require no particular qualifications to spot. Would you be willing to face a hefty fine just for the privilege of running an instance?
If they make the fediverse illegal, then it will be illegal. There’s not much that can be done about it. Obviously we cannot do “age verification.”
It would look really bad, politically, so they probably won’t go that far right now — they’ll just slowly push things in that direction until it seems feasible.
There’s not much that can be done about it.
According to many lemmings the elegant solution is to simply ignore the law entirely and pretend that will be ok
How is it they can meaningfully enforce it?
The notion that every single user-to-user service should incorporate invasive age-ID tools in itself is deranged and dystopian.
I’m not arguing it being an insane law. But it would be enforced by fining companies within applicable jurisdictions. Companies like system 76 or anyone else profiting from distributing an operating system, or anything else they can argue it applies to.
Oh we’re talking about OS, not user-to-user services online.
There are so many variants of Linux they could never get on top of it.
I mean yeah you could never get to 100% enforcement, like with every other law. But it wouldn’t be hard to have a huge impact against the big guys. Ignoring the law as one of those is not going to be smart. Unless you move your ops somewhere not impacted. But realistically it would be easier to just follow the law.
I mean I simply don’t think they will bother regarding the many Linux variants.
Same reason they won’t bother the Threadiverse. I doubt they even know what it is.
To consider the possibility is part of accepting that it will happen, making it much easier to actually happen. First, I think, people should pressure so it doesn’t get to pass, as they seem to be against it. If the worst scenario does come, then people can consider what’s the least bad route of actions.
We shouldn’t go down without a fight, out plan A must be to prevent dystopia. And you are right that asking "what if"s can encourage a feeling of defeatism by distracting from plan A, however it’s generally not bad to think about a plan B ahead of time.
Personally I’d want to see at least some instances behind i2p or tor as it’s really the only answer to all the censorship coming.
Doubtful it ever will happen I mean that stuffs had a lot of time to take off and hasn’t as yet.
I wish the fediverse would allow federating with Tor-protected instances
What prevents this? Is it just that you would a need a server that is a bridge on both networks?
I think it’s doable if the server can connect to the onion network on its side
It shouldn’t, just host it somewhere else where legislation doesn’t apply.
A prompt at sign-in:
“Are you 18 or older?”
Yes: let’s you in
No: lets you in
I wish it was so simple
A related question that comes to mind is what jurisdiction’s laws should we all be exploring to avoid age verification completely?
I’m not suggesting we all get legal degrees or dispense legal advice, but as conscientious people who are also literate: Should the Fediverse identify lists of these jurisdictions for its community of small to very large instances, and resources to help decide whether those laws of favourable jursidictions should be adopted and some common pitfalls?
We all see the headlines of countries exploring bans on under 16s for social media in the name of improved ad and online surveillance. Which are the countries who are saying no or will resist this?
You tell anyone asking that they can suck your dick. Being that they must be an adult to have that job and ask that question, you must be an adult to be able to give consent to them.
Age = verified.
It should not. Fuck the police.
Does the App allow random platforms to do verification? Or do we need to be some registered business, do contracts, likely pay for the service…? For the App to speak to our instances?
Good questions. I haven’t seen any info about the economics yet. I think that’s up to the member states?
I found some info here: https://ageverification.dev/
But that’s difficult to read, very technical. And mostly written from the user perspective. It looks to me like they’re (for once) trying to come up with a proper solution. Everyone can be an Attestation Provider, Relying Party or repurpose the white-label App. At least in theory. It’s all specified and in the open. And then the European Union contributes some list of trustworthy Attestation Providers (governments, banks, mobile network providers…)
I think due to the project structure, it’ll be more like the Covid-Certificate App, which could be customized by every member state and it’s theoretically possible to use it as one uniform solution.
So unless there’s some certification for “Relying Parties” which I missed while skimming the documentation, I’d say in theory it’d be possible to use it on a technical level. Of course it’s still a preview so the EU has lots of opportunity left to mess it up.
Everyone can be an Attestation Provider,
Maybe everyone can apply to become one, but there will be some certification process. Anything else would defeat the purpose. So you have the question of how much that would cost and who pays for that.
I agree that, on a technical level, it should be possible to implement support for the app.
