I live in the UK, and this is something I was saying about the Online Safety Act. It puts all the onus on the websites and not only do some websites not have the money or resources to comply, but with something like Mastodon, it doesn't really work. Like this bill was written and passed by people who don't know shit about fuck about tech. Several Lemmy and Mastodon instances have shut down/Geoblocked the UK because of this, and other jurisdictions don't seem to understand that either.
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2025
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It's almost like this law was made to preserve the Meta monopoly. Starting a social media platform just got more expensive and complicated.
They consulted with MindGeek, who own Pornhub etc.. They're one of the few companies big enough to comply. It was designed to preserve their monopoly, not Meta's. The politicians voting on it didn't necessarily understand that, but the law had been approved by children's charities and (a single representative of) the industry, so there'd be no reason (if you didn't understand how technology works) to question it.
What gets me is how many people in this very community have the same level of ignorance. And on top of that, they don't understand that these laws also apply to the very service they are using.
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I don't see how Mississippi or the UK think they can issue laws on sites hosted outside their jurisdiction. That's just mind boggling. The onus is on the state to provide age verification, or make their ISPs do it.
No, it's upto the individuals to police their or their childrens internet usage, have family computer in place they can monitor, children should have special childrens phones that are locked down with parents configuring it, today parents are abdicating responsibility, leaving schools to feed, potty train, how to clean teeth and how to behave.
Whats next expecting schools to provide beds and rooms to sleep in, soon babies will be handed to state and raised by the state, is it any wonder we now have a nanny state in many countries, people are getting lazy and filthy, spitting in streets, peeing and pooping in streets, dumping rubbish in streets 😡
Sorry, the sort of individualism you speak of only applies to opting out of vaccines and praying to jeebus in the classroom.
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"You have no power here" - Some server hosted on a satellite (probably)
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Government sets up page to verify age. You head to it, no referrer. Age check happens by trusted entity (your government, not some sketchy big tech ass), they create a signed cert with a short lifespan to prevent your kid using the one you created yesterday and without the knowledge which service it is for. It does not contain a reference to your identity. You share that cert with the service you want to use, they verify the signature, your age, save the passing and everyone is happy. Your government doesn't know that you're into ladies with big booties, the big booty service doesn't know your identity and you wank along in private.
But oh no, that wouldn't work because think of the... I have no clue.
You sell that cert to a local kid for $50
You generate another cert to sell to a local kid tomorrow
???
Profit
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The problem is that meat-space logic is applied to the cyberspace (as it might have been said in the 90ies).
You go into a store and the clerk sees you and knows your age. If it's borderline, then they ask for ID. They are applying that thinking to internet services. And so are you. You are just trying to figure out a better way to ask for ID.
The UK doesn't have a system of mandatory national ID. Brits feel that that is totalitarian. So obviously, they do not use the scheme you propose. It's not their meat-space logic.
Where this falls down is that no ordinary Mastodon instance can comply with the regulations of the close to 200 hundred countries in the world. Of course, just like 4chan, many wouldn't want to out of principle.
The only way to make this work is to introduce another meat-space thing: Border posts. You need a Great Firewall of the [Local Nation]. At physical border posts, guards check if goods comply with local regulations. We need virtual border posts to check if data is imported and exported in compliance with local regulations.
Such a thing, a virtual Schengen border, was briefly considered in the EU about 15 years ago. It went nowhere at the time. But if you look at EU regulations, you can see that the foundations are already laid, most obviously with the GDPR but also the DSM, DMA, DSA, CRA, ...
Eventually, the border will be closed to protect our values; to enforce our laws. We will lock out those American and Chinese Big Tech companies that steal our data. We will only allow their European branches and strictly monitor their communications abroad. We will be taking back control, as the Brexiteers sloganized it. Freedom is just another word for having to ask the government for permission when you enter a country. And increasingly, it is another word for having to ask permission for how you use your own computer.
It won't be some shady backroom deal. Look here. People in this community love these regulations. Europeans here are happy to tell US companies to "FO if they don't want to follow our laws". Well, the Great Firewall of Europe is how you do that.
That sounds like a very functional and rational solution to the problem of age verification. But age verification isn't the ultimate goal, it's mass surveillance, which your solution doesn't work for.
The fact that they haven't gone for this approach that delivers age verification without disclosing ID, when it's a common and well known pattern in IT services, very strongly suggests that age verification was never the goal. The goal is to associate your real identity with all the information data brokers have on you, and make that available to state security services and law enforcement. And to do this they will gradually make it impossible to use the internet until they have your ID.
We really need to move community-run sites behind Tor or into i2p or something similar. We need networks where these laws just can't practically be enforced and information can continue to circulate openly.
The other day my kid wanted me to tweak the parental settings on their Roblox account. I tried to do so and was confronted by a demand for my government-issued ID and a selfie to prove my age. So I went to look at the privacy policy of the company behind it, Persona. Here's the policy, and it's without a doubt the worst I've ever seen. It basically says they'll take every last bit of information about you and sell it to everyone, including governments.
https://withpersona.com/legal/privacy-policy
So I explained to my kid that I wasn't willing to do this. This is a taste of how everything will be soon.
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the problem of age verification
what exactly is the problem, though?
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How about people parent their children?
I believe the issue is that parents themselves are overworked from their job and have no energy to be a parent, because in our society, it is more successful to be a worker than to be a parent.
(Sorry for turning it into a critique of capitalism, I just can't help it these days)
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Because it's not actually about age verification, it's about totalizing surveillance of everyone.
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“there is nobody that can decide for the fediverse to block Mississippi.” (...)
“And this is why real decentralization matters,” said Rochko.
Hey, UK! When you are being compared to Mississippi, you are fucking up very very badly.
If it's a law, it should be free for both businesses and users.
That means being paid by the tax payers.
The free option is to trust your children.
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