What sucks is that once these laws are in place repealing them will probably never happen. There are far too many people who will benefit financially from this to allow that to happen.
They’re making it so that vigilante justice is the only form of justice the ruling class can receive.
There are far too many people who will benefit financially from this to allow that to happen.
Orly? Can you give me a couple of examples?
I’m opposed to this trend myself, btw. But I just interpreted as a bit of pointless over regulation by a bunch of populist nanny-statists. You’re telling me there’s financial interests involved as well?
There are companies to store and process IDs on behalf on the sites. Also it will give a hell of a lot more information to marketers who will pay tons for it to sell you crap they think you need. They already have far too much information on everyone already, but this will give them even more.
Age Verification Is Coming for the Whole Corporate Internet
There, FTFY
Gotta show me the relevant RFC for BGP first.
That’s what I’m thinking. There goes the Internet.
Seems to me, there’s no real way to age verify people. This is pointless.
Want ID? Kids can just upload a fake one.
The app wants access to your phone’s camera, so it can use ai to assess your age? Well I don’t know for certain, but I’m 99.9% there’s probably a way to trick your phone into using a virtual camera, showing images of a middle-aged man.
What ever method of age verification, someone will figure out a way to trick it, and kids will be onto the trick very quickly.
Yeah, probably not.
What a failure of an idea.
Fuck that. The future fucken sucks.
And as soon as that happens, I’m out. I’d rather just opt out of the modern internet. I already have to deal with my information getting leaked from various different services at least once every couple years it seems. I can change a credit card or a password, I can’t change my ID.
We’ll build our own Internet. With black jack and…
We have already done that. It’s called Dreddit and not even major governments can stop it.
Is it filled with the type of people that one might wish major governments could stop, though?
Not much more than the www.
By proportion maybe?
(Just guessing, I’m not on there)
Yeah, it’s all relative. It’s like the www before corporate takeover. Like the old www, you need to have some sense on where to go and where to avoid.
before corporate takeover.
The good old days, yes.
We already have gemini. A text based internet protocol like gopher.
Whats up with gemini lately? Havent seen anything about it since before covid
Them pods are a gigantic rabbit hole. A hare hole if you will.
I believe they updated the FAQ, but it seems to be humming along just fine.
Black jack anddddd…
I’m literally going around trying out old school forum sites this week.
Why do you assume that the old school forums are going to get exempted? They are going to get on the bus or get run over by it just like everywhere else. Government has already proven that they can, and will, regulate those forums.
Great question!
First, that the definition of content that is considered “adult” doesn’t necessarily mean every forum qualifies. Privacyguides.org likely would not. A car forum likely would not. Facebook must comply because links shared can be “harmful” anywhere on the platform. The fractured nature of Web 1.0 is a feature now, not a bug.
Second, that proxy measures can reasonably work for forums with smart admins. If I register with an email I can show has been in use since 2007, some forums are willing to accept that as enough evidence. I saw an article somewhere I can’t find right now that someone was accepting 5 year old tickets to a concert or something that was an 18+ event. Typically age verification laws are focused on large Web 2.0 platforms and can include lower cost, lower threshold options for sites with a very small number of users.
Finally, that it might simply take a longer time for anyone to care or even notice some smaller sites. By the time someone comes calling, policies might have already changed several times and reasonable exemptions now mean no work is needed.
First, that the definition of content that is considered “adult” doesn’t necessarily mean every forum qualifies. Privacyguides.org likely would not. A car forum likely would not. Facebook must comply because links shared can be “harmful” anywhere on the platform. The fractured nature of Web 1.0 is a feature now, not a bug.
if it were so easy. you can post links to the privacyguides forum too. but the bigger problem is that anyone can post anything. if they don’t do age verification, they are liable for any forbidden content that slipped through. that can also be used as a form of blackmailing.
Sure you can post links, but that’s not the topic of the forum, and it’s not specific the a xountrybor market, which is also a factor right now with the UK law, so it doesnt ping as a problem worth dealing with.
where did you read that it’s the topic of the forum that matters?
I’ve read what seems like 30+ articles and explainers about the UK law the last few days - this has some lousy (official) defintions. I think the most recent episode of Power User with Taylor Lorenz might cover some of this enough to get the overall sense.
The topics under scrutiny of the “user-to-user” site is extremely vague beyond obvious porn, but it amounts to if it allows the sharing of links of basic news of any topic, it counts. Because in terms of categorizing “harmful content” for minors, seeing fucking protests happening anywhere, at all is “controversial adult content.” But if the links are limited to a very specific topic, say Honda Ridgeline owners, privacy and cyber nerd shit no one cares about) etc., cooking, and other innocuous things, it’s a grey zone that doesn’t demand compliance. YMMV, but even for a fascist wannabe set of policies can’t justify “harmful” material for kids with a Linux forum or a forum for owners of the Honda Ridgeline (WTF?)
Car forums are still alive and well because they’re a great repository of knowledge. There are plenty of computing forums too still.
Yep, and every one of them already complies with age verification laws so as new laws are added they’re going to comply with those as well. There are very few web admins / sysops / site operators out there who are willing, or even able, to buck these kinds of national laws.
I am already browsing the “old way”, since the mess with reddit…
I found out there is a forum for everything. It’s not centralized in one website, but it’s not that different than browsing /r/whatever you know.
More often than not, the discussions are more intelligent and on point too.
For my doom-scrolling needs, Lemmy does the job.
Lemmy will be pressured into age verification also and most hosts will crumble. $50M per caught infraction is wild.
We gonna end up going back to libraries. Which actually would be cool as fuck. Like Yentl when all those dudes are hanging out in a big ass room talking philosophy. It’ll re-spark the postal service. Live music will thrive. Coz everyone will be like fuck the internet, we’ll do it live.
Lemmy will be pressured into age verification also and most hosts will crumble.
Then just self host
ah ha! Guess that’s how we beat the system. People would need to sub to your instance though for you to post content right?
What would the pros and cons be?
People would need to sub to your instance though for you to post content right?
I think there is some way to automatically forward your content but I don’t self host and am not an expert.
Pros are that while you could be “defederated”, you can’t be banned. You make any decisions and could also let others use your system.
Many fediverse hosts will make an effort to stay open by shifting their servers to countries that are out of reach of verification and law enforcement but that will only last so long.
Let us know what you find. I’m ready to go back to the 90s/early 2000s internet. Golden era of the internet.
Sneakernet is gonna be back with a vengeance
Among us nerds, I’m sure.
Isn’t that how it started
Only once every couple of years! Wow you’ve got it good!!
We’re heading back to the dreams of the 90s with people running websites on non-standard ports and DNS (new rinky dink decentralized DNS?). Take a performance and usability hit for the return of a more decentralized Internet. Probably still more usable than the early internet with all the lessons learned and tools available to modern developers. We can also bring back the term: web master
There are already far more people in raw numbers on various federated/non-commercial/self-hosted/indie web stuff than there ever were on the early web- it just takes a little effort to find it.
Yeah I find that so annoying.
refer my comment on the parent comment
You can start here Marginalia - Indie Web Directory
See you guys in I2P.
Or ZeroNet
Is that project still alive? Their git repo hasn’t been updated in years.
ZeroNet
What’s up on ZeroNet these days?
I don’t know what on there, but I do know that age verification is not on there, so…
What a throwback. I was on there but then it stopped suddenly.
I was hoping it still lived on, and had improved bootstrapping and search.
What’s I2P?
It’s the name of the invisible Internet protocol.
It’s pretty much like tor, but more geared towards services hosted as hidden services. It doesn’t have a proper way to hide you if you want to visit “normal” websites.
But it has its own torrents and stuff :)
Oh neat!
If this happens they should check ID at church too seeing as how children are much more likely to be abused or groomed by someone there.
If it comes to Lemmy, I quit. I’ll go touch grass all day, I don’t mind.
I will move to freenet, i2p and tor
Tor was a U.S. government supported service and guess who pulled the plug on it.
Really? I haven’t really used Tor but I can’t find anything about that. What happened?
Current US administration stopped funding it as part of their slide towards corporate-driven dystopia, I believe. Tor itself is still out there, just a little more strapped for cash than it used to be.
Using it from time to time and hosting a relay. Works and has been improving over the years imo
The Naval Research Laboratory invented onion routing and open sourced the code.
I don’t see how anybody could come for lemmy. I feel this just attacks centralized services
If they threaten server admins with legal action based on the global user count of lemmy rather than their local server user count I’m sure plenty of owners will fold.
Lemmy is probably not complying with UK law already. But if hosted outside the UK you can just ignore them.
Some instances have blocked the UK but you can also just ignore it because wtf are they going to do
Lemmy is still very centralized, sure there are many servers and that takes care of the /u/spez problem but very little else, most topic generally have one big community and it’s on the one big server
You can go elsewhere, if you like speaking into the void and nobody even hearing you.
one big community and it’s on the one big server
Which you can follow from another server, what’s your point?
the one big moderating boot, that you cannot escape
but don’t worry,
the boot loves you,
the boot works for you,
it only wants the best for you
as it pummels your face into the ground
for your own good
Good bye corporate internet. I won’t miss you
Remember guys, they cared about the kids and their online safety as soon as Israel started a genocide in Gaza and they lost control of the narrative. But they didn’t care at all for the past 20 years when Epstein and his buddies were running rampant.
edit: clarity
This is why the Dark-web exists.
- Tor
- I2P
- Yggdrasil
- LokiNet
- FreeNet
- ZeroNet
- GNUnet (In the distant future)
Did I miss anything ?
Freenet is now hyphanet, fyi.
