this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
31 points (97.0% liked)
Fediverse
23886 readers
2 users here now
A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.
Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".
Getting started on Fediverse;
- What is the fediverse?
- Fediverse Platforms
- How to run your own community
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don't think that means they're planning on doing age verification. Mastodon and anyone running a Mastodon instance has to operate within whatever legal regime their country imposes. I interpet the above as putting some work towards figuring out ways to do that.
The thing is that age verification in a digital world is not easy.. what exactly does the government mandate as a valid verification method?
Like.. would asking the user their age be valid enough? ... because it's not like a reliable method exist (not even credit card verification prevents a minor from taking their parents card and go through it). IMHO, until the government doesn't actually set a standard, I don't see why websites should actually give anything else than the most minimal effort possible when it comes to this.
Maybe I'm not following, but the fear is that government requirements amount to an ID requirement, which makes anonymous posting impossible. That's why I care about IDs, at least.
Yes. But my point is that until now that has not been made explicit, so there's no reason for websites to require IDs right now, at least not until the government does mandate such a system. So I was wondering what's the minimal effort that would satisfy current mandate.
Agreed. I imagine this working group would be working in the direcrion of the minimal viable options, including figuring out whether they need to do anything at all.
The thing is, if the country wants age verification, the country has to give a way to verify the age of their citizens. A website by the government that returns an encrypted cookie verifying the user as adult would be the solution. The work is on the government as they are enforcing a rule.
Another way for the government is to verify a company to do this work, with the security this entails.
I don't think politicians ever consult someone for these changes. They just want to de-anonymize the internet.