I'm all pro Age Verification, the good old "If you are over 18 click yes"
this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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Privacy
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If you are over 18 click yes
Years ago, I heard of a guy who failed one of the voluntary "enter your age" checks because it thought he was 7 years old. He was actually 107, but the system only considered the last two digits.
We need old school Leisure Suite Larry age verification questions asking things like, "Where were you on 9/11", or "What's George Bush's middle name's first letter?"
If someone is eighteen today, they would've been negative eight years old during 9/11.
That depends on if said person means 11 Sep 2001, Sep 2011, or Nov 2009.
Tough! Better luck with the next question. Luckily it's best out of 3.
We shut migratie everything to I2P and Tor.
Should do that anyway tbh
I am failing to see how the highlighted text is saying that they will implement it. My understanding is that they are evaluating yhe situation. Am I wrong?
I'm not worried. Either it'll only affect their dedicated servers. Or it'll be integrated into mastodon itself and then quickly forked.
If I setup my own private instance and don't make myself verify my age.. can they still stop me from following others or other instances following me in some way?
It would only ever be instances specific would it not?
I doubt they would bother going after a one person instance, even if it could be traced back to you
Don't be lawful evil, be neutral good. Or even chaotic good.
I mean... They have to.
Countries are making it law, so sooner or later, fedi projects are going to have to deal with that crap.
Do they? There's one thing to make it law, another thing to enforce it. OSA in the UK has been around since last July and managed to do nothing other than pick a fight with 4chan and get nowhere. I seem to recall someone mentioned Lemmy to Ofcom in a discussion regarding OSA and they were literally like "What's a Lemmy?"
How on earth do you imagine a regulator is going to work out how to deal with 50+ federated instances (for instance)?
I mean if they can really just do nothing, then that is also something it would be good to be sure about.
Nintendo has shown that it is possible to attack open source projects at the repository level, and while that wouldn't necessarily stop development, it would be a step down to force development technically "underground".
And if instances have to start being regularly replaced, that WILL cause attrition.
I just think this is a logistical dead-end for regulators who may rely on the chilling effect of the thought of being targeted rather than actually being targeted. Unless the Fediverse somehow becomes massive, I don't see that it'll ever enter their eyes. Especially as many places will be based in the USA who is the least likely country to implement these laws, and the most hostile to any threats from foreign regulators (see again the 4chan example).
Especially as many places will be based in the USA who is the least likely
uh, what?
Yes? USA is the least likely to do this. Porn laws in various states don't apply to social media.
Other attempts have been stuck in legislative hell, been unenforced or have court cases challenging their legality (Mississipi)
US Tech firms profit the most from it, the verification data lands on some palantir server - as the recent discord fiasco implied.
Nintendo has shown that it is possible to attack open source projects at the repository level
I’m out of the loop. What happened there?
Probably talking about Nintendos recent re-crackdown on the repos of Switch emulators.
Still waiting for wikipedia to block itself in UK.
Wikipedia took UK to court over the fear of being targeted, it was dismissed purely on the basis of "Well they haven't done anything to you yet". And Ofcom clearly hasn't got the balls to do it.