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?
“Fuck you, make me”
First of all we should submerge the EU parliament with protests, as we did for the chat-control question. Then protest marches, strikes, and so on. Then simple non-compliance. Whatever is undemocratic has automatically null morally legal validity.
I think we can still use the https://fightchatcontrol.eu/ platform for this. Just need to change the text and protest against age verification.
I’d sign and send an email for sure.
It should not. Fuck the police.
Is it implemented the same way beer company websites ask for your age?
Not at all.
Protest any age verification laws by not regarding them.
The DSA isn’t a one size fits all. It uses a tiered system where the most intense rules—like mandatory age verification—are aimed at the Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs). The law was clearly designed with Big Tech monoliths in mind, so it doesn’t really fit the decentralized nature of the Fediverse. Small instances largely gets a free pass; the focus is on targeting the platforms that actually have the scale to cause systemic risk. I think the limit is drawn at 45 million users. No instance in the EU will (hopefully) become that big!
I hadn’t considered if existing legislation might already require implementing an age verification when l posed the question. Now that you bring it up, I fear it does.
The DSA has exceptions for small companies. But I would caution that there is no case law that supports your interpretation that users should be counted on a per-instance basis. Courts are often not very receptive to attempts to avoid rules through such formalities. Bear in mind that the DSA is supposed to protect the “fundamental rights” of Europeans, which may not include running an instance.
Other laws do not have such exceptions. This app seems poised to become the required age verification mechanism, wherever age should be known. Either use the app or show you have something better.
In January, a Berlin court ruled that TikTok was in violation of the GDPR for not doing enough age checking. It’s being appealed. It remains to be seen how much of that case will be applicable to the Fediverse. But there is a good chance, that even without new laws, age-gating will become mandatory through case law.
Will every website out there start doing age verification? Doubtful
Just the ones we will quit.
Misunderstood the question. Deleted response.
Like this https://lemmy.ml/post/46011830
They can try to force me adding that for my single user instance, but I don’t think they can:
- Force the developers of GoToSocial to add this feature
- And force me to add that to my instance (I don’t live in the EU no US)
Do do this, they need to enforce cryptographically verifiable age verification everywhere. It would require forcing big instances to only cooperate with small instances that poof they do age verification and if you’re selfhosting then the hoster needed to verify you? Not really possible.
Of course big applications and servers could choose to add age-verification freely to avoid scrutiny. Won’t be cheered on in the Fedi I’m sure.
I’m more worried about the proposed OS-level verification, which will be harder to circumvent if you’re not using a FOSS OS. Especially since I can imagine a global effort on this by US, EU, China.
Edit: hypotecially, if we ask how could it be added, a zero-knowledge proof that you’re >18, without revealing anything else, would be the way to go.
Does it require it to be good? Like an audited service working with government databases and some kind of PKI system or is it just heuristics? If it’s the latter, then half ass a local vision model running client side during registration that trys to determine age, and defaults to “sure”. Have the age range the guess falls into (6-12, 13-18, 18-25, 25-999) be random number tables pick a fake number in the guess age range and move on. If a user WANTS to be precise let them. Maybe a test on “adult” questions like what is your favorite brand of toilet paper, what did you last pay for eggs, when cleaning a rug what method do prefer, etc (localized to region maybe just so people unfamiliar with a thing don’t get stressed by these bs questions).
Even better federation if we could have a concept for the federated servers so that they have a concept of what info actually needs passed along (as in above 18) and pass just that info if the user allows. Useful idea for other bits imho anyways. Pick and choose what actor metadata we share, allow servers to share data calculated on metadata without sharing it, etc.
Otherwise as others have said, Tor, i2p, and maybe freenet? The best case is servers in free countries support all three clearweb, tor, and i2p, and local server behind the wire support just the secure one that works in their security environment.
