reuters.com
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After reading about this on hacker news, I get why they do it. Its to make people upload identification documents, to get them prepped to authenticate for using the internet. Now the world makes sense again. I was wondering why they would do something positive. But now I get it.

  • General_Effort@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    2 days ago

    I see that you’ve changed your opinion, OP, but I still have a question.

    How did seeing this as positive go together with being on the fediverse? How do the volunteers running this thing cope with these demands?

    More generally: How can the open internet survive if every local government makes its own rules about what information or service you may or mustn’t give its citizens?

    • 1984@lemmy.todayOPEnglish
      11·
      2 days ago

      America is already deciding almost everything about the internet, through owning the operating systems, the networks, big tech companies, Ai, and so on.

      They could make a law that forces all major american websites to require a global auth cookie, that people can only get by doing age verification at some site.

      • General_Effort@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        I can’t really make sense of that. Do you understand that Lemmy instances are run by just some random people?

        • 1984@lemmy.todayOPEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          Yes of course. I meant that they are part of the social media thing, and they may also be required to implement age verification if things become bad.

          • General_Effort@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            1 day ago

            they may also be required to implement age verification

            They are already required. Australia is requiring them to do exactly that. It’s a safe bet that this will be ignored for now, at least outside of Australia.

            Suppose the fediverse wanted to comply, what do you think the volunteers running it would have to do?

            • 1984@lemmy.todayOPEnglish
              1·
              14 hours ago

              Just guessing here but maybe implement support for some kind of dystopian cookie that all visitors need to have in their browser…

              • General_Effort@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                11 hours ago

                Well. Step 1 is monitoring legal requirements around the world. In all the 50 US states, 200 countries, and whatever other kind of jurisdiction feels important.

                You have to age gate social media for 16+ in Australia. Some content is criminal in some countries. Some content is 18+ in some countries but not in others. Some countries require such content to be age gated, others do not.

                What kind of age verification is acceptable also varies…

                You need to constantly have your eye on new laws, legal precedents, or decision by regulators and adapt.

                And that doesn’t even begin to address the technological problems.