Bad news!

Yesterday, I read that certain software packages on the NixOS Linux distribution cannot be used in the UK, because they require downloading from the Git provider repo.or.cz, which just flat-out bans any traffic from the UK due to the Online Safety Act.

I have a colleague with two kids, who's actually not unhappy about *something* being done to try to prevent children from accessing the internet unfiltered. But that colleague is a huge fan of NixOS, too.

So yeah, oof, even before we get into the very concrete problems this article talks about, there's a lot of nuance these laws need to get right.

They care as much about the people who can't verify as they do for the kids they proclaim to protect. UK age law restricts kids (and anyone who does not identify themselves) from seeing or discussing sensitive topics like Palestine. Given how the UK government has gone after Pro-Palestine activists, it makes sense why many of them might not want to identify themselves. If age verification was truly enforced worldwide it could stifle any and all discussions about sensitive topics. It's like a child has been seriously hurt on the playground and their response is to child-proof every path, shop, road, park, forest trail and public space. It's never been about the kids.

Is anything outside of reference material and news on the internet really worth visiting? I wasn’t really missing anything before social media became a thing. It’s just people arguing.

I feel like forcing kids to identify themselves online is just gonna allow predators to locate and exploit them easier. Which might be an unspoken motivation for some of the powerful people pushing these laws.

Glad I don't live on Airstrip One. Where's Amelia?

You don't say.....Stifling discussion is the feature not the bug.

All a prelude to more walled gardens and more fees.

The end goal is: Do anything we don't want you to, and die.

So Servitors, without the tech helping you stay servile.

"I have a colleague with two kids, who’s actually not unhappy about something being done to try to prevent children from accessing the internet unfiltered."

You know I really hate this kind of bullshit. I question if it's a psyop at this point. When I was in school, they had this censorship thing, it was a stupid fucking dog as their logo, very fitting with the current news. I taught my friends how to bypass it. This was grade school. And I was teaching them how to use proxies, we we're just browsing the net so ignore security. Had the school IT call us out on this lol. I mean I started with using a 64 MB flash drive running whatever was the smallest linux version to realizing I could just run TOR off that flash drive.

you can still access and participate in almost all non-porn forums without ID

stop lying

Everything has moved onto the internet so you can't compare the 1990's with today. Government services, businesses, there aren't phone books anymore, you can't find phone numbers of businesses without it. Products aren't carried in stores anymore, or only at exorbitant prices because everyone buys them online. To just name a few things.

Porn has always been the canary in the coal mine.

Also, from my understanding, OSA in the UK requires ID for any site where people can talk and share videos and photos with each other. Urban Dead shut down because of it. I'm pretty sure the Fediverse servers running there are concerned about it. I'm curious to hear how they've been dealing with it?

And Texas and other many other states are planning to implement similar laws to OSA. Even with just the current laws, Texans can't even access many porn sites because they just flat out block IPs from there to avoid any possible problems at all.

This carpet bombing strategy to protect the kids is going to destroy the Internet of old. Only major corporations with a team of lawyers and a war chest to deal with corporate-sized fines will be able to start a forum. And to protect their investment they will convince the government and the people that the Fediverse is dangerous. "The Pedoverse is where pedophiles, terrorists, racists, and other 'mah freedomz' freaks hang out. The only safe place to be is at Walmart Social Network. See plans starting at $9.99 a month*"

Okay how do you define porn? And would you host a forum that’s not porn but has to do with sex? Would you be willing to host it without an ID check risking fines and police visits?

How do you think reference material and news gets written and distributed?

Reference material is often wikis or git repositories, which legally and technically are social media, so if you want those to exist, you want social media to exist.

News isn't by itself social media, but social media helps significantly with following and discovering it. I get most of mine through Mastodon and Lemmy.

As if social media == internet.

It is. You're using social media right now. So is IRC if you think about it. Anything with a "message component" that "exchanges user submitted information between other users" or whatever can be classified as social media.

Under that definition, it's very easy to group things such as forums, github/gitlab/whatever. Now you can't even voice complaints or get and help build source code to resist.

Fuck age verification laws. Anything less than calling it encroachment on liberty and democracy itself is boot licking.

I know what social media is. You are painting a strawman of how the laws might get abused with further law which nobody is suggesting, aside from fear mongerers like you. And while focusing on that straw man you completely ignore the very real problems that social media brought into the world.

Nevertheless, even if you were right, the internet is still much larger.

This is the EFF. These people know what they're doing and talking about.

But sure, I'm painting a strawman. Let's take a look at how the UK defines "social media service" in one of their tax laws!

(3)“Social media service” means an online service that meets the following conditions—

(a)the main purpose, or one of the main purposes, of the service is to promote interaction between users (including interaction between users and user-generated content), and

(b)making content generated by users available to other users is a significant feature of the service.

source

The internet is much larger, until that part gets thrown down the slippery slope too.

Why is the EFF is concerned with tax laws? The traditional slippery slope is to use concerns about child safety and extend it to places where child safety is hardly a topic.

You should have cited instead the Online Safety Act 2023 which does not even use the term social media platform. Instead it uses user to user service, which is even broader.

But it also brings across the point better, and it aligns with science that tells us where childrens safety is a concern.

maybe, before you rant against governments addressing a problem that is reported from medical professionals, first take a position around the real problems that these social media platforms bring. You are certainly not on Lemmy because you are happy how Instagram and Reddit function. Are you only concerned about moderation at all, and not so much about the content they promote? For me it's primarily the latter. In my eyes moderation is a necessary feature, and I think the only places that are even more toxic than the corporation controlled platforms are places without any moderation.

Read the fucking article. The EFF is not talking about tax laws but freedom of association without government identification. I was merely using the UK's tax law definition of "social media" to demonstrate how easy it is to establish an overly broad definition of something either accidentally or maliciously.

Do you want a free internet where people can associate without the government's permission? Or are you privileged enough that you've never had to worry about your rights and privileges?

EFF has long warned against age-gating the internet. Age verification technology itself is often inaccurate and privacy-invasive, and as more countries considering implementing ID-based checks, the risks move beyond censorship and surveillance toward excluding some people entirely.

From the fucking article, since you won't read it, you philistine.