Law in some (many?) European countries already requires more intrusive age checks. The EU also has some explicit requirements. There is also push to ban social media for people under a certain age (maybe 16).
The EU has just presented an age verification app. That app would become a required standard through new laws. or even through case law from court judgments.
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.
You are talking about the DSA.
There is no reason to believe that future social media bans will have such exceptions. VDL said explicitly that the app means that there are “no more excuses”.
The DSA excludes small platforms from some rules, so as not to overwhelm start-ups with bureaucracy. Clearly, such considerations are to be neutralized in the future.
(In case someone has been living under a rock in the last 48 hours. Anthropic’s new model “Mythos” has been finding a lot of new vulnerabilities. This is about patching one.)
Tears of joy, no doubt. No wait. Java…
By the by, anyone know what Daryl Bem is up to these days?
Since the (source) FT article is paywalled:
Etymology note: The word enterology does not seem related to the word enter.
@TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works You made me look this up.
There are also people who can’t distinguish between entomology and enterology.
I think that tech companies taking a stand on what their employees and/or users believe in is a reasonable thing.
How would that actually work? Like, you’d have pro-Trump and anti-Trump companies that only employ pro- and anti-Trump employees and only serve pro- and anti-Trump customers? What happens when someone who is basically pro-Trump thinks that ICE goes too far?
To me, this feels like school politics.
OMG! Jaden invited ICE to his birthday party! I’m never talking to him again!
Oh No! ICE nabbed Julio! I’m telling the teacher and they will get suspended!
Probably a good number of these people are actual children. I know there are adults who have broadly similar ideas. For someone living a very sheltered and privileged life, being trolled on the internet is the absolute worst form of aggression they ever experience. Particularly in Europe, activists and politicians talk about “digital violence”, which tells you that they have no sense of proportion.
Trump being able to clone Mastodon is not the same as letting Trump on Mastodon.social
The Mastodon devs made a choice in releasing it as open source. They could have decided to pick and chose who is allowed to use it. It was completely foreseeable, that the software would be used for something like Gab or Truth.Social. When they release update, they know that these will also be used by such services.
This is merely a statement of fact, not criticism. They chose not to exercise power or become arbiters of good and evil. That is laudable.
Bluesky is a centralized platform and their mods don’t ban Nazis.
I get it. You feel that tech companies should deny service to bad people. For example, to a government agency acting on behalf of a president elected by a solid majority of the popular vote.
I agree that the voters got it wrong, but I don’t think that the rich and powerful vetoing voters will lead to good outcomes. Look at medieval Europe. Life got better with democracy, not with a supposedly more just king.
The tech lord most in line with your ideas is Elon Musk, except that he’s kinda nazi. So, on a purely practical note, it doesn’t seem very likely that tech companies being more political would lessen racism.
Do you think it would be better if all the billionaires, who are probably mostly non-nazi, were activist like him?
So, trying to parse what’s going on here.
Bluesky has verified that an account claiming to belong to the US government agency ICE really is controlled by that agency. Somehow that shows that Mastodon is better. Because Trump has his own Mastodon instance and doesn’t need anyone to vouch for his goons?
Looking at the comments, maybe the issue is rather that the Bluesky company provides services to ICE. Tech companies should refuse service. Huh. I guess there is more diversity of opinion on Lemmy than I had thought, regarding the power of tech companies, democracy, and law.
Adam the creator
It seems awfully coincidental that, of all the curvatures out there, the universe should just end up having none.
I’m surprised they had a robot radiation hardened enough to actually try.
It’s not like this was the first time, such a situation came up. And it’s not like we have to guess what plan B looks like.
Be strong now. Mastodon is a gGmbH. That’s the German version and translates to public benefit limited liability corporation.
For those who don’t get it: That’s promo for the Schwarzenegger + DeVito movie Junior (1994). Schwarzenegger and DeVito play scientists who have developed a new drug. A little self-experimentation has Schwarzenegger pregnant.
Social media critters would so explode today.
Photo of the expectant couple and their doctor:
The EU has similar but generally harsher laws. The copyright lobby is extremely powerful. They literally control the media. In the US, this is slightly tempered by the traditional commitment to free speech.
Europe demands that you follow their law if your service is available to them. You may have noticed the legal fight between the UK and 4chan? (BBC story)
In the EU there is a lawsuit regarding the matter. The ECJ will soon decide. It’s about the diaries of Anne Frank, which are public domain in most countries, but not in the Netherlands. The Dutch Anne Frank Foundation offers a free edition on the net, but in deference to Dutch copyright they geoblock the Netherlands. The rights owner, the Swiss Anne Frank Fund, is suing them with the argument that geoblocks can be easily circumvented via VPNs. (Heise story)
So that’s about where we’re at.