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.
Lemmy.world tries really hard to follow the law. That means cracking down on illegal content. So yes, we are puritanical here.
At the very bottom is a menu with an entry called “Instances”. Click that to see lists of linked and blocked instances.
Everyone can be an Attestation Provider,
Maybe everyone can apply to become one, but there will be some certification process. Anything else would defeat the purpose. So you have the question of how much that would cost and who pays for that.
I agree that, on a technical level, it should be possible to implement support for the app.
Maybe, but letting a new instance federate doesn’t create a bigger abuse risk than allowing account creation. Going through a compliance checklist takes more effort.
It might split the Fediverse in compliant and non-compliant, where compliant servers don’t talk to the others.
Good questions. I haven’t seen any info about the economics yet. I think that’s up to the member states?
You don’t need age verification if you run it for your family and know everyone’s age.
You could run your own family forum just fine. The problems start when you want to federate. Let me be crass to make the point. Say someone posts child porn and that gets federated to your instance. You think you can just declare that someone else’s problem to avoid legal complications?
The way I expect this would work, is that instances would become responsible for who they federate with. If an instance allows your family instance to federate, they would allow your users to indirectly use their instance. We’ll have to wait what lawmakers or courts do, as you say. But I think, federation would only be by manual approval after some sort of check for compliance, or maybe even a legal contract similar to how it goes in GDPR. Actually, such GDPR contracts might be required anyway, but who cares.
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.
Good point. European governments keep churning out the digital regulation, but have hardly any qualified people to enforce them. That has protected the Fediverse, so far.
But a straight age-gating requirement would require no particular qualifications to spot. Would you be willing to face a hefty fine just for the privilege of running an instance?
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 flat world, there is such a thing as a free launch.
Why not?
After the recent judgments against Meta, it was predicted that there would be a crackdown on mental health topics. DDLC has been connected to a suicide in the UK.
*Screenshot is page 54 of the “Claude Mythos Preview Card”.
https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/8b8380204f74670be75e81c820ca8dda846ab289.pdf
It’s really only a minority, or else the world would not work. Think how the theory of evolution gained mainstream acceptance, despite resistance by fanatics who had support by society,
(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…
They are just making it up. It’s just nonsense.
These copyright claims are governed by the DMCA in the US. Platforms like Youtube that allow User Generated Content have a safe harbor provision. They are usually not liable for content that users post. Without that, the internet as we know it would be hard to imagine. But when someone reports a copyright violation, the platform must take it down, or else becomes liable. Then it could be sued for damages, as if the platform had pirated the content.
Posters can submit a DMCA counter-notice. At that point, the copyright owner must either sue the poster, or the content goes back up (within 14 days). It is quite suspicious, that there is no mention of that in the OP.
However, copyright owners have sued Youtube, alleging that they did not do enough to take down pirated content. This did not go so well for Youtube. Eventually they were forced to create “Content ID”. Owners register and upload their content. Youtube continuously scans for that content in videos posted by users. What happens when there is a match depends on the assumed owner. They can choose to have it taken down, or to get the ad money, for example. SNAFUs are pretty common, especially with classical music. It also has no regard for Fair Use, but content owners hate that anyway.
Filing lots of legal cases for harassment is an established tactic (see SLAPP).
Using copyright claims to fleece people is also an established method, or rather several methods. People make fraudulent claims eg on youtube to get the ad money. Or they go a legal route and put a lot of copyrighted material out there, and sue anyone they can (“copyright trolls”).
It would rarely work against the likes of Paramount. Such companies have big bureaucracies to clear the rights. And legal departments to fight in court. Usually, this is about fleecing small companies or individuals, for whom it is cheaper to pay you off, than to go to court.
Anyway, mind that the OP contains legal disinformation. Better get your info from somewhere else.
It may be illegal to link to illegal content. They could certainly get in trouble over it.