That’s what I’m thinking. There goes the Internet.
What sucks is that once these laws are in place repealing them will probably never happen. There are far too many people who will benefit financially from this to allow that to happen.
They’re making it so that vigilante justice is the only form of justice the ruling class can receive.
There are far too many people who will benefit financially from this to allow that to happen.
Orly? Can you give me a couple of examples?
I’m opposed to this trend myself, btw. But I just interpreted as a bit of pointless over regulation by a bunch of populist nanny-statists. You’re telling me there’s financial interests involved as well?
There are companies to store and process IDs on behalf on the sites. Also it will give a hell of a lot more information to marketers who will pay tons for it to sell you crap they think you need. They already have far too much information on everyone already, but this will give them even more.
Age Verification Is Coming for the Whole Corporate Internet
There, FTFY
No it’s not, maybe for some mainstream websites. Saying the “whole internet” is clickbait hyperbole.
For some people “the whole internet” is like half a dozen websites.
I worked in tech support. For some people Facebook is the internet
They mean most of the internet for most people Only the vast socially relevant parts of the internet
elite nerds who use lemmy will be able to circumvent
if the snobs are fine, why care?
those people kvetching about how the endless September ruined everything will have their wish
Well if they enslave everyone else, we are going to feel it too, no matter what cracks of the system we hide in
Australians will soon be subjected to mandatory age checks across the internet landscape, in what has been described as a huge and unprecedented change.
Search engines are next in line for the same controversial age-assurance technology behind the teen social media ban, and other parts of the internet are likely to follow suit.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-11/age-verification-search-engines/105516256
It’s the Internet. There are internets, but just one Internet.
Remember guys, they cared about the kids and their online safety as soon as Israel started a genocide in Gaza and they lost control of the narrative. But they didn’t care at all for the past 20 years when Epstein and his buddies were running rampant.
edit: clarity
The real goal is to eliminate anonymity from the internet.
It’s about control. They can grant you access or revoke it based on your id.
The powers at be hate that they can’t control the narrative as well as they used to so this is their solution.
Hell no. Just use decentralized apps, fediverse etc. It’s not about “protecting” children. It’s about full control and power. So don’t give up.
It’s about the information vacuum. Now every service will get your ID or photo, giving them both age and a whole sort of other metrics to build a profile on you. And yes, Lemmy.ca doesn’t know that about me.
every service will get your ID or photo
To be fair, that’s not how it will work. The site and the identity verifier will be two different things, the verifier only attests that you are not underage and the site doesn’t get your identity.
Still harmful though, because you can be sure that there will be scamsites redirecting people to fake but real looking verifiers for blackmail and identity theft purposes.
I for one will never put my ID or photo into any age verifier ever.
I gotta be honest I thought I’d never be able to quit Reddit. But it was a lot easier when I just did it. If this shit becomes the norm, I’ll back out of a site first time they try that shit and block the site. Maybe I’ll just have to stop using the internet. Wouldn’t that be a net positive on my life. You made me do this, capitalism.
You made me do this, capitalism.
This is a problem with Government not an economic system. It’s about control, not dollars, pounds, or yuan.
But this scene was set by capitalism. The family friendly, market friendly internet is the basis for this entire issue. Yeah, government is the one finally pulling the trigger on sanctioned, total control, but we’ve been surveilled and profiled and censored for decades at this point by countless corporations for ad dollars. We’ve gone through the cycles of outrage and acquiescence and outrage and acquiescence as things have gotten worse and worse—same goes for the quality of politician, all bought and paid for by telecom companies neutering everything we can do to make the market and internet more favorable while the politicians got worse and worse and we began accepting it and just laughing it off.
And here we are. Don’t be fooled, this is 100% at the feet of capitalism.
Yeah “family friendly” = advertisable.
Capitalism runs on top of government. Governments create and enforce the notion that a human, or a fictional human with fractional ownership (corporation), can in turn own arbitrarily large and important objects.
This is often done at the behest of said arbitrarily-large-and-important-thing-owners, who also come up with other similarly terrible ideas to have the government do.
Yeah so what could possibly go wrong when every site you want to use has your ID and passport etc.
Sure but it would be trivial for a company to build profiles on people using public apps like Lemmy.
But not necessarily link it to your other accounts or real identity, which is the point.
Unless you are one of the extreme privacy people, like deep into freakaziod territory, the folks who build tracking / id systems would maybe need an afternoon to go from your Lemmy username to your home address and underwear size.
For my account sure. I use the same username most places. But it’s also reasonable to have a fairly decent Lemmy account that’s decoupled from all your other online accounts. Use a temp email provider, VPN, and proper browser and you’re most of the way there.
There is a lot of information in the way you type and the topics you choose to discuss. More than we suspect.
If it was so trivial why would they even bother making everyone show their IDs?
Not a static target. What we consider a profile today is vastly more comprehensive than what was deemed sufficient a few decades ago. Ad networks today would put intelligence agencies back then to shame. They can always get more info. Adding biometric face data is useful to them. In a few more decades people might be talking about if Google and governments should be allowed to read your thoughts. The tech making this possible is already being developed and further along than many might expect.
decentralized apps, fediverse
Those apps and / or the fediverse itself would get sued into the ground and shut down one app or server at a time. There’s nothing stopping any Governments authorities from going after servers inside their borders and there’s nothing stopping them from “harmonizing” identity verification restrictions among other countries. They’ve already done it once with Intellectual Property law.
This push to de-anonymize the Internet isn’t new either. Microsoft started this back in the oughts with their Passport / Digital-ID program. Google and Meta, along with others, long ago launched their own versions and it’s why you can sign into so many websites with a Google or Facebook account.
It’s generally referred to as IdP and now that the Internet has been fully corporatized, with minor holdouts, you can bet your bippy that the days of anonymous access are ending.
If only there was a non-commercial, decentralized way of doing the same thing we are already doing. Perhaps make it free too. Hmmm
Those apps and / or the fediverse itself would get sued into the ground and shut down one app or server at a time.
Time to self-host your own instances. Sites like yunohost try to make it easy.
You’d need to decentralize the Internet itself. Good luck with that one…
What do you mean by that? Most of the infrastructure that makes up the internet is owned by like 6 companies.
infrastructure that makes up the internet is owned by like 6 companies.
GAFAM holds a large chunk of social media HTTP/S traffic, plus cloud crap. That’s all application layer.
Do they own main trunk IP routers too?They do wade into the IP / transport territory a bit but those are not the 6 companies I was referring to. I was thinking of Verizon / AT&T / Lumen / Zayo / etc.
Those for sure… in the US.
Which international ties to they have? I know Vodafone is present in a lot of countries (the brand, it’s a different company altogether in each country) but don’t know many more… nor do i know of any that has a global monopoly of network nodes.Lumen and Verizon both have subsea cable connections to Europe. EXA Infrastructure is in the process of acquiring Aqua Comms, both of which own subsea cables. Google, MS, and Meta have all invested in subsea infrastructure to varying degrees as well. These are not monopolies in the classic sense of the word but they’re not exactly owned by benevolent interests either.
That said, the point is that a malicious government with sufficient pull, for example the current Trump administration, wouldn’t have to bully very many people to severely limit the flow of information between North America and Europe. So much of the internet depends on US infrastructure that this wouldn’t be terribly far off from censoring the entire internet. In that scenario there isn’t much that can be done about it. Europe can control their own information flow to Asia and Africa but at minimum this would be a severe disruption for a significant amount of time. Other entities might take such an opportunity to impose their own restrictions and make the situation even worse.
I2p exists
So do a million different forms of encryption. That doesn’t make the infrastructure any less centralized. If the people who own the fiber decide to only allow pre-approved types of traffic to cross their networks then it doesn’t make any difference what sort of protocols exist. Building free cross-country or subsea fiber routes is not economically viable and the internet doesn’t exist without them.
Please look into how i2p works. It’s not just some form of encryption.
Please explain how you can bypass carrier enforced traffic shaping policy.
From geti2p.net:
I2P’s protocols are efficient on most platforms, including cell phones, and secure for most threat models. However, there are several areas which require further improvement to meet the needs of those facing powerful state-sponsored adversaries, and to meet the threats of continued cryptographic advances and ever-increasing computing power.
The people involved in the project you’re referring to acknowledge that governments can, by influencing carrier policy, disrupt and subvert the project’s intended function. Why then are you implying they are incorrect?
That’s a very different story than requiring I’d for some websites
No it isn’t. Either traffic is allowed to flow freely or it isn’t. Once you start down the “isn’t” path there’s not much that can be done to get around the fact that a few people control a huge chunk of the infrastructure.
Last time I checked, the p!rate bay still exists. In fact there are many of them. Because the website itself is open source. The same could be done with any other site. If one gets taken down, two more pop up in it’s place.
While true, most sites do not have the fame of the pirate bay and will not see anywhere near the same number of fans hosting remakes, even if the source is available.
Also apps that don’t need servers. Switched to this for staying in touch with family p2p, works surprisingly well https://keet.io/
Got this response from one of the developers:
Looks like a routing issue, it works when navigated to from the index page without a full reload.
Its a server configuration issue. If you have a SPA even server side frameworks that uses native paths you need to configure the server to send all requests to the main application. You’ll find documentation of how to do this in the setup for every framework I’ve run into.
deleted by creator
All it takes is one snapshot of legislator’s IDs put online to poke a hole into this balloon.
Back when the govt here started incentivizing people to ask for receipts the Prime Minister’s fiscal ID was made public and the fucker starting having a lot of receipts in his name.
It’s fucking ironic that this article is asking me to register just to read it.
Can was please fucking stop needing accounts to exist online? So fucking dumb
deleted by creator
Dunno why the advice was deleted, but thanks anyways
Gotta show me the relevant RFC for BGP first.
If it comes to Lemmy, I quit. I’ll go touch grass all day, I don’t mind.
I will move to freenet, i2p and tor
Tor was a U.S. government supported service and guess who pulled the plug on it.
Really? I haven’t really used Tor but I can’t find anything about that. What happened?
Current US administration stopped funding it as part of their slide towards corporate-driven dystopia, I believe. Tor itself is still out there, just a little more strapped for cash than it used to be.
The Naval Research Laboratory invented onion routing and open sourced the code.
I don’t see how anybody could come for lemmy. I feel this just attacks centralized services
If they threaten server admins with legal action based on the global user count of lemmy rather than their local server user count I’m sure plenty of owners will fold.
Lemmy is probably not complying with UK law already. But if hosted outside the UK you can just ignore them.
Some instances have blocked the UK but you can also just ignore it because wtf are they going to do
Lemmy is still very centralized, sure there are many servers and that takes care of the /u/spez problem but very little else, most topic generally have one big community and it’s on the one big server
You can go elsewhere, if you like speaking into the void and nobody even hearing you.
one big community and it’s on the one big server
Which you can follow from another server, what’s your point?
the one big moderating boot, that you cannot escape
but don’t worry,
the boot loves you,
the boot works for you,
it only wants the best for you
as it pummels your face into the ground
for your own good
If this happens they should check ID at church too seeing as how children are much more likely to be abused or groomed by someone there.
Fuck that. The future fucken sucks.
I’m literally now playing ps2 games on my modbo chip ps2 slim.
Glad I got a decent Xbox 360 collection.
I played through Black for the first time this year on my old Fat with a sata hdd. How great was that game? It felt a generation ahead of its time, especially using the higher res display mode and the component video.
If you don’t already have a good controller solution, I highly recommend the Brook Wingman. I’m using mine with a Dual Shock 3 for the analog buttons (gotta have them for Ace Combat), but it supports so many controllers.
I bought the ps2 slim second hand. Then I personally did the modchip myself. Learning some more advanced soldering skills in the process. Now I’m able to play any game I want. But since it’s slim version I can’t use a hdd.
However, I can use samba share. Or usb (but could be slower, and bigger files needs to be split due to fat32 file size limitations). So I setup my samba share on my Linux server. And use OPL to load the games from my samba share on my ps2 using ethernet. It’s awesome.
Furthermore, I use a open source tool called OPL-Pc-Tools to manage my collection of games on my smb share. This tool also works great under Linux.
I’m trying to force 1080p output in OPL without success yet, but apart from that it’s all working now. Took me 1 week from soldering to Samba games ahah. As a bonus I now also have an advance JBC soldering station with multiple tips.
Now that you mention it, I’ve had mixed results forcing resolutions through OPL. But the factory ones you do with button combos always work great.
Ow actually I just got it working now. With my modbo v5.0. Using ps2 to hdmi adapter. I’m able to set the video mode to HDTV 1920x1080 60hz. So much better now.
I stopped using my hdmi adapter because it wasn’t looking as good as the component video. You got the 1920 to work? What version of OPL do you have? I might have to try it again!
Latest stable release, which is currently version 1.1.0. While I do have 1920x1080 60hz working. Just keep in mind that not every game has 1080, however even then when you are forcing 1080 you might get less blurry results.
See attachment image.
Oh, you can still get storage on the slim. I just did Gusse’s IDE resurrector on mine, but there is a better version out there now with much larger SD card support.
This is why the Dark-web exists.
- Tor
- I2P
- Yggdrasil
- LokiNet
- FreeNet
- ZeroNet
- GNUnet (In the distant future)
Did I miss anything ?
Freenet is now hyphanet, fyi.
this is backwards. why can’t publishers mark pages as child-friendly and then browsers and operating systems can have a child-friendly mode that parents (or whoever the authoritarians are) can use. Laws can target people misusing the child-friendly mode.
It’s not about actually protecting children. It’s about data.
They’re using children as human shields while they attack our human rights.
This is the correct answer. Notice that they have no compunction about punishing parents who secure gender-affirming care for their trans kids, but there has been zero discussion of holding parents responsible for their kids’ internet usage.
Far-right groups in the US have been crying “Big Brother” about everything for years because their whole plan has been to create a surveillance state where to gather information about dissenters. Every accusation is a confession with these people.
The purpose is to protect the mainstream media.
And as soon as that happens, I’m out. I’d rather just opt out of the modern internet. I already have to deal with my information getting leaked from various different services at least once every couple years it seems. I can change a credit card or a password, I can’t change my ID.
We’ll build our own Internet. With black jack and…
We have already done that. It’s called Dreddit and not even major governments can stop it.
Is it filled with the type of people that one might wish major governments could stop, though?
Not much more than the www.
By proportion maybe?
(Just guessing, I’m not on there)
Yeah, it’s all relative. It’s like the www before corporate takeover. Like the old www, you need to have some sense on where to go and where to avoid.
before corporate takeover.
The good old days, yes.
We already have gemini. A text based internet protocol like gopher.
Whats up with gemini lately? Havent seen anything about it since before covid
Them pods are a gigantic rabbit hole. A hare hole if you will.
I believe they updated the FAQ, but it seems to be humming along just fine.
Black jack anddddd…
I’m literally going around trying out old school forum sites this week.
Why do you assume that the old school forums are going to get exempted? They are going to get on the bus or get run over by it just like everywhere else. Government has already proven that they can, and will, regulate those forums.
Great question!
First, that the definition of content that is considered “adult” doesn’t necessarily mean every forum qualifies. Privacyguides.org likely would not. A car forum likely would not. Facebook must comply because links shared can be “harmful” anywhere on the platform. The fractured nature of Web 1.0 is a feature now, not a bug.
Second, that proxy measures can reasonably work for forums with smart admins. If I register with an email I can show has been in use since 2007, some forums are willing to accept that as enough evidence. I saw an article somewhere I can’t find right now that someone was accepting 5 year old tickets to a concert or something that was an 18+ event. Typically age verification laws are focused on large Web 2.0 platforms and can include lower cost, lower threshold options for sites with a very small number of users.
Finally, that it might simply take a longer time for anyone to care or even notice some smaller sites. By the time someone comes calling, policies might have already changed several times and reasonable exemptions now mean no work is needed.
First, that the definition of content that is considered “adult” doesn’t necessarily mean every forum qualifies. Privacyguides.org likely would not. A car forum likely would not. Facebook must comply because links shared can be “harmful” anywhere on the platform. The fractured nature of Web 1.0 is a feature now, not a bug.
if it were so easy. you can post links to the privacyguides forum too. but the bigger problem is that anyone can post anything. if they don’t do age verification, they are liable for any forbidden content that slipped through. that can also be used as a form of blackmailing.
Sure you can post links, but that’s not the topic of the forum, and it’s not specific the a xountrybor market, which is also a factor right now with the UK law, so it doesnt ping as a problem worth dealing with.
where did you read that it’s the topic of the forum that matters?
I’ve read what seems like 30+ articles and explainers about the UK law the last few days - this has some lousy (official) defintions. I think the most recent episode of Power User with Taylor Lorenz might cover some of this enough to get the overall sense.
The topics under scrutiny of the “user-to-user” site is extremely vague beyond obvious porn, but it amounts to if it allows the sharing of links of basic news of any topic, it counts. Because in terms of categorizing “harmful content” for minors, seeing fucking protests happening anywhere, at all is “controversial adult content.” But if the links are limited to a very specific topic, say Honda Ridgeline owners, privacy and cyber nerd shit no one cares about) etc., cooking, and other innocuous things, it’s a grey zone that doesn’t demand compliance. YMMV, but even for a fascist wannabe set of policies can’t justify “harmful” material for kids with a Linux forum or a forum for owners of the Honda Ridgeline (WTF?)
Car forums are still alive and well because they’re a great repository of knowledge. There are plenty of computing forums too still.
Yep, and every one of them already complies with age verification laws so as new laws are added they’re going to comply with those as well. There are very few web admins / sysops / site operators out there who are willing, or even able, to buck these kinds of national laws.
I am already browsing the “old way”, since the mess with reddit…
I found out there is a forum for everything. It’s not centralized in one website, but it’s not that different than browsing /r/whatever you know.
More often than not, the discussions are more intelligent and on point too.
For my doom-scrolling needs, Lemmy does the job.
Lemmy will be pressured into age verification also and most hosts will crumble. $50M per caught infraction is wild.
We gonna end up going back to libraries. Which actually would be cool as fuck. Like Yentl when all those dudes are hanging out in a big ass room talking philosophy. It’ll re-spark the postal service. Live music will thrive. Coz everyone will be like fuck the internet, we’ll do it live.
Lemmy will be pressured into age verification also and most hosts will crumble.
Then just self host
ah ha! Guess that’s how we beat the system. People would need to sub to your instance though for you to post content right?
What would the pros and cons be?
People would need to sub to your instance though for you to post content right?
I think there is some way to automatically forward your content but I don’t self host and am not an expert.
Pros are that while you could be “defederated”, you can’t be banned. You make any decisions and could also let others use your system.
Many fediverse hosts will make an effort to stay open by shifting their servers to countries that are out of reach of verification and law enforcement but that will only last so long.
Let us know what you find. I’m ready to go back to the 90s/early 2000s internet. Golden era of the internet.
Only once every couple of years! Wow you’ve got it good!!
Sneakernet is gonna be back with a vengeance
Among us nerds, I’m sure.
Isn’t that how it started
