I know - you’re very probably already sixteen. That’s why we are here.
If you’ve managed to miss the coming change in the law, I envy you. This silly law has taken up several hours of my year that could have been spent doing something more productive like watching Golden Girls.
But, the law is here now and we need to take “Reasonable Steps” to ensure that everyone is over sixteen. If you are wondering what “reasonable steps” is, then join the club. Nobody really knows. What I do know is that we have to start to make an effort to be sure that no young’uns are here against the law.
To that end, we have hired a helpful bot called Molly. She’s an expert at being sixteen and she’s just been told that it’s her job is to verify all your ages. Here she is:
What’s next? Well, in the first phase we ask that you drop her a Message that verifies you are over 16. She doesn’t want to see your government ID. Some ideas that she would accept are:
- A passenger takes a photo of your username on a sheet of paper with you driving (please don’t make this one a selfie). Faces not required.
- A photo of your username with a glass of alcohol at a bar.
- A convincing spiel that would only come from someone older than sixteen (Can you tell Molly who Samantha is?). Can you tell her about the Breakfast Club that only 70’s/80’s kids from Queensland would know?
- Anything else you can think of that only someone over sixteen could/would do.
There’s no need to spend a lot of time on this. At this point, I’ll go through the users who have messaged her and compile a list of people who have verified their age. You can be creative. Just be aware that there’s an infinitesimal chance (but not zero) that whatever you send may be sent to some government agency to demonstrate that we are complying with the law.
Frequently Asked Questions:
- How do you know that the user isn’t faking their submission? I don’t. No method is perfect, we saw kids defeating intricate and expensive verification systems earlier this year. Kids are smart.
- How do you stop a kid from moving their account to one of the thousands of non-Australian Lemmy Instances and just continuing on with their day? I can’t. The fact that the law is totally ineffectual in the context of Lemmy is beside the point. We clearly meet the definition of a Social Media platform according to the law, and we are based in Australia. So we have to comply, even if it is pointless.
- Are you aware that this is pointless and kids are going to get around it? I know that teenage-me sure would have. But again, that’s beside the point. We need to comply with the law.
- Will you accept a photo of me in my undies? Ok, this one isn’t frequent from previous discussions on the law, but I wanted to include it in case. Please don’t send NSFW photos to show you are over age.
That’s fine, but it’s an obvious technicality isn’t it?
“Oh your side has outrageous content that could harm children? Oh, it’s okay. You don’t have user accounts. Carry on.”
Proof it’s not about “protecting children” when the most child unfriendly social media sites are not impacted
What that means technically is that the Fediverse could just allow non-account posting whilst verifying everyone who makes accounts. What a laughable law. At least in the UK, they didn’t allow such a loophole even if we can’t do anything to 4chan.
Nailed it
They could just release some tools to parents to monitor/block sites but that would be too logical
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Comments on reddit are suggesting that the fediverse is simply too small to come under this law btw
Also, how is the verification process working there rn?
I haven’t seen any cutout for small sites, you have to comply if meeting the criteria. You’d just be breaking the law and hoping the govt doesn’t come knocking
Yeah, no carve out. The only way to be exempted is for them to specifically choose to exempt you. Or if you’re for one of the specific purposes listed as exempt, like education and work.
i agree that it’s not about protecting kids - is it ever? - but i also think that IF this were something conducted in good faith (it’s not), then the process would be pretty similar: gated access is the easy fix, so you work that out first (like a minimum viable product), and then work on the harder parts later
If conducted in good faith they would have discussed it with industry like everything else they do and industry would have worked with them to produce a solution that isn’t brain dead
Like zero knowledge proofs for being over 18
i completely agree, i just don’t think that particular line of reasoning (not taking into account anonymous sites) proves that
if they wanted to do it properly, they’d have a system that integrates with mygovid that sites can integrate with via some oauth-like flow (login with facebook, login with google, etc: but verify with mygov), and the only thing the site gets back is a “yes over 16”
the government has this data; there’s no reason anyone else should see it
of course that’s also assuming the whole concept is a good idea, which is absolutely not… it’s wallpapering over a massive problem whilst solving absolutely nothing and causing issues