Lemmy.zip is UK based and ended up blocking anyone from the UK from visiting the site 🤷
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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Mastodon has nothing they can do to implement digital ID's, which is what age verification is. Lemmy might not have the technology to do it, because it's libre and a protocol.
Will Lemmy instances be forced to verify users' ~~ages~~ identities?
If they're located in the UK, sure. But given how small Lemmy instances are, I assume they'll fly under the radar.
Non-UK instances won't be forced to do anything. The UK can't do shit outside their borders, so as long as the instance's operator doesn't set foot into the country, all they can do is block the instance in the UK.
Was wondering about this, I'm in UK, I could just make my own instance, I'm the only user so I verify my own age, federate with everyone. All good? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I love that idea.
If you do, I'd like to know what kind of bandwidth and system usage it demands.
I've been wondering if a pi could do this for me and my few friends.
Well they can do shit - they can put out arrest warrants and fines, and possibly have the person extradited to the UK depending on the country.
Right, but realistically this would be far too much work. Like, they would need to do the same for every digital sex worker who has ever spun up their own website. It's just not feasible.
They could also instruct their ISPs to block the instance.
Oh certainly. But this is a lot less work than trying to extradite someone
they can put out arrest warrants and fines
Of course they can, but they're unenforceable if the instance's operator has no presence nor assets in the UK. That's why I wrote "forced" in bold. They can issue shit, but that's where it stops.
and possibly have the person extradited to the UK
According to Wikipedia, extradition requires that the crime is such in BOTH countries. So no, I don't see that being an option here.
>According to Wikipedia, extradition requires that the crime is such in BOTH countries. So no, I don't see that being an option here.
I can only answer for dbzer0/anarchist.nexus but FUCK NO. We ain't gonna do that shit lol. If we ever have trouble with the law in any country, we can always backup and move.
I was wondering if I chose the right instance migrating over from lemm.ee. Nice to see I did
Ditto. We were contemplating a flash screen warning with links to VPNs and TOR for affected countries.
That's how you troll them lol
That isn’t a legal way around the age verification laws.
👏🙌
I really don't see that happening. The internet and the real people that build it tend to be innovative tinkerers and hackers. Things get built because there's a need and someone tries to say they can't. P2P, darknets, proxies, VPNs, heck the whole concept of the fediverse defies the idea of control by an external entity. So they may try, but the chances are slim it works.
Compliance depends on the instance. Pick an instance where the admin doesn’t give a dingo’s kidney, or an instance located in a country where the local law doesn’t require age verification.
Hmm, do we know which countries will be exempt? I hadn't thought about that...
Also, how will they enforce who can just ignore the requirement? Will they not take noncompliant websites down by nameservers or something?
I’ve only heard about UK, Australia and certain states in America. If you live in Kazakhstan next to Borat, you should be fine.
As always, EU is complicated, so we’ll have to wait and see how that works out.
Twitter / X started asking for age verification for adult content when browsed from EU. Works fine from Asia but you also need to set your account country to the one you're browsing from.
So, if you can’t even use Xitter for porn is there anything left? What even is the propose of that site any more?
I don’t understand why anyone would ever use Twitter for porn in the first place lol. Porn sites exist……
I’ve been on Twitter for like 16 years now and porn has never been something I’ve seen or even thought to search for on there. It makes no sense.
Oh trust me, stuff you didn’t even imagine could exist can be found in that wretched hive of depravity and fornication. If you never click any of that, the algorithm won’t know how dirty your mind is. On the other hand, you could also do the exact opposite and click on everything horny. That will turn your whole feed into a wicked orgy. Let’s just say that it’s a surprisingly versatile site.
It's still the biggest art posting platform. And I'm not even sure where art posters should migrate to... I mean sure it would be nice to have them scattered across different fediverse instances, but it would be nice for us, not for them. The main thing they get from X is massive algorithmic reach. You hit like on a Miku art and another artist with their Miku art immediately slips into your feed, you like it even more and you decide to check their profile and you like their other works and you subscribe. This kind of easy and efficient advertisement is something that doesn't exist anywhere else outside of few centralized systems.
Why don’t art posters use y’know something dedicated to art or images and not microblogging?
Like DeviantArt or Tumblr, the two once popular with artists sites designed for them.
Pixiv, Fanbox, DeviantArt, Tumblr, etc, are also widely used. Very few people only use a single platform. I think Twitter is top 1 for expanding your audience not only because how well their feed algorithm works, but maybe also because all those focused platforms are used more by artists and less by viewers (or used less often by viewers), while Twitter being general-purpose is the one where more people who like to watch/discover arts but are not artists themselves, are. But there are other factors, like Twitter comments being better than Pixiv or DeviantArt comments, etc. Finally, if we return to the context of this discussion, I don't think any of those dedicated platforms in any way solve the problem of age verification and that is why I wouldn't recommend migrating to them in this context even if they were otherwise good for art.
Should Lemmy heavily incorporate hashtags, then? Hmm...
Nah. Mastodon can handle that.
I had an impression it didn't work great across instance boundaries. Like, algorithmic discoverability was very limited. I might be wrong and it might have changed since I last checked though. Also I had an impression that Mastodon doesn't really have global cross-instance feed on the same level as Lemmy instances. And again, correct me if I'm wrong here.
That’s partially true. If you use the official mastodon app, you get the following feeds; following, local, lists and followed hashtags. If you use the web UI, you can also see the federated feed. A different client app, like Ice Cubes, gives you a trending feed as well.
PieFed has them.
There isn't a global law about age verification they countries could be exempt of. It's individual countries doing it.
And on top of that the laws are different from what I've seen, in the UK for example you have to fullfil certain criteria to fall under that law. But frankly it seems to be a mess in my opinion.
This is what an age verification service says about it:
https://www.yoti.com/blog/understanding-age-verification-online-safety-act/
In the UK the law is largely unenforceable. VPN usage has shot up since it came in and there was a reveal the houses of parliament are exempt from the requirement.
The internet safety law is impacting larger companies that profit from adult content such as red GIFs and pornhub.
Facebook hasn't been called out yet despite the very obvious adult content in their reels.
Smaller sites are flying under the radar for now. Lemmy probably due to it's distributed nature.
the houses of parliament are exempt from the requirement.
Of course, the jerks...
I've always said the only way to make this fair is for the big sites to publish viewing data
My instance just blocked UK users. Je suis francais maintenant, mate.
No, just like they don't give a fuck about your privacy either. If any instance does get big enough then yeah it's fucked.
I don't think I'll block any, but then I only have a few friends using my instance.
I'm in the odd boat that my server in in Australia (for the AU laws), but I call it a NZ instance - where I live