“The SCOPE Act takes effect this Sunday, Sept. 1, and will require everyone to verify their age for social media.”
So how does this work with Lemmy? Is anyone in Texas just banned, is there some sort of third party ID service lined up…for every instance, lol.
But seriously, how does Lemmy (or the fediverse as a whole) comply? Is there some way it just doesn’t need to?
The answer? Block Texas
Not joking. If suddenly hundreds or thousands of sites would become unavailable. It wouldn’t last a week
doesnt that happen every time it rains in texas?
That didn’t work with porn, so it’s not a good idea for less popular websites.
Honestly only a couple of the big porn sites, of it hit more big things it’d cause more uproar, imagine if Facebook went down for a day
Who cares about porn
Enough that there’s a serious spike in VPN sales during the porn age restriction wave.
I doubt NordVPN and friends would see that if EVERY single lemmy instance got banned.
Why would anyone mess with texas at this point?
Cause it’s funny
Why would we not? Why would we listen to a damn thing they have to say?
This has “DMCA notice to a Russian music site” vibes. Basically, we do nothing. They have absolutely zero authority outside of Texas. If the instance is inside Texas’s borders, that’s a different story, but if the instance is located outside, it has no obligation to follow Texas’s law. They can’t do anything. They can’t block Lemmy, because it’s federated. They can’t sue Lemmy, because it’s federated. They have zero recourse, except for slam their feet on the ground and cry like a petulant child.
I’m curious to why can’t they do anything to Lemmy because it’s federated.
Can they just block all the domain names of lemmy through ISP?
As for suing, can they just go after the server owners or the hosting service?
Good luck finding “all the domain names”. IDK about suing, but unlike centralised monoliths like Facebook, you’d have to sue every instance violating your rules separately, and that’s assuming you can pin down who and where to sue for each of them.
And suing someone in NY for breaking Texas laws doesn’t really work well.
How does suing in a different country work, for instances in Europe? Do they actually have any leverage?
Even less leverage than as suing in another state.
They can’t sue, but they could legislate that ISPs have to block lemmy instance domains. That would require Texas legislators to understand Lemmy though, which will never happen.
Which to them is a normal adult behavior
They can SCOPE deez nuts.
That’s right, get noSCOPEd
Why should it affect LW or any other (non-Texan) instance? Any rogue country with populists at the head can implement any arbitrary legislation. That does not affect Lemmy instances hosted in countries with reasonable governments. If Texas wants to enforce their rules (or punish for non-compliance), it is on them to approach instance admins or block the site in their corner of the global internet.
This is a fair view. I’m not sure anyone has gotten that far, especially outside the country.
Heres an article about a similar bill in Utah, that hasn’t gone into effect yet.
What’s not clear from the Utah bill and others is how the states plan to enforce the new regulations.
I mean if the general consensus is that it doesn’t apply, then, cool.
I live in Texas, and can confidently tell you the people writing these laws have no fundamental concept of what the internet is or how to implement or enforce such a law for consistent adherence.
I can also tell you with confidence this law will be wielded with impunity against specific companies/sites our corrupt, petulant AG decides to go after. Fuck Ken Paxton.
As far as users in Texas, this is nothing a VPN can’t fix.
Is there a way to put a VPN on the router, so that all devices are covered?
Absolutely. Most “travel routers” have openvpn installed on them. I have one router set up with my normal internet, and another with a full time vpn’d connection. The VPN router was like $60.
They’re also great to have when traveling. It connects to whatever random wifi, and all of your devices show up as a single device. You turn off the VPN to connect to your hotel’s capture portal, then turn it back on and all of your devices have secure internet.
That’s an amazing idea. I had no clue this was a thing. I would imagine openvpn is free?
Is there a particular VPN router that you suggest?
Also, is there a subscription fee or something for the VPN usage?
Thank you so much for the info!
Find OpenWRT compatible routers
I’m using the gl.Inet 1200 off Amazon.
There is a monthly fee for your VPN account. I use nordvpn, but there are a ton of options depending on how much you want to pay and what you need.
They think it’s a big truck that you can just dump something on
That was Alaska
I can absolutely see Texas looking at it the other way. “Your website can be accessed by our citizens? On you to comply with our laws.” They then spit out a bunch of criminal charges that make things rather inconvenient for some instance hosts. The US reach into international banking systems is uncomfortably long.
The real problem question is about federation. You can post to an instance from any federated instance. If an account is created in one instance and the user posts to a federated instance are both liable? You have to be able to create accounts AND post to be subject to the law. Can one instance not allow posts but host accounts for participation in other instances to skirt around the law?
That would require jurisdiction to charge them anyways. They do not have such power.
jurisdiction and extradition. theyre too busy suppressing voting and melting their elderly.
Interstate commerce is not under the jurisdiction of any state, it’s under the jurisdiction of the federal government. They’d need a federal bill passed.
isn’t this exactly what happened with porn sites?
Look where it’s hosted? Sorry, but this approach has been outdated for decades. Laws apply when you address the users inside that legislation. No matter where you are, where your server is, etc.
Do you have examples of that? From what I’ve seen the laws only apply if a business has a physical presence in that state or country.
Pornhub is an example of exactly this. They’ve blocked whole stares like Arkansas and Utah over these kinds of laws. I highly doubt pornhub has a physical presence in Arkansas of all places.
Everywhere…
Today here: https://sh.itjust.works/post/24478719
And like the top level comment stated, it’s on Brazil to block Twitter in their corner of the internet. That’s why their 20,000 ISPs are scrambling to block it - not Twitter
Is there any Lemmy hosted in the US? Texas can put on a stunt against any US instance, but don’t see them even trying for anything from the rest of the world. Too much work/money with too little chance of success.
And the state I’m in would tell them to fuck right off and would probably allow me to counter sue Texas into the ground for harassment. I don’t think Texas wants to mess with states that have massive GDPs and contribute lots of money to the federal government.
Lemmy isn’t social media. Ignoring that though, the law actually says:
According to the Texas Office of the Attorney General, this new law will primarily “apply to digital services that provide an online platform for social interaction between users that: (1) allow users to create a public or semi-public profile to use the service, and (2) allow users to create or post content that can be viewed by other users of the service. This includes digital services such as message boards, chat rooms, video channels, or a main feed that presents users content created and posted by other users.”
Which literally applies to every single site on the entire planet that has a comment section. This law is incredibly unenforceable.
Lemmy is absolutely social media.
Nuh uh! I’m a Sovereign Netizen and I’m not driving social engagement, I’m just a traveler on the information superhighway!
Social engagement has nothing to do with social media. If you define anything with social engagement as social media then you literally are calling the entire internet social media.
They said its not but, I think the argument they were trying to make was that it’s not enforceable.
It’s absolutely not. It has none of the hallmarks of social media (personal relationship, feed of user activity, likes and shares). It’s a forum. Forums existed for decades before social media. If you define forums as social media then you are defining every comment section on every site, including news sites, help sites, things like stack overflow even, as social media which is clearly ridiculous and so broad as to be a useless definition.
Lemmy isn’t social media.
What in the heck is it then?
It’s a social news aggregator. I assume the difference is, that this is to follow mainly news, whereas social media is to mainly follow people. In my 10 years of reddit and now Lemmy I never followed any account, I was just there for the niche topics and news aggregation.
Social News aggregator = social media.
I guess I disagree with “social media is to mainly follow people”. I think social media is for socializing, regardless of who it’s with. Sorry for the double reply.
I don’t know about you but I’m here for the comments sections, i.e. to socialize. That counts as social media IMO. Socializing with random users and not followed accounts, is still socializing.
You’ll note that Wikipedia has that article under the “Social Media” category.
Its a webforum.
Webforums are not social media.
I totally disagree on both counts: forums are social media, and Lemmy is not a mere forum. Lemmy is a platform where people can create forums, and many of those forums (communities) exist mainly to socialize.
I’ll give you that some forums (both on Lemmy and otherwise) that have a clear defined topic - such as tech support for a particular thing - are somewhat different from “social media”, but even in those three are often regulars who use the forum to socialize with each other. Any forum with an “off-topic” subforum is social media in my book, in a very real sense (not just technically).
But hey, we can disagree on this and it’s fine.
To clarify why I think Lemmy is not a forum: in my eyes, forums are set up by the admins, only the admins can decide which subforums exist and what’s allowed in them. Lemmy and reddit are not simple forums because they allow any user to create a subforum and make those choices and decisions, that traditionally are reserved for admins. It’s an extremely important difference and makes Lemmy much more of a general social platform and not a focused forum.
Lemmy has the ability to lock down forum creation, like on programming.dev which is the 8th largest lemmy site.
Social media has always been defined as being about people, not topics. People just don’t even try to use the right words though so you get ridiculous things like people calling something coincidental or unfortunate “ironic”.
By your definition every single news comment section is social media, which is clearly a ridiculous suggestion. Webchat, irc, literally anywhere there’s a comment section. That’s just clearly incorrect and so broad as to be a completely useless definition.
Engaging with people does not make it a social media platform.
A bathroom wall covered in graffiti messages is not social media.
an email is not social media.
text messages are not social media.
a brick with “Fuck You” written on it, thrown through a window, is not social media.
A restaurant you go to with friends is not social media.
A webforum is not social media.
IMs are not social media.
Just because you socialize on/in/at something, does not magically make it social media… Because Social Media is a very specific type of thing.
Stop trying to make everything into freaking facebook.
facebook is social media, therefor friendica is social media
instagram is social media, therefor pixelfed is social media
twitter is social media, therefor mastodon is social media
at the VERY least, all the latter platforms can interact with each other via activity pub, as can lemmy. by interacting with lemmy, you’re making interactions with social media
social media isn’t just big tech - social media is a way of interacting with a system
is reddit social media? most people would say yes it definitely is… and this makes lemmy firmly social media
Getting people to agree to a mistaken, misinformed premise does not mean you are right.
Lest you also believe the world is a flat pancake and other various nuttery.
Also, you clearly know what the difference is, since your list of examples is nothing but social media.
Again. Stop trying to make everything social media. You have all the social media you need to fuel your need for attention, as is. You don’t need to make non-social media into more of it.
Wikipedia: „Lemmy (social network) - Open source social media software“
Also: „Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongst virtual communities and networks.“ How does Lemmy not fit that description?
And Reddit is what?
Originally, a social news aggregator. Now? An abortion of that idea.
Yet it’s neither a web nor a forum. Curious.
A forum?? Which have existed for literal decades before social media was a thing? If you define literally anything social as social media then you’re defining the entire internet as social media which is just a useless definition.
Yep. This is another dumbass politicians trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist with a solution that doesn’t work.
It’s not about solving a problem, it’s about exerting control.
It probably boils down to the definition of “user” vs. owner/admin/host … But I wouldn’t be surprised if those definitions were unclear or missing entirely.
deleted by creator
I’m tired of Texas trying to expand their sphere of influence beyond their borders with shitty laws and shitty judges.
Texas wants what the EU and California have so bad.
Just financially.
It’s called the “Fuck Texas” response to such a garbage law. And good luck enforcing it especially with federated sites.
As someone neither living nor hosting my instance in Texas I’ll basically ignore it, and if it came to it I’d block the entirety of Texas if they somehow convince courts to enforce this outside of Texas.
I’m so glad I don’t live in that shithole state.
I’m fine with Texas disappearing from the internet. Literally every site with a comment section now has to comply or just block Texas. One of those seems more feasible.
Texas is slowly turning into Afghanistan
Not so slowly. 20 years ago it was a battleground state.
Set up a redirect for all Texas IP addresses. Point to Fuck Texas.
welp no more lemmy for texas i guess, lmao
If I ran an instance and if I knew how to do it, I’d just prevent it from working in Texas like all the porn sites are doing.
Be better to just block signups within texas. That way someone can use a vpn to make their account and then use it
Did you changed the “O” in your username? When and how did you even do that?
Yes. Yesterday. Display name can use emojis.
Comply?
“Is there some way it just doesn’t need to” = “Is there some scenario in which Texas laws don’t apply worldwide?”
Yes. There is.
To expand on this- In general you must comply with the laws of any jurisdiction where you have a business presence. This for example Meta is a USA company, but they have offices in the EU and they sell advertising in the EU from EU offices so they have to comply with EU laws for EU users. They can’t just wave off and say ‘we are a USA company, EU regs don’t apply to us’.
Lemmy is not a corporation. There is no business presence in Texas, unless an instance admin lives there or hosts the server there. So Lemmy, both as a whole and as individual instances, can simply give Texas the middle finger and say ‘we aren’t subject to your laws as we have no presence or business in your state. We are in the state of California (or whatever) and are subject to the laws of our home state. It is not our job to enforce Texas laws in California on servers hosted in Virginia.’
Thus Texas trying to enforce their laws on a Cali company is like Hollywood studios sending DMCA notices to Finland.
Thus Texas trying to enforce their laws on a Cali company is like Hollywood studios sending DMCA notices to Finland.
My point exactly.
