Age Verification laws, if they are ever enforced against the fediverse, will be enforced against instances, rather than the fediverse as a whole. So the federales will come for feddit.online, or lemmy.world or mastodon.social. The trouble is, to get the fediverse writ large taken down, you have to get every instance down all at once, otherwise the instances will just keep federating content between them. This seems impractical and kind of unlikely to succeed.

You openly defy it. Fuck you, Make me. Jurisdiction hop, darknets, etc.

What law? Where? How could it even be enforced on something completely decentralized?

They could go after some locally hosted instances I guess but the federated platforms as a whole do not have a "home base" and trying to enforce such a rule would be difficult if not impossible in practice (never mind that age verification was never about protecting anybody).

@MeowerMisfit817

This is completely wrong

Age Verification laws have nothing to do with Fediverse "popularity"

They have only to do with the political jurisdiction of your instance, and the political jurisdiction of you as a viewer

Legally it's currently required if the instance is hosted under a jurisdiction with such laws.

Size or being mainstream doesn't really matter with current legislations. All it takes is someone suing an instance over that and then owner would have troubles.

Selectively denouncing instances under these laws could basically dismantle the fediverse, specially if this laws end up being approved all across europe and north America.

That's why you should probably take down your representative and put there someone who is not a moron.

Yes, that's why the made the law. It's supposed to stop any competition for the already privileged.

Probably. Regulators usually care about reach, not architecture. If the Fediverse became genuinely mainstream, it would likely end up in the same political spotlight. The real difference is that federation makes compliance an instance by instance problem, not one global switch. That is much harder to enforce.

thats not how it works. there is no company. if your server tries to age gate me, i'll just use another.

You can just join another instance that is outside the jurisdiction of these laws or run your own instance with closed sign ups since you don’t have to verify your own age (or the age of known friends if you offer access to them)

The fediverse is inherently resilient to this sort of law, it’s the laws that make platforms liable for the content posted to it, that are more of a concern for the fediverse.

In one description I saw, part of the criterion was algorithmic feeds i.e. viewer manipulation. Lemmy has a fairly wimpy form of that compared to something like Facebook, and it could be shut off entirely without any loss. If it were up to me I'd shut it off either way.

Decentralization may help, and not profiting off targeted advertising too I think.

The reason we lost a big chunk of the old forums over the past few years is due to much of this stuff too, but I think the fediverse may be a little more malleable to weather storms.

One can migrate accounts across servers, move to different jurisdictions, roll your own server and the interact across different fediverse platforms.

Afair Mastodon were looking to integrate email as a way to both get content and post content which could also help accessibility.

It wouldn't - it should already.

Why, you ask? Because these laws almost always appear to be first and foremost tools of surveillance and control, not for legitimate reasons, so everyone's in these laws' scopes. It's just easier to go for the bigger players first, or even the US companies as they need to respect the laws of countries they operate in by American law too.

Flying under the radar can only delay the problem so much, so if it concerns you, or whomever else for that matter, do push against these laws, and understand people need to be as resilient as those pushing in favor of these laws.

It already did, in Australia. Aussie Zone adopted a unique way to verify us. We sent images to Molly (after Molly Ringwald) and that was enough for the federal government. Things like username at a pub. I’m old and have false teeth so I sent a pic of those.

No, they didn’t like it and they said so, but they found a way round that worked.

In theory, yes, but it would have to scale up significantly in order to be noticed. And then since it would be split across many difference instances would be a logistical nightmare for authorities.

A lot of the laws aren't limited by the size of the site, or whether or not it's non-commercial, so instances with users in some places with age verification laws already do; Australia, Mississippi, and the UK (with the Online Safety Act) are three example. I haven't heard of any examples of instances getting warnings about this yet -- although a couple instances with content that might be considered unsuitable for minors have geoblocked the UK to avoid triggering the Online Safety Act -- but it's only a matter of time.

From what I understood of how the federation works it would be rather difficult to enforce it if anyone can run their own instance.

It can but then again to counter it we have hash based protocols like reticulum and nostr

Well, the software is written and the network is ran by the people who use it. So we'd be age-verifying and spywaring ourselves!?

Yeah, well, you know, that question has been around for almost as long as the WWW: Which laws apply on the Internet, and how do you enforce them if they do?

Lots of politicians would like the answer to be: My country's laws apply to all websites that can be accessed in my country. If they violate them, my country's government should be able to fine them, order ISPs to block access to them, arrest people associated with them, maybe even more…

But if that's the case, then cannot countries like the PRC, Thailand, Iran, North Korea, etc. also do those things? Can we claim they are doing something illegitimate when they do, when self-described liberal democratic republics do them too? Can the Internet even work at all if everyone constantly has to comply with all countries' laws, most of which they don't know about?

The business model of mainstream social media companies is that they are ultimately part of the advertising industry. They need some kind of legal presence everywhere that they have customers (advertisers). That legal presence can be fined like any other company, and that is how most laws are currently enforced against them. But those that don't can do this https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c624330lg1ko or even this https://www.techdirt.com/2025/09/05/when-trolls-take-on-tyrants-4chan-and-kiwi-farms-sue-the-uk-over-extraterritorial-censorship/ and then what do governments do?

didn't they already carve an exception for open source?

The question is what are they to do if a kid starts their own instance. Will the kid get fined?

@[email protected] IIRC 4chan just told the UK and other jurisdictions to stuff it. It works for them since they're not in a jurisdictions that requires it, but anyone in a jurisdiction that does is kinda out of luck.

Technically, they all fall under those rules in places like the EU already, those rules just aren't being enforced.

Long-term, the Fediverse isn't a social media platform, the instances are platforms, and they just connect to each other. I'd only expect enforcement on the few instances that are "large", like a million users in size or more.

If instances choose to comply, either by capping users or shutting down, it could be good for decentralization of the network.