I’m pretty sure we’re all across the recent decision to restrict social media to people aged 16+, but has any thought been put into how we’ll respond to this?
I know we have about a year to figure it all out, but I am worried about the future of aussie.zone. @[email protected] @[email protected] do you have the time to implement something? Do you feel comfortable collecting the required information and managing age verification? Are donations sufficient to allow you to pay some other company to do it for you?
Another option is that we may be able to apply for an exemption from the eSafety Commissioner - but is that an actual option? Do either of you have the ability and time to procure the required documentation and write letters to the commissioner, or whatever else is needed?
Perhaps more importantly; what modifications could even be put in place that would be compatible with Lemmy? Will the instance just shut down?
If worse comes to worst, could another option be disabling signups and banning/removing all users, but keeping the instance open as a remote instance accessible solely through other instances?
Forgive me if I am being cynical and jumping the gun, but I am genuinely concerned that a solution won’t be found, or neither of you will have the time/ability to implement one, forcing aussie.zone to come to a close. I really love our little instance, and it would be a major shame to see it go.
Whatever happens, please don’t just leave us in the dark before eventually pulling the plug on AZ with a couple of days notice (or worse: no notice)
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Nobody, not even the government, knows how any of this will work. We don’t even know whether the same party will still be in power in six months/whether this thing will actually go ahead.
Assuming it does and there are guidelines on how to comply, we will attempt to implement them. I just hope there’s a way to comply without modifying/customizing the Lemmy codebase. I don’t want to be trapped in a place with a custom build that can’t easily be updated.
Sorry for not having a better answer, but we simply don’t know if it will actually be signed into law and what will be required to comply with the law.
Anything that drastically affects the user experience will be communicated, of course.
All good questions, that I don’t have any answers to. Plenty of time to figure it out… I’ll probably be looking at the larger players to see where this goes, and what clarifying information the government put out next year.
One thought I had was of trying to get an exemption for us. It’s a stretch, but if we all sent letters to our MPs and the relevant Minister explaining what we are and why we’re not really the intended audience (very small. Mostly adults anyway. Doesn’t use an algorithm designed to keep people addicted because it’s an open source community project.), just maybe we could get the Minister to declare an exemption for aussie.zone. It’s an outside chance, but possible—especially if anyone happens to be friendly with some Government MPs already. (I, unfortunately, am not…unless the next election results in a shock Greens majority 😅)
The only downside I can see of this approach is that it might put us “on the radar” of the government in some sense, though what that would mean in practice is probably nothing, it could be a concern to think about. I would only send such a letter of you wanted that kind of campaign.
Yeah I think any exception for us just brings attention to us which is a double edged sword. More users more members etc more scrutiny unfortunately though
Partly I think that will depend on whether exceptions are made publicly available via a list of something. (Certainly, it’ll be possible to get them via an RTI, but that’s not nearly the same exposure.) And also partly on how many exceptions are given. If we were one of 4 exceptions that would be very different from if we were one of 400.
Thanks for the response. If I might ask, are you prepared to put something in place if it required modifications to Lemmy code, an additional piece of software to host, or paying another company to do it on your behalf?
Apologies for the directness, not insinuating you wouldn’t do whatever’s needed to comply out of malice or laziness or anything like that. I remember you mentioning in the past that you’re time poor, so I’m just trying to mentally prepare for whatever’s going to happen.
Also, if you can’t come to a solution, or it’d be too intense to implement, or cost too much to maintain or whatever, could you commit to us as much of a heads up as possible? I’ve seen a few Lemmy instances shut down with minimal notice (albeit, much smaller than AZ). If it comes to that, it would be really good to have time to organise ourselves and figure out where we’re headed next (this is particularly in the context of the Melbourne daily threads, but does also apply to a lesser extent elsewhere across the instance)
I’ll give as much notice as possible, whatever ends up happening.
I don’t think they can have any idea whether they can implement the guidelines for what co stitutes reasonable checks for age until the commissioner actually comes out with the guidelines.
That’s a fair point. I’m not sure it really changes many of the struggles though. Any method will probably take some amount of time or effort. The only thing that wouldn’t, would be implementing a checkbox that you’re over 16, but that’s already been specifically ruled out. I can’t off the top of my head think of any other ways that would verify (or at least determine beyond a reasonable doubt) somebody’s age without some investment of time, or money for someone else to do it
I think someone mentioned that writing styles and phrasing may count, but even that would require the admins to review a sample of somebody’s writing. I think that or a face scan would be the two quickest or cheapest things to do, but would still add at least an extra 30 seconds per application
Yeah I’d like to think the government will set up some kind of anonymizing check via myid that lets hosters easily insert the check into their account setup without sacrificing user privacy or tracking their online presence, but you just know none of that is going to be the case. It’s either going to be a full track gov implemented solution or a poorly supported system of people handing over their IDs with little to no restrictions on how the data is stored.
Or a checkbox that says ‘Yes, I’m over 16’, as the current age-restricted content has.
Does aussie.zone abide by gpdr?
There’s your answer.
I don’t know the specifics of gpdr, but every site updated their privacy policies when it came in to say they’d change the way they collect data and would provide what they have on users or delete at request.
If that’s all there is to it, then yes. We don’t collect anything on users that isn’t in their profe or settings pages. And yes - you have the power to delete all that yourself.
Yeah, not having ads or selling user information makes it a lot easier to comply with gdpr. Its been a while since I read through it, but from memory, it’s largely around how you have to store user info, deleting PII within a certain timeframe of account deletion, managing inactivity, and providing a way to delete information
The only thing I can think of is that Lemmy does log IPs in a log thing somewhere in the docker files, but they’re not attached to an account that I recall, so I don’t think that poses a GDPR problem
This is a little bit different, because aussie.zone is hosted in Australia, run by, and primarily used by Australians. The European courts and GDPR people probably have bigger fish to fry than the 1 or 2 people that may or may not use our instance. The same is also true of our court system and these laws, but it’s still a little bit different in my view, as it would cost way less to prosecute our instance admins, than it would be for the European systems.
Your argument is certainly applicable to other instances not run by people easily prosecuted here, but I don’t think it’s really that relevant. Considering the fines are up to ~49 million dollars, I certainly wouldn’t stake my money on just being deemed “too small to care about” if I were in their shows.
I certainly wouldn’t stake my money on just being deemed “too small to care about”
Something to consider on that point is that there might be a spike in the userbase once the major players put in whatever irritating form of age verification the govt dreams up.
Can you just host offshore?
Might be simplest, though idk what the legislation says…
Unless Lodion also plans on relocating offshore and changing his citizenship, I doubt this approach will work.
Hint: He doesn’t. 😉
Is rottnest offshore enough?
I don’t think Rottnest has NBN.
They only have fibre to the quokka, pffft…
Are forums like Lemmy social media? To me social media are sites where people friend/follow other people. Lemmy is more of a general purpose public website with user-generated content.
Not affiliated with the community, but as Lemmy is open source, and the primary coding is done by people other than the instance owners, it would be the people maintaining the codebase that this would probably fall to implement
