The new SCOPE Act takes effect this Sunday, adding protections for kids online through age verification and stricter marketplace regulations but one non-profit is challenging it. Will a judge block it? #OnlineSafety #ConsumerProtection #SCOPEAct
"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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Texass is gonna have to play whack-a-mole and do it the hard way. And I’m pretty sure the more technically inclined members of the fediverse are going to have loads of fun fucking with whatever IT measures they try to mitigate this with, because they’re certainly not going to be drawing the best and brightest minds.
Put another way: weaponized non-neurotypicals are gonna have some fun fucking with a state government that doesnt like them, because the feeling is very much mutual.
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.
Social media is probably a very poorly or very narrowly defined term. Either they called out Facebook, Reddit, Snapchat, etc by name or they gave some broad description of social media that could apply to everything from Facebook all the way down to somebody's Vbulletin forum and this will be unenforceable for the vast majority of websites. Compliance is likely voluntary for the little fish in social media. I imagine that they aren't even aware that Lemmy exists.
It's the internet - so unless you're under Texas' jurisdiction, then it's likely going to just simply be ignored. Lemmy doesn't have an interest in making money in Texas or anything, so it's not like they can go after bank accounts, or otherwise retaliate in any manner other than blocking Lemmy in Texas....so...nothing lost.