I know - you’re very probably already sixteen. That’s why we are here.

If you’ve managed to miss the coming change in the law, I envy you. This silly law has taken up several hours of my year that could have been spent doing something more productive like watching Golden Girls.

But, the law is here now and we need to take “Reasonable Steps” to ensure that everyone is over sixteen. If you are wondering what “reasonable steps” is, then join the club. Nobody really knows. What I do know is that we have to start to make an effort to be sure that no young’uns are here against the law.

To that end, we have hired a helpful bot called Molly. She’s an expert at being sixteen and she’s just been told that it’s her job is to verify all your ages. Here she is:

What’s next? Well, in the first phase we ask that you drop her a Message that verifies you are over 16. She doesn’t want to see your government ID. Some ideas that she would accept are:

1. A passenger takes a photo of your username on a sheet of paper with you driving (please don’t make this one a selfie). Faces not required.
2. A photo of your username with a glass of alcohol at a bar.
3. A convincing spiel that would only come from someone older than sixteen (Can you tell Molly who Samantha is?). Can you tell her about the Breakfast Club that only 70’s/80’s kids from Queensland would know?
4. Anything else you can think of that only someone over sixteen could/would do.

There’s no need to spend a lot of time on this. At this point, I’ll go through the users who have messaged her and compile a list of people who have verified their age. You can be creative. Just be aware that there’s an infinitesimal chance (but not zero) that whatever you send may be sent to some government agency to demonstrate that we are complying with the law.

Frequently Asked Questions:

1. How do you know that the user isn’t faking their submission? I don’t. No method is perfect, we saw kids defeating intricate and expensive verification systems earlier this year. Kids are smart.
2. How do you stop a kid from moving their account to one of the thousands of non-Australian Lemmy Instances and just continuing on with their day? I can’t. The fact that the law is totally ineffectual in the context of Lemmy is beside the point. We clearly meet the definition of a Social Media platform according to the law, and we are based in Australia. So we have to comply, even if it is pointless.
3. Are you aware that this is pointless and kids are going to get around it? I know that teenage-me sure would have. But again, that’s beside the point. We need to comply with the law.
4. Will you accept a photo of me in my undies? Ok, this one isn’t frequent from previous discussions on the law, but I wanted to include it in case. Please don’t send NSFW photos to show you are over age.