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:
- 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.
- A photo of your username with a glass of alcohol at a bar.
- 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?
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Ooh - I missed this update last week:
This genuinely boggles my mind. The government can make sentences like this, but they can’t make them reality. Imagine if it said that only people with red hair were allowed to access the site. What technology exists to handle that? Because it is effectively what we are facing. We can only try our best - but we can’t assure the government 100% that no user has tricked us onto the platform. And I’d still say that if I had the resources of Google to ensure compliance.
At this rate I think I’m going to pretend to be under sixteen and work out ways to get onto every age verified site…
I might even post about my findings for science “journalism” on some random pages that don’t have age verifications.
I have a real 14-year-old in my house. I should see what accounts he can manage to create for himself.
I have instructed my two kids to NEVER give age verification documents and identity to websites and plan on helping my youngest circumvent it after they turn 16 because i don’t want them on social media anyway.
According to the AFR…almost literally any. Many platforms don’t even stop you if you tell them you’re under 16. And none seemed to stop you viewing content if you told them you’re an adult, without any further verification.
The dot points read like an instruction guide to me. I was musing about a week ago about making a backup Facebook account ahead of time and subscribing to insurance companies and marriage memes pages, or staging a trip to France.
membership in youth-focused groups, forums or communities
My Little Pony fans have been warned.
people with red hair were allowed to access the site
At least Molly would be here to try and keep Pauline Hanson off.
spoiler
So I went and grabbed a drink at a local, where do I send the pic?
Up the top where “her” is highlighted, press it, then press “send message”.
Send Message to Molly
Is she supposed to reply?
Not instantly. I’ll go through all the DMs soon (I was going to go through them on the weekend but, December) and send replies. Yes, replies will come from Molly.
Oh good, I thought I failed
Fuuuuuck. This is happening over different countries (Australia, US, UK and Europe) which I knew but I didn’t realise it was going after the small forums and forcing them to shut down.
(From a link in the article) the UK one forced a Linux gaming forum to close https://web.archive.org/web/20250102185206/https://www.gamingonlinux.com/forum/topic/6463/
Plus a bunch of others.
Whelp, forgot to get a photo from a pub. Hopefully it’s fine to get a photo on the 10th… Otherwise all I have to show is my old Gameboy colour and Pokemon games from when I was a kid…
I no longer drink, don’t have a car and don’t wish to appear in any photos. And despite having been a redditor for 12 years, changing handles frequently for privacy means I’ve been Melbaboutown for much less than that. I’m not sharing any other accounts as the long term ones are doxable.
It sucks that Lemmy is being forced to do this and I wouldn’t even humour it for a second if it wasn’t you guys asking.
Guess if I want to keep talking to you awesome units Molly is just going to have to hear about my calcium pills, gaming off floppy discs as a child, and how I still have the Walkman I owned as a teen. Also Video Ezy and Blockbuster.
Whether the government wants to believe me is up to them.
Great idea. Adding Lemmy and Mastodon to my 4-digit Slashdot.org profile now.
Edit. Done, sort off.
I just added my aussie.zone nick to my reddit profile. Considering that account itself is almost a teenager, should be good.
Don’t make me break out my livejournal. I’ll do it. I’m a madwoman.
Annoyingly I deleted my MySpace, Friendster and all my old school forums are gone.
My first Facebook account probably is 16 (late adopter) but I shut it down and wouldn’t be sharing that anyway
Can’t break out livejournal without agreeing to the stupid Russian t&c we all ported to Dreamwidth to avoid. I could get back into that one or Fetlife but Nath might faint.
I talked about the first album I ever bought (midnight oil’s 10-1 album), my first boyfriend’s car (1979 Gemini), the first cassingle I ever bought (Suzanne Vega) and my first picture disc (Bros). I feel like if you’re under 16 you wouldn’t understand a percentage of that statement 😆
If it was Tom’s Diner, that song has a special place in digital music history. It was the test song for what became the MP3 standard.
It was!
gaming off floppy discs as a child
Dang. I’m a little younger than you. We had floppy disks when I was in year 1 & 2, but I remember having a Powerpoint project where some of the kids’ Powerpoint files were too big to fit on a floppy.
I think this was my first game as a little tacker. Text based.
This one’s more my era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoombinis
I played those too when they came out
Mutha fuckin Zoombinis
Haha yeah I know! I was actually watching a streamer (who mostly streams completely unrelated stuff—Photoshopping thumbnails for others’ aoe2 YouTube channels) just a few weeks ago, and the topic of Zoombinis came up. She’s apparently the moderator of the Zoombinis speedrunning records. Which…is apparently a thing.
University was a horror of finding out your assignment was too big to save on the floppy you had picked, and going through your whole stash trying to find one it would fit on, or having to delete some file share game before you lost the whole thing.
Dayum, you were using floppies to hold multiple different unrelated files? Like a USB today?
Most of us carried around about 10 floppies in a case. I had a fancy case that held 15 floppies and expanded out like a little set of stairs.
Most files we carried around were well under 100kb. We didn’t carry photos around, digital cameras weren’t a thing and we didn’t scan photos unless they were going into a specific file or something.
If I did have to carry a file that was larger than 1.44mb, I used arj to compress it and split the archive into 1440kb volumes. Arj had better compression than zip.
Yes? Had to get them to campus to print and drop in the department office box to get stamped by 5pm or points off.
Damn, that’s just wild to me. As I said above, I came in near the end of their era, so just storing one project on there was at times stretching the limits of what they could do. It’s kind of incredible to think of how far we’ve come.
No inbuilt hard drive, so it really did fucking matter! (Mac Plus and SE) still love some of the games. Try Fools Errand if you can get the emulator to work 😺
I suspect if this comes to a head you can just change instances to one offshore .
If they start blocking tiny websites “not complying” then shit has really hit the fan.
My pet conspiracy theory is that corporations pushed for this so they can collect your ID and even more personal information you should never share with anyone on the internet.
Fuck this law is so dumb
I might, it’s just a hassle. I can’t be stuffed.
And I find it kinda plausible. Maybe it wasn’t the main driver, that’s the Australian government having a knee jerk response to look like they’re solving a complex problem. But for lucrative data brokers it is very very convenient.
It would have perhaps been better to give under 16s dumb phones and have a family computer room, or just talk to your damn kid about what they’re doing and seeing online. But that doesn’t dump highly sensitive info out to create advertising profiles and sell.
Hi, Brit here.
I’m confused. I thought the rules from Australia here only applied to specific platforms rather than anywhere. I read somewhere about specific platforms being considered exempt. The likelihood to me that the Australian government (or your Ofcom equivalent) even know about the Fediverse to me seems slim.
They seem to for now?
From what I can tell these relaxed measures for Aussie Zone are pre-emptive, to establish that ‘reasonable steps’ were taken and hopefully avoid being pressured to demand more intrusive verification in future.
However that doesn’t mean things won’t change. Afaik Dreamwidth and 4chan are litigating to not have to comply. And more sites could be brought in during the second wave.
I see the UK government has noticed Bsky (part of the fediverse) and demanded verification there so it’s possible ours might learn what it is as well.
Creepily the UK also seem to be making tentative noises about VPNs now.
However that doesn’t mean things won’t change. Afaik Dreamwidth and 4chan are litigating to not have to comply. And more sites could be brought in during the second wave.
What could Australia possibly do, other than geoblocking 4chan, if they don’t comply exactly?
I see the UK government has noticed Bsky (part of the fediverse) and demanded verification there so it’s possible ours might learn what it is as well.
Bluesky is much larger than the Fediverse here to be fair. It’s not the same. Moreover, they’d have to individually investigate hundreds of instances as they are all independently run.
Creepily the UK also seem to be making tentative noises about VPNs now.
Eh, nothing concrete. What are you referring to?
They could probably just geoblock 4chan I guess? Maybe? Or try to? I don’t know what the government think they’re going to do. But Mississippi residents did get geoblocked from Bsky.
I hope you’re right and we just keep flying under the radar. Especially as they’d probably try to use AI for the workload of hundreds of instances, with not great outcomes.
Yeah, nothing concrete. And they claimed to have nothing concrete in mind. But they’re definitely thinking about it, I’ll see if I can find the article again
Edit: Ok, so they ‘have no plan to ban VPNs’, but ‘are looking very closely into their usage’. I have no idea what that means.
They could probably just geoblock 4chan I guess? Maybe? Or try to? I don’t know what the government think they’re going to do. But Mississippi residents did get geoblocked from Bsky.
Well yeah, literally all they could do is geoblock 4chan.
Edit: Ok, so they ‘have no plan to ban VPNs’, but ‘are looking very closely into their usage’. I have no idea what that means.
I am a Brit.
Absolutely nothing lol.
Well the Mighty Boosh was 20 years ago, and I have clearly drunk baileys from a shoe…
… but in seriousness thanks Nath. Love this little corner of the interwebs and appreciate you dealing with this stupidity to keep it rolling
I assert that imoldgreeeg… IS ACTUALLY YOUNG GREEEG!
Talk to molly about your mangina !
One of the places I work at has a display cabinet showing historical media formats and devices, seeing things in it like the zip disc and the Sony camera that took floppies always makes me feel like Elrond:
Zip disks ain’t that old!
Fixing computers on location I once saw a word processor (as in, a very limited specialised computer for writing text, not the software for general purpose computers that killed 'em) on display. Now that was old.
(Not as old as the completely mechanical typewriter I wrote my school essays with, though.)
Mum had a Compaq with a 5.25" in the side of the screen. Ran Zork and some lame work shit she needed.
Zip disks ain’t that old!
That’s what I like to think as well, but I guess it has been a while. It’s like how I think 90s cars are still fairly recent until I see ones rolling around with historic rego…
Just a thanks to everyone involved with keeping things running here and dealing with not only our stupidity, but the stupidity of our stupid government.
And, Molly! Whoooooo, girrrrrrrrrrrrl! You have a job ahead of you! Good luck and thank you to you too!
(Edit: And I think I messed up my submission already sorry 🫣)
What if I promise faithfully (so help me Dog) that I am over 16? If that doesn’t work, my 20 year old son will vouch for me. And anyone else willing to pay him.
Thanks for bringing that up. The good news is that it only affects users at our instance. I should make that clearer on the title. That’s one of the reasons the law is pointless. A kid can sign up at another instance that isn’t in Australia and be otherwise unaffected.
Finally, an intelligent bot. 🧪🔬
Next, we’ll invent intelligent users.
This account will be visiting from another geolocation which isn’t subject to Australian laws and will henceforth identify as a foreign bot trying to disrupt Australian society and promote disunity. I request to be labelled as a foreign asset, not subject to age authorisation. In small print add “works for gambling industry, owns coal mine, makes political donations, VIP, mates with Albo and the Pope”
Well don’t drag me into disrupting australian society please. I have other stuff on my plate already.
Just want to add at this point that I am loving this post and all the responses. Getting old is so bittersweet 😔
These strategies are quite nice. I was worried I would have to show my license which I’m not entirely comfortable with. I can easily talk about how my friend skateboarded to my house after the breakfast club first aired so we could excitedly discuss it and I could take a photo of drinking a pint while driving. Easy.
What happens if I don’t get around to it by the 10th? Will my account be deleted, or temporarily disabled until I provide proof? I likely won’t be able to do it in time.
Also, is it ok to send govt ID with the info blacked out (with Date of birth visible)?
This is the first round of verification. There will be more than one. At some point I’ll resort to sending direct messages to stragglers.
The law is vague about our requirements. It’s vague on lots of things.
We need to proactively ban users who identify themselves as children. We don’t have to immediately ban every unverified account, but at some point we’re going to need to have some sort of record of age verification for active users.
Waste of everyone’s time? Yep.
I don’t envy your position.
I’m certain that this new law has nothing to do with protecting children, and only exists to provide a way for AI companies to start making money.
Na, its to pop a cultural crisis balloon the media was blowing up last year.
There will be some tangential benefits, i think the no alcohol before 18 is a good analogy, the only problem is there can be some benefits to social media, whereas theres not a really an upside to alcohol.
But largely its due to talk-back wankers, and the Government not wanting a distracting fake cultural crisis. Commercial media in this country suck large round ones.
Anyway, thats my view.
I do worry where this is going as more countries do this kind of shit.
On that front, we’re a little fortunate. One of the whitepapers I saw on the legislation essentially spruiked a whole industry poised to offer sites ‘age verification services’. By getting in ahead of all that and verifying our users using methods our own users themselves define, we’re avoiding that noise.
And the users have been wonderful. I’ve always loved the support of this crowd and they haven’t let us down on this matter, either. By simply leaving it with you all to go ahead and define your own verification means, you’ve come up with loads of unique stuff that I would never have thought of. And by keeping it all funnelled to DMs the way we have, no AI is going to learn anything from you.
If we are singled out to demonstrate that we took reasonable steps, I’d love to present the evidence that we have complied with the legislation. They can’t complain that our methods fail to meet some standard, as they haven’t provided a standard. I honestly believe I could go all the way to court with the messages that you’ve sent in as “any reasonable person would believe this was sent by someone over sixteen”. If that turns into some sort of thing that goes ‘ok, you need to do x to verify ages in future’, we’ve beaten all such changes by being grandfathered in on our own system.
I’d love for you to share the de-identified messages. We’re a clever bunch here and I’d love to see how we all responded.
Maybe a few of them and after a bit. I can’t think of any examples so far of two people doing the same thing, but I also don’t want to take dozens of means off the table for future respondents. One user already shared his genius method, and I suppose that method is still available for others to use. 😆
There is no way some other lazy person hasn’t done the same thing I did.
I likely won’t be able to do it in time.
Yeah same. I’m currently overseas and still will be on the 10th. I don’t drink, and I’m born in the earlyish noughties so I can’t provide a very convincing spiel.
After reading through the post I will be jumping ship, later boys I’ll see you in another instance
