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Demigodrick @lemmy.zip

IMPORTANT: Proposal to change Lemmy.zip to 18+ only

Hi All,

Due to some overbearing/draconian laws coming into place in the UK, I need to take steps to protect the site long term. You may have already seen this post in /c/technology which proves that these laws have a real negative effect on small independent websites, especially those hosted/run by people in the UK.

While I assume this will play out the same as GDPR did and actually most things will be fine, one thing that continues to be an issue is how Lemmy handles NSFW content and account creation.

Currently Lemmy.zip offers accounts to anyone 13+ (or whatever the minimum age is in your country), and asks that you only activate the NSFW flag if you are 18+.

However we have no way to enforce that, nor turn if off if someone says they're under 18, nor really any way of monitoring that process. Lemmy does not currently give admins the ability to add extra confirmations about age, or a customisable pop up warning when that flag is clicked, or the ability to add more text to the button, or anything like that during the signup process, without creating custom UI stuff (which I am not able to do). The outcome of this is that anyone is able to just click the "Enable NSFW" flag during signup or in their profile settings, and view NSFW content, without any explicit check.

It would be great if the functionality of Lemmy was changed to make this more accommodating to children so they can't access NSFW content, however that could take a long time to implement and I want this site to be safe before this law comes in to effect in March.

In order to make things as simple as possible going forwards, I am therefore proposing:

From the 1st of February 2025, Lemmy.zip will only offer a service to people who are over 18.

Before I go any further with this, I am asking all Lemmy.zip users to share their thoughts on what this change might mean. I know the Fediverse tends to skew older, but I am also aware that this might affect some current users too.

I am not asking anyone under 18 to dox themselves either, if you're worried this might apply to you, you are more than welcome to reach out via PMs or preferably Matrix (my link is in my profile).

This restriction makes it clear that you must be 18 to have an account on the site and therefore removes some of the burden on the age verification, and although it isn't the perfect solution, it moves us slightly further away from any grey areas in the law.

There is an alternative though. I could turn off NSFW completely and then no one would be able to see any content marked NSFW, even if it's not actually NSFW. This obviously isn't something I want to do either.

Happy to hear thoughts/concerns, but would appreciate any feedback either way on this. I'll leave this up a couple of days to give people a chance to read it.

Thanks

Demigodrick

Footnotes:

  • some of this actually already exists under The Digital Economy Act 2017 (age verification), and the upcoming Online Safety Bill puts further duties on websites to shield children from NSFW content, which is where the software lacks in features.
  • The Ofcom Online Safety Bill guidelines are over 1000 pages long. There is no provision for small independent websites, they are lumped in with the likes of Meta. Ofcom seem to think paying tens of thousands of pounds to update websites with their suggestions is "reasonable". It is clearly not.
45 comments

  • I think this is fine just to be on the safe side with the law - reddit had, and probably has, the same restriction in place.

    Unless Lemmy implements age verification, you can just lie about your age, though, so even if you were underage, nothing changes for people signing up, really, does it?

    • Yeah absolutely, it doesn't stop anyone lying about their age. I'm hoping it's just enough to say that if someone was to report it to whoever, we can turn around and say "they lied about their age". We could even do it now, but the enable NSFW buttons have no surrounding text to repeat the age warning (and there's nothing at all in the profile option!) which is what worries me the most.

    • IIRC, Reddit just had the 13+ age limit mandated by COPPA. I'm guessing they'll have to make the NSFW restrictions more of a hassle than just a checkbox, but they're a huge company that can afford to do what they want.

  • Kids never lie about their age to watch internet porn. They also never lie about their age to click a button allowing NSFW content or when registering for a social media site.

    • Absolutely, but then they've lied instead of us willingly offering a service. It's not the perfect solution by a long shot, but it's a step in the right direction for now

  • It is kind of crazy that this exists all. What's even more crazy is that it seems to apply to people not living in the UK. I wonder if it would be possible for you to create a legal entity that is a foreign country that you work for as a foreign worker.

    • Yeah, its insane. They expect this to be done by every website providing services to UK users. The overreach is just mad. And completely unenforceable too.

      I imagine many UK sites will go down that route, especially with how many Mastadon servers there are in the UK. I'd be up for doing that if it was feasible (financially and technically).

  • As a dad I approve of this message. I mainly use this instance for news which by default is open to interpretation & requires a little extra effort than I would expect anyone as young as 13 to automatically engage with.

  • I think out of all the options, this one is the most reasonable. As long as it doesn't involve providing ID.

    The UK governments overreach here is absolutely ridiculous. Isn't the de-facto E2EE encryption ban coming into effect soon too?

    EDIT: Oh. I think this is the same legislation :/

  • My vote would be to make it an 18+ only instance, especially since the NSFW tools are used for other content such as marking spoilers. Becoming a NSFW free instance would be a last resort option as I really want to keep Lemmy.zip my home instance but this would be pretty upsetting as I'm a huge fan of art and this would make it even harder to discover and support artists.

  • Seems fine to me. I'd even be okay with full NSFW blocking if that seems safer legally speaking. Do what you gotta do to reduce any danger to yourself.

  • You need to actually read the guidance, an "I am 18" checkbox isn't going to cut it.

    Stage 1: Is it possible for children to access the service or part of it? Under the Online Safety Act, ‘children’ means anyone under 18.

    You can only conclude that it is not possible for children to access your service if you are using age verification or age estimation (together known as age assurance), which prevents children from normally being able to access that service.

    [...]

    Examples of age assurance methods that have the potential to meet the above criteria include:

    photo-ID matching
    facial age estimation
    reusable digital identity services.

    Examples of age assurance methods that are not highly effective include:

    payment methods which do not require the user to be over 18
    your terms and conditions say the service is for over 18s only

    • Wow, that's really messed up. It seems purpose-built to destroy small websites. I'm sure no one involved would publicly admit this, but I don't know how it could reasonably exist without them being aware of that.

    • I don't disagree that's it's not highly effective, but Lemmy doesn't have any other built in tooling for this and in order to move in the right direction, with the lack of tooling, moving to 18+ only is just a step in the right direction.

      There's over 1000 pages of guidance, and of ofcom haven't released their risk assessment yet, so things should be clearer when that is available - for now, I feel it's important to at least not offer a service to under 18s if we can't guarantee they don't look at NSFW content.

      I will also add that their "effective" methods are not reasonable for small independent sites, and the whole act shows a complete disregard for an independent Internet.

      • I'm not saying the guidance is good or sensible, I'm saying that you currently have the same options as LFGSS - spend an inordinate amount of money verifying users or shut down. It explicitly calls out your solution as unacceptable, regardless of your feelings. Yes, the methods are unreasonable, yes the government wants complete control over the internet, no it's not going to make a difference when you cop your £18 mil fine. Welcome to the UK, it fucking sucks, get used to it.

45 comments