@dalias @ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox

if you're already in a safe jurisdiction, yes, get your servers out of a bad jurisdiction, absolutely

but if you're in an unsafe jurisdiction, it doesn't matter where your servers are. if they want to target you, they'll target you, and no amount of obfuscation will protect you from that

of course if you're a small fish doing small fish things, you'll probably be fine for a long time

@benroyce @ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox You just make it so it's no longer you running it. It's been passed off to an entity legally incorporated someplace else, and your involvement is as a volunteer or contractor working with a foreign entity for which you have no authority to implement the type of "age verification" your government wants them to impose.

@dalias @ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox

so let's say i'm in the uk. you expect me to set up in let's say canada

under someone else's name? what? you have those kinds of connections?

nevermind the added cost

also the effort will trigger more interest in you than if you never tried it. when they find out you're just trying to avoid age verification they'll laugh

you think govts aren't used to this kind of intrigue from dealing with crypto/ gambling/ silkroad/ pedophile rings/ etc?

@benroyce @iju @ariarhythmic @mellifluousbox @Mastodon @MastodonEngineering @Gargron it is to utter idea, I don’t want to have amd I know a lot of people who doesn’t want to have credit cards and are completely ok with Debit Cards. 1. There are people who do not want to be formally in debt, 2. There are people who do not want to be formally in higher loan to salary ratio. (Yes when I was asking for mortgage, I got rid of CC, because it was literally increasing my debt to salary ratio even when it is not used, by its credit limits) and as last thing asking gamers (and yes gaming is addictive) when there are games with concept of in game payments for credit card is just wrong. It shall be regulated the same way as online gambling is.

@janantos @iju @ariarhythmic @mellifluousbox @Mastodon @MastodonEngineering @Gargron

It's entirely possible to own a credit card and not use it

The point is to solve the problem of age verification without asking anyone's age, and using cc solves that problem

But you also want to solve the problem of addictive personalities who wind up stuck on gambling?

What

You ask far too much

Nothing can function in this world on this level of concern

Scope your concerns to reasonable goals please

@janantos @LukefromDC @mark @nitrml @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic

You're talking about decentralized identity

You can see vestiges of that in the project's history

So it looks like they abandoned that

Perhaps because it's not up to snuff yet?

But I don't know, I'm not up to speed

@dalias
Thank you for standing up for what is right. It is terrible seeing the excuses.

@benroyce @ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox

@vervain @dalias @ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox

it's about what works or not

there isn't excuses, there's dealing with reality

if someone wants to be pure and not deal with reality, ok

but the rest of us are trying to deal with the bullshit

and for that, i suppose we're a vast evil

same old toxic idealism, not achieving shit, but sure good at whining

@pablomuyo @Mastodon @mellifluousbox what do you mean? Libretranslate works well on my instance for translating posts

@Mastodon do not, I repeat DO NOT attempt to implement age verification. You’ll kill the platform. See: Discord.

Decentralised, federated networks are one of the few bastions from which we can fight this. Don’t throw that away.

@benroyce fuck you, average mastodon dot social user

@benroyce @vervain @ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox You're trying to deal with defeat before it even happens. Governments DGAF about your Mastodon instance. But they're happy to have you complying in advance.

@Mastodon @mellifluousbox @Gargron Project leaders should commit now to never poison the codebase with this stuff. If individual servers want to implement invasive age-checks (or have to in order to satisfy their local laws), that's up to them, but do not allow such things to fracture the Fediverse. Commit now to never allowing features such as blocking federation to/from non-age-verified servers.

@nitrml @benroyce @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic 🤮

@benroyce @iju @ariarhythmic @mellifluousbox @Mastodon @MastodonEngineering @Gargron absolutely. However that time, even if you don’t use it, the credit limit goes negative to your credit score in bank risk assesment.

@janantos @benroyce @ariarhythmic @mellifluousbox @Mastodon @MastodonEngineering @Gargron

I believe that "credit score drops if you don't use the card" is an US speciality. At least I've never heard of it outside imported TV-shows.

But it's a good point to say that not everyone owns a credit/debit card that works online. Though how many of those people are on Mastodon, is anyone's guess.

@dalias @vervain @ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox

that's not what i said

the point you're making is the point i made to you already:

"of course if you're a small fish doing small fish things, you'll probably be fine for a long time"

that's the real answer

a 20 account mastodon instance will go 10 years before anyone cares about it and age verification. unless someone on your server gains attention of the fascists

then the no age verification will be the conceit to dig on you

@dalias @vervain @ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox

by the very same token, setting up goddamn shell corporations in foreign countries is not anything a mastodon server with 20 accounts is ever going to do. that was what i was pushing back against: going to absurd contortions to escape the age verification. no one is going to do that

@benroyce @vervain @ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox If you're a server with 20 accounts, it's probably not open registration anyway. In this case, the main "opsec" you should be doing is not publicly identifying who runs the server and what jurisdiction it's under.

The case I was thinking of is more when you have a medium-sized, semi-open (e.g. by request/invite) instance with maybe 1000 or so users, which suddenly finds itself under threat of a being required to verify ages for its users. If you're not comfortable doing civil disobedience and just refusing to do that, the responsible thing is to restructure ownership outside of the jurisdiction. Whether that involves a "shell company" or real transfer of operations to trusted people elsewhere.

@dalias @vervain @ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox

you're not thinking about how this will play out in reality

in reality they will not care if you don't have age verification if you have 5 users or 50,000

but then someone on your server will draw the govt's attention. could be in 10 days. could be in 10 years. only then

and in that moment, i don't care what obfuscation you have that you think will work. it will not work

then absent age verification will be the conceit to go after you