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I am reading the EU Kids Act, and I want to be clear and concise: fuck online age verification.

That said, if I am reading it right, fedi instances *could* be configured in a way that spares them from age verification requirements?

Age verification is basically Chapter II Section I Article 6 point 1 of the Act:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52026PC0681#:~:text=minors-,Article,service,-%2E

There are 5 things that each individually can make a social media service or video-sharing platform required to do age verification:

2 użytkowników udostępniło to dalej

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
First two:

"enables recipients who access the service through an account to transmit content in real-time to an indeterminate number of other recipients of the service, including through live streaming of audio-visual content;"

"enables recipients who access the service through an account to contact, communicate and otherwise interact with other recipients of the service not part of the recipient's pre-existing connections or subscriptions;"

So, make posts friends-only, and accounts locked.
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
Next:

"uses a recommender system which is based on profiling as defined in Article 4, point (4), of Regulation (EU) 2016/679;"

Easy. No profiling. I guess we get that for free on fedi anyway.

"uses a recommender system suggesting or prioritising to a recipient who accesses the service through an account contact suggestions or information that has not been provided by one of the recipient’s pre-existing connections or subscriptions;"

Disable recommendations. Boosts are fine. Check!
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
Final one:

"deploys or presents functionalities, interface designs or characteristics which are intended, or can reasonably be foreseen, to enable uninterrupted content consumption, that incentivise interactions with the service or with content or other recipients of the service, or that transmit automated notifications designed to prompt the user to initiate or resume use of the service."

No endless auto-loading feed and no annoying "we haven't seen you for a while" notifications. Gotcha.
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
This is a Hot Take™, and there is a lot of possible nuance here. But the way things are written, it seems to me kinda sorta possible to create fedi instances that would not be required to do age verification at all.

Obviously, we should not comply in advance with this BS at all. Instead, we should push back against EU Kids Act.

But it is genuinely interesting to me to see how fedi could maybe avoid being caught in largely by many things that are already available or obvious on fedi.

2 użytkowników udostępniło to dalej

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
(and no, I don't have a clue why these points are numbered (d) through (h) instead of (a) through (e); probably some operator error?)
nicole
wow, we'll be allowed to host alternatives to big tech if we remove all the features people use them for
Ten wpis został zedytowany (4 dni temu)
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
@mkljczk I don't know, recommendation algorithms and profiling and endless feed and notifications designed to pull you back in seem like a good riddance to me. 🤷‍♀️
@nicole
*_jߍyrope
@Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 I am just wondering, what they'll require from individuals hosting only themselves;)
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
@jrp my guess is if you do not allow anyone else to set up an account, you do not have to do age verification for your users.
@*_jߍyrope
Kolja
just move it offshore and give a fuck on the EU. So far enough countries which dont require this.
I was just on a conference in MEA and the LGBTQ community sees the EU KIDS act as thread to there security.
But after the youth protection agency in germany told me on public stage they dont care if minorities are affected i stopped taking anyone involved serious and be happy to host all the mastodon server outside the EU and make sure this fails as much as possible.
Fuck the EU.
cbk-res
@frelsisbaratta Ideally we need to build communications technologies which cannot be practically compelled by any entity (state or otherwise), to actually implement such. As federated as the fediverse is - you still end up with a bunch of smaller but nevertheless central nodes, belonging to orgs or groups which are too easily targeted by law. Essentially - it is my view that we must proactively design spaces which make the function of regulators regulating prohibitively difficult.
@Kolja
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
@cbk_res @frelsisbaratta this is the "cyberpunk" view, and from the perspective of time (it's been 30 years since the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace) it not only feels pretty naïve to me, it also feels actually harmful.

This is the same philosophy that cryptocurrencies are steeped in. And in turn, this is a philosophy that is steeped in Ayn Randian individualistic libertarianism.

It's the same broad philosophy that gave us tech broligarchs, in fact.
@Kolja @cbk-res
cbk-res
@frelsisbaratta I understand your apprehension, but I don't see a practical alternative. 21st century state power is increasingly divorced from the wishes of those these entities supposedly represent. We will probably, in the longer term, lose the battle against such, and that will be to the detriment of our rights to communicate and organise. Especially so, amid a rising far-right in Europe and elsewhere, complete with proposals aimed at remigration + denationalisation - I'm scared.
@Kolja
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
@cbk_res @frelsisbaratta I'm scared too. Partially because I see people giving up on the one thing that used to keep far-right in check – public institutions.
@Kolja @cbk-res
*_jߍyrope
@Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 Oh bloody hell, yes. Those institutions over here (Berlin) are literally taking themselves down since 20, 30 years already. They've been getting rid of most in-house expertise on the way, and are now relying on private sector counseling and decision making with most bigger state projects.

Obviously for that you do not always get fact-based neutrality, but a profit-interested bias as well. If anything fails or works differently during the realization of a project, new external consultation cost and major delays are created.
Lowest bidders for public tenders are preferred over quality.
At last all responsibility for costly external decision making is left with the institutions themselves.

A deadly spiral, as too many projects delay, are way over budget, and people's trust is gone.
Ten wpis został zedytowany (2 dni temu)
cbk-res
@frelsisbaratta That's not to say that we shouldn't learn from the mistakes of the past - we must. But we must also realise that our contemporary public sphere (which is digital) exists at the benevolence of centralised providers + the jurisdictions within which they operate. This leverage over collectives, civil society, and vulnerable groups is immeasurable, and we cannot, or rather should not, entrust rights which should be fundamental (expression, organisation), to any third-party.
@Kolja
Ten wpis został zedytowany (3 dni temu)
Filip Lachert he/him
"tm" doesn't work if you don't use it with a single word and don't hashtag it, sorry.
kawunngg
too bad boosting won't work with locked accounts or am I missing something?
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
@kawunngg my account is not locked, my posts in this thread were public and have been boosted a bunch.

No idea what you're missing.
@kawunngg
kawunngg
ah sorry I wasn't clear. and I realized I confused something.
I was wondering if locking accounts and boosting would work together to avoid the conditions that would make age verification necessary.
I was first confusing it with setting post visibility to followers only - and I think those two would not work together.
Now I realize I don't really know how a locked account works.
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
@kawunngg ah right. Good question, I'd imagine there would at least be a possibility to boost to common followers.
@kawunngg
Chłop Marcin :fediverse:
How would Fedi-people find new people to follow if everyone would post only to followers and all accounts would be locked?
robryk
Wouldn't this also mean that follow requests would have to be blocked? (They are after all a way to "contact, (...)" a user who you don't have a pre-existing connection with.)
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
@robryk that'sa matter of interpretation I think. A locked down friends-only account where all follow requests need to be accepted might be enough as a way to establish a "pre-existing connection".
@robryk
robryk
I meant outgoing friend requests: then the account holder is contacting someone they might or might not have a connection with, no? (Or is it obviously fine to take the account holder's word for the existence of the connection?)
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
that's likely something that will have to be interpreted in courts.

The lack of clarity here is a problem in and of itself of course.
Ten wpis został zedytowany (10 godziny temu)
Ret
attempting to comply is a mistake in my view. It legitimises these things. Lex iniusta non est lex.
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
@ret well if you cared to read the whole thread…
https://mstdn.social/@rysiek/117451967860327274

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

2026-10-16 18:20:02


This is a Hot Take™, and there is a lot of possible nuance here. But the way things are written, it seems to me kinda sorta possible to create fedi instances that would not be required to do age verification at all.

Obviously, we should not comply in advance with this BS at all. Instead, we should push back against EU Kids Act.

But it is genuinely interesting to me to see how fedi could maybe avoid being caught in largely by many things that are already available or obvious on fedi.

@Ret
Ret
oh I did, just adding my vote for that opinion too.
JakeB
It's a really good idea to prepare for it and try to find ways around it, because if we are honest, the eu leadership have already made up their minds and no matter how much we push back, it will pass eventually.
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
@JakeKb I disagree. There is a long and storied history of EU regulations that were killed or made meaningfully not shit through the hard work and dedication of organizations like @edri.

Assuming stuff is already decided and done for is giving up, that's a great way to lose before the fight even starts.
@EDRi @JakeB
JakeB
@edri I am not saying you should give up. We should fight this till the last vote and support @edri and other organizations fighting back as much as possible. But we should also prepare for the highest probability scenario, which is that this thing or something similar becomes law. That's why I boosted you, because we need to also start thinking what to do if it passes and no-one had started this conversation before.
@EDRi
MiKlo:~/citizen4.eu$💙💛
@Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 As simply as possible:
“Are you under 15? You can legally run your own single-user fediverse instance, on your own hardware, without age verification.”
@Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
jaj
@miklo Maybe that's the boost that fedi needed?
@MiKlo:~/citizen4.eu$💙💛
ohir
@miklo
> Are you under 15? You can legally run your own single-user fediverse instance

Soon only on 127.0.0.1. If not already.

To federate such an instance you need a reachable, resolvable, fixed ip address.

@rysiek
@MiKlo:~/citizen4.eu$💙💛 @Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
@robryk phone networks are not included in this legislation
@robryk
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