You may not but many others DO.

Maybe we can get more people on the Fediverse

Once there’s enough people on the Fediverse it will get noticed by the Authorities and when that happens you’ll see instances start shutting down as they are unwilling, or unable, to comply with the Age Verification and Social Media laws that are being passed all over the globe.

I’m somewhat surprised that the NSFW instances haven’t already been hit by the Age Verification laws that many US States have but as soon as a single state, say Utah, notices the rest of them will pile on and the Fediverse will start to unravel.

This isn’t just a US problem either, there’s Age Verification and Social Media laws being proposed or already in effect in many Western Nations. Hell the two Australian instances are already afoul of the laws in their country so as soon as their Government notices they are going to have some difficult decisions to make.

If they said that about Lemmy i would tell them to fuck off

Lemmy will eventually be targeted by the various Age Verification and Social Media laws popping up all over the globe. More of them are being proposed and passed every week and the confusion and risk just grow higher.

As an example my home instance, lemmy.today, is run out of Washington State and they have proposed legislation that could impact us. HB2112 and HB1834 are just two examples.

Even if none of them pass in WA, and one of them surely will, it won’t too be much longer before the NSFW instances in the lemmiverse start getting targeted by the wide range of States who already have such laws. Instance operators do not have the money to challenge these laws in court so their options will be: comply, shut down, or get fined into oblivion / risk jail time.

I’m not happy about it but in IMO Lemmy is living on borrowed time.

As an American I’m rolling my eyes so hard at your comment that they are about to fly out of my skull.

Jokes on him,I’m already in at least a dozen.

Nah, the attitude WAY predates Ol’ Rupert.

Fedinsfw.app

Assuming its not cheap piece of crap that isn’t UL listed and that’s where the problem is.

Well…we’re waiting!

The easy answer is to use commercial displays. They are more expensive and may not have the latest tech BUT they last longer and don’t do the spyware shenanigans.

Add Illinois to the list.

https://legiscan.com/IL/bill/SB3977/2025

I wonder how fediverse instances are supposed to handle this.

Because not everybody is willing to roll over and give up.

Where in the bill does it say that?

I appreciate that you provided a link to the bill in your previous comment and I’m taking my response directly from there. Here’s a quote of the first sentence of the bill summary.

"The bill requires a developer to request an age signal with respect to a particular user from an operating system provider or a covered application store when the developer’s application is downloaded and launched. " (Emphasis Mine).

Okay so maybe it’s a bad summary, let’s look at the text of the bill. On the 2nd page it says:

“The bill requires a developer to request an age signal with respect to a particular user from an operating system provider or a covered application store when the developer’s application is downloaded and launched.” (Emphasis mine).

Then again on Page 5:

“(2) (a) A DEVELOPER SHALL REQUEST AN AGE SIGNAL WITH RESPECT TO A PARTICULAR USER FROM AN OPERATING SYSTEM PROVIDER OR A COVERED APPLICATION STORE WHEN THE DEVELOPER’S APPLICATION IS DOWNLOADED AND LAUNCHED.”

So yeah, the bill literally says it in both the summary and the text.

So what is an application?

From Page 3 “APPLICATION” MEANS A SOFTWARE APPLICATION THAT BE RUN OR DIRECTED BY A USER ON A DEVICE." Huh, no ambiguity there.

And where would that make sense? What would Notepad or File Explorer do with my age range? That would make no sense at all.

Ask Colorado and California, it’s their legislation.

And yes, as a professional developer I would definetely comply and use this API instead of bothering my customers…

That’s good because if you don’t then you cannot have users in California nor in Colorado (assuming this legislation passes in Colorado).

…every time by askIng them to confirm their age, but since I’ve never worked on any age restricted software in the first place, it does not affect any of my products.

**Why do you think that matters?**There is no exception for your apps in the the Colorado or California legislation! You as a dev MUST comply with this law. If you choose not too then I hope you are prepared to deal with up to a $2,500 fine per user that turns out to be a minor!

“6-30-104. Enforcement - penalties.3 (1) A PERSON THAT VIOLATES THIS ARTICLE SHALL PAY A CIVIL PENALTY OF NO MORE THAN TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR EACH MINOR AFFECTED BY EACH NEGLIGENT VIOLATION, OR NO MORE THAN SEVEN THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR EACH MINOR AFFECTED BY EACH INTENTIONAL VIOLATION. THE ATTORNEY GENERAL SHALL ASSESS AND RECOVER THE PENALTY IN A CIVIL ACTION .”

Hmmm, okay well what is an “app store”, maybe your app is distributed in a way that allows you to sidestep the law?

"(5) (a) “COVERED APPLICATION STORE " MEANS A PUBLICLY AVAILABLE INTERNET WEBSITE , SOFTWARE APPLICATION, ONLINE SERVICE, OR PLATFORM THAT DISTRIBUTES AND FACILITATES THE DOWNLOAD OF APPLICATIONS FROM THIRD- PARTY DEVELOPERS TO USERS OF DEVICES .”

Soooo, if you’re stuff is available on Google, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, GOS, STEAM, EA, or anyone else’s app store you need to comply. If your stuff is distributed from your own website you need to comply. If your stuff is distributed from GitHub you need to comply. If your stuff is distributed via package manager on Linux (that’s a software application!) then you need to comply.

Colorado’s legislation is slightly smarter than California’s in that it at least carves out some exceptions regarding applications for Enterprise, Commercial, and Government use but there are still caveats.

tl;dr This law and California’s clearly and specifically apply to applications as well as Operating Systems, are not “neat”, and its easy to predict that most F/OSS developers absolutely will not comply with these restrictions.

This bill is not “neat”. It literally REQUIRES every piece of software in existence to query for the users age bracket. Do you think that any F/OSS software devs are going to comply with this horseshit?

MSO and EXO have a value proposition that Cloud PC doesn’t and Cloud PC at minimum doubles the cost.

It was never crazy and people were predicting this since the 90s. It’s essentially a return to the dumb terminal & mainframe paradigm that was in use prior to desktop pcs.

Business’s will not adore this. Cloud PCs in M365 or Azure cost money, often as much per year as it would cost to just purchase a pc to begin with.

Read the legislation. It’s not just operating systems, its applications as well! All applications, there are no exceptions. Everything from GIMP to the EHR your Doctor uses to a custom Open Claude bot on Github. ALL of them.

Maybe MAGA will ignore it, but at least you are forcing them to break an actual law, which you can now hold against them.

They’re already breaking actual law and What Mamdani has done is just an Executive Order. His EOs are no more “law” than fucking Trump, Obama, or Bush Jr’s were.