this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2025
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Privacy
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Just use mastodon ffs people
This is the law in the UK. Once mastodon become more commonplace, you can expect servers to start receiving warnings from the UK government... I don't think being not for profit allows you to get away with it either.
Being based in another jurisdiction might allow them to tell the UK government to suck a fat dick.
I mean, yeah, and the government might just order ISPs to block the infringing domains. That's usually how it goes.
I see no problem with that.
It does render the original advice somewhat moot though doesn't it.
Just use Mastodon, except of course that won't work, oh I don't care then.
That's true. But there isn't any advice that will work against such totalitarian practices and be legal at the same time. Either you circumvent the law with some VPN, or you relinquish your right to privacy.
The VPN route won't work with sites like Blue Sky, as they've already bent to the state so you won't have privacy there, even if your face or ID isn't in their database.
I don't think circumventing the restrictions with a VPN is illegal. It's one of those dumb laws where everyone just has to basically play along but everyone knows it won't achieve anything.
This from the government that routinely leaves laptops on trains, with post-it notes stuck to them as to what the password is (this is not hyperbole they have actually done this).
I think that was the Johnson govt? Was a while ago now? Or more recent? Can't find anything after 2021 myself
I am not a lawyer anywhere, nor a citizen of the kingdom, but usually, when you circumvent an ID check, that's not legal.
Well that's where it gets muddy. Technically it's only illegal to circumvent an age verification check if you're subsequently found to be underage, the actual circumventing of the check isn't the illegal part, it was buying the product underage.
Not illegal yet. I'm joking. Makes sense.
The problem is they're trying to implement a law that was put in place to stop kids buying alcohol to stop people looking at pornography. It doesn't translate well into the virtual realm.
Circumventing the checks isn't illegal because they don't want to be arresting a bunch of kids. So they just take the fake ID or whatever off them. They haven't bought any alcohol, because they were found out, so no crime has been committed. The law makes no allowances for adults buying alcohol legitimately but still bypassing the safety checks because no one assumed that would happen, and where you're just handing over your driving licence to a store clerk it wouldn't.
But we're being asked to trust third-party companies who routinely lie about their cyber security. Now there absolutely is a reason for adults to want to bypass the checks even though they're overage.
But what if countries collaborate ?
I already do, but just wanted to make people aware
Meant people as a whole. Didn’t mean to make it sound like I meant you specifically.
Glad you are also on board with mastodon 👍
Or IRC 😂
Is the user experience on Mastodon any better than it used to be because it used to be utterly appalling which is why no one used it. Then of course the situation was exacerbated by the fact that because no one used Mastodon, no one else used Mastodon, because none of the people that everyone wanted to follow were on Mastodon.
For popular culture, it is a bit of a ghost town, but last I checked, many tech individuals/groups fled to Mastodon the moment Musk got his hands on Twitter. It is possible that they have moved on to BlueSky, but I have not been keeping track.
how about you try again and see? i went through this with another person like a year ago and it's absolutely fine, it's basically identical to bluesky.
It would be a bit quiet if I joined. None of the content creators I care about are on the platform. All that seems to be on there are a bunch of programmer types, which is fine if that's what you're interested in, but if you're not it's basically dead.
Which was my point. Mastodon's user experience resulted in basically no one other than tech nerds subscribing, this subsequently meant that no one else even tried because they would have to wade through a quagmire of poor UI only to join a platform with no one on it.
there are plenty of non-tech nerds on mastodon, if you actually look for them and don't just dismiss the platform