“The SCOPE Act takes effect this Sunday, Sept. 1, and will require everyone to verify their age for social media.”
So how does this work with Lemmy? Is anyone in Texas just banned, is there some sort of third party ID service lined up…for every instance, lol.
But seriously, how does Lemmy (or the fediverse as a whole) comply? Is there some way it just doesn’t need to?
I’m fine with Texas disappearing from the internet. Literally every site with a comment section now has to comply or just block Texas. One of those seems more feasible.
This has “DMCA notice to a Russian music site” vibes. Basically, we do nothing. They have absolutely zero authority outside of Texas. If the instance is inside Texas’s borders, that’s a different story, but if the instance is located outside, it has no obligation to follow Texas’s law. They can’t do anything. They can’t block Lemmy, because it’s federated. They can’t sue Lemmy, because it’s federated. They have zero recourse, except for slam their feet on the ground and cry like a petulant child.
Which to them is a normal adult behavior
I’m curious to why can’t they do anything to Lemmy because it’s federated.
Can they just block all the domain names of lemmy through ISP?
As for suing, can they just go after the server owners or the hosting service?
They can’t sue, but they could legislate that ISPs have to block lemmy instance domains. That would require Texas legislators to understand Lemmy though, which will never happen.
Good luck finding “all the domain names”. IDK about suing, but unlike centralised monoliths like Facebook, you’d have to sue every instance violating your rules separately, and that’s assuming you can pin down who and where to sue for each of them.
And suing someone in NY for breaking Texas laws doesn’t really work well.
How does suing in a different country work, for instances in Europe? Do they actually have any leverage?
If you don’t operate in Texas, do you have you comply? Is the easy fix is don’t have your servers be in Texas?
My guess is that the law is basically extra-territorial - meaning that in theory it applies no matter where you are based.
For a for-profit service this is more enforceable - just gotta find a way to seize the stream of money flowing out of Texas for violate of the law.
For a service based in the US this is more enforceable - just gotta get the federal system and other states to cooperate, and enforce Texas’s court judgement, and then Texas can find a way to seize the stream of money flowing around and out of the US (or perhaps seize the US assets of the company).
For a non-commercial entity based in the territory of the European Union that has no funds flowing at all from the US (think lemmy.world or feddit.de here) then it’s probably quite a bit harder to do anything at all in terms of effective enforcement.
I’m gonna petition my state to make a law that if someone is from Texas and tries to enforce Texan laws on my state, they’re executed on the spot.
Should be about as enforceable as this joke of a law.
If you own an instance it’s better to check with a lawyer. They might give you a warning first or they might go after you immediately. How effective that is depends on what country you live in and which country the server is in.
Someone can correct me if im wrong, but, pretty sure its any social media. Similar to what happened with pornhub.
According to the Texas Office of the Attorney General, this new law will primarily “apply to digital services that provide an online platform for social interaction between users that: (1) allow users to create a public or semi-public profile to use the service, and (2) allow users to create or post content that can be viewed by other users of the service. This includes digital services such as message boards, chat rooms, video channels, or a main feed that presents users content created and posted by other users.”
Fuck 'em. They want to do this, let Facebook, and Reddit, and Instagram, and TikTok and the fediverse, and any others that I’m forgetting refuse to serve connections to Texas.
Make Texas the ONE PLACE where the internet is just yahoo and thehampsterdance.com
And then when Texans go elsewhere, they realize all they did was punish themselves. The rest of the world moves on without them.
(1) allow users to create a public or semi-public profile to use the service
So it seems like I’m safe. I run my own single-user instance to federate and post - but I don’t allow others to sign up at all, so they can’t create a public or “semi-public” profile here (and what does semi-public mean?)
I was going to argue that your account is publicly viewable, but I realized that you may still be right. This depends on their definition of what is a user.
Same with semi-public. May even be used for anything that is not public but they don’t like it.
The law literally is so broad it applies to every website on the planet with a comment section. This will be struck down immediately.
I find this interesting. Does one just install software and buy a domain? I would assume theres somewhere you have to register with in order to federate. I mean, if theres no one to go after, this would be a nice work around. At least, until theres a site for every Texan that figures it out.
I think semi public would be like setting your facebook profile to private. It shows your name, and basic details, but doesn’t show all your posts or interactions.
Edit: haha, you kinda answered this somewhere else as I was typing.
I think semi public would be like setting your facebook profile to private. It shows your name, and basic details, but doesn’t show all your posts or interactions.
Seems reasonable. It’s good to figure these things out now btw, as courts will adopt the “common definition” if the law doesn’t explicitly define things (including referencing dictionaries for the meanings of words).
I find this interesting. Does one just install software and buy a domain?
You don’t even need to buy a domain necessarily, just have a place to install the software and use one of the free services.
I run my own self-hosted single-user pyfedi instance, and I more-or-less do so for free (I mean I pay for internet and I bought the old laptop that I’m running pyfedi on ages ago, but that’s it).
After looking at a lot of different options, I decided to go with srv dot us since srv dot us guarantees you a permanent domain name without having to pay (albeit you can’t pick the name). srv dot us actually doesn’t require any signup either - you just follow the instructions, connect, and go - and they only keep records like your ip address for one day, so if you stop using it for longer then poof you’re suddenly that much harder to trace.
ngrok dot com also offers a free domain name (but you can’t pick - if you want to choose your own then you have to pay). You sign up with your email and all that though (you can also sign up using your github account). I almost went with this (the author of pyfedi, [email protected] , mentions (recommends?) using ngrok for this purpose) but at the time I had some other issues and misdiagnosed it as ngrok blocking federation with their silly popup (see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/73017353/how-to-bypass-ngrok-browser-warning for more details)
You can learn more about pyfedi by visiting the flagship instance at piefed.social
I would assume theres somewhere you have to register with in order to federate.
Nope, nothing like that. Verification is done mostly just by making sure you own or otherwise legitimately have access to the domain that you are using (specifically that you have SSL certs that are certified for the given domain for use in HTTPS if you wanna get a little bit technical).
I mean, if theres no one to go after, this would be a nice work around. At least, until theres a site for every Texan that figures it out.
So fly-by-night instances it is! It wouldn’t necessarily work for large instances with many users though - pretty much all of these do buy their own domain, for which you have to provide your legal name and address and such (even if it’s not public thanks to domain privacy, it would be available to law enforcement)
And federation does not play nice with someone’s domain name changing. Meanwhile if one is caught registering for a domain with a fake name etc then the domain registrar is entitled to cancel the ownership of that domain and take it back.
That said, one might luck out and find a good domain with a registrar that’s in a jurisdiction that is particularly unfriendly to Texas’s ability to enforce SCOPE.
Edit: haha, you kinda answered this somewhere else as I was typing
Thought I could enhance my previous answers by adding a little more detail here.
I mean my question was addressing the scope of the jurisdiction Texas can have over a server in another state. It feels like the onus is on them (or the ISPs in Texas) to block that server
Aha,
Exemptions Small businesses as defined by the Small Business Administration (SBA);
Not sure how’d this work overseas, but basically lemmy.world and friends just needs to apply to SBA to get recognized as a small business, and they’re all good. (Or perhaps they could try to apply thru a US Embassy; or apply at a local authority and argue for legal equivalence between the SBA’s recognition and their own country’s).
As for enforcement, well,
If someone were to violate the act, the AG’s office may seek … civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation, and attorneys’ fees
So yeah basically it comes down to trying to grab money. So as they say about sucking blood from a turnip…
Maybe someone is better equip to answer this question. As far as I understand, it is up to the social media company, as it is operating in the state. Sort of the way the corporate office of a national grocery store can be sued.
https://www.texaspolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023-05-BillAnalysis-HB18-Updated.pdf
First, it prohibits digital service providers from entering into an agreement with a known minor unless they have verifiable parental consent.
It seems its up to whomever is registering the account. If the person is under 18 they see a scrubbed version, of the person is over 18 they have full access. I’m not sure an ISP has control like that. I could be wrong.
I know with pornhub, the ISP didn’t block the site, pornhub itself did.
“Operating in the state” and “accessible in the state” are different.
Much like a business doesn’t have to have a specific state’s business license to sell to customers of a different state, a website does not have to comply with all laws everywhere just because the laws exist. If they’re operating in Texas, they will. If they’re accessible from Texas, that’s Texas’ problem.
Pretty sure it doesn’t work that way. Look at what happened to Binance; not a US website, not technically allowing US customers, still successfully prosecuted by the US government for not doing enough to prevent people in the US from using it.
That’s because they were facilitating actual, across-the-board federal crimes.
Not looking at titties.
I could see states that have such draconian laws working together to attempt to do anything about flagrant violators, but otherwise Texas has yet another pointless, toothless virtue signaling “law” on their hands.
The difference between what the laws are trying to enforce is a different issue though. The point is a website can be prosecuted just for being accessible when what it offers is against local laws.
In the case of a grocery store, they’d have an actual physical presence in the state along with revenue and employees, so I (a total laymen) don’t see how that’s comparable to a website like Lemmy. Even PornHub would be different IMO since they have paid content and the transaction would be happening in Texas. A site like Lemmy earns nothing from its users and doesn’t sell anything so it seems like it’d be quite the stretch to hold them accountable for the actions of some kid on the other side of the country (or planet) since Texas jurisdiction ends at the border of Texas.
the ISP didn’t block the site,
And from the article you posted at the beginning, perhaps the ISP can’t be required to do that. At least it’s not list as an explicit remedy. Others are suggesting that Texas might block the site from being accessible from within Texas, but there’s nothing in the law itself that suggests Texas would legally do this.
Basically it reads like that they’re restricted to whatever the existing office of the AG of Texas could have already done in terms of enforcement powers, which is largely fines.
It seems its up to whomever is registering the account. If the person is under 18 they see a scrubbed version, of the person is over 18 they have full access.
Or, like, not allow registration for under 18s at all, I suppose.
I’m not sure an ISP has control like that. I could be wrong.
No, you are right. The site itself must comply.
They can SCOPE deez nuts.
That’s right, get noSCOPEd
As someone neither living nor hosting my instance in Texas I’ll basically ignore it, and if it came to it I’d block the entirety of Texas if they somehow convince courts to enforce this outside of Texas.
Set up a redirect for all Texas IP addresses. Point to Fuck Texas.
I’m so glad I don’t live in that shithole state.
Social media is probably a very poorly or very narrowly defined term. Either they called out Facebook, Reddit, Snapchat, etc by name or they gave some broad description of social media that could apply to everything from Facebook all the way down to somebody’s Vbulletin forum and this will be unenforceable for the vast majority of websites. Compliance is likely voluntary for the little fish in social media. I imagine that they aren’t even aware that Lemmy exists.
welp no more lemmy for texas i guess, lmao
Texas is slowly turning into Afghanistan
The answer? Block Texas
Not joking. If suddenly hundreds or thousands of sites would become unavailable. It wouldn’t last a week
That didn’t work with porn, so it’s not a good idea for less popular websites.
Honestly only a couple of the big porn sites, of it hit more big things it’d cause more uproar, imagine if Facebook went down for a day
Who cares about porn
Enough that there’s a serious spike in VPN sales during the porn age restriction wave.
I doubt NordVPN and friends would see that if EVERY single lemmy instance got banned.
doesnt that happen every time it rains in texas?
Why would anyone mess with texas at this point?
Cause it’s funny
Why would we not? Why would we listen to a damn thing they have to say?
Good luck Texans. Nordman will heed your call
Lemmy isn’t social media. Ignoring that though, the law actually says:
According to the Texas Office of the Attorney General, this new law will primarily “apply to digital services that provide an online platform for social interaction between users that: (1) allow users to create a public or semi-public profile to use the service, and (2) allow users to create or post content that can be viewed by other users of the service. This includes digital services such as message boards, chat rooms, video channels, or a main feed that presents users content created and posted by other users.”
Which literally applies to every single site on the entire planet that has a comment section. This law is incredibly unenforceable.
Lemmy isn’t social media.
What in the heck is it then?
A forum?? Which have existed for literal decades before social media was a thing? If you define literally anything social as social media then you’re defining the entire internet as social media which is just a useless definition.
It’s a social news aggregator. I assume the difference is, that this is to follow mainly news, whereas social media is to mainly follow people. In my 10 years of reddit and now Lemmy I never followed any account, I was just there for the niche topics and news aggregation.
I don’t know about you but I’m here for the comments sections, i.e. to socialize. That counts as social media IMO. Socializing with random users and not followed accounts, is still socializing.
I guess I disagree with “social media is to mainly follow people”. I think social media is for socializing, regardless of who it’s with. Sorry for the double reply.
You’ll note that Wikipedia has that article under the “Social Media” category.
Social News aggregator = social media.
Its a webforum.
Webforums are not social media.
Yet it’s neither a web nor a forum. Curious.
And Reddit is what?
Originally, a social news aggregator. Now? An abortion of that idea.
I totally disagree on both counts: forums are social media, and Lemmy is not a mere forum. Lemmy is a platform where people can create forums, and many of those forums (communities) exist mainly to socialize.
I’ll give you that some forums (both on Lemmy and otherwise) that have a clear defined topic - such as tech support for a particular thing - are somewhat different from “social media”, but even in those three are often regulars who use the forum to socialize with each other. Any forum with an “off-topic” subforum is social media in my book, in a very real sense (not just technically).
But hey, we can disagree on this and it’s fine.
To clarify why I think Lemmy is not a forum: in my eyes, forums are set up by the admins, only the admins can decide which subforums exist and what’s allowed in them. Lemmy and reddit are not simple forums because they allow any user to create a subforum and make those choices and decisions, that traditionally are reserved for admins. It’s an extremely important difference and makes Lemmy much more of a general social platform and not a focused forum.
Lemmy has the ability to lock down forum creation, like on programming.dev which is the 8th largest lemmy site.
Social media has always been defined as being about people, not topics. People just don’t even try to use the right words though so you get ridiculous things like people calling something coincidental or unfortunate “ironic”.
Engaging with people does not make it a social media platform.
A bathroom wall covered in graffiti messages is not social media.
an email is not social media.
text messages are not social media.
a brick with “Fuck You” written on it, thrown through a window, is not social media.
A restaurant you go to with friends is not social media.
A webforum is not social media.
IMs are not social media.
Just because you socialize on/in/at something, does not magically make it social media… Because Social Media is a very specific type of thing.
Stop trying to make everything into freaking facebook.
facebook is social media, therefor friendica is social media
instagram is social media, therefor pixelfed is social media
twitter is social media, therefor mastodon is social media
at the VERY least, all the latter platforms can interact with each other via activity pub, as can lemmy. by interacting with lemmy, you’re making interactions with social media
social media isn’t just big tech - social media is a way of interacting with a system
is reddit social media? most people would say yes it definitely is… and this makes lemmy firmly social media
Getting people to agree to a mistaken, misinformed premise does not mean you are right.
Lest you also believe the world is a flat pancake and other various nuttery.
Also, you clearly know what the difference is, since your list of examples is nothing but social media.
Again. Stop trying to make everything social media. You have all the social media you need to fuel your need for attention, as is. You don’t need to make non-social media into more of it.
Wikipedia: „Lemmy (social network) - Open source social media software“
Also: „Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongst virtual communities and networks.“ How does Lemmy not fit that description?
By your definition every single news comment section is social media, which is clearly a ridiculous suggestion. Webchat, irc, literally anywhere there’s a comment section. That’s just clearly incorrect and so broad as to be a completely useless definition.
There are degrees to social-media-ness. News comment sections have a very low amount of this. Lemmy has a lot.
It probably boils down to the definition of “user” vs. owner/admin/host … But I wouldn’t be surprised if those definitions were unclear or missing entirely.
Lemmy is absolutely social media.
Nuh uh! I’m a Sovereign Netizen and I’m not driving social engagement, I’m just a traveler on the information superhighway!
Social engagement has nothing to do with social media. If you define anything with social engagement as social media then you literally are calling the entire internet social media.
They said its not but, I think the argument they were trying to make was that it’s not enforceable.
It’s absolutely not. It has none of the hallmarks of social media (personal relationship, feed of user activity, likes and shares). It’s a forum. Forums existed for decades before social media. If you define forums as social media then you are defining every comment section on every site, including news sites, help sites, things like stack overflow even, as social media which is clearly ridiculous and so broad as to be a useless definition.
Yep. This is another dumbass politicians trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist with a solution that doesn’t work.
It’s not about solving a problem, it’s about exerting control.
Comply?
“Is there some way it just doesn’t need to” = “Is there some scenario in which Texas laws don’t apply worldwide?”
Yes. There is.
To expand on this- In general you must comply with the laws of any jurisdiction where you have a business presence. This for example Meta is a USA company, but they have offices in the EU and they sell advertising in the EU from EU offices so they have to comply with EU laws for EU users. They can’t just wave off and say ‘we are a USA company, EU regs don’t apply to us’.
Lemmy is not a corporation. There is no business presence in Texas, unless an instance admin lives there or hosts the server there. So Lemmy, both as a whole and as individual instances, can simply give Texas the middle finger and say ‘we aren’t subject to your laws as we have no presence or business in your state. We are in the state of California (or whatever) and are subject to the laws of our home state. It is not our job to enforce Texas laws in California on servers hosted in Virginia.’
Thus Texas trying to enforce their laws on a Cali company is like Hollywood studios sending DMCA notices to Finland.
Thus Texas trying to enforce their laws on a Cali company is like Hollywood studios sending DMCA notices to Finland.
My point exactly.
It’s called the “Fuck Texas” response to such a garbage law. And good luck enforcing it especially with federated sites.
