@1dalm@lemmy.today @linux@lemmy.ml
The country I exist in (Brazil) passed an age verification law “Lei 15.211/2025” which, to a certain extent, is even more dystopian than Californian one. Because, at least, the Californian “allows” self-declared age, while Brazilian don’t. This means systems must employ mechanisms such as ID’ing, age estimation by selfie or behavioral analysis.
When UK passed their law, threatening and, to certain extent, effectively sanctioning even even non-UK “disobedient”, something happened: many sites and platforms started to geoblock UK. Many Fediverse instances geoblocked UK.
Brazil has a similar history of legal outreach, we had court decisions trying to enforce and rule over non-Brazilians. Something similar is expected to happen when it comes to this age verification law. So I’d expect a similar widespread reaction of sites and platforms geoblocking Brazil.
In fact, it’s already happening: in mere two days since the law became effective, MidnightBSD geoblocked Brazil, Arch Linux 32-bits (not the mainstream Arch Linux) geoblocked Brazil, and others are expected to follow, both distros and websites as well. Including the Fediverse.
This kind of law will hardly stay in the countries and USian states where they’ve been implemented. It’ll spread, because the narrative it’s wrapped with is too alluring and compelling (from emotional appealing “Think about the children!?” all the way to the strawman “If you disagree with age checking laws, you’re literally a pdf file”). So expect more countries embracing this dystopia. This means fewer and fewer places where it’s not a thing. It reeks of a coordinated agenda, especially because it achieves similar things that intended by projects such as Chat Control, PIPA/SOPA, among many other previous authoritarian attempts. The authoritarian found the correct recipe: wrap 1984 in a cute “children protection” wrapping, rinse and repeat.
Therefore, some Fediverse instances, especially those sitting under the hurricane’s eye (e.g. Lemmy Brasil) may end up implementing age checking, or stopping altogether if they can’t afford the additional costs of age checking (it won’t be a free thing for platforms to do; a trivial cost for giants such as Meta, Google and Microsoft, but unfeasible for, say, Fediverse instances and FOSS projects).
Now, regarding the “kid friendly” limitation: if the Web gets limited to “non-adult content”… what’s “adult content” to begin with? Is it just porn, or it may end up covering several non-pornographic things?
It turns out, and here I’m risking getting too off-topic, many things would end up beneath this purposefully vague terminology “adult content”, content from many vulnerable groups: LGBTQIA+ (check out what happened during the recent itch.io and Steam crusade against “adult games”), women, pagans/occultists, political dissidents and whistleblowers, among others. This is what age verification laws are about: silencing everything deemed non-normative.
@shads@lemy.lol @asklemmy@lemmy.ml
Brazilian Portuguese: “Por gentileza, empilhe as cadeiras ao final do dia”.
If colloquial or more informal translations are desired:
- “Empilhar as cadeiras não faz cair a mão” (roughly “you won’t lose your hands if you take the time to stack the chairs”)
- “ô mossss, empilhascadêra fazenofavô?” (A very informal transcription from “Mineiro” (people from the state of Minas Gerais) accent for “Hey girl/boy, [can you] stack the chairs, doing [everyone] a favor [please]?”