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I don’t think that means they’re planning on doing age verification. Mastodon and anyone running a Mastodon instance has to operate within whatever legal regime their country imposes. I interpet the above as putting some work towards figuring out ways to do that. If a country mandates age verification and Mastodon has no ability whatsoever to comply, then Mastodon becomes illegal in that country. Maybe we don’t care about that for a few countries here and there. If that happens in the EU however, that’d be a problem and a likely blow to the Fediverse.
The thing is that age verification in a digital world is not easy… what exactly does the government mandate as a valid verification method?
Like… would asking the user their age be valid enough? … because it’s not like a reliable method exist (not even credit card verification prevents a minor from taking their parents card and go through it). IMHO, until the government doesn’t actually set a standard, I don’t see why websites should actually give anything else than the most minimal effort possible when it comes to this.
The thing is, if the country wants age verification, the country has to give a way to verify the age of their citizens. A website by the government that returns an encrypted cookie verifying the user as adult would be the solution. The work is on the government as they are enforcing a rule.
Another way for the government is to verify a company to do this work, with the security this entails.
I don’t think politicians ever consult someone for these changes. They just want to de-anonymize the internet.
Agreed. I imagine this working group would be working in the direcrion of the minimal viable options, including figuring out whether they need to do anything at all.
