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Mastodon says it doesn't 'have the means' to comply with age verification laws (techcrunch.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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Decentralized social network Mastodon says it can’t comply with Mississippi’s age verification law — the same law that saw rival Bluesky pull out of the state — because it doesn’t have the means to do so.

The social non-profit explains that Mastodon doesn’t track its users, which makes it difficult to enforce such legislation. Nor does it want to use IP address-based blocks, as those would unfairly impact people who were traveling, it says.

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[–] 19 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Except if the topic is wifi meshnets, no amount of tech savvyness will get you around an absence of other nodes nearby. General apathy is actually a huge problem here.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I used to think about this via mesh networks as simply routers, but now with nostr, IPFS, atProto and that new BT messaging stuff Jack Dorsey is on. Technically you could utilize your phone as an access point to the mesh network as you move around the city and load all the comms in the background. The latency would be high, but it could work. Also with 5g tech nowadays long range mesh networks are much more feasible albeit probably expensive for a hobbyist.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Are there now legal means to do longer range communications? I thought the main limitation was you need to be licensed to do anything more than short range home wifi

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago

    I mean it's all licensed by the frequency and antenna transmit power, so long distance is possible with the right choice of protocol, antenna and frequency you can get a surprisingly long distance with unlicensed spectrum. Ubiquity makes some directional antenna for wirelessly connecting 2 sites that operate in the 2.4 and 5ghz ranges that can connect over distances of multiple kilometers

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)

    So what do you propose? People who aren't able should set up nodes?

    Also if wifi mesh is our last hope, oof

    I say that as a freifunk participant

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    Also if wifi mesh is our last hope, oof

    Yeah. What I propose is getting more people involved and caring about freedom preserving technologies before it gets to that point. A tiny minority of somewhat more tech literate people are not going to be magically immune to authoritarian checkmate scenarios through technical solutions alone.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    For the last 20+ years, I've been trying to get people to understand the point of free and open formats with pretty much zero success. For the most, they just don't care if somebody else owns all they data. Maybe if something really bad was to happen to them or a loved one as a result, they'd change their mind. Then I'd get to tell them "that's what I've been telling you for literally decades", but what would be the point?

    Not technical people will never get it.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    How can you know the success is zero? Encryption is more widely used and much more resistant to political attack. Open source software is more powerful and accessible. A large portion of people loathe corporate tech platforms at a level they didn't years ago. Granted a lot of that is just down to how functional or trustworthy the software is, and what guarantees about it can be plausibly provided, and it isn't all wins. Maybe you can't exactly get everyone caring about this stuff in the same way or for the same reasons you do. But that doesn't mean there are no possible avenues to success, or that the tech habits of other groups can be written off as useless here, because it's probably the most important thing.

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