On Meta, it will be through Yoti’s facial assurance check, which requires users to take a video selfie to assess their age.
Can I send a video of the hair on my cock instead?
this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2025
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How about I prove I'm old by not taking a selfie.
How about they look at my account creation date and then eat the entirety of my arse
We all know that nearly all of us will be ping'd for verification. That'll let em get our ID and add another data point. I say they're throthing at the upcoming data rush.
I honestly doubt it. They've got very little to gain from it, and huge risk to reputation if they do it and then get hacked.
They don't care about reputation in any way. It'll be a small fine of a few million and they'll rub their hands for that cheap data.
Yeah, just look at Discord. Not only harvesting data, by sharing it with "trusted partners" I was told the Esafety commissioner can bring legal action to find companies up to $850k per offence for improperly storing Australian citizens data, but I haven't heard anything about hundreds of millions in fines against Discord yet.
I've got some accounts hanging around that were basically name sitting.
What they don't realise is:
- i won't go through any sort of age verification hoopla. At all. I'll just abandon the apps and accounts.
- I will now actively tell people "I don't use XMetaWhatTok anymore. If you want to contact me, please use AltFreeNoAgeVerificationApp instead"
I might even just point people to a private email and a private news server lmao.
I'm interested in what you mean when you refer to a private news server? Do you mean like the Guardian app; or do you mean some sort of RSS set up; or is it some self hosted thing?
I'm interested because i have an idea for a news reposting site fed by an RSS feed, but maybe you use an equivalent system i'm not aware of.
I meant news as in nntp/usenet server.
nntp is so old school it became old school before school became old 😁
The ITEE department at my uni had a newsgroup. One professor actually actively used it for his course, circa 2015. That was pretty much the only time I ever used it.
Ooh, not sure i should've asked this question! I really don't get what i'm looking at here. Thats why i've taken so long to reply.
The server-user diagram seems a bit like the structure of Activitypub. I think the use of the word 'news' is throwing me as well, they're not using the word news in the common 'news organisation delivers articles in some form' sense but using the word in a more broad sense? So how is this different from Activitypub, maybe less open/connected? But its the connected servers that communicate with the Activitypub protocol as well.
TBH, I haven't paid much attention to the workings of ActivityPub etc to comment. I'm just an oblivious end user nowadays 😀
If I really wanted to set up something like that nowadays, I'd probably use something like Lemmy anyways. news servers were basically abandoned for discussion forums hosted separately on websites, and they evolved into various social media etc. And here we are, recreating the wheel again!
Now I'm getting nostalgic. Maybe I should go hunting around usenet archives for my first post. Hahahaaa! Me so old....
Ypu should go and find ypur firat post, tbh i'm surprised you think theres a server still running that would have it, if we're predating the rise of social media here.
Whats your assessment of bonfire networks?
I really like the idea of the circles thing, i think it would be extemely useful for community organisation and maintenance purposes. But it seems like they're having trouble getting traction, so maybe theres a problem with the idea i don't see.
Is it effectively a competitor to Lemmy or Mastodon at it's heart?
Re Circles, to me it just comes across as groups or even simpler mailing lists. Overlaying security on top with Boundaries seems useful.
Just from a high level, i nearly always end up looking at 2 issues:
- is the social media/ app topic centric or people centric? Eg, I look at Lemmy being topic centric as it's mainly split by Communities. Whereas, say, Facebook at least initially, was people centric as you effectively sub to your Friends. I'm a fan of topic based.
- how does the social media/app scale with size, eg with thousands and millions of users/posts/comments. Eg, Lemmy does it via upvotes/downvotes, and you can sort comments in a post by Top. There's also what I view as security aspects to this, but security is really a huge topic to itself anyways.
Is it effectively a competitor to Lemmy or Mastodon at it's heart?
I think it is, to an extent, but seems more flexible in its range of potential uses. So Bonfire social definitely is, but the Bonfire Science, and Bonfire Communities add a bit more flexibility in ways to structure the communities and groups within those communities. I like the ideas driving it, one of the problems i find with Lemmy, is the inability to organise on platform beyond a reasonably casual exchange. It makes things slow, and hard to communicate through.
The boundaries thing is cool, i'd forgotten that was part of it, the circles i think makes more sense when you look at the different use cases like the science, or community projects. But yeah its just a grouping mechanism.
~topic based
This is the best use for social media. I can't see the use case for non-public figures on a platform like say twitter.
~scale
Yeah, its a good question. The more complicated a structure, how well can something like a bonfire communities scale before groups become meaningless. Maybe its a better as literal town size, but hard to see tens of thousands in circles being an effective use case. I've watched this project for a few years now, and i've not seen much in the way of growth, so i'm not sure they would've come across the challenge yet.
I suppose for security in scaling the boundaries function could really come into its own, it seems more fine tuned than the heirarchy of admin/mod/user.
To be fair to the tech companies, the government has really left them holding the ball on this thing they didn't ask for. The government did a little bit of age verification testing, found it was occasionally actuate in certain circumstances for a small portion of the population, then said good enough and told the tech companies to figure it out or we'll fine you millions. The government then goes around taking all the credit for pretending to do something about "protecting" children and will just blame the tech companies when it all goes to shit. At the end of the day, it's only stopping them from having accounts, they can still watch all the trash on YouTube and tiktok logged out and will be fingerprinted by their device to tune the algorithm.
The worst part is I can’t block dodgy recommended channels without being signed in. And yeah, it does still behave algorithmically for me.
So kids are still going to be seeing manosphere content, MLM crap, and whatever else. Not to mention alcohol and gambling ads if those haven’t successfully been blocked (which has been made harder to do without having premium unless you know how)
What do you lot use for group chats? For some reason my social circle decided facebook messenger is the goto. This could be the chance to get them off it. We've tried to setup a signal chat in the past, and there is some interest, but the lack of chat history deters new users. I don't think we need that level of encryption going on.
I also mostly use Facebook Messenger. In theory at least Messenger should be unaffected by this, since it's a chat app, not "social media". How that will play out in practice, with most Messenger accounts being tied to a Facebook account, is...unclear.
My other big chat app currently is Discord. I've recently started trying to convert one of my Discord groups onto Matrix. Matrix seems pretty good for this kind of thing. It can do one-on-one chats, group chats, and Discord-like "Spaces" with multiple different Rooms. For those less tech-inclined, just don't explain any of the federation details, just go to matrix.org.
Cheers, I was thinking a Discord style platform would work well but don't want to swap one closed system for another. Matrix looks good - with different rooms in spaces, public or invite only access, email only sign up. One issue with signal is also that everybody uses secretive usernames - not great for friendly neighbourhood community chats. But it looks like some Matrix clients have multi-account support, so that could fix that. Do you know if theres any sort of cap on user numbers? I'm envisioning around 50-150 users for events/requests/etc.
The group I'm looking to migrate is much, much smaller than that, so it's not something I've considered. But a quick search tells me that it should be fine with those numbers.
There is chat history, you just have to back it up
Ah i meant history of what's come before. When a new user joins, they just see a blank void, not a great first impression
Ahhh I see.
I mean, who's reading the chat history anyway?
If you add someone to a chat you should say hello! Problem solved.
Further, people are already used to this with WhatsApp which functions on the same protocol (with Meta harvesting the metadata and connections of course)
Trillian is still there and still great
I'm already fully prepared for all my social media accounts to be deleted (because there's no way in hell I'm giving google my ID).
If they go after Steam or my email then I'd be in trouble, but I think those'll be fine.
Same. I think Steam may have been added to the list for age verification but will need to double check in case I’m thinking of the UK version of this.
I’m not sure about email but am wary as Gmail addresses may be linked to Google search signins and YouTube which absolutely are going to ask for verification. I’ve been downloading media from Google drive and switching to different email providers on services that used a Gmail just in case.
Officially Steam is not included but they reserve the right to add it back. https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/industry-regulation/social-media-age-restrictions/which-platforms-are-age-restricted
As for gmail, I can't find a clear answer or even anyone who's asked the question. The whole account deletion thing is stupid, they should just remove all the safety consequences of having an account (limiting interaction, hiding public profiles, etc). Actually they should just make me e-safety commissioner, because I'd do a far better job.
Yeah they flip flop so much I get confused and have to worry about every platform.
I’m really confused about Gmail because they haven’t said anything but YouTube and Google signin are linked so I have no idea whether the email part is safe.
It’s a dog’s breakfast
So ... it gets worse. Apparently they're quietly rolling out a porn ban, and part of that is that you won't be able to "log in to a search engine" without verifying your age. As I understand it a YouTube account is kinda different from your google account but the same isn't true for google search.
In the past I thought that even though I don't like it, social media addiction is the issue of the decade. But half the issue is also digital privacy. This not only fails to meaningfully address social media addiction but it also actively worsens digital privacy. This whole crusade is counterproductive.
So the good news is that, despite the legislation saying it should apply to all social media sites, the actual regulation seems to only be being applied to certain designated platforms. Which is actually an excellent approach.
As for how it will work. Still nobody has been very clear. It's likely companies will use profiling to estimate users' age, and many people will simply not need to do anything to keep using it. If you do get detected as underage, facial recognition or uploading photo ID seems likely to be the only option.
Meta will use facial recognition provided by "Yoti" or photo ID.
Tiktok said it would have "a simple appeals process". No further detail.
Google has not given any indication as to whether it will even comply with the ban, but has threatened legal action to determine if it is even lawful.
Snap and Kick say they will comply, but have not yet shared any details about how.
X and Reddit have not given any comment.
All other platforms are, as yet, exempt.
It’s likely companies will use profiling to estimate users’ age, and many people will simply not need to do anything to keep using it
I wonder if I can preemptively add some activity to my profile to feign this, like add 'married' as a status and subscribe to insurance companies.
I'm just hoping the fact that my account is, like...15(?) years old will be a pretty clear sign that I'm over 16.
They’ve been really unclear and flip flopping but YouTube has already demanded I age verify.
Ugh, we are in the "find out" stage?
How is this even constitutional? You don't protect your minors?