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How will Australia's ban on youth access to social media affect instances hosted in Australia? (lemmy.ca)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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Do they have any rule that says you need a minimum number of users on a site to fall under the law?

If servers of someinstance.co.au fine if they move to hosting in Finland?

It just feels like a nightmare.

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[–] 9 points 11 months ago (11 children)

So how is Australia going to make other sites with no footprint in Australia do it then?

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  • [–] -3 points 11 months ago (10 children)

    National level site blocking, suspension on any future operations, international courts... Corporations are much easier to persecute over borders than private persons.

    Why do you think American companies, even ones with no legal presence in Europe, still went along with GDPR? Same principle applies here.

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Australia blocking 4chan in Australia doesn't compel 4chan to do anything.

    Why do you think American companies, even ones with no legal presence in Europe, still went along with GDPR? Same principle applies here.

    They didn't want to lose custom in Europe.

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  • [–] -2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    They didn't want to lose custom in Europe.

    Yeah sure that's why major news sites "complied" with GDPR by blocking European visitors...

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Some didn't mind the loss of service in Europe and just cut Europe off. Some did. Bottom line is that the EU wouldn't have been able to sue them because they had no assets in Europe.

    What is it you imagine Australia could do to 4chan, other than blocking 4chan in Australia?

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

    My point is that the threat of legal action was enough that major sites decided not to risk it, and blocked Europe et al.

    4chan is hardly a financial/corporate entity (though they do seem to profit off traffic with ads), therefore much harder to go against, but blocking the service is still effective. It will be up to 4chan to see if they want to comply with the law and get unblocked or if they can live without Australian traffic.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago*

    My point is that the threat of legal action was enough that major sites decided not to risk it, and blocked Europe et al.

    And has 4chan done the same to UK after Ofcom sent them any messages? No, they haven't. There's no meaningful difference between being blocked by a country and blocking them yourself. If we eventually block 4chan, then we do that - but no way would the current US administration accept any attempted fines against them.

    4chan is hardly a financial/corporate entity (though they do seem to profit off traffic with ads), therefore much harder to go against, but blocking the service is still effective. It will be up to 4chan to see if they want to comply with the law and get unblocked or if they can live without Australian traffic.

    Right, but that's all I mean. They can't do anything to 4chan otherwise.

    (And this law, comically enough - doesn't really apply to them in the first place because they don't have account signups).

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    National level site blocking, suspension on any future operations, international courts

    Easily circumvented by changing your DNS settings or using TOR or other VPN services

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  • [–] -4 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Not when the specific IP addresses of services are blocked on IPS level - which would be mandated by the state.

    VPN/Tor, sure, but at that point the service itself can't confirm where the visitor is from, therefore Australian laws wouldn't apply.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    The second half of your comment is redundant. Not knowing where the user is from is THE WHOLE POINT of TOR and VPNs in general. It just proves that this whole internet censorship thing is doomed to fail. It just forces people to find a work-around that the government doesn't control.

    But hey, if the government wants to waste time and money pissing into the wind they can go for it, let's see where that gets them.

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

    Except they're wasting tax payer money, which is shitty.

    I hope at least it helps reduce pressure on kids that they need social media from their peers, it can be a pretty bad place to be (regardless of age really).

    Thats about all the good from it, my fear is everything else that comes after. Mainly that they'll force devices to be linked to a person, which means you'll need a way to have approved devices that can access sites etc, which means you can only use a browser that has device attestation, which means no more free and open ecosystems of applications or operating systems (LineageOS, GrapheneOS, etc)...

    Fuck all this.

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