Hi All,
Due to some overbearing/draconian laws coming into place in the UK, I need to take steps to protect the site long term. You may have already seen this post in /c/technology which proves that these laws have a real negative effect on small independent websites, especially those hosted/run by people in the UK.
While I assume this will play out the same as GDPR did and actually most things will be fine, one thing that continues to be an issue is how Lemmy handles NSFW content and account creation.
Currently Lemmy.zip offers accounts to anyone 13+ (or whatever the minimum age is in your country), and asks that you only activate the NSFW flag if you are 18+.
However we have no way to enforce that, nor turn if off if someone says they’re under 18, nor really any way of monitoring that process. Lemmy does not currently give admins the ability to add extra confirmations about age, or a customisable pop up warning when that flag is clicked, or the ability to add more text to the button, or anything like that during the signup process, without creating custom UI stuff (which I am not able to do). The outcome of this is that anyone is able to just click the “Enable NSFW” flag during signup or in their profile settings, and view NSFW content, without any explicit check.
It would be great if the functionality of Lemmy was changed to make this more accommodating to children so they can’t access NSFW content, however that could take a long time to implement and I want this site to be safe before this law comes in to effect in March.
In order to make things as simple as possible going forwards, I am therefore proposing:
From the 1st of February 2025, Lemmy.zip will only offer a service to people who are over 18.
Before I go any further with this, I am asking all Lemmy.zip users to share their thoughts on what this change might mean. I know the Fediverse tends to skew older, but I am also aware that this might affect some current users too.
I am not asking anyone under 18 to dox themselves either, if you’re worried this might apply to you, you are more than welcome to reach out via PMs or preferably Matrix (my link is in my profile).
This restriction makes it clear that you must be 18 to have an account on the site and therefore removes some of the burden on the age verification, and although it isn’t the perfect solution, it moves us slightly further away from any grey areas in the law.
There is an alternative though. I could turn off NSFW completely and then no one would be able to see any content marked NSFW, even if it’s not actually NSFW. This obviously isn’t something I want to do either.
Happy to hear thoughts/concerns, but would appreciate any feedback either way on this. I’ll leave this up a couple of days to give people a chance to read it.
Thanks
Demigodrick
Footnotes:
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some of this actually already exists under The Digital Economy Act 2017 (age verification), and the upcoming Online Safety Bill puts further duties on websites to shield children from NSFW content, which is where the software lacks in features.
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The Ofcom Online Safety Bill guidelines are over 1000 pages long. There is no provision for small independent websites, they are lumped in with the likes of Meta. Ofcom seem to think paying tens of thousands of pounds to update websites with their suggestions is “reasonable”. It is clearly not.
The problem is we currently provide services to under 18s, with a toggle that allows anyone to view NSFW content. You’re absolutely right, there is no way to verify that currently, but the least I can do is protect the site going forwards by saying you have to be 18 to sign up, because there are no additional checks around age. That would then put us on par with an adult entertainment site at the moment (if/until mandatory age verification is brought in) in terms of someone would have to confirm they are 18 to enter.
I’m certainly not a lawyer, but that seems to move us away from anyone of any age signing up and me saying I’m fine with it. Until there is a solution in place software wise, it seems easiest to say we don’t provide services to children and they shouldn’t sign up here.
Forgive my ignorance, I’m not from the UK, but don’t they already block porn sites for those without a specific porn pass age verification? Or is that still an ongoing process?
I believe it’s technically part of this law, although there is some reference to it from a 2017 law. Not that there’s much more than a pop up on most websites (As I’m lead to believe 😇)
How hard is it, for anyone who has experience developing for Lemmy, to add a custom UI flow that asks the user to confirm that they are 18 (purely verbally with no ID verification)? It might be worthwhile to implement in general tbh
Well it’s not just lemmy - lemmy is basically just the backend, and is absolutely a bad place to manage this
There’s a bunch of different front ends, including the official one, as well as a bunch of client apps. Modifying any one of them is probably pretty easy, you just set a popup and a cookie, or do the equivalent in an app. Apps likely get a pass unless the app stores start mandating it, but choosing the front end of your instance is up to the site admin, so you really only have to change or fork one
Well it’s not just lemmy - lemmy is basically just the backend, and is absolutely a bad place to manage this
There’s a bunch of different front ends, including the official one, as well as a bunch of client apps. Modifying any one of them is probably pretty easy, you just set a popup and a cookie, or do the equivalent in an app. Apps likely get a pass unless the app stores start mandating it, but choosing the front end of your instance is up to the site admin, so you really only have to change or fork one