Enforcing a ban also presents additional privacy risks, experts add.
Under the Australian law, platforms looking to verify a user’s age can either request copies of identification documents, use a third party to apply age estimation technology to an account holder’s face, or make inferences from data already available such has how long an account has been held.
Michael Geist, a professor and Canada Research Chair in internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, said that potential data collection alone is concerning and would need to apply to all social media users regardless of age to be effective.
He noted that it can be difficult to discern between a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old by appearance alone, whether in person or online through biometrics systems.
“So what those systems tend to do then is dig deeper,” he said. “They look at who your friend circle is or the language that you use when posting to try to make a better guess.
“Well, now they’re literally engaging in increased surveillance in order to try (to identify your age), and raising even more privacy concerns in order pull this together.”
Well, defed is just when they personally don’t like something. There are right wing run Lemmy instances that defed from lefty instances. And lots of content is removed in general.
Lemmy is just as manipulative as the corporations, just with their own topics.
I think we should conversationally separate “access to information” from “social media.” Although they sort of go hand in hand.
I’m sure there probably are far-right instances out there somewhere federating with each other. If the Naziverse federation somehow grows to have anything like the cultural relevance of the mainstream Fediverse federation, the problem will not be the technology. The problem will be that your society is full of Nazis.