Texas SCOPE act takes effect Sunday. How does Lemmy comply? - eviltoast

“The SCOPE Act takes effect this Sunday, Sept. 1, and will require everyone to verify their age for social media.”

So how does this work with Lemmy? Is anyone in Texas just banned, is there some sort of third party ID service lined up…for every instance, lol.

But seriously, how does Lemmy (or the fediverse as a whole) comply? Is there some way it just doesn’t need to?

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Data in Bitcoin is undeletable, it’s impossible for any law to force anything from being deleted on Bitcoin. Then the same exceptions that apply there would apply to Lemmy since the technology is similar in the relevant aspects (besides deletion being theoretically possible on Lemmy).

    As for Meta, the problem is that the data they’re sharing is not public. Meta is not getting fined for sharing things you posted on your publicly, since they share those regardless by virtue of them existing and being publicly available, they’re fined for sharing things you put privately or data derived from non publicly available sources such as how you interact with Meta.

    Any information that a user willingly makes public can be processed in any way, even if it includes identifiable medical information (which is the biggest no-no of GDPR). It even has a specific point about it in 9.2.e

    processing relates to personal data which are manifestly made public by the data subject;

    Essentially saying you can process anything that was made public by the person. GDPR is to protect people from companies doing shady things, not to prevent people from themselves. Because EVERYTHING is public in Lemmy, all data in it has been manifestly made public by the person who created it.

    • General_Effort@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Bitcoin.

      It may be illegal to operate a bitcoin miner in Europe. That’s entirely possible. I don’t think the courts would go so far as to outlaw crypto in Europe via that route. But who knows.

      the technology is similar in the relevant aspects

      No. You can just turn off federation. You can make contracts with the instances you federate with. With crypto, you have to send the whole blockchain around, or else you don’t have crypto.

      As for Meta, the problem is that the data they’re sharing is not public.

      No. Look up what companies and people are fined for.

      Any information that a user willingly makes public can be processed in any way

      No! NO!!!

      You may not process any personal data without a legal basis. It does not matter if public or not.

      Certain sensitive personal data may not be processed at all, even with a legal basis. Except in certain circumstances listed in Article 9.