It doesn't say what they're planning to do about laws requiring age verification. It says they're forming a group to figure that out. The problem with bad legislation is you can't just ignore it, so they need to at least work out an approach. In itself this news is neutral, but we'll have to see what they decide.
this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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So, they are basically announcing that they are
forming a committee
to figure out
how to talk about
how to understand the stuff?
...Honestly, it could have been a lot worse.
When you get big enough, you are under more scrutiny and these laws are spreading more and more. I can imagine the Mastodon team is under lots of external pressure to start following these new laws. Mastodon won't be the last to start thinking about implementation.
I hope it's face verification so I can just point the camera at a guy on Google images or whatever to get it to let me in.
Could it be best way to provide legal liability for how to comply with vague and easy to misinterpret badly-written law is to have a process underway at your organization to examine it? Just move slowly till the bigger guys lawyers figure it out?
Everyone on today’s internet is directly exposed to regulations like GDPR, the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and lately numerous age verification (or assurance) laws and related social media bans for minors.
How, how, how did we manage to stray this far from John Perry Barlow's dreams? Is there any good left in the world? ;_;
We decided temporary safety was better than essential liberty.
And I'm aware of what the quote was about, thank you.
Davos, Switzerland
February 8,1996
Thirty years have not been kind
I think going out an meeting people IRL is what I will go for next.
unfortunately age verification is now required to touch grass
but you can fuck all the children you want as long as you're in "the club".
This is a real leopards ate MY face?!? moment for much of the fediverse.
Yeah turns out there are consequences to rightously bandwagoning on moral panics....
I would be totally down for some trustworthy and transparent verification service that does not store or hand out your data. Since pretty much everyone will need to verify for whatever at some point, I think this would be awesome to have