Who: Yes, Aussie zone appears to fit the definition of a social media site.

What: "A provider of an age-restricted social media platform must take reasonable steps to prevent age-restricted users having accounts with the age-restricted social media platform." Details are a bit scarce on "reasonable steps". There's a bit about how we are not to collect Government ID details though.

When: Presently December 10, 2025 but the bill is worded such that they are prepared to shift it.

Why: Protect the kiddies from the evils of the site. By the way, if you spot any actual bad content please report it.

How: and now we get to the big question. I truly don't see how you'd enforce this on Lemmy. Even if a perfect system were introduced to verify everyone's ages somehow, nothing stops people from shifting to a non-australian instance and just keep using the site. Or just spinning up their own private instance at home. Lemmy federation works a bit like email - imagine trying to stop kids from being able to access email. Again, I just don't see how you'd accomplish that.

So, we're doing what the government is doing. Keeping an eye on things and waiting to see how the big players respond. I'd love to see Facebook or YouTube to just go 'nup' and withdraw from the market. The public backlash would be insane and this bill would quickly vanish. People are asleep on this thing because they don't really see it affecting them. Yet.

The UK has just introduced an age verification thingy, and it's off to a poor start. The words are nice, but putting them into action is not trivial.