How Are Reddit Alternatives Handling Age Verification Social Media Laws?
Posted by textuist@reddit | RedditAlternatives | View on Reddit | 12 comments
BlueDwarf.top is blocking the access of seven U.S. states in response to age verification legislation for social media...
This sounds like a little too much to me because for example Bluesky is "only" blocking Mississippi: https://bsky.social/about/blog/08-22-2025-mississippi-hb1126
Does anyone know what Reddit Alternatives are supposed to do to comply with these new laws, or are people kind of uncertain and experimenting with different approaches as the dust settles on how the law is going to be enforced in practice?
Clear_Party_6825@reddit
Darkweb is wide open.
outerzenith@reddit
I thought that it's pretty expensive to employ the services that do these verification, some of them may just took the easy road and ban the countries that impose strict verification requirement.
kdjfsk@reddit
Fun Fact: Opera Browser for desktop and mobile have a built in, free, no sign-up VPN you can just enable in the settings.
Imo, if those websites detect youre in one of those select states, then along with their legal landing page, they'd be smart to drop users hints, or links right to Opera.
ChaoticAgenda@reddit
Another fun fact, if you're not paying for a service it is because you and your data are the product. Any free VPN is making its money off you somehow, most likely by harvesting your data.
kdjfsk@reddit
In the case of Opera, they make money based off of stuff like the default 'speed dial' links on the browser homepage. Amazon, ebay, ESPN, etc pay to have their links there by default. You can delete them. As well as google being the default search engine.
Im not saying you're wrong, but all the browsers are free and do the same shit. The free VPN is just an extra angle Opera decided to make its niche to try and get some market share as its not a hugely popular browser. They have to do something to stand out, and given the new age verification laws, having a built in free VPN, thats free, that requires no signup, is better than showing your face to sketchy porn sites.
Plus, I'm not suggesting anyone make Opera their default browser and do their online shopping and banking or other important stuff on it. Instead, the opposite. Keep your primary browser free of porn, use Opera as your 'Horny Browser', and use it only for porn. what are they going to collect? They gonna try to sell wet wipe ads to the guy with a scat fetish? If you see ads on the internet, youre doing the internet wrong anyways. Just install an ad blocker.
jEG550tm@reddit
opera marketing account
opera is literal chinese spyware
kdjfsk@reddit
I dont really give a shit if China knows what porn i watch.
outerzenith@reddit
or maybe a link to other free vpn, for just bypassing the check (not downloading or require fast speed) free plan should be enough.
that way people don't need to change browser and can use whatever they want.
better_rabit@reddit
It's rather irritating for years governments have complained about these giants having a monopoly so instead to breaking them up they give them the data they have been hungry for years and entrenching their power. Lord we live in the worst timeline. Their is no way someone on their advisory team did not tell them this would happen.
Skavau@reddit
Speaking from a British perspective: They mostly just can't afford to bring in AI checks. Reddit alternatives are primarily hobbyist more than commercial and survive entirely on a small donation pool that mostly goes to keeping the site up. Owners of these sites don't have the ability or even interest (why should they?) to bring in age-controls for content, either in terms of access at all or somehow segmenting up their platform into two-tiers: one for over-18s, one for under 18s.
In addition, as more countries bring in their own specific requirements for local compliance, it's going to get silly and impossible for many sites of this nature to comply. This is what people mean when they say required age-walls cause more centralise to the big sites as smaller competitors simply can't afford to do it. So if pushed, they'll block. Raddle has, and a variety of Fediverse instances (lemmy.zip as the largest) have simply blocked UK IPs entirely as pushback to this.
But on the flip side, it's unlikely that most government regulators even know that these small sites exist - so they're also likely to not even be noticed.
BlazeAlt@reddit
Happy cake day!
Electronic-Phone1732@reddit
Since lemmy is decentralised, people can evade the blocks easily.
Right now it seems instances will just ignore the regulation, until it becomes a problem. Then they'll block access from those areas.