cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/49248066
Finally it seems the end of Reddit is near.
I hate reddit as much as the other guy, but I’m not sure what other course of action they have if they are by law required to do this.
What this new law means for fediverse users and servers hosted in the UK is still to be found out.
Host server -> ignore law -> eventually get shutdown -> host new server -> ignore law
Its torrent sites all over again
I’m curious what the actual ramifications would be. The UK doesn’t exactly have a great firewall. Even if they did, the actual great firewall is only so effective. I’m guessing the UK would start pressing the payment processors against Reddit for their paid services. I don’t know if that would make enough of a dent in their revenue to make them think twice or not.
If they have any UK offices, those would have to close for sure. They’d effectively have to be “accessible” in the UK but not “operating” in the UK.
Big corps like reddit and pornhub will likely not lower themselves to the likes of pirate bay. Not my opinion, only an assumption.
The morally correct course of action for an international Internet-based business facing this situation would be to cut all ties with the UK, make sure you have no business presence there at all, and then duly ignore their laws.
But that might make the shareholders unhappy I guess.
They’d risk getting blocked in the UK if they did that. Sure users could get around that using a VPN, but not everyone uses one so in general that’d reduce their userbase and as such their revenue. Shareholders sure won’t like that either.
I’m curious about the technical/enforcement side of this. The UK doesn’t really have a great firewall. Would they press ISPs to drop routes for their ASN?
The usual way is to ask ISPs to drop the DNS record for Reddits domains.
This leaves most users unable to reach the site. Determined users won’t be stoped. But it’s good enough for the powers that be.
Hopefully DoH and DoT take off to help with that. But also are ISPs usually running devices hefty enough to inspect every DNS response going through their network? I thought they mostly run pure routers.
With unencrypted DNS it’s dead easy to redirect to your own resolver. In fact, if you’re trying to enforce DoT or DoH on your LAN it can be good practice to do this to ensure that rogue applications aren’t bypassing your resolver.
I don’t think ISPs really do this though currently.
Fun unrelated backstory: I found a website that resolves DNS records using 1.1.1.1 over DoH in JavaScript. I had to flat out block connections to 1.1.1.1.
It’s likely not the end of Reddit, though. It’s just going to be booming business for VPN providers. And other people will just upload their selfie. Last time I was asked to do something similar, I used AI to generate one and that worked fine.
Reddit has been auto-banning VPN users for a long time.
Even if you trust what they say about access and removal of identifying information (which I don’t), they admit they store the birthday. What purpose could that possibly have after confirming you’re an adult? Checking whether you’re becoming a minor again?
I don’t get it, just upload the pic of an adult stranger and that’s it?
They’ll be matching it against government records likely. It’s an age verification service.
And now that there is an industry for this service the law will never be able to be removed because “that will kill jobs”.
Which will likely not go through with the verification service they’re subcontracting with.
…yet the most wonderful thing about the atman-brahma is that everyone is no one and everyone…anonymity is required for nirvana…
should require dick pics
