Url for reference.
How’s this going to effect Lemmy? I was a kid online once, I would have loved something like Lemmy. With this Texas law, theoretically the people running an instance could be in trouble when some kid signs up for their server which won’t have the desired parental controls…
The 509 section on Applicability seems to restrict this to services specifically targeting or deliberately creating environments suitable for, or providing attractions that can only be reasonably targeted to minors.
So if you don’t create kidzone.world or a blues clues community you’re probably alright, if you can show you don’t target or encourage minor participation.
I’d argue that the law doesn’t affect Lemmy instances unless they attempt to link a Lemmy identity to someone’s real-world identity.
Note that it only applies to “digital services” that collect “personal identifying information”. But “personal identifying information” is defined very narrowly:
(1) “Digital service” means a website, an application, a program, or software that collects or processes personal identifying information with Internet connectivity.
[…]
(6) “Personal identifying information” means any information, including sensitive information, that is linked or reasonably linkable to an identified or identifiable individual. The term includes pseudonymous information when the information is used by a controller or processor in conjunction with additional information that reasonably links the information to an identified or identifiable individual. The term does not include deidentified information or publicly available information.
So it seems to me that any service that ① uses pseudonymous identities and ② does not attempt to link them to real identities using other information, doesn’t count as a “digital service” under this law’s definitions.
If a specific Lemmy instance requires real-world identifying information from its users, then that instance would come under this law. But purely pseudonymous services that do not do that, aren’t covered.
Hmm that would seem to do the trick then. Curiously, by that same definition reddit would have an argument to being exempt.
I guess lemmy’s lack of trackers would also help with that problem.
If I wanted to make the opposite argument — that Lemmy instances should fall under this law — I’d point to the practice of collecting email addresses. Some instances require an email address to create an account. Email addresses make an account more “reasonably linkable” to an identifiable individual.
One could even argue then that the law covers an instance that merely invites users to link their account to their email address, even if it does not require them to. After all, someone looking to target children can look for the most-vulnerable child, not the average child.
It should be easier to implement this on Lemmy, I think. There should be one instance with whitelisted instance federation, and during signup, if somebody says they’re less than 18 (or whatever the age limit is), they should be redirected to that instance. They won’t see anything from anything other than the whitelisted instances.
