Just received an email from feddit.online saying they've geoblocked UK IPs due to the Online Safety Act
I think they're the 3rd, 4th largest piefed instance? Check: !feddit_online@feddit.online
I’m confused, why are non-UK instances banning UK users? Are their admins located in the UK? Is anyone afraid of being extradited to UK because of their local laws? Do you block Saudi Arabia too because you can’t guarantee blasphemy laws are going to be upholded?
@misk@sopuli.xyz @Skavau@piefed.social
As a sidenote, I remember that UK has an odd and ancient "law" stating something in the lines "The Crown must not be offended" (i.e. being anti-monarchy and advocating for the end of monarchy, even without any violent language/means but a pacific defense of anti-monarchy). I couldn't find it, nor I can remember the exact phrasing, but such a "law" threatens prison time for those who "dare" to "offend" the crowniness of UK Crown. Also, I'm not sure to what extent this law is applied in practice.
Even though I'm Brazilian (so the UK supposedly "have no power over here", and I say it with the Gandalf's voice), I see these international situations with some worry: there are needed laws (such as laws against noise pollution) and there are laws whose reach ends up going way too far from their "seemingly well-intentioned" puritan scope (such as the aforementioned laws).
If countries are capable of passing draconian laws against their own citizens, don't expect that those same countries couldn't go further to impose these laws beyond their own lawns, especially in times of interconnectedness.
And Fediverse platforms from everywhere around the entire globe end up being caught in the crossfire, due to that same interconnectedness.
In the end of the day, the world is increasingly bleaker, as the history is being repeated (maxims "One thing people can learn from history books is that people can't learn from history books", and "history doesn't just repeat, it rhymes").
I remember that UK has an odd and ancient “law”
The Treason Felony Act of 1848. Nothing odd about it. That used to be quite standard. Actually, the years of 1848/49 saw many major revolutions and hard fighting across the continent.
As a sidenote, I remember that UK has an odd and ancient "law" stating something in the lines "" (i.e. being anti-monarchy and advocating for the end of monarchy, even without any violent language/means but a pacific defense of anti-monarchy). I couldn't find it, nor I can remember the exact phrasing, but such a "law" threatens prison time for those who "dare" to "offend" the crowniness of UK Crown. Also, I'm not sure to what extent this law is applied in practice.
Given there's an active pro-republican campaign site I'd wager not at all.
If countries are capable of passing draconian laws against their own citizens, don't expect that those same countries couldn't go further to impose these laws beyond their own lawns, especially in times of interconnectedness.
UK against the USA? I think the UK isn't winning that.
A public enforcement action by Ofcom could make it difficult because payment processors can refuse to work with the site owner, domain registrars could be pressured to suspend the domain, and hosting providers might refuse to provide services.
Who needs this drama?
I think in practice Ofcom would just geoblock your site specifically.
6th with 70 monthly active users https://piefed.fediverse.observer/list
Piefed.social has 949, piefed.world 222
Piefed.social isn't as affected because they restrict the NSFW communities. Feddit.online doesn't have the restriction, so it's more exposed.
The fear is a complaint being made to Digital Ocean that a server they host is violating UK law. It would be much easier for DO to remove the server than to take any other action.
To be clear, the specifics in the act go beyond not specifically hosting pornographic content.
That makes sense
The Mozilla VPN with their Firefox extension (not yet on Linux), for example, lets you change the VPN server's country based on the domain you connect to and even bypass the VPN for certain domains. So, I believe it can be configured to select a U.S. VPN server, for example, when visiting a U.S. social site, but stay on the native connection when accessing BBC services. It uses Mullvad as the provider, actually, which is high quality. They can't be the only one.
The Internet always seems to find ways to bypass blocks.
Ain't had no job to pass a bad law for their citizens. Now our chaps have to use VPN to come and talk with us! It's sad!
Uhh totally unrelated but... how hard is it to get fedi platforms working over the alt internets, like tor/i2p/ipfs/etc? I'm sure somebody somewhere must be working on that, right?
Social problems aren’t solved with technology 🤦♀️, it's great shame .online decided to abstain, but even greater shame UK illiterates desire fascistic anti-intellectualism.
I'm just waiting for all UK users to be banned from anything that isn't Facebook or X. It's absolutely ridiculous and a huge win for big tech as it locks us in to their platforms and their platforms only. Those of us with a bit of tech knowledge will work around it but it's infuriating.
Currently Twitter is doing the bare minimum by simply allowing UK users to bypass the age-checks by setting their location to another country.
At least do it Leisure Suit Larry style and ask three questions someone at least 18 should know.