I think they're the 3rd, 4th largest piefed instance?
6th with 70 monthly active users piefed.fediverse.observer/list
Piefed.social has 949, piefed.world 222
Just received an email from feddit.online saying they've geoblocked UK IPs due to the Online Safety Act
Submitted 2 days ago by Skavau@piefed.social to fediverse@lemmy.world
Comments
Blaze@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
Jerry@feddit.online 2 days ago
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.
Skavau@piefed.social 2 days ago
To be clear, the specifics in the act go beyond not specifically hosting pornographic content.
Blaze@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
That makes sense
MxRemy@piefed.social 2 days ago
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?
muntedcrocodile@hilariouschaos.com 2 days ago
It is a thing it is being done. I can’t remember the repo link but u can do it.
AntiBullyRanger@ani.social 2 days ago
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.
deafboy@lemmy.world 2 days ago
They absolutely are. It’s one thing to beg for the right to do something. It’s entirely different to be able to just do it without the permission.
Did people forget how big of a deal the printing press was?
misk@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
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?
Skavau@piefed.social 2 days ago
They believe that Ofcom could pressure their hosts to cut their services off if they don't comply with the act, or believe they could be fined.
misk@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
How would that even work in another country? Wouldn’t Saudi Arabia pressure hosts for breaking blasphemy laws?
Jerry@feddit.online 2 days ago
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?
Skavau@piefed.social 2 days ago
I think in practice Ofcom would just geoblock your site specifically.
Jerry@feddit.online 2 days ago
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.
roserose56@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
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!
Piatro@programming.dev 2 days ago
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.
Skavau@piefed.social 2 days ago
Currently Twitter is doing the bare minimum by simply allowing UK users to bypass the age-checks by setting their location to another country.
henfredemars@infosec.pub 2 days ago
The equivalent of a pop-up asking you if you’re 18 or older.
Back in the day, I was 18 for like five years.
nokturne213@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
At least do it Leisure Suit Larry style and ask three questions sometime at least 18 should know.
TeddE@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Just a reminder. Self-hosting is a hobby that is both useful and satisfying, and the skills you pick up will change how you see computers that are increasingly part of everything.
You probably won’t be going off-grid overnight, but the tech industry has spent 30 years promoting propaganda that ‘only skilled engineers should worry about what goes on under the hood’ and have conditioned us to expect tech to just be magic.
Fighting back means educating yourself, and that means grabbing an old laptop, learning how to install Linux on it, fire up a few Docker projects, and exploring all the options that opens up.
It will take a few weekends to get started, and it will require some upkeep. But for that price you will gain some sovereignty back over your digital life.
For extra credit and when ready you can pay $15 /year for a vanity domain (you’d only need one, as you can freely create an unrestricted number of subdomains), once done you move from being a serf to a digital landlord.