I know - you’re very probably already sixteen. That’s why we are here.
If you’ve managed to miss the coming change in the law, I envy you. This silly law has taken up several hours of my year that could have been spent doing something more productive like watching Golden Girls.
But, the law is here now and we need to take “Reasonable Steps” to ensure that everyone is over sixteen. If you are wondering what “reasonable steps” is, then join the club. Nobody really knows. What I do know is that we have to start to make an effort to be sure that no young’uns are here against the law.
To that end, we have hired a helpful bot called Molly. She’s an expert at being sixteen and she’s just been told that it’s her job is to verify all your ages. Here she is:
What’s next? Well, in the first phase we ask that you drop her a Message that verifies you are over 16. She doesn’t want to see your government ID. Some ideas that she would accept are:
- A passenger takes a photo of your username on a sheet of paper with you driving (please don’t make this one a selfie). Faces not required.
- A photo of your username with a glass of alcohol at a bar.
- A convincing spiel that would only come from someone older than sixteen (Can you tell Molly who Samantha is?). Can you tell her about the Breakfast Club that only 70’s/80’s kids from Queensland would know?
- Anything else you can think of that only someone over sixteen could/would do.
There’s no need to spend a lot of time on this. At this point, I’ll go through the users who have messaged her and compile a list of people who have verified their age. You can be creative. Just be aware that there’s an infinitesimal chance (but not zero) that whatever you send may be sent to some government agency to demonstrate that we are complying with the law.
Frequently Asked Questions:
- How do you know that the user isn’t faking their submission? I don’t. No method is perfect, we saw kids defeating intricate and expensive verification systems earlier this year. Kids are smart.
- How do you stop a kid from moving their account to one of the thousands of non-Australian Lemmy Instances and just continuing on with their day? I can’t. The fact that the law is totally ineffectual in the context of Lemmy is beside the point. We clearly meet the definition of a Social Media platform according to the law, and we are based in Australia. So we have to comply, even if it is pointless.
- Are you aware that this is pointless and kids are going to get around it? I know that teenage-me sure would have. But again, that’s beside the point. We need to comply with the law.
- Will you accept a photo of me in my undies? Ok, this one isn’t frequent from previous discussions on the law, but I wanted to include it in case. Please don’t send NSFW photos to show you are over age.
I have never heard of the breakfast club. I did go to the cinema to see Crocodile Dundee back in the 70’s. I am 64 for fuchks sake.
Wait, you’ve never heard of it? Not having seen it is one thing, but never heard of it‽
Not me having no idea what the fuck that is
I just looked for The Breakfast club and found I have a copy. My bad.
I will watch it soon.
croc dundee wasn’t the 70’s was it? shit, I saw the sequel in cinemas and I was born in 78
Crocodile Dundee came out in 1986. Hoges was huge on TV in the 70’s though - the Paul Hogan show ran for years. Fun fact: almost all of the Paul Hogan Show has been lost. It aired before VCRs were a thing and the station lost or over-wrote the original tapes.
Thanks for your efforts.
You can delete this account if you feel the need to, not interested in all verification stuff, even if is half arsed.
Actually joined the Internet when I was 16 back in 1994. Back then using Excite to search the Internet was better than what Google is today.
You can delete this account if you feel the need to, not interested in all verification stuff, even if is half arsed.
Massively adult take right here.
While we have tried to make the verification system as light-touch and unobtrusive as we can, we need to accept that this policy will cost us users. Just as we have no influence on government policy, we have no control on how people will respond to our willingness to obey the law.
I even understand it. If Canada introduced some sort of law that required me to do something I couldn’t justify, I’d likely let my lemmy.ca test account lapse. People are going to evaluate their own position from evaluating the variables in front of them. And some of them are going to come down on their Aussie.Zone account not being worth that much to them. Which is totally fine.
It’s going to come to effort. Do I create a lemmy.whatever account or do I verify? Verification isn’t guaranteed and making my own instance is above dad effort territory. Maybe someone will begin a kiwi hosted aussie.zone 😁😁 I appreciate all the effort you guys have gone too though.
Nah, I don’t think that’s it. Your comment here constituted more effort than some responses we’ve received. We don’t need much.
We’re lucky in Australia in that there’s a treasure trove of pop culture from the 20th century in our minds that isn’t really on Google. Just talk about Nudge’s antics or something. No kid will know who Nudge is, but he was a household name in the 80’s. Or maybe Bobby’s death and how that affected you? Google “Bobby’s death” and you’ll get the wrong Bobby.
Furry muff. I’ll message molly with something about 80s tram tickets or something.
I know you’re probably getting hassle comments about these laws and policies. I hope everyone on the site appreciates these bullshit hoops you’re being made to jump through. You could just shut the site down and be done with it.
We aren’t copping any abuse. Everyone understands that this isn’t coming from us and that there is no point hassling us over it.
Shutting the instance down is not on the cards. It means too much to too many people.
Yes. I’d have the same response if I was able to get out more IRL and youse weren’t some of the only sane people on the internet
Same, rather stop using than go through hoops. This site and everything else.
Aus Independents Anon Image Boards:
https://ausinds.com/image-boards/
No Login, no age verification.
I’d have to double-check the wording to be 100% certain, but if you don’t make accounts, I don’t think it counts as social media.
Just want to add at this point that I am loving this post and all the responses. Getting old is so bittersweet 😔
Oh god. Does anyone remember FoxPro
What about HyperCard? I remember being really excited when HyperCard came out with colour…
Yeah HyperCard was a bit before my time.
I do remember hypercolour which was something completely different
People putting inappropriate hand prints on each other’s clothes all the time
Inappropriate, but fun! 🤣
Remember? We still gotta deal with that shit at work
Luckily I was able to memorise enough of a program to produce a broken database and a B+ then move on
These strategies are quite nice. I was worried I would have to show my license which I’m not entirely comfortable with. I can easily talk about how my friend skateboarded to my house after the breakfast club first aired so we could excitedly discuss it and I could take a photo of drinking a pint while driving. Easy.
Do kids still watch round the twist when the teacher can’t be assed teaching that day?
I don’t know, but everyone’s favourite substitute teacher at my school used to read us the Paul Jennings books in class before Round the Twist was even a thing.
So, would posting at a not a bar, but a restaurant that also sells alcohol with a user name written with something like Rekorderlig (Swedish brand of Cider) also be acceptable? If so, I think that just might be doable. Better than being obliged to show a face at all.
I haven’t looked at the dms in over a day, but to that point, exactly zero of the responses included a face, or anything identifiable.
The answer to your direct question is “yes”, alcohol served to you at a restaurant would be just as fine as alcohol in a bar. The point to it is the setting. A kid can raid mum and Dad’s liquor cabinet and pose a photo. Doing that in a restaurant is not so doable.
As a general guide for whatever you choose: what we are looking for is essentially ‘could a kid have sent this?’
Only a 3-4 people had gone the alcohol route when I last checked.
This would be actually one of the better ways to verify. No faces involved, and the government gets its wish of verification. A win for everyone. Now if all other sites followed this, would make things plenty easier at the least.
This is still a pain in the butt.
- You don’t know until you log in to a site whether they have assessed you as over 16, and also what type of verification they want. There’s a bunch of sites that I only visit occasionally, and I guarantee it will be when I urgently need that information, that I get blocked.
- I have different usernames for different sites/socials etc. I would either need to have my list of sites prepared and do one visit to the pub (awkward), or do it as needed (inconvenient and/or liver traumatising). See above for the problems with that - we don’t know what each site/social will require, and they may not accept the bar/restaurant with alcohol method.
I’m not arguing with you guys, I’m just pissed off about the whole situation. It’s a joke and every “verification method” is open to faking/abuse.
Is it ok if I turn 16 on December 11th?
Oh God, oh fuck, you need to close Lemmy ASAP!!! Your brain is about to have the front fall off since your frontal cortex is underdeveloped and can’t understand the shit fuck takes on Lemmy.
No, you don’t have permission to turn 16
Thank God. I couldn’t bear to go through that again.
Dang I wish I still had my usbourne programming books. Those little robots carrying 1’s and 0’s while I programmed in basic on the apple ][ were made for this verification.
Edit: my steam account just turned 21. That’s a bit terrifying actually, but it has a use.
Can you tell her about the Breakfast Club that only 70’s/80’s kids from Queensland would know?
Hang on, is this to do with a free school breakfast program?
I have one old memory of free breakfast being held at my Melbourne primary school but I don’t think it lasted long for us.
Edit: Also does anyone remember the Victorian gas crisis where everyone was taking cold showers?
Oh ok it was a kids tv show https://www.reddit.com/r/brisbane/comments/lkzku4/brisbane_tv_from_the_olden_times/
Not from Brisbane so I would never have got that.
Oh wow! That this came from a non-Queensland kid is extra surprising. Yes, this was the breakfast club. It gave us, Agro by the way. Queensland kids knew Agro years before the rest of Australia.
I didn’t actually watch it, I initially thought it was a government initiative/tuckshop thing like the free milk. Then when I saw free breakfast was still happening (so not useful for age purposes) I just googled Queensland breakfast club and the time matched up.
So technically I cheated. Sorry Agro.
However I do remember when you would buy jam in tins. Sliced pickled cucumbers too. And I remember being served pink junket. And being given cod liver oil.
I wasn’t vaccinated but was simply allowed to catch chickenpox >:( This was probably outdated even at the time (making me sound older than I am) but parents did historically hold ‘pox parties’ to get it over with all at once.
Junket! I remember the smell of junket tablets 🤤
Junket is so underrated. Def needs a comeback. Pink panna cotta!
I still like it on occasion, but there is always 1 dodgy flavour in the packet that gets binned
I heard about it but lived in NSW at the time. Got wierdedout at the idea of gas fridges, had never heard of such a thing.
Yea the Longford esso explosion!
That’s actually what I was gonna write about lol. I was yr 8 at the time. Had electric hot water so was very popular.
we had electric water heater then too. Amazing how many of my mates bussed to my place after school just for a hot shower.
that one was hilarious, dad had electric hot water but a gas stove, we had gas hot water but an electric stove. We worked it out.
Will you accept a picture of two eight year olds?
Lol, only when stack d in a trenchcoat (not an admin btw).
Oh, hang on, I read this post when there were not many responses and I thought it was a piss take and had a laugh and moved on.
But coming back, it seems like I do have to send something to this bot? Still not clear what.
Well, that’s 5 mins of my time I will never get back. Having said that, I’ve also wasted an hour “talking” to a so-called “customer service” agent on a chat thing today, which was much more frustrating.
Edit - for reference, I pointed to a comment that I made 2 years ago about being alive in the 90s.
After reading through the post I will be jumping ship, later boys I’ll see you in another instance
Ohhh this must be why all the mods were asking me to send them naked photos of myself or be banned; for age verification! Makes so much sense now lol.
