this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2025
1092 points (97.0% liked)
Microblog Memes
8513 readers
2931 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
Rules:
- Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
- Be nice.
- No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
- Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.
Related communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yeah, I get pushing for Mastodon over Bluesky, but Bluesky is being forced to do this by the UK government for UK citizens so this is just exaggerated rage bait.
Rage bait, or a line being drawn? The excuse that it's just for certain type content, only some features will be limited, etc. sounds like "it's just a little bit of Orwell, why you so mad bro?" Let the free market sort it out, if most people are fine with limitations (and future additions to those) then so be it. There are alternatives right now, so make a choice.
The UK government is forcing them and all other web services to do the same. UK-hosted Mastodon servers may coast under the radar for awhile, but they'll come for them eventually.
Rather than getting mad at Bluesky for implementing government-mandated age verification, how about actually getting mad at the UK government?
A lot of us are and have protested for years. The previous gvmt didn't care and the current one don't either because its not really about kids, its about control and surveillance. The ruling political class want to know what its citizens are up to and/or want us to know they can id us any time, especially those of us who are noisy about political issues.
Our right to protest is just about gone, including the right to wear masks. We are legally obliged to provide pins to our phones when detained and we can be arrested if a protest is deemed obstructive - which includes being too noisy. We can even be arrested just for discussing holding a protest of some kind.
At the same time, we are told that vocally supporting non-violent groups is now terrorism and can be punishable with prison time.
And the vast majority of the UK population sit on their collective arses moaning about immigrants and watching Love Island. They don't care - genuinely, they absolutely do not care their rights are disappearing one by one.
Required to use our fingerprints/faces, and PINs at border, but not PINs at e.g. protests right? Or is this a thing where within 1000(?) miles of the border is close enough?
https://www.pcdsolicitors.co.uk/advice-news/latest-news/do-i-have-to-provide-my-phone-password-to-the-police/
Mad at your government, but still leave Bluesky, just don't leave angry.
Also, it's just a matter of time for other governments to do the same. They're already working on it in the U.S.
How about both? And while doing so, use applications that aren't yet subjected to those rules.
Others are tho. For example lemmy.zip blocks UK users from signing up for this reason.
Why do you think Mastodon is exempt from those rules? The law applies to all sites/services with a significant UK audience - some of the Mastodon .uk instances will definitely be subject to this, and because of how badly the law is written, it can apply to many more.
People can have their hardon for hating Bluesky, but they're literally just trying to avoid being fined by the UK govt here - this wasn't their idea.
Mastodon might not be legally exempt, but depending on how much effort the UK government puts into enforcing this, large swaths of it might be functionally so. Most instances presumably arent hosted in the UK, and while some of those outside that country might block traffic there or be big enough for the UK government to order ISPs there to block them for noncompliance, theres a decent chance that some smaller, foreign run instances might simply ignore whatever the UK is doing, and if a UK user signs up to one of these, or uses a VPN to use one that does block the UK, and can still get the content from the rest of the network due to federation anyway, then the platform as a whole could potentially get away with ignoring those rules in a way that a single large site couldnt.
It’s absolutely Orwellian, and people should be angry at the UK for forcing this onto any website their citizens access.
But there won't be alternatives for long cause you're placing the blame on the whip and not the person cracking it.
A) I'm just commenting on it being labeled as rage bait and not a call for action(s)
B) Absolutely go after the root cause as well as find alternatives
C) There are always alternatives