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…
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.
Here’s the text of the bill.
Note that it only applies to “digital services” that collect “personal identifying information”. But “personal identifying information” is defined very narrowly:
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.