Fuckass age verification

[pengilly]

Just this evening, when I went to check this site, I got a weird error page, telling me that I was being geoblocked due to age verification laws in Mississippi.

I was using Dreamwidth earlier today without any issue, and I was definitely not in Mississippi. Multiple reloads later, and I was still geoblocked. It became obvious I'd have to download a VPN to get on here again.

I went with Proton VPN due to how often it appears in Best VPN lists (usually as something like, "Best Free VPN"). My relief was palpable when I was able to access the site again. The server randomly chosen for me was in the U.S., so I was a little worried nothing would change, but it must have been far enough from Mississippi to not be an issue.

I was concerned about the privacy implications prior (because you KNOW these companies that collect ID scans don't provide this service out of the goodness of their hearts). But it hadn't occurred to me how prohibitively expensive age verification would be for smaller sites that run on donations.

These fuckass age verification laws had better not come for my state.

Comments

[petsohp]

😭 Over the last year I've come to enjoy this site; and the reality is that its main base and operations is on US territory, so I will like these sort of restrictions to not well, affect it.

[adore]

I'm not in the US so most of what I know about the age verification laws being introduced by some US states is via dw_news. The Dreamwidth folks are fighting against these laws passing, with Netchoice iirc. It's wild to me that some judges have passed these laws!

The browser I use is Opera GX so that has an in-built VPN that I can turn on.