Mastodawn

Presumably Mastodon is not on the under-16 ban for if someone can work out how to set up a Mastodon account, they also would easily be able to circumvent any security settings.

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Taran Rampersad 1d ago

@davidallengreen a group of teenagers under 16 could set up their own mastodon server and NOT federate, just like anyone else.

Just them and their friends.

Could they? Really?

Pete / Syllopsium 1d ago

@JuliaRez @knowprose @davidallengreen Are we talking technically or legally?

Technically, yes. Legally : no, you're still subject to the online safety act and probably the upcoming law too. I'm not sure even if teenagers had the ability to handle the OSA requirements, if they're even legally permitted to because they're not adults.

The only reason Mastodon has got away with it so far is because it's small, and no one has (yet) tried to enforce the law against an instance.

Says the person who is in Sweden, honest guv, cough.

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adamrice 1d ago

@syllopsium @JuliaRez @knowprose @davidallengreen There are Mastodon hosting services where you pay them money and get your own instance. Doesn’t even require a lot of technical expertise. Here’s one in France, which I assume is not bound by UK law. https://masto.host/

Masto.host - Fully Managed Mastodon Hosting

Masto.host was built from the ground up to make running a Mastodon instance easy.

Masto.host

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Julia Rez 1d ago

@adamrice

@syllopsium @knowprose @davidallengreen

Credit card.

Teenagers.

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adamrice

@JuliaRez @syllopsium @knowprose @davidallengreen I’m not in the UK, so forgive me if this doesn’t apply, but here, bank cards function as debit cards, and one can buy prepaid cards at a grocery store.

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Buxton The Red (Matt)1d ago

@adamrice In the UK, our regular bank cards are generally on the Visa or Mastercard networks. They can be used in *most* online shopping situations that ask for "a credit card".

Merchants (or maybe it's processing platforms) can determine if a given card is Debit or Credit - Steam uses this in the UK as their only form of age-validation for smut-games (must be a Credit card).

But for "get a domain" and "get a cheap VPS" transactions, I have used my regular MC-debit bank card without issue.