CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@Lightfighter

Whoever owns a server is considered the central authority over that server and the members on it. The State of Georgia could go after any Mastodon server anywhere for not activating age verification for an underage user in that state, if I understand correctly. All they would have to do is go after one to cause a pretty big chilling effect on everyone else.

@gbargoud @Lightfighter

I certainly do! Hell, I'm old enough to remember Facebook switching away from that! But, again, gotta convince judges and legislators and they have mostly not shown themselves to be super interested in learning the ins and outs of tech.

@Lightfighter

Tell it to the judge?

From a user experience, Mastodon is a social network that, when I log in and start scrolling, is not superficially distinguishable from any Meta product, which is what I'm worried about.

Yes, I do know how Mastodon and the whole fedi works under the hood and how it differs from a centralized, singular server where all data resides and is sorted and delivered via algorithmic sorting.

My question is whether a judge, regulator or legislator can comprehend the difference when making rulings/laws, especially should the plaintiffs prevail in these upcoming cases and their inevitable appeals. Would that all judges were geeks/coders like Alsup (see Oracle vs Google), who could understand the difference, but what we usually see in tech rulings and legislation is meat-fisted "OMG protect the children!!" results that destroy privacy, security and personal online freedom.

Gawds I want to be normal and spend my time discussing things like some ref's call at the Sportsbowl or whatever instead of things like this.

So... in these lawsuits against corporate social media companies, one of the points of contention is infinite scroll. If you're a commercial platform selling ads, you're incentivized to tweak your algorithm to show viewers (incl. teenagers/kids) whatever keeps them engaged and scrolling so as to generate as many ad impre$$ions as possible. Infinite scroll = infinite profits.

But with noncommercial social networks, there is no profit, no incentive and no algorithm. And, unless you follow thousands of people who post a lot, it's possible to get "caught up."

I'm curious if there are any fedi legal eagles paying attention to the arguments that are likely to come up and what any verdicts against Meta or TikTok could mean for noncommercial, non-algorithmically-amplified networks like Mastodon.

If the plaintiffs prevail, it's hard to imagine a judge and regulators being savvy enough to make the distinction.

Edit to tag @eff in case they have any thoughts.