It might happen for some instances, but I think if some countries start requiring fediverse instances to do this, most users will switch to instances hosted in countries that don’t require it.

If it happens in case of Fediverse, It will only happen in instances based or hosted in countries where there’s age verification. But censorship on entirety of Lemmy or Mastodon would be very hard.

Do kids even know about Lemmy?

Do the government?

And even if the answer to both of those is yes, maybe feddit.uk keeps me in some sort of unicorn bubble, but I’m yet to see anything that is even remotely NSFW.

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Let us think outside the box for a bit.

First, we already see a phenomenon going on with Fediverse, and Web as a whole: invite-only and/or need-to-apply places. Because of multiple factors (bots, trolls, AI DDoS+crawling), there are fewer places where one can simply have an account without the need for approval from someone else (the instance admins) or needing to know someone to join the “closed club”. This means places are already imbuing themselves with gatekeeping, one where it’s not so trivial to get approval, especially if someone has no Web history to prove themselves, a lack of “verifiable Web history” of which applies both for introvert adult people and for children as well. In practice, Fediverse and other niche places feel like they’re are already kind of gatekept against children.

Then there’s this requirement shared among those laws being implemented worldwide, “meaningful mechanisms to check age”. I can see govs and corps coming up with some kind of API, a centralized “age validator” entity.

Using the country I reside as an example: gov.br already has an API so websites and platforms can allow logging in with a CPF (“Cadastro de Pessoas Físicas”, Brazilian legal ID). Back in the pandemics, I received, as a DevOps, a freelancer job request to integrate a website with the gov.br API system for validating COVID-19 Vaccination status (at the time, I refused because I was already working on something else, and also because I don’t like dealing with bureaucracies). But this means that any website could, essentially, check the user’s age by redirecting the user to gov.br auth flow and requesting the official Date of birth. gov.br login has 2FA using facial biometrics via their governmental app. Currently, many Brazilian businesses deal with Pix (instant payment system maintained by the Brazilian Central Bank) through its official APIs because they’re being socially compelled to accept Pix as a means of payment. Pix is becoming a model for instant payment worldwide, many countries are copying Brazil’s Pix (in turn, copied from India while improving the existing Indian payment system).

So it’s just a matter of time before we see countries copying gov.br, with corp platforms adding gov-kept authn+authz of citizens to their systems.

Then, back to Fediverse: even if instances decide not to implement age checking, let us remember Fediverse, even when “self-hosted”, is still part of the Internet, a infrastructure dependent on ICANN/IANA, ISPs, ASNs, overseas fiber cables, national DNS authorities (e.g. registro.br for Brazilian ccTLD websites), etc. So it’s pretty trivial for countries to mandate something: upon refusal of compliance, a country could simply cut the dissident from the countrywide DNS, and/or request ISPs to block the access…

So, I can foresee a near future where there’s no country left without this kind of law, and Fediverse as a whole is compelled into implementing this.

One of the Aussie ones already does by you providing a pic of you having a drink at a pub.

That way the instance owner doesn’t have to hold PPI as someone having a drink at a pub means they are over 18 and aren’t subject to the law.