Fair enough.

My point is that the threat of legal action was enough that major sites decided not to risk it, and blocked Europe et al.

And has 4chan done the same to UK after Ofcom sent them any messages? No, they haven’t. There’s no meaningful difference between being blocked by a country and blocking them yourself. If we eventually block 4chan, then we do that - but no way would the current US administration accept any attempted fines against them.

4chan is hardly a financial/corporate entity (though they do seem to profit off traffic with ads), therefore much harder to go against, but blocking the service is still effective. It will be up to 4chan to see if they want to comply with the law and get unblocked or if they can live without Australian traffic.

Right, but that’s all I mean. They can’t do anything to 4chan otherwise.

(And this law, comically enough - doesn’t really apply to them in the first place because they don’t have account signups).

Some didn’t mind the loss of service in Europe and just cut Europe off. Some did. Bottom line is that the EU wouldn’t have been able to sue them because they had no assets in Europe.

What is it you imagine Australia could do to 4chan, other than blocking 4chan in Australia?

Yeah, but what I mean is that wasn’t a reaction to Australia here. Since your threshold here is 18, not 16.

Australia blocking 4chan in Australia doesn’t compel 4chan to do anything.

Why do you think American companies, even ones with no legal presence in Europe, still went along with GDPR? Same principle applies here.

They didn’t want to lose custom in Europe.

So how is Australia going to make other sites with no footprint in Australia do it then?

March? Over 18?

Reddthat presumably was reacting to the Online Safety ACT UK there.

I think OP means less bots that are set up to be bots, and more “bot accounts pretending to be human”

Piefed does this for new accounts that delete themselves. But not for old accounts. Which is good, as otherwise the fediverse would slowly be littered by comments that simply say [deleted].

Similarly UK has tried to get 4chan, kiwifarms etc but they have no UK footprint so they just ignore them.

No, that’s a matter of enforcement. UK is still trying to fine 4chan - but failing. Australia has just outright said the law doesn’t apply to them.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/09/4chan-not-blocked-australia-under-16s-social-media-ban

Yes

Apparently aussie.zone is asking users to DM evidence of being over 16, and the implication is that of those who don’t - he’ll ban/delete their accounts.

But absurdly enough, 4chan is exempt from this because all activity on there is anonymous. Not through accounts. So if the Fediverse had anonymous, non-account posting on-top of regular account-based posting then people could post anonymously happily, but anyone with an account would have to verify.

Make it make sense.

They tend to use similar names. Not always though. Not sure if you’re talking about the same person.

This is what blights so many small reddit alternatives.

The initial wave of users onto reddit clones often include a disproportionate amount of malcontents. A lot of people who don’t play well with others, who are banned from reddit (or at least banned from lots of subreddits) usually turn up first on these reddit alternatives and disrupt the community by repeatedly showing anti-social or disruptive, attention seeking behaviour. It’s not even necessarily related to any political persuasion. This stuff can collapse budding alternatives.

The first wave of new users on reddit alternatives are, in my experience, more likely to have a lot of problem users and since the sites are so small, and usually sparsely moderated, they are much more disruptive than they would be on reddit. The Fediverse is large enough to avoid the problems of that to some extent now (a problem user who makes alts to troll, and bait and harass is a lot more visible on a small reddit clone with 1000 users vs. 50,000) but there’s something to be said by growing and ignoring the problems (as Reddit itself had done - which is why it’s now a site utterly infested with bots and astroturfers and trolls etc).

The hope here is that the Fediverse can implement useful tools that disrupt the typical pattern of behaviour that these people present so they don’t increase and fester as the network grows. Best to nip this stuff now whilst the userbase is manageable.

It’s on Piefed. Piefed just automatically removes all posts by accounts less than 24 hours old that self-delete.

The person in question here is permanently banned from the Fediverse (effectively ban on sight for most instances) in part for spamming, but also because of maladaptive personality traits. They don’t accept that and instead still wish to “help” the fediverse via providing content (news spam)

This seems to be dealing with the issue of finding them after the fact, rather than just automatically purging the posts. So it does help, but the best solution here is to just automate it.

Piefed already automatically has a toggle in its settings that can be activated. On piefed.social any account that self-deletes within 24 hours has all of its posts purged.

This is a lemmy problem.

Yeah, I know. That’s why I think other instances should also do it lol

Then the question is, why is it when users come from reddit they don’t hang around? they don’t tell their friends, hey this is a place that’s awesome!

Some do. I would argue that most social media websites sign-ups become dormant accounts very quickly. Whether its Reddit, a large Discord server, a reddit alternative etc. The retainment rate of most social media sites is and has always been quite bad. People are fickle, or not as interested as they thought, or just sign up to have a better look. I don’t think there’s anything special about Lemmy or Piefed here, and advertising it isn’t exactly easy nor even welcome.

Does Lemmy/Piefed have the best design? No. Is it uniquely bad? Not at all. I think Reddits is pretty poor in areas, but that doesn’t seem to be an encumbrance to it.