Are services like Lemmy, Mastodon or PeerTube KYC’d in the UK?
Sorry to be a doomer, but if so, then the Fediverse has failed and we should just move on with a decentralized web that uses decentralized backends: Nostr, Odysee/LBRY, etc.
Maybe the threat model of the Fediverse was incomplete. It isn’t just Big Tech who is threat, but also regulation by Big Government.
Fediverse is very good at censorship resistance, much better than alternatives.
If internet is restricted in your country, use a VPN. If you’re an admin, move your server to a different country.
If internet is not restricted, then there is nothing to worry about.
@fediverse
If you need a VPN to access it, then the Fediverse isn’t censorship-resistant. The VPN is. Even more, the Fediverse instance is geoblocking/censoring you.
Examples of services that geoblock you or KYC you:
Examples of services that don’t geoblock/KYC you:
Fediverse is tens of thousands of instances. You may need a VPN to access your home instance (e.g. if it is blocked in your country), the rest of the network can be accessed from there.
I never heard about instances doing KYC (which is usually done by payments processors). If your home instance requires KYC, you can always move to another instance that doesn’t require it, because there are so many of them all across the world.
VPNs are not much different from the Fediverse, by the way. It’s just servers, they can be blocked by ISPs, and they can geoblock users. This is also true for Nostr relays, IPFS gateways, Tor relays, etc.
@fediverse