epicenter.works

Austrian digital rights organisation epicenter.works has published an article arguing that mandatory digital age verification protects no one, calling it a wrong path pushed from two political fronts. The piece criticises that, unlike the EU's Digital Services Act, small platforms such as Mastodon and F-Droid would not be exempt, making compliance burdens fall on small projects.

The digital rights group epicenter.works is criticised in discussion of the EU's proposed child safety rules, with commentators arguing that Wikipedia and Codeberg are granted exemptions while decentralised networks like Mastodon are not, despite being similarly open and volunteer-run. Critics warn this would force age verification on every individual Mastodon instance, creating an outsized burden for small, community-operated servers and raising concerns about how the law treats non-commercial platforms.