denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

The Wheelhouse - Week 7 - 2

Aug. 26th, 2025 12:09 am
clauderainsrm: (Default)
[personal profile] clauderainsrm posting in [community profile] therealljidol
 I'm still alive.  Somehow.  :) 

This weekend was insane (in a good way) , and I'll update you later. 

But I wanted to make sure no one forgot the deadline was on WEDNESDAY!!
therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1195555.html

***
Also, if you haven't submitted your accusation for this week, you have until that deadline to do so. and most of you haven't yet! So help bring these Killer(s) to justice!!

The Wheelhouse - Week 7

Aug. 17th, 2025 02:39 pm
clauderainsrm: (Default)
[personal profile] clauderainsrm posting in [community profile] therealljidol
 I just decided to give you another week on the deadline to give people more time to coordinate and write.  I wasn't planning on it, but a comment about the amount of time came up and which led me to asking the Wheel. therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1195555.html

So - thank the Wheel! 

***

How has your weekend been going? 

Week 7 - Prompts

Aug. 14th, 2025 09:07 pm
clauderainsrm: (Default)
[personal profile] clauderainsrm posting in [community profile] therealljidol
 Yes.  You read that correctly - there's an S at the end. Because with an intersection each partner gets a different prompt. But again, you can figure that out. 

Your prompts for the week are *spins wheel*: 


BAT 
Oxytocin Loop

The deadline to link your entries back to this thread is Wednesday, August 27th at 7pm ET.   (and remember to send me your accusations on the identity of a Killer!) 

Week 7 - Twist Reveal

Aug. 14th, 2025 08:24 pm
clauderainsrm: (Default)
[personal profile] clauderainsrm posting in [community profile] therealljidol
We got rid of one of the "No Twist" options last week. So I'm not going to ask the wheel about removing another one. 

I'm hoping for something good. Or "good".. or at least interesting!!

Come on Wheel.... show me what you've got!!

First wheel - Twist or No Twist... And the wheel says.... *spins*  TWIST!!!!

So we move to the second wheel... 

*spins* 

Well, at least YOU will love this one.  Well, some of you. 

It's an INTERSECTION!!!

The Wheel was apparently happy with how last week went, and wants to see more of it. 

For those of you who haven't been around when there is an Intersection it's pretty straight forward.  You find yourself a partner.  Feel free to use this space to do so.  You can handle that part anyway you like, as well as how you work together.

But you create two related pieces (one each), it's still your independent work after all. But the pieces should somehow relate to each other, How that works for you is of course up to you!  :) 

Results - Week 6

Aug. 14th, 2025 08:08 pm
clauderainsrm: (Default)
[personal profile] clauderainsrm posting in [community profile] therealljidol
 Up until I hit refresh, I was mentally planning for another tiebreaker round. 

However that will not be needed. A single vote changed that fate and gave us a different sad one. 

We are saying goodbye to an Idol legend [personal profile] roina_arwen whose stint as a Kil... oh wait, sorry, she wasn't actually a Killer.  Just wanted to see you react to that!  :D 

Seriously though - thank you for coming out and I hope you will stick around to see what the Wheel has in store! (Hopefully a chance for you to get back into the fray!) 


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