Why should it affect LW or any other (non-Texan) instance? Any rogue country with populists at the head can implement any arbitrary legislation. That does not affect Lemmy instances hosted in countries with reasonable governments. If Texas wants to enforce their rules (or punish for non-compliance), it is on them to approach instance admins or block the site in their corner of the global internet.

Lemmy isn’t social media. Ignoring that though, the law actually says:

According to the Texas Office of the Attorney General, this new law will primarily “apply to digital services that provide an online platform for social interaction between users that: (1) allow users to create a public or semi-public profile to use the service, and (2) allow users to create or post content that can be viewed by other users of the service. This includes digital services such as message boards, chat rooms, video channels, or a main feed that presents users content created and posted by other users.”

Which literally applies to every single site on the entire planet that has a comment section. This law is incredibly unenforceable.

As someone neither living nor hosting my instance in Texas I'll basically ignore it, and if it came to it I'd block the entirety of Texas if they somehow convince courts to enforce this outside of Texas.

The answer? Block Texas

Not joking. If suddenly hundreds or thousands of sites would become unavailable. It wouldn't last a week

This has "DMCA notice to a Russian music site" vibes. Basically, we do nothing. They have absolutely zero authority outside of Texas. If the instance is inside Texas's borders, that's a different story, but if the instance is located outside, it has no obligation to follow Texas's law. They can't do anything. They can't block Lemmy, because it's federated. They can't sue Lemmy, because it's federated. They have zero recourse, except for slam their feet on the ground and cry like a petulant child.

They can SCOPE deez nuts.

So much freedom that it hurts.

If you don't operate in Texas, do you have you comply? Is the easy fix is don't have your servers be in Texas?

I'm tired of Texas trying to expand their sphere of influence beyond their borders with shitty laws and shitty judges.

It’s called the “Fuck Texas” response to such a garbage law. And good luck enforcing it especially with federated sites.

Set up a redirect for all Texas IP addresses. Point to Fuck Texas.

lol it doesn’t

Texass is gonna have to play whack-a-mole and do it the hard way. And I’m pretty sure the more technically inclined members of the fediverse are going to have loads of fun fucking with whatever IT measures they try to mitigate this with, because they’re certainly not going to be drawing the best and brightest minds.

Put another way: weaponized non-neurotypicals are gonna have some fun fucking with a state government that doesnt like them, because the feeling is very much mutual.

Texas: "I'm gonna let you finish but I'm just going to keep regressing right now."

I'm fine with Texas disappearing from the internet. Literally every site with a comment section now has to comply or just block Texas. One of those seems more feasible.

Enjoying freedumb in Texas, I bet. One of the least-free states in the country.

Comply?

"Is there some way it just doesn't need to" = "Is there some scenario in which Texas laws don't apply worldwide?"

Yes. There is.

I expect the usage of VPNs in Texas to skyrocket exponentially in the next couple of months.

welp no more lemmy for texas i guess, lmao

If I ran an instance and if I knew how to do it, I'd just prevent it from working in Texas like all the porn sites are doing.