Here we go Substack in Australia requires me to give ID To view an article about investing… Ofc for my own “safety” This is not a law I voted for But I have to deal with it anyway image

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Def not thinking of living in Australia, as neat as that place is. In general, people like us might have to relocate in order to have physical or digital freedoms to exist without interference.
I reckon if enough people like the service, it will be forked into a FOS version with no login requirements. If not enough people like it, it will die a slow death.
with what fiatjab explained, that clients must run locally and that if someone runs it, not even the developer who created it should have control once one has it, this way these things could be avoided from an update forcing the pages to deliver your data?
Australia’s Online Safety Act 2021 was amended in late 2024 to introduce a minimum age regime for online platforms, now in force as of December 2025, requiring certain services (especially social media) to take reasonable steps to prevent under‑16s from accessing them. To comply, platforms must implement age assurance measures, which can include things like age checks or verification flows. Substack has chosen to apply age verification for Australian users in response to those requirements, even though it isn’t explicitly listed among the core “social media” platforms the law targets... Many analysts view Substack’s approach as an overly cautious interpretation of the law, or even pre‑emptive compliance, because Substack isn’t explicitly on the list of platforms covered by the age restriction.