Actionable Take - Episode 4
Week ending December 20, 2025
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Michael Ginsburg
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Due to the importance and urgency of one of the topics discussed in this episode of the Actionable Take, I have decided to make the show notes for it publicly available and they are found immediately below this box.
"Age Assurance" to search the web
Kicking in Australia on December 27
Let's start with some positive news on that front...as those are very rare:
Dan Frieth
You can download the full court judgement below:
Meanwhile in Australia:
Victoria Police have effectively conceded the social media ban isn’t working after ~200 teenagers, mostly aged between 14 to 17 were able to organise the storming of a Woolworths store and post footage of it online. pic.twitter.com/bkbRU6qEP6
— Australians vs. The Agenda (@ausvstheagenda) December 18, 2025
Everyone and their dog have heard about the "under 16 social media ban". It was discussed heavily (including by yours truly) but the much more ominous aspect has managed to slip under the radar...almost certainly by design!
Legislation versus "regulatory change"
The social media ban required legislation which was indeed passed by the Australian parliament a year ago in late November 2024.
This next thing did not require legislation and instead was implemented through changes in regulation!
It was mentioned very briefly at the time the changes in regulation were implemented in July this year but was never mentioned again since (until now) with the infamous "social media ban" getting all the attention instead.
national technology reporter Ange Lavoipierre
Bluesky
The excellent video below does a great job explaining how this "regulatory change" managed to slip under the radar of most Australians (myself included unfortunately):
This kicks in right after Christmas on December 27
Lisa M. Given
What will ACTUALLY happen once this kicks in?
If the aftermath of the social media ban coming into effect is anything to go by, it is hard to know how the implementation will look like.
What is known with certainty is that the major search engines are READY to go....and have been for some time:
For those doing a search on Google or Bing while logged in to their Google or Microsoft accounts respectively, they will be asked to verify their age.
If they refuse to do that (which you ABSOLUTELY SHOULD! DO NOT COMPLY!!), the search results will be "sanitised" with anything deemed by the algorithm inappropriate for "minors" (which will absolutely NOT be just porn!) hidden from the results.
Those searching without logging in to their Google account (which is effectively impossible to do if you are on an android device that is not de-googled), they will be treated as minors by default and the search results will be "sanitised" accordingly.
While it is CERTAIN that both Google and Microsoft Bing will comply with this "regulatory change", private search engines like Brave Search or DuckDuckGo do not have user accounts and therefore their ability to comply with this new dictate is effectively non-existent.
Here is what the Founder & CEO of Brave Brendan Eich said to me in response to a direct question I asked him on this matter:
No user account, so does not apply to Brave Search.
— BrendanEich (@BrendanEich) December 21, 2025
I then asked him what happens if the Australian government demand they "sanitise" their search results similar to what Google and Bing will do for "logged out" users:
That's what I thought. Thanks for confirming. Let's assume for the sake of argument you are designated and told the comply. Will you exit Australia and block Australian IPs from using your search over this?
— Actionable Truth Media (@actionabletruth) December 21, 2025
To which he replied:
With no account? I can't say without taking advice of counsel which is confidential, so not necessarily. But if they violate their own law as written and try to coerce us even though no accounts, at the limit we'd leave. Have to stick to principles, right?
— BrendanEich (@BrendanEich) December 21, 2025
Make of the above what you will.
I also don't know what stance a Russian search engine like Yandex will take but I doubt they will care much about what the Australian government (or any western government) demand they do. Saying that, Yandex and the Chinese Baidu are far from being "free speech" search engines and their results are obviously heavily censored ("sanitised") already and have been for some time.
My advice:
Make Brave Search your first option for search with DuckDuckGo as a backup.
I personally haven't used Google to search anything for close to two years now and am not missing it the slightest.
The ULTIMATE endgame for all of this
All this "age verification" nonsense is just the warm up act and IS designed to fail...by design!
Here is what happens next:
Here is another 'variant' on the exact same "problem, reaction, solution" presented by yours truly:
What I'm saying in the clip above is not me making some hyperbole. The enemy has TOLD US this to our faces (at least in Australia):
And in the future, other place too...
The Actionable Takes from this
First: DO NOT COMPLY! Second: Time to use the Internet like it's the 1990s again.
EVERYTHING starts with NON-COMPLIANCE first and foremost!
Doing anything else before committing FIRST to not comply no matter the consequences is kinda like putting your clothes on without wearing underwear first or putting on running shoes without wearing any socks....or going into the battlefield wearing nothing but board shorts!
You must also understand that this is not the "vaccine". Digital ID is the enemy's FINAL blow. It is the KO of this long 'boxing match' between us and them.
Once they manage to ram this one through, THEY WIN. Period!
No undo button. No second tries. The "FINAL enslavement" is in place....FOREVER!
We Decentralise...or the Internet DIES!
The web as we know it is on life support and WILL DIE unless we act NOW!
While the Internet was never designed to be secure, it was designed to be a highly resilient network that could literally withstand a nuclear strike.
The primary reason why the Internet was resilient is because it was DECENTRALISED! We need to get back to that.
So how does decentralisation of the Internet looks like in late 2025?
As I said on the livestream: PROTOCOLS instead of Platforms!
The latest very very STARK example of how bad things can get if you allow Platforms to dominate is obviously Substack:
Agent131711
We must all stop being LAZY by expecting that we can go to one place on the Internet and have all of our needs in terms of information, entertainment or communication met.
Doing so goes very much AGAINST the most basic tenets around which the Internet was designed.
The best way to return to the web the way it was meant to be QUICKLY (which is super important and time is of the essence) is through...
The Fediverse/Social Web
Fediverse stands for "Federated Universe" and the social web is another name for it...or at least to the suite of applications running one specific Fediverse protocol.
Let's get over the basics first:
The biggest application on the Fediverse at the moment is the decentralised social media application Mastodon:
Here is the entity behind it:
The way it works is that you choose a Mastodon server (instance), open an account there and off you go:
Amanda Silberling
The biggest Mastodon instance by a wide margin is Mastodon.social which has 270k monthly active users (MAU), with virtually all other servers having 10k or less with the exception of pixelfed.social that has 60K MAUs.
There have been concerns raised that Mastodon.Social has become too big and that goes against the decentralisation concept that underpins ActivityPub but apparently there are "plans to address it". However, no practical details of how exactly this will be done have been released yet.
Bonfire is another social media application for the Fediverse I am keeping my eyes on. While Mastodon is more like a Twitter alternative, this one is positioning itself to be a decentralised alternative for Discord or Telegram which focus on creating online communities through groups/channels.
The Fediverse runs on a protocol called ActivityPub
The one thing that is CRUCIAL for you to understand even if you don't know or care about technology is that no one owns ActivityPub.
This is because ActivityPub is a PROTOCOL rather than a platform. It's the same as HTTP/S, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, RTMP and many other strange acronyms.
These are all PROTCOLS which in simple terms means they are a set of pre-agreed standards that applications agree to follow.
This is exactly the same as how you can receive email from people who are using an email service than is different to yours and you can also send email to any such people regardless of which email service you use.
This is because there is a set of email PROTOCOLS that all the email services agree to use in order to be able to interact with each other in what is referred to in 'geek speak' as "interoperability".
ActivityPub is a PROTOCOL (i.e. set of standards) that all applications running on the Fediverse/Social Web have agreed to adopt.
Here are some of the ways you can get on the Fediverse:
While you can obviously sign-up for an account one of the many Mastodon (or Pixelfed) servers (instances in 'geek speak') out there, unless you control that particular server, it is yet another platform from your perspective because someone else owns/operates it and you can get kicked out and lose your account.
There are however some fairly simple ways where you can have your own Fediverse-enabled server that YOU control and thus can't get kicked out of.
WordPress
The most widely used CMS (Content Management System) on the Internet has joined the Fediverse through an ActivityPub plugin you can install:
김지운
Development has been progressing well and here is the latest update:
Matthias Pfefferle
And here is how it looks when enabled:
Another very prominent example of how you can run your own ActivityPub-enabled Fediverse server (instance) is the software powering this very website.
Ghost
Ghost is also a CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress but has a more modern architecture that does not rely on plugins. This also makes it much more secure than WordPress.
That's all I will say as anything beyond this will get 'geeky' and your eyes will probably start glazing over.
I will just say that Ghost has taken a slightly different approach to implementing ActivityPub which focuses on ease-of-use which I think most non-geeks will appreciate.
Here is an interview with the creator of Ghost in which he explains the approach Ghost has taken in terms of integrating ActivityPub:
Host videos through PeerTube
In very simple terms, PeerTube is software which allows you to create your own YouTube/Rumble/Odysee and by that I mean not a channel but an actual full fledged video platform that you can self-host and thus fully control.
It also has full (and relatively mature) integration with the ActivityPub protocol (read: set of standards) and thus the Fediverse/Social web.
PeerTube have also recently updated their mobile app with a new creator mode. This allows people to manage their PeerTube channel, as well as upload and edit new videos directly from their smartphones:
Framasoft
Framasoft, which is the organisation behind PeerTube, promises even more features for the app including background play for videos, support for livestreaming and a dedicated mobile app for tablets.
Unfortunately (but unexpectedly), both Apple & Google are not very accommodating for apps that allow for video streaming from a decentralised network and as a result, the number of servers that can be accessed through the mobile app is limited. They should probably get their app on the F-Droid app store as well as other alternative app repositories for Android.
I'm not going to get into much more detail beyond that except to say that if you would like to explore further the idea of running your own self-hosted PeerTube server (and are at least somewhat technically minded), the resources below should be enough to get you started:
Chocobozzz
Use ActivityPub through your smartphone
This is quite ground-breaking from a technological perspective and if this project proves successful, it will be as easy for people to use ActivityPub as another decentralisation protocol called NOSTR (discussed below).
As explained here:
The goal of Holos is to run an ActivityPub server on your phone. Because mobile devices are traditionally not particularly suitable for this (changing IP address, not always online), Holos adds a Relay service that mitigates these issues.
Holos also changes some long-standing dynamics in the fediverse: in this project, your data lives on your phone, which does mean owning and control over your data is more tangible than when you are dependent on your local friendly fediverse server admin.
At the same time, it creates a new form of dependency, where the Relay operator manages your identity. This new type of implementing ActivityPub also introduces new unknowns regarding how account and data portability are handled. Still, experimentation is cool to see, and as mobile phones are the primary and often sole device for the majority of the population, it’s good to see fediverse projects that are even more directly mobile-first.
If you are already on Mastodon, PixelFed, PeerTube or any other service that integrates the ActivityPub protocol...or have a Ghost website or a WordPress website with the ActivityPub plugin installed, you can follow my handle:
@michael@actionabletruth.media
(notice there is a second @ in Fediverse handles which differentiates it from email addresses)
Nostr - another protocol for decentralised social media
Nostr is another PROTOCOL (i.e. set of standards) just like ActivityPub is but the focus here is on having a portable identity.
Your Nostr 'profile' (for lack of a better term) is comprised of a pair of keys:
- Public key which is like your profile handle; and
- Private key which is like your password (and therefore you must keep secret).
You can use this key pair to operate your NOSTR identity through any service which supports that.
For example, this is my public key (equivalent to profile handle) for Nostr:
npub165muf3u2dqtqt7v38dpfca99ny2u0zs4s04sk3vs27qlu8v796vsz8fu4s
If you go to this link, you will find a list of some of the more widely used Nostr services and you can sign-up for a Nostr identity through, or use your existing identity with. I personally use Primal for now.
If this all went completely over your head and you are more of a visual learner, this two videos are pretty good:
A brand new kind of Internet which runs on totally different protocols
This is a very ambitious project which aims to rebuild the internet from scratch and make it much more resilient and censorship-proof than what it was originally designed. It can even run through a mesh network.
Corbett
Not sure how this one will play out but big Kudos for the vision and the ambitious attempt to implement it...which is why I decided to also add them to this round-up of potential means to decentralise the web.
Mass shooting at Bondi Beach
The ONLY question that matters remains the same: Cui Bono?
