311–320 of 1001 posts
Only 26 million is way way lower than I expected, especially given how much these companies make in profit
Scott Alexander had a few posts about that ("why is there so little money in politics?"): https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/tech-pacs-are-closing-in-on...
Age verification is merely the background task to set up infrastructure for OS to provide many many other signals about who's using the device. Age signals from the OS? Need to provide a channel of information available to applications. Applications already talk to servers with unchecked commonality. Biometric data? Today it unlocks your private key. Tomorrow it's used to verify you are the same person that was used…
Nobody stops the government from sending goons to your door right now for a snarky comment. Some govts in fact do it today. It is also cheaper than ai rocket and more precise too
Anyone reading this purely as a child safety or campaign finance story might miss the broader architectural war happening here. If you zoom out a little, this is the inevitable, scorched-earth retaliation for Apple's ATT rollout from a few years back. Apple cost Meta billions by cutting off their data pipeline at the OS level, justifying it with a unilateral privacy moral high ground. Now, Meta is returning the favor…
if "it" is the middle finger, for sure. "terrifying" is a great choice of word for it.
Age verification is merely the background task to set up infrastructure for OS to provide many many other signals about who's using the device. Age signals from the OS? Need to provide a channel of information available to applications. Applications already talk to servers with unchecked commonality. Biometric data? Today it unlocks your private key. Tomorrow it's used to verify you are the same person that was used…
Nobody stops the government from sending goons to your door right now for a snarky comment. Some govts in fact do it today. It is also cheaper than ai rocket and more precise too
> Nobody stops the government from sending goons to your door right now for a snarky comment.
This is just dumb. They literally don't know who wrote it, and have to assign somebody to track you down. The fact that they're putting infrastructure on your computer and on the network to make this one click away for them matters.
Age verification is merely the background task to set up infrastructure for OS to provide many many other signals about who's using the device. Age signals from the OS? Need to provide a channel of information available to applications. Applications already talk to servers with unchecked commonality. Biometric data? Today it unlocks your private key. Tomorrow it's used to verify you are the same person that was used…
Nobody stops the government from sending goons to your door right now for a snarky comment. Some govts in fact do it today. It is also cheaper than ai rocket and more precise too
Age verification is merely the background task to set up infrastructure for OS to provide many many other signals about who's using the device. Age signals from the OS? Need to provide a channel of information available to applications. Applications already talk to servers with unchecked commonality. Biometric data? Today it unlocks your private key. Tomorrow it's used to verify you are the same person that was used…
I've wondered if FaceID and the Android counterpart are actively creating an extraordinary labeled dataset for facial expressions at the point of sale.
With users trained to scan their face before every transaction, tech companies could correlate transactions to facial expressions, facial expressions to emotions, and emotions to device content. I can imagine algorithms that subtly curate the user experience, selectively showing notifications, content, advertising to coax users towards "retail therapy".
Anyone reading this purely as a child safety or campaign finance story might miss the broader architectural war happening here. If you zoom out a little, this is the inevitable, scorched-earth retaliation for Apple's ATT rollout from a few years back. Apple cost Meta billions by cutting off their data pipeline at the OS level, justifying it with a unilateral privacy moral high ground. Now, Meta is returning the favor…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would a world with your preferred age verification system look like?
If age verification has to exist at all, it could look something like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46447282 And responses to some common criticisms of the idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46459959 I also forgot to mention in my original post that the token issuer is not a monopoly. Any company that wants to participate can do so, just like there are many brands of tobacco and alcohol. Require…
Only 26 million is way way lower than I expected, especially given how much these companies make in profit
The biggest shocker to me has been just how "cheap" a lot of people are to buy off. Mandelson is complaining about air miles FFS. So much of this is a few thousand here, some fancy tickets there, a jet ride elsewhere, etc. In my mind it was always much, much bigger sums that people were selling their countries & souls out for, sadly, it turns out a lot of people, even in really high positions, are shockingly cheap.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_of_Peter_Mandelso...