Is a 10% reduction that bad?
The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy
71–80 of 655 posts
Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ...you should be forced to identify yourself for posting... The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the right to anonymous speech is inherent in the first amendment [1] [2]. See also The Federalist Papers or Common Sense, without which the US might not exist at all. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/362/60 [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-986.ZO.html
That’s pre the ability for foreign actors to engage in our public square en masse. I think technology has changed the situation. Free speech absolutism that ends up in creating an environment where real speech is drowned out by lies is not valuable to me. It’s like the paradox of tolerance.
The first amendment doesn't have a clause that exempts Americans from anonymous speech if it's possible a foreigner could inadvertently take advantage of the freedom too.
You may as well advocate for no one to be allowed to drive cars because of the possibility of someone getting into a car accident.
Or (in case you're a fan of the second amendment) - advocate for guns not being allowed to be sold to law-abiding citizens because of the possibility of the gun later working its way into the hands of someone who would use it for a mass shooting.
Freedoms exist with the understanding that both positive and negative consequences can result from them. The argument is that the good vastly out-weighs the bad and are worth preserving.
Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy
#73No, it won’t. The internet is just getting smaller from my perspective because there’s no way I’m handing over my identification and allowing every connection made to a server to be tracked back to me.
It’s simply not on the cards, and I live a frugal enough life in a high paying industry that I can retire in a few years. If I was willing to bank on inheritance then I could retire now.
I feel for the people that are forced to engage though. But too many of them simply don’t care about privacy, which is why we’re here.
Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy
#74I appreciate the wealth of technical solutions that don't violate privacy, but isn't this overlooking an important point: that children don't need to be connected to the Internet at all times from such an early age? Many internet and cell phone providers seem to take it for granted that children must be online, which is already a net loss for their privacy as they mature.
Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, I'm meant me, using my 18+ ID to generate a bunch of tokens that can't be linked back to me, and then giving it to random < 18 year olds for the lulz.
There are multiple approaches. One, which the Europeans use, hardware-locks the token. Each age attestation is unlinkable, but the cryptographic credentials you need to make the attestation aren't portable. Of course, this model requires a big statist apparatus that does implementation certification, but it does achieve the narrow goal of unlinkable, privacy-preserving age attestation that doesn't instantly decay to…
> as anonymous digital currency and use cryptographic penalties like slashing
Or make it so that tokens cannot be tested except by spending/burning them, which would significantly reduce (but not eliminate) a black market because it would be hard for any buyers to trust any sellers.
The best outcome here is going to rest on getting people to agree that "good enough" is the best outcome. We want a system that gets the broad social results (e.g. less brain-rot in the kids) without being so impossibly strict and overbuilt that it leads to an even-worse problem (e.g. authoritarian hellhole tools.)
Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even on Hacker News the consensus is mostly in favor of anything from age restriction to making all social media illegal. That doesn't sound right. Put up a poll. I'd put money on 90%+ choosing some flavor privacy/anonymity on the internet.
> I'd put money on 90%+ choosing some flavor privacy/anonymity on the internet. I can only say what I've observed from numerous threads - people's advocacy for privacy on the internet here does not extend so social media. But OK this could be fun let's put my keyboard where my mouth is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680434
Talk to people in person and you’ll get a different view (at least among those under 50), especially if you ask about the negatives.
Social media is full of astroturfing.
Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
As you say, it's doubtful governments want it to be private. So we should expect them to not use these kind of elegant solutions, and the public is generally not sophisticated enough to distinguish between the options already.
In what direction do the incentives point?
There's two strong incentives - deanonymization for law enforcement is pretty useful so that's one. You want to make it easier to subpoena information about posters for various reasons, access to stores on different dates etc. Lots of reasons for that.
And you want to satisfy voters who are worried about children online or have heard scary things about anonymous criminals. You want to be seen to do something about those.
A distant third is that you want the system to be cheap and built up fast and relatively easy so voters don't complain about it.
All together this leads you to something like "any time a site needs to verify your age (based on this broad list of requirements) put in your government ID number / picture". The infrastructure already exists for that, banks need it, social media needs it, and the current president has agitated for it a few times now. If you're really aiming high you set up some digital ID attached to it that's easier for the users.
Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy
#78I can’t think of a better solution to the issue of children being so aggressively harmed by the internet. That doesn’t remove any of the problems associated with this.
Parents taking responsibility for their kids. I grew up in a neighborhood full of drug dealers. Street sellers, not the classy Walter White kind. Ironically being on a computer all day kept me out of trouble. But with these laws in place I guess you might as well start doing stupid ish in real life.
The thing is, those dealers can end up in jail for selling drugs.
More to the point, if a kid walked into a convenience store and the clerk sold them a pack of cigarettes, the clerk wouldn't get off the hook by claiming, "well, the parents are responsible for their kids." I'm also not sure how one would justify holding parents legally liable for crimes they played no role in committing.
I'm not saying that I agree with these laws. They appear to be taking things too far. But that has more to do with there being no clear way to define sites that are only of interest to adults (no gatekeeping needed) and sites that should be restricted to adults.
Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, I'm meant me, using my 18+ ID to generate a bunch of tokens that can't be linked back to me, and then giving it to random < 18 year olds for the lulz.
The verification service would tie the token to the IP address/geolocation. It would also throttle the number of identifications, or expire old ones. Yes, that can eventually be worked around, but not really that different than doing the verification today on someone else's device.
>The verification service would tie the token to the IP address/geolocation
"Use this exact tor/vpn server"
>It would also throttle the number of identifications
So I can only wank off 5 times a day, or grant access to porn sites for 5 kids?
Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Parents taking responsibility for their kids. I grew up in a neighborhood full of drug dealers. Street sellers, not the classy Walter White kind. Ironically being on a computer all day kept me out of trouble. But with these laws in place I guess you might as well start doing stupid ish in real life.
So what happens when parents don't? Too bad?
What happens when parents don’t lock the liquor cabinet? When they smoke in front of their kids? When they leave porn laying on the table?
Too bad!