Stop Killing the Internet: No Digital ID and No Age Verification

I'm guessing you don't have kids.

This is a good point. I wrote a self-deprecating post to Reddit one time that got flagged by AI or someone who isn't a native English speaker as a "threat of violence." This is almost word for word the exchange that triggered it:

Me: [some in-depth discussion of electrical wiring in a house]

Other person: Wow, thank you so much! I would hire you to fix my wiring!

Me: haha oh I'd probably find some other way to burn your house down

The final line was meant to be a humble way of dismissing the compliment by playing down my expertise. But someone with the power to ban accounts parsed this as "I am going to commit arson."

And so I lost the ability to DM any of my friends. My entire reputation was gone. This was a nearly 20yo Reddit account.

And I can't make a new account and tell people "this used to be me" because then Reddit bans your new account because it's against the rules to create a new account if you've been banned.

Yes, I've created other accounts since then. But I can't ever link them to my old one because Reddit will just ban the new ones. (I tried this, and that's exactly what happened.)

I can't even participate on the same subreddits because there's some algo that recognizes if two accounts have similar subscription habits and does some kind of analysis to guess at if it's a person evading a ban.

I was shocked at first (I was in the mid of organizing an event using Reddit in part for communications, and had to rely on an IRL friend who was helping rn it to speak for me), and then angry, and then just sad.

It's one reason I've begun using one moniker everywhere, and I own that domain name as well. It's the closest I can get to fully owning my handle.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49080929

There is discussion about LLMs, models, CSAM, undressing people with AI, and posting those images to places.

No handy wavy stuff, makes this problem go away due to filtering at creation. That's because, open models are a thing. So you either ban all open models, or maybe make it a crime to publish uncensored models, or you punish what individuals do on the internet.

Slander and libel and defamation are a thing, and have been a thing forever, millennia. Suddenly, on the open and free internet, for barely an eyeblink, anyone could say anything with zero liability and responsibility.

Then, 2010s came. Then, doxing of people we didn't like, or didn't agree with, became OK. So suddenly, it was OK to "out" a person, but not to just force everyone to be de-anonymoized. In other words, unpopular opinions? Yeah, that's OK to remove the cloak.

And with AI, everyone and their dog will be able to render images of anyone they want naked. CSAM. Political lies, made up videos, slander, libel, literal wors in people's mouths, on and on.

What's my point?

Well, just as 2000 brought a new world to people, 2025 is doing the same.

This is only going to get worse. And I fully agree, the dangers for "control" are going to exist. But the dangers of people posting all of this stuff, has hit the point where a lot of people are uncomfortable with it. And if you think Grok creating CSAM is bad, then you must think anyone creating CSAM is bad. Or anything. So how to you prevent the harm?

Well really, you either heavily restrict software. Open LLMs, or?

You make people posting this stuff liable.

The world is at a fork. Everything will change. Because banning software requires immense control over hosting software, but so does deanonymizing the internet. And really, this is inline with how the political and societal landscape changes.

It's only been 20 years since a lot of people were on the Internet, and only 10 years since I'd label it 'mainstream'. As in, even grandma uses it. And so, now the laws are coming, as legislation and law and change takes time for politicians, and political bodies.

We're here. Right now. This is the moment.

So I 100% guarantee that absolutely nothing will stop the path to liability for slander, libel, and more that is coming. Nothing. Whatever it takes, you can be sure it will happen.

So how will it happen?

Well, by knowing who to sue.

Like it or not, that's the truth. And no, I don't like it myself.

'Something impossible for kids to bypass' is not the goal. It's akin to evaluating a flu vaccine on the standard of zero breakthrough cases. Such a standard has no relevance on the efficacy of the vaccine.

Likewise for underage internet access. Proponents would be happily satisfied with 90% compliance. They really don't care that coverage isn't complete or circumvention is complete. Once you realize that, you can start constructing counterarguments that dismantle the claim that digital IDs would solve the problems they're supposed to.