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

citizens-initiative.europa.eu

211–220 of 313 posts

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

#211

I want the right to not be identified. I also want the right to SELF identify . I think the toxic culture of the internet has happened in part because anonymity leads to lack of accountability. I want to self identify and interact with other people who also self identify. The cost of running LLM botnets is going down. I cannot imagine how the next cycle of elections is going to be like on all countries. I understand…

Toxic culture was always there but it really took of with social media where users often have zero shame to self-identify. There are anonymous communities that are far more friendly than the common insta group. "My brain" is perfectly fine with anonymous users.

And yes, anonymity should be the default because otherwise the alternative is that you need to identify. If not, most users would stay anonymous because it is simply the smarter decision with the exception that you seek exposure.

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

#212
post #81

We can talk, talk, and governments will still move forward. Or we can build an alternative that shows it's possible to get age verification while maintaining privacy. There is a real way out of it -- the governments can have their cake and eat it too. I published several academic papers to prove it, and I'm open to building and deploying it. Would anyone want to work on this together: https://magarshak.com/papers.htm…

Personally I think we should build something that makes verification unfeasible instead of building something slightly less worse.

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

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what?

I truly believe unfettered access to endless scroll dopamine is bad for adults, but even more terrible for a developing mind. It reduces attention span, increases anxiety, etc. Pushing the onus on parents for healthy internet consumption is probably not effective because most families have both parents working jobs and can't be on top of their kids 24/7. Now... how to effectively address this problem without introduc…

> Now... how to effectively address this problem without introducing a dystopian surveillance state?

Forbid endless scrolling like the EU is doing? Or just ban short form video content altogether?

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

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd wager the amount on FB is orders of magnitude _more_ than on 4chan. 4chan's average severity is likely higher, though. They're different problems, but saying that online toxicity only exists on anonymous sites is naive at best.

> anonymity leads to lack of accountability They didn't say that, they said "anonymity leads to lack of accountability". Even the counter that authenticated sites have users engaging in toxic behavior doesn't contradict the original point.

The clear implication of the earlier statement in context is that lack of anonymity should be expected to reduce the practical aspects of the problem to a useful degree. I believe the general state of facebook stands as a stark counterexample.

That said, I do think it's a fruitful line of inquiry to wonder why that might be the case. Are there any known cases where anonymity alone is sufficient to tip the balance towards widespread toxic behavior? Related to that, if lack of anonymity frequently does not curtail toxicity then what might the important differences be versus real life interactions that can account for it?

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

#215
post #124

>The legislation should require anonymous or pseudonymous proof-of-age NO. It really shouldn't. I will not comply. Porn sites can require this shit, but not the rest of the internet. Social media, dating websites, that's up to the users. If kids are on there, that's on the parents. Do your job, be the parent. I'm not going to let lazy good for nothing parents ruin the internet for everyone else.

Yeah I agree, forcing large websites to respect client side parental control settings is better (let the OS/browser set a request header with the age bracket that the website uses)

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

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the toxic culture of the internet has happened in part because anonymity leads to lack of accountability. It is trivial to demonstrate that this is incorrect (despite sounding plausible). There's plenty of incredibly toxic behavior to be found all over facebook. Among other considerations it's worth noting that most of the usual social feedback mechanisms are missing from typical online interactions. > The…

> There's plenty of incredibly toxic behavior to be found all over facebook. But is it comparable to the amount of toxic behavior on 4chan?

Yes, it is far worse because it gets personal far more quickly with non-anonymous users. People don't feel exhausted by 4chan, it is mostly the comparison to others on "legit" platforms.

And to be frank, there is value in 4chan. Nobody would feel compelled to believe obvious bullshit some societies and cultures impose on its members. This shit needs a counterweight. That isn't 4chan of course, but any free platform.

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

#217
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time I had police knocking at my door, it was a lot more than two, and they were readying their battering ram when I opened, and then immediately swarmed me and told me to sit down, and then I just explained and they realized their warrant was for a different address and they left. It was scary in the moment, but I never had a gun pointed at me and I wasn't even touched, so overall it left me with a rather p…

> giving them more power doesn't look like a slippery slope straight to dystopia. Are you seriously saying that with a straight face while (apparently) living in Germany of all places? May I suggest picking up a history book or two?

Believe me, German history education is very thorough in making sure people know that the Nazis weren't some kind of slippery slope situation where people didn't know what they were planning to do. The Nazis were open in their idea that Germany could have won WWI if it hadn't been for those damn lefties and their revolution. They were open about their desire to crush those lefties. They were open about their hatred for Jews. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf about his ideology in prison after his failed 1923 coup. When people voted for him in the 1932 election, they weren't somehow unaware of these. They voted for him because they knew and because they agreed.

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

#218
post #170
post #105

There is a surprising amount of engineers who don’t understand what’s happening. So they deal with it as if it’s a funny thing… yeah if two police officers come knocking your door with hard data, you will just explain… and yeah, I mean kids, can bypass it… right? Wrong. This is not 1995. They can make very harsh laws and they can make it borderline impossible to bypass should some authority choose to do so. The dange…

The last time I had police knocking at my door, it was a lot more than two, and they were readying their battering ram when I opened, and then immediately swarmed me and told me to sit down, and then I just explained and they realized their warrant was for a different address and they left. It was scary in the moment, but I never had a gun pointed at me and I wasn't even touched, so overall it left me with a rather p…

I think I'm like you in the sense that I'm a law abiding citizen in what I consider a high trust society. That said, I'm not naive to the fact that "having nothing to hide hence nothing to fear" doesn't cut it: privacy eroding laws are a slippery slope eventually leading to finding yourself on the wrong side of what's deemed acceptable. That, and to the fact that law enforcement association with political extremism has only increased in recent years, as evidenced by the number of reports about bursting neo-nazi groups and such.

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

#220
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time I had police knocking at my door, it was a lot more than two, and they were readying their battering ram when I opened, and then immediately swarmed me and told me to sit down, and then I just explained and they realized their warrant was for a different address and they left. It was scary in the moment, but I never had a gun pointed at me and I wasn't even touched, so overall it left me with a rather p…

> giving them more power doesn't look like a slippery slope straight to dystopia. This only makes sense if you have no concept of "future", wherein different, less reasonable people can gain power. This should be especially obvious in Germany, where an adversarial relationship with the state can easily be had by merely criticizing it.

On the contrary, I don't think the current relative lack of arbitrary police brutality depends on the reasonableness of the people in power at all, only on the reasonableness of individual police officers. The police don't suddenly get softer when there's a left-wing government in power and tougher when there's a right-wing government.

That "merely criticizing" the state gets you into an adversarial relationship is, I think, also overblown. For example, insulting someone is a crime in Germany. This is usually not enforced on children's playgrounds, so many remain unaware of this until adulthood. Then they might insult someone who is aware of the law (e.g. a representative of the state) in public and get surprised by a lawsuit. Similarly, spray-painting slogans on someone's house without permission will get prosecuted as vandalism. But if you stick to publishing in ways that normal people publish pro-state opinions, you can publish your criticism in the same way and nobody will bat an eye. (Certainly, a large number of people are criticizing the state in exactly this way at any given time, without being worse off for it.)

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