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The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

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Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#131

Post by iamnothere »

doginasuit wrote: post #99
iamnothere wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with you. Plans to eliminate anonymity have been discussed for years in elite circles, at Davos and similar events, and it’s most often framed in the context of social control (eliminating dissent or foreign influence). Larry Ellison on surveillance: “Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.” This is not new and it’s not about kid…

As far as the matter of ulterior motives, we're not in disagreement. Assuming that's true, it is important to address the real problem they are hijacking to realize their goals. Dismissing it as a made up problem just means you lose credibility with anyone who is paying attention.

It will always be possible to find a cause du jour to justify violating the rights of citizens, because crime happens and reality is messy. The real problem is that the mass media is complicit in this agenda, so they amplify the excuse until bad laws are passed (laws which seldom solve the problem).

While I do think we should make efforts to reduce crime and create better spaces for kids, laws like this aren’t the answer.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#132

Post by Bender »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #120
Bender wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course that is not parental controls. That's 3rd party controls. Parental controls means you create a child account for children and when a site is detected as being adult ideally using RTA headers [1] then a password prompt asks for the parents approval. That is parental controls. [1] - https://nochan.net/b/Internet-Crap/20230829-Think-Of-The-Chi...

Indeed, that's a reasonable approach. Just to clarify that we're agreeing, the comment I was replying to was strongly defending California and Illinois' laws that require the OS record an age field for the primary user of the device, which while currently self-declared is at least an obvious path for future, more invasive legislation.

The problem with a self declared approach is that puts a signalling mechanism in place. Once in place the laws can easily scope creep year over year to add more information or require putting in ID information or some future nation-wide digital ID and Trump coin digital wallet which could easily be the plan all along. All they need is the API that will interface with websites using some agreed upon standard and then it can easily be extended line by line. Give them an inch, they will take a mile.

With proper parental controls there is no signalling.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#134

Post by josh_p »

Gigachad wrote: post #125
josh_p wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the other commenter who replied to you. I don’t think this comes from actual parents. And the article suggests this latest push is from right-leaning groups whose goals are surveillance and censorship. That said, I’m a father of 3. I’m a millennial and tech worker. I have the digital literacy to teach my kids about the internet and its horrors in a safe way. Not every parent does, so passing this off as…

We know what good UX is already from history. Movies for example have an age rating system that clearly lists the ages the movie is suitable for. If you look underage, you get asked to provide ID. Parents do not have the time or energy to configure modern parental controls which work more like tuning firewall rules. The other part of the problem is you need collective action, if you ban your child from Facebook, they…

That was my point though.. showing ID at the door doesn’t translate well to the Social Media landscape.

If we actually cared about supporting children and parents as a country, parental controls and access, and making sure that systems were actually safe and protected privacy, would NOT be an afterthought.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#135

Post by anigbrowl »

autoexec wrote: post #103
anigbrowl wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully appreciate that you care more about anonymity on principle, but it seems very naive to assume that principles are necessarily going to win out over the demands of aggrieved reactionary parents. Cranky parents are very consistent voters and providers of tax revenue in most polities and politicians want them to be reasonably happy and quiescent for the sake of stability. It seems to me you are wildly underestim…

Are aggrieved reactionary parents demanding that they should have to scan their face to look at websites? It seems to me like they just want social media companies to be forced to change their harmful and predatory practices and that instead of properly regulating the bad behavior of social media companies the government has decided to use this issue as a means to give themselves more surveillance and control. We don…

Certainly I think they'd be happy if social media companies changed their behavior, but the problem is that they and the politicians don't really know how to make them do that. So the next best thing they can think of is a digital version of 'you can't come in here if you're under 18' similar to nightclubs, betting shops etc.

We just need parents to reject the idea that they have to give up their identity and the identity of their children

OK, but (as I have asked many times before) what is your alternative, beter proposal? People intuitively understand the idea of checking ID to prevent sales of alcohol to minors, keep teens out of adult spaces and so on, because virtually every adult remembers being a teenager and not being allowed to do certain things due to not being old enough. That makes checking identity an easy sell to people.

What is your better idea that is similarly easy to sell? Because if you don't have one,people will fall back on the mediocre idea of ID checks. I feel like anyone working in the tech field should understand that the best technological solution does not always win out.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#136

Post by switchbak »

walrus01 wrote: post #70
nzeid wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that there's no security in a system that abusively collects your data. That goes for children as well.

Or guarantee that even if you provide such data to a nice, friendly, democratically run and ethically managed administration, that some future regime change to a completely different group of people won't result in catastrophic misuse.

This is the issue I have with most of my well meaning but somewhat politically uninformed friends. The idea of “wouldn’t it be good if …” (idealized scenario), is never followed up with a “yes, but …” (realistic evaluation of how politics actually works).

Yes it might actually work out ok if a mythical benevolent dictator could manage things with infinite precision and unlimited compassion. I would imagine that has never happened at any reasonable scale.

The Conservative folks seem to phrase this as a desire to “keep government small” - which always seemed a little clunky given the stakes and track record of these governments.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#137

Post by butterlesstoast »

newspaper1 wrote: post #110
kraken_cult wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is flagrantly untrue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...

[flagged]

This is clearly an AI bot. Watch it automatically respond to my comment.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#138

Post by samsin »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #3

> These NGOs have converged upon a unified strategy: use the rhetoric of ‘child safety’ to advocate for digital ID laws that would prevent adults from using the internet anonymously. Of course. Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you into giving up your freedom for security. Whatever argument they make should be simply ignored and dismissed.

There's an ongoing debate in Australia to ban gambling advertisements. One of the arguments that is supportive of a ban says that children shouldn't be exposed to gambling advertisements during sports broadcasts, as they should be family friendly.

Should that argument be ignored too?

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#140

Post by switchbak »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #3

> These NGOs have converged upon a unified strategy: use the rhetoric of ‘child safety’ to advocate for digital ID laws that would prevent adults from using the internet anonymously. Of course. Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you into giving up your freedom for security. Whatever argument they make should be simply ignored and dismissed.

“Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you”

Any argument with such blatant oversimplifications is almost certainly lacking in nuance and can be ignored and dismissed.

I get what you’re pointing at: politicians regularly abuse these arguments, but that doesn’t mean it’s 100% of all arguments involving children.

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