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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

#141

Post by autoexec »

joenot443 wrote: post #38
BeaverGoose wrote: post #8

I'm always surprised how defensive people get in here about privacy when so many corporations have vastly more information about you than the government does.

The government has a monopoly on violence and companies do not.

That's not really true though is it. The Sackler family caused over 500,000 deaths. Nestlé has killed millions of babies. DuPont and 3M poisoned every living creature on Earth. Nobody spent even one day in prison for any of it.

Corporations all over the world routinely and knowingly poison, injure, or outright murder their employees and their customers. They spend massive amounts of money preventing the public from knowing about the harms they are causing. Even in the most egregious cases where there is well documented proof of what they've done the heads of these companies still get away with it. They profit from it. They're just happily living their lives in their mansions and on their yachts while graves are dug and families are torn apart.

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

#142

Post by onetimeusename »

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 into giving up your freedom

These are NGOs not parents. And "child safety" is often a euphemism. The point is it's hard to argue against child safety. For example, if opaque NGOs demand deanonymization to stop CSAM, I am assuming most people would not want to seem like they are in favor of CSAM. So you need an organized effort to argue in favor of privacy and even then anyone who does it can easily be smeared as a CSAM user. So child safety can backdoor something else.

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

#143

Post by ColdStream »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #34

Like it or not, there is a large constituency who wants to “protect the children”. By demonizing them and failing to engage with the worries over social media and pornography We have brought it on ourselves. Is it to be wondered at that many people are angry when tech companies have polluted the commons with their effluvium?

This is the flow back from the idea of 'information wants to be free'.

In letting things flow to easily the opposition is to have heavy lock down on information. A lot of the time, the opposite of one bad idea is another bad idea.

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

#144

Post by matchbok3 »

walrus01 wrote: post #41
matchbok3 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 2026, the conspiracy theory that business people wanted RTO for office space value has been debunked 100 times. Such a silly, nonsense idea.

You think that the size of investment firms that own something like, a good sized chunk of midtown Manhattan class A and B commercial real estate aren't capable of deploying social and tradtional-media influence tools to push an agenda to repopulate their office space? That would be a very inaccurate assessment of how large and motivated they are.

If you are willing to believe a nonsense conspiracy like that then there is no way we could have a productive conversation.

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

#145

Post by andrew_lettuce »

samsin wrote: post #138
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?

Kids can't gamble so yes we should enforce laws and ignore that one too. We can then debate if sports gambling itself should be legal or advertised at all.

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

#146

Post by SubmarineClub »

josh_p wrote: post #113
drivebyhooting wrote: post #34

Like it or not, there is a large constituency who wants to “protect the children”. By demonizing them and failing to engage with the worries over social media and pornography We have brought it on ourselves. Is it to be wondered at that many people are angry when tech companies have polluted the commons with their effluvium?

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…

> I don’t think this comes from actual parents.

Why would you think that? Most of my friends are parents now and all of them are quite concerned about the effect of social media, phones, and technology more broadly.

Basically all of them are planning to delay exposing their kids to phones and screens for as long as possible.

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

#147

Post by andrew_lettuce »

switchbak wrote: post #140
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.

If they use blatant, binary positions and you try to be subtle and nuanced you've already lost.

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

#148

Post by josh_p »

energy123 wrote: post #126
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…

> I don’t think this comes from actual parents. The polling I have seen from Germany and Australia of a social media ban for children was quite in favor of it. Sentiment here on HN and on Reddit was the polar opposite. We are in a bubble.

Okay, that's probably true..

I'm not trying to call everyone else voting for these things dumb, but does the average person who doesn't think about this stuff for a living actually know what they're voting for?

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

#149

Post by onetimeusename »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #34

Like it or not, there is a large constituency who wants to “protect the children”. By demonizing them and failing to engage with the worries over social media and pornography We have brought it on ourselves. Is it to be wondered at that many people are angry when tech companies have polluted the commons with their effluvium?

Perhaps but we have a problem globally where NGOs can mask nasty politics inside of faux charity.

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

#150

Post by matchbok3 »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #77
matchbok3 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 2026, the conspiracy theory that business people wanted RTO for office space value has been debunked 100 times. Such a silly, nonsense idea.

Didn't mean to imply that was the only reason, so I've added another reason to my comment. I haven't come across much of the debunking of the commercial property issue. I would say it's undeniably factor, but we can argue about the scale. A total of $800 billion—in real terms—of value is at stake by 2030, and, on average, the total value of office space is expected to decline by 26 percent from 2019 to 2030. https://…

You think XYZ Company is going to listen to some consultant telling them in a press release that they should go back into the office because some REIT needs more money in it? Why would the CEO of a tech company care at all what the value of their leased office building is? Do you understand how leases and real estate works?
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