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

citizens-initiative.europa.eu

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

#221

Post by yorwba »

krater23 wrote: post #178
yorwba wrote: 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…

Would you think the same thing if you happened not to be there, came home half an hour later to find your apartment ransacked with the door smashed in, and had to wait a few months for compensation for the repairs?

They only threatened to break down the door because I told them to wait a moment as I was in the kitchen. My neighbor, whom they were actually looking for, was apparently not at home and they left his door intact. I guess for non-urgent searches they would get a locksmith to open the door in a less destructive manner. But sure, if they had caused significant damage and I had to wait for compensation, I would get upset. At the claims processing bureaucracy, not the police for acting on the information they had available.

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

#222

Post by yorwba »

mothballed wrote: post #175
yorwba wrote: 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…

Unfortunately, reasonable men, perhaps virtually all reasonable men, can and will become more corrupted by expansive power. The fact that they were not corrupted when they had less leverage on the populace doesn't mean they will behave differently than other historical German (/human) apparats when they have a bit more of the intoxicating liquor. >r warrant was for a different address and they left. I am sorry but th…

They didn't actually make any mistakes. The only way for them to quadruple-check was to knock on my totally featureless door and ask, which they did. There was never a threat of lethal violence, hardly a life and death matter.

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

#224

Post by cykros »

atmosx wrote: 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…

Kids can't bypass it because the systems they're trying to access are entirely different than they were in 1995. They are not accessing "the Internet" on which they connect to their friend's BBS's, irc servers, Usenet, etc. They're large, private systems which can absolutely be locked down by the parties that own them, on which activity has largely been centered.

Kids CAN absolutely bypass a lot still. Jump on Nostr and nobody can stop anyone -- a server can be run on any device (mine is on my phone), and it'll even run on non-TCP/IP networks (FIPS is in early days and still largely runs on existing infrastructure but absolutely doesn't rely on it staying there). Give it another few months with some LoRA build out (and enough motivation for the kids) and even the ISP gateway stops being a filter point. Not that ISP level controls have ever really been the most effective anyway, given the existence of VPN's and other tunneling methods (to say nothing of public wifi networks).

We see this happening in real time as India tries to stamp out Bitchat. The codebase has appeared on more and more repositories, and the most recent version of Bitchat is capable of transmitting itself for install to other devies without relying on any server or Internet at all.

So should we push back? Of course. At some point we would need to worry that they'll say enough is enough and make the hardware itself inaccessible. We're a long way off from that, and it'd be a surefire way to get a LOT more pushback.

But in the meantime, we shouldn't despair too much. The cypherpunks that gave us private and secure access on the Internet used by everyone today despite being once illegal to export didn't go anywhere. They're still here, kicking down every wall that gets put up, or at least pointing out that there are multiple ways around (or through) it.

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

#225

Post by cykros »

hunterpayne wrote: post #117
nemomarx wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's the current solution that's impossible for kids to bypass with a borrowed or stolen id, say? I don't see any proposals yet that will actually work for what they say they'll do.

You want a proposal? Make a kids-only set of sites. And then make hardware/software that can access only those sites. Make sure existing and future "non-kid" hardware can't access those kids-only sites. You can allow companies to register that they are one of these kid friendly sites with the additional regulation that would entail. Then make a kid having hardware that can access the normal Internet like having a bee…

Seems like a good idea.

Who ever heard of a kid getting ahold of a beer?

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

#226

Post by cykros »

Someone100 wrote: post #205
b112 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here: 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…

Who cares if they undress people with AI. Its slop and not worth restricting liberties over it.

Underrated take.

Nothing ever stopped a sufficiently skilled pencil artist from sketching someone in the nude without their permission.

People have been making fake nude photos since the 90's with Photoshop and related software.

Is it crass and disrespectful? Sure.

I think it's also, however, more alarming because when it first happens it's something people worry that it will be accepted out of hand as real. Once it settles in that this is just the sort of media that is trivial to make, that matter falls off, and it's just like any other sort of harassment at most.

Attempts at censorship won't go well. Even blowing the whistle on it happening has likely added fuel to the fire of it happening more -- how many only know deepfakes are a thing because a news article exposed the practice and how awful it was?

It won't go anywhere. Especially as more and more models become capable of being run on cheaper and cheaper hardware at home. Time for society to adapt its expectations for what sort of media exists, and how trustworthy any of it is.

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

#227

Post by cykros »

hart_russell wrote: post #171
matchstickman23 wrote: post #162

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…

I think it's worth recognizing the impact that Gin had on 18th and 19th century England. It was at least akin to the meth epidemic across large parts of the US 15-20 years ago.

Not saying we don't have alcoholism now, but the scope of it has dramatically changed. Some of it is that people recognize the dangers, some of it is that people have found ways to mitigate the harm, and some of it is prevention methods.

People went into gin when it first hit the scene treating it like a relatively neutral new beverage that felt pretty good. They'd drank beer for centuries (small beers or regular), and it just seemed like a mostly harmless innovation. Or if not harmless, at least the harm wasn't as interesting as the positive experiences.

We find ourselves in many ways in the same boat now with our tech.

And the perhaps sad reality is, when we're talking about physiologically damaging innovations, these adaptations can take generations. Children seeing what they did to their parents deciding that they want something else -- parents who may have regrets but at least a difficult time detaching themselves from their addictions. Though also, in that process, some of them finding ways they can replicate to cease further damage. And, somewhat helpful, the regulation of the production such that some of the harmful aspects are removed simply by improving quality, giving people some of the experience without as many side effects (see: Bathtub Gin).

It's worth noting what didn't work as well: prohibition.

There are ways we can have a lot of the benefits of social media and dispense with the negatives. The brainrot dopaminergic algorithms. The constant surveillance. We can preserve the beneficial aspects: the exposure to diverse perspectives, and innovative ideas. And there is plenty of awareness that can be shared around just how harmful overexposure to even the best implementations can be. And we can iterate and adapt to see what works well for some people and what leads to ruin.

The way out is through.

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

#228

Post by cykros »

skinfaxi wrote: post #188
hart_russell wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. So, the choice is surveillance state or nothing? I guess we choose not to solve the actual issue of overstressed parents working too much to parent their kids because there is no way to profit from that.

It's almost like impoverishing everyone by debasing their currency to fight foreign wars for a century has had some knock on effects to public health.

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

#229

Post by Geezus_42 »

DangitBobby wrote: post #198
Geezus_42 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's to stop an adult from using the "kids only" hardware?

Nothing. It won't matter on age appropriate sites.

Then why make non-kid hardware unable to access it? This whole idea is ridiculous and would never work in reality.

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

#230

Post by account42 »

hunterpayne wrote: post #117
nemomarx wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's the current solution that's impossible for kids to bypass with a borrowed or stolen id, say? I don't see any proposals yet that will actually work for what they say they'll do.

You want a proposal? Make a kids-only set of sites. And then make hardware/software that can access only those sites. Make sure existing and future "non-kid" hardware can't access those kids-only sites. You can allow companies to register that they are one of these kid friendly sites with the additional regulation that would entail. Then make a kid having hardware that can access the normal Internet like having a bee…

> You want a proposal? Make a kids-only set of sites. And then make hardware/software that can access only those sites. Make sure existing and future "non-kid" hardware can't access those kids-only sites. You can allow companies to register that they are one of these kid friendly sites with the additional regulation that would entail. Then make a kid having hardware that can access the normal Internet like having a beer in the US. Now perhaps you can find a hole in this, but it can be patched with technology and the right regulation.

This is like saying you can stop world hunger by giving everyone food.

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