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Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

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261–270 of 371 posts

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that many independent national newspapers (including this article from CNBC) are openly calling-out the surveillance state and entering the debate into the public conscience should tell everyone that USA (and the West) is very different from Russia or China or Dubai. So, the only benefit of the USA is that some media can still complain. And the regime just ignores and does what they want. Regardless dems o…

I think pointing to a single puppet master is reductive. Demography and geography predict essentially all of these changes. Protesting and civil disobedience can obviously tip matters, but the authoritarianism taking the us has been a long time coming just based on the centralization of federal power that started almost as soon as the ink was dry. The tendencies of landlocked resource heavy states are going to be aut…

> Demography and geography predict essentially all of these changes.

> The tendencies of landlocked resource heavy states are going to be authoritarian.

What are you basing this on? Where can I read more about this?

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#262

Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world? You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice, and the rest of the world begrudgingly admired you for that and were slowly improving to become like you, but ever since 9/11/2001 the rich old people that rule you have been feeding you boogeymen to make you their complacent b*tches and you lay down and crawl along and acc…

> Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai etc where the old money cabals run everything,

This is clearly propaganda manufactured by the evil tech cabal to suppress grassroots efforts to protect children from their brainwashing. /s

In all seriousness, populist outrage doesn't help anyone except for the power brokers who can hide their true intentions under all the noise. As much of an overreach I think the Patriot Act was for example, the degree of harm that resulted from it is minuscule compared to the brainrot caused by social media. If you want me to oppose the age verification laws, then you need to convince me that those laws won't actually reduce brainrot or that surveillance harms me more than I think and let me come to my own conclusion.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#263
post #103

Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world? You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice, and the rest of the world begrudgingly admired you for that and were slowly improving to become like you, but ever since 9/11/2001 the rich old people that rule you have been feeding you boogeymen to make you their complacent b*tches and you lay down and crawl along and acc…

> Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai The fact that many independent national newspapers (including this article from CNBC) are openly calling-out the surveillance state and entering the debate into the public conscience should tell everyone that USA (and the West) is very different from Russia or China or Dubai. USA is not perfect, but at least is has active public discourse. We can…

> The fact that many independent national newspapers (including this article from CNBC) are openly calling-out the surveillance state and entering the debate into the public conscience...

LMAO! Bro/sis/secret third thing, you won't even start to believe how brave our press was when Putin had not consolidated his power yet. Ever heard of NTV? Or maybe Sobesednik, which lasted until 2023 I think? TV 6 or TV2 perhaps?

Seriously, this better-than-thou attitude will be your downfall one day. I know it was ours.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#264
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public discourse is a speed bump not an immovable barrier. The proof is in the state of things advancing in the same direction for the past few decades at least. Speed bumps are still valuable but not if you want to block the road. So public discourse alone isn’t the silver bullet you make them out to be.

It's quite a defeatist perspective. You're saying that because we can't fix or prevent everything , then we should choose not to fix or prevent anything ? Many US states do not impose government surveillance or have age verification laws. But the point I was mainly making was regarding the comment equating USA and the West to Russia or China. Go to one of those countries and we'll see how long you can openly complain…

I'm not telling you what can or cannot be done. I'm telling you that the example you chose to counter GP's "wild exaggeration" statement, was in itself an exaggeration. It doesn't make the point you think it makes. I'm telling you that if you want to change something, continuing to only do the thing that proved ineffective in the past won't cut it.

> Go to one of those countries and we'll see how long you can openly complain about government surveillance before you end up in jail.

Those people never had it any other way so their complaints are either "the usual", or come from people who can cause real trouble. Those people get silenced almost everywhere in the world. Want to know what Germany does if you "insult" a politician?

In Russia people openly complain about the government all the time, as long as this doesn't cause real trouble no one bats an eye. Russia has nowhere near the capability of the US and China to surveil people anyway. And in China most people don't openly complain because their lives are orders of magnitude better than just a few decades ago, many see it as the price for the better life.

"I'm not that bad yet" is never a strong argument. 50 years ago the press was "impeaching" presidents. Today presidents are "impeaching" the press. See the progress? It accelerates.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#265
Even if they didn't track all possible details of current adults, they would contain the details of future adults.

But maybe this is yet another attemption to produce mindless factory workers who won't rise against their lords even if someone inserts something something to them. While recording it, of course. For the profit... Erm, science.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#266
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Active public discourse seems to have not made even a slight dent in the growth of surveillance in the last 25 years.

Wild exaggeration. Here's an example just recently: https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-5612825/flock-contracts... It's a constant and ongoing public concern.

Over some Democratic party campaign wedge issue like illegal immigrants (who I guess are the only people who should be protected from constant surveillance, so special.) They will immediately not care about this at all when they are in charge of ICE, or whatever they rename it. Democrats love Flock (i.e. get paid by Flock.)

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#267
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engagement is not discourse. This is the core strategy of the alt-right playbook. By replacing discourse with engagement, the logical structure of politics becomes meaningless, and victory becomes automatic. The playbook worked. The alt-right is in power now. We won't get the power back by playing the very game they destroyed. So yes, this started as a different situation, but in the end, power is power.

> the very game they destroyed I am a minority who disagrees with liberals. Is it conservatives fault I get attacked by liberals for attempting to question them? No. Enough of this distortion.

Enough of what distortion? Could you be more specific?

Is it conservatives' success that liberals fail to represent your interests? Probably. Is that success a result of conservatives actually succeeding to represent your interests? Unlikely.

If politics were structured by reason, then liberals might stand a chance at losing that game. Wouldn't that be nice? Of course, that would imply a deserving winner, which is sorely missing from our post-reason situation.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#268
post #170
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow we have more public “discourse” than ever with less public “debate” than ever. People just yelling rude names at each other and repeating nonsense talking points, while the trajectory of what’s actually happening continues to worsen. I include Congress and the executive branch in this characterization.

I regret that I have but one vote to give to this comment. It seems like at least half of what everyone consumes in all of 'social media' is 'politicized' but no one is interested in debating. Debating would have to mean we're talking to those gross people from the opposite 'team,' asking them to justify the policy they are advocating for, listening to them, and trying to convince them of our own positions. When was…

It's pointless. Very few people will be convinced by arguments. Refuting someone's entire belief system will not lead them to reevaluate their lives and follow us as though we were Jesus. This just doesn't happen.

The reason for this is people believe things without actually thinking about them. People manage to believe in things that are mutually exclusive. Debating them will just make them hate you for your air of superiority.

Discourse is useful for validating one's own beliefs. Throw ideas out there and if others can't refute them then they are probably good ideas. I don't think there is any other use.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think China is some mass surveillance state where every single yard of dissent is carpet bombed: yes, I can see why you think that way. Just like the US, it can take a whike for thr CCP to get around to every individual. It's a large country. Your mistake is thinking that that's the line it has to get to before we can compare a country to China/Russia.

I don't disagree. It can (thankfully) take quite a while to get around to every dissenter. I also don't disagree that we have to wait for a particular milestone to compare ourselves to China/Russia. Where you lose me is: > I don't see much difference these days. Substitute wechat for X and that's the US for anyone non-white. Again, I agree with you on most of your points. But I think you're doing yourself, and all fr…

> I think you're doing yourself, and all freedom loving peoples a disservice by dividing the victims of this state action.

There have been at least 2 explicit murders by state actors on the streets, hundreds of wrongfully deported people who aren't back to this day, and thousands stuck in concentration camps.

No, it's not at '6 million jews' level (yet). But I'm fairly comfortable admitting that these actions are at a scale where we aren't too different from Russia nor China. Downplaying it now is how we get to those massive, unignorable numbers later on.

>If there is to be any resistance to state over reach, telling the racial majority of the country that it doesn't happen to them or it's not a "white/euro american issue" is counterproductive at best.

It disproportionately is not happening to them, though. That's what made the 2 murders mentioned earlier so high profile. Undeniably white suburban citizens gunned down.

I'm not telling them to not take action. It's more like their inaction or outright support is why we got this far to begin with. No snowflake feels at fault in an avalanche.

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