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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

#311

Post by Tostino »

autoexec wrote: post #234
anigbrowl wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you're articulating the result you want, but not the mechanism for how you expect to achieve it. A law has to articulate which behaviors are legal or, and what the penalties for non-compliance are. Otherwise we could just pass laws saying 'the economy has to make everyone prosperous, people have to feel safe and fulfilled' and call it a day. So, what actual rules do you want to make in service of these desirable…

What I'd recommend is research on specific behaviors taken by social media companies to determine which are shown to cause harms. Some of that is already done by the companies themselves. If, for example, infinite scrolling is seen as a practice that increases addiction to the platforms, a law can be passed that makes it illegal to implement infinite scrolling. A law like that is pretty easy to explain and understand…

So let's say I have a business SaaS application, am I banned from showing content in an infinite scroll window? How would I prove my application is targeted for business users and not actually targeting children?

Not saying these are impossible questions to answer or get right in a law, just that there are more things to think about than which component you decide to show data inside.

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

#313

Post by ColdStream »

ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #284
chr15m wrote: post #254

The right people to protect children are those responsible for them - their parents and guardians. If there is a problem with children not being sufficiently protected, that is the level at which to solve it. Give families tools and information to do so.

No ID checks at clubs, bars, or other adults-only venues. No school zone speed limits, or protected crossings on streets near schools. No requirements for railings on public balconies, fencing around public pools, protective covers over drains or other holes in the ground. Parents/guardians can just supervise. Sounds great!

While what you say seem intuitive, it is missing one point. Those locations probably are not recording exactly who is coming and going and what they are saying/doing.

That is where this become more than just gate keeping and becomes full on tracking.

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

#314

Post by zkmon »

Technology helps, but it also enabled increased 'toxicity' in general, across the global ecosystems, including social, human relations, trust, digital crime etc.

It's not just about child safety. No one is safe from this increasing levels of toxic environment created by digital/online ways. A lot of types of people will be extinct, who are unable to deal with technology driven media onslaught, complexity, online crime and content manipulation. There is no scope for trust and assumptions. One need to be on their toes in every engagement with others and these systems, or hire an agent/expert even for simple tasks in life.

The tech-savvy people here might argue for freedom and anonymity at any cost. But think of other social classes, laws and the way the nations and societies came to be what they are today. The world doesn't just belong to tech nerds only.

People need safety from all this tech. That may against the wishes of a tiny minority of the people. But a nation, by nature, enforces generic policies that benefit those most of the people.

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

#315

Post by b112 »

ElProlactin wrote: post #290
CookieCrisp wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the consequences of the government not abusing it isn’t devastating.

By that logic, countries like the US, UK, France, etc. shouldn't be allowed to have a standing military.

And yet, compared to every military in the past, compared to the fact that war was seen as a normal thing in the past, compared to how it used to be standard to rape and pillage in the past, and that was just expected and fine and normal, current modern militaries of the West are exceptionally disciplined, and their use by politicians doubly so.

Of course, that doesn't mean we can't do better and shouldn't.

But we do need to compare "How things have been for all of human history" to "How we do things now", and see that our modern democracies show immense restraint and a lack of malfeasance, compared to how they've been used in the past.

I feel that people view how the world is today, through such a restricted world view. Where the history of how things were, and the immense and great and incredible progress we've made, is thrown aside because "Oh bad thing happened!", and therefore "The entire West is completely corrupt and everything sucks and we should rip it all down because it's bad".

One only need take a tour around the rest of the world. To compare our militaries to those in non-democratic nations. To how those leaders act, in reality, compared to our leaders. Even the current US admin looks good, comparatively. And yes, I know that's saying a lot.

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

#316

Post by dyauspitr »

speedstyle wrote: post #309
dyauspitr wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you don’t realize is most people want this. The social media bans across Western Europe, and Australia are heavily supported by the vast majority of the population.

You could make it easy to ban on children's devices, rather than having websites do it. At the moment you either have a small set of allowed applications, which is fine for younger kids, or domain-list filtering which is unreliable, hard for parents to set up (and not that hard for kids to get around). There are many ways to improve the situation – I think websites should have to attach metadata about the content bei…

There’s no such thing as children’s devices. Everyone uses the same smartphones. Optional on device restrictions don’t matter as long as your peer group is on the platform, kids will not stop using it. People are not asking for biometric scanning, but I believe the vast majority would be OK with some sort of ID based authentication system. Now there are ways we can do that in a decentralized way where neither of the parties have total information and I fully advocate for that.

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

#317

Post by matheusmoreira »

Gigachad wrote: post #109
shimman wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a good way to cede the argument to the opposition and let those that do believe them make up the rules.

Especially when there are very obvious and tangible harms from modern social media. Either you participate and help drive privacy preserving methods to solve the problems, or someone else will solve it in a way less desirable to you.

Bringing attention to their methods is much better than dignifying the "think of the children" nonsense with a response.

You just posted the answer:

> Especially when there are very obvious and tangible harms from modern social media.

The addictive and manipulative dark patterns of the big techs are harmful and should be banned straight up for everyone. No need to spare the children and let adults get abused. No need to verify age at all.

So why don't we just ban it? Because that'd eat into profits so much it could actually kill their business models.

All this "children" bullshit is just them trying to preserve their business models. It's them saying "year we're harmful and addictive and gambling tier but look we're adult only now". This is why Meta's among the corporations lobbying for this stuff.

Manipulation stops working when the other party is aware of it. Bring their manipulation out into the light.

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

#318

Post by stressback »

slg wrote: post #267
GiorgioG wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politicians don’t care about your kids, they only care about your vote.

This level of cynicism is only possible if someone has never interacted with people on a local political level. Once again, it's more a reflection of your own worldview than an accurate reflection of all of humanity. There are some people who genuinely have empathy for others and want to do good. The way some of you refuse to believe that is truly disturbing.

There are some people who have genuine empathy for others and want to do good, and they aren't politicians. The only thing disturbing about this is you don't see it.

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

#319

Post by [deleted] »

ColdStream wrote: post #252
soueuls wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in China for a while a decade ago, studied at Tsinghua and did some research as well. IMHO you have more freedom in China than in Europe. Can you walk on the street and say "Fuck Xi Jinping" like you would in France with Macron? Probably not. But it's a completely useless freedom to have. At least in China you get relative safety when you walk on the street at night. And when the government decides to restric…

I will update an old Yakov Smirnoff joke. You see, China and the US aren't that different you know. In the US, I can go up to Donald Trump and say "I don't like Donald Trump. The policies of the republican government are rubbish!" In China, I can go up to Xi Jinping and say "I don't like Donald Trump! The policies of the republican government are rubbish!"

[deleted]

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

#320

Post by somenameforme »

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.

You're straw manning most people by trying to insist upon this, as most Americans support a ban on social media for children. [1] That turns into the overwhelming majority if you consider only Americans with children. And the percent of Americans that oppose things like age verification for the usage of social media sites is in the single digits.

So it will most likely happen especially because you are certainly right, in part, that no government has ever said no to actions that'd give them more power, let alone ones that are widely supported. But the point of this is that rather than having this as some sort of red-line no, I think it'd be much more pragmatic to try to argue for identity verification regulations that would be most palatable.

[1] - https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54969-eight-in-ten-parents...

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