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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

#321

Post by ColdStream »

iamnothere wrote: post #172
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?

There is a term for this: a moral panic. Believe it or not, sometimes the best answer is to do nothing until the crowd moves on to the next panic, as with the “Satanic Panic” in the 1980s. Turns out D&D was not actually a gateway to Satan worship.

If D&D didn't lead you to Satan, you were playing it wrong. ;)

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

#322

Post by tadfisher »

zmgsabst wrote: post #233
slg wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When a politician is worried about your kids, you should be worried about your rights and freedoms. Not only for your own sake but for your kids too! What rights and freedoms should I worry about when a politician wants to make sure my child is fed by supporting food stamp programs or free hot lunches at school? The idea that any attempt to help a child is inherently suspect honestly says something distrubing about…

In the case of food stamps, that was the leverage by which social engineers destroyed the black family via incentives for single mothers — collapsing from 75% married (circa 1950s) to 25% married (modern). The “Welfare State” is nothing but modern share cropping from the party of Jim Crow.

Your narrative is embellished and does not correlate strongly with the data [1].

Embellished: marriage rates are 33.8% for Black women and 37.8% for Black men, neither of which I would round to 25%.

Uncorrelated: marriage rates dropped sharply among people of all single races on the Census except for Asians. It has dropped more sharply for Black respondents, but anything disproportionately affecting the lower and middle economic classes would disproportionately affect Black families.

Show me some data, and not outdated welfare policies from the 1980s, that supports the "social engineers" causal narrative better than plain deindustrialization. Or deindustrialization combined with good old American racism and mass incarceration. I am willing to change my position on this.

1: https://usafacts.org/articles/state-relationships-marriages-...

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

#323

Post by cgriswald »

slg wrote: post #207
cgriswald wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“For the kids” arguments are distinct from arguments worrying about future generations in that they are almost entirely focused (ostensibly) on preventing harm to children while they are children rather than “all our descendants including the adults”.

Then let's ban child safety locks, child labor laws, and any law that distinguishes child abuse from other forms of abuse. Let's also allow minors to buy tobacco and alcohol while we're at it if we're claiming that any law that exists to protect children as children is inherently misguided.

I think if you spoke to the people actually making the claim they’d define it a little better to include only cases where adults are being asked to give up rights, freedoms, or privileges. But you can ask them.

I didn’t take a position on the argument. I pointed out a distinction.

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

#324

Post by ColdStream »

onetimeusename wrote: post #149
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.

Most tasty actions in this world always hide behind a claim to virtue.

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

#325

Post by matheusmoreira »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #57
walrus01 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently put some thought into what I would have done if I had encountered "parental controls" to use the Internet when I first encountered it as a young teen in 1992. I would have made it my personal mission in life to circumvent everything and anything possible. I feel fortunate that no such controls existed and the adults in my life knew significantly less about the technology than I did. Was I exposed to some c…

I have a feeling we had a similar experience growing up. I generally agree, but also, we got QAnon/Alex Jones and such which have quite directly screwed up my country. So I don’t know, my opinion is often contradictory and fluid. I don’t know where I stand anymore. I believe in an “open internet,” but also, there’s people like Andrew Tate who have ruined the minds of people I care about. We can debate if these system…

> We need basic screening and filtering.

Based on whose values and criteria? Yours?

Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

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

#326

Post by ElProlactin »

b112 wrote: post #315
ElProlactin wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Are you serious?

During the Vietnam War era, the US dropped over 7.5 million tons of ordnance across Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, which is more than double the tonnage dropped in all of WW2. In rural parts of Laos and Cambodia, unexploded ordinance is still a daily threat to people. 50 years on.

As for raping and pillaging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_Vietnam_War

> 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.

When I see comments like this, I want to believe that it's not real but sadly, I suspect you really believe this.

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

#327

Post by autoexec »

Tostino wrote: post #311
autoexec wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You wouldn't have to prove that you were or weren't targeting children. You'd just have to operate a social media platform and allow infinite scrolling.

The law would define a social media platform. Maybe something like: The term “social media platform” means a website or internet medium that— (A) permits a person to become a registered user, establish an account, or create a profile for the purpose of allowing users to create, share, and view user-generated content through such an account or profile; (B) enables 1 or more users to generate content that can be viewed by other users of the medium; and (C) primarily serves as a medium for users to interact with content generated by other users of the medium. [https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?def_id=42...]

If your SaaS app met that definition of a social media platform it would be illegal for you to show content in an infinite scroll window. Because your application targeted business users who paid for the service, people would be less likely to sue you. Maybe it'd be worth it to you to include infinite scroll anyway. Companies knowingly break the law all the time after calculating that even on the off chance they get caught the fines they'd face will probably be less than the profit they'd make. The larger your platform got, the less worth it breaking the law could become and of course if the public felt the fines were so low as to be ineffective, the law could be amended to increase the fines.

The law could even allow some platforms to include harmful content like infinite scrolling if certain conditions are met. For example, platforms could be allowed to include infinite scrolling if they require a credit card to sign up, and they display a warning explaining that the platform uses infinite scrolling which has been determined to be harmful by promoting addictive and compulsive behaviors, and it provides an option to disable that feature. Still, it's probably better to widely ban those kinds of practices that serve no purpose other than driving engagement/addictive behavior. We can just decide as a society that we value people's mental health more than maximizing tech billionaire profits.

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

#328

Post by ColdStream »

dyauspitr wrote: post #272
a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #231

Is anyone that cares going to put on a suit and talk to the people passing laws?

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.

Yep, here in Australia you almost never hear anyone mention it. The silence is deafening, especially with how quickly people just rolled over on this stuff "For the children".

That said it was funny, yesterday Microsoft said I had to age verify my account. I went in basically with the intention of backing out of it at the first sign of over reach.

First step was, 'provide you email for this account'. So I did that and then... approved! You are certified over 18+. That is the flip side of this, some of these companies will put up some of the weakest barriers on this stuff.

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

#329

Post by Gigachad »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #317
Gigachad wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nee…

I mean yes, we should just ban it all, but I'll take banning it for kids as a first step rather than an all or nothing where we will get nothing.

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

#330

Post by 6r17 »

dyauspitr wrote: post #275
6r17 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I actually think sustained adherence to the goal of deanonymizing the Internet to basically get kids off of it in the face of significant minority opposition, actually portrays strength. I care deeply about privacy and surveillance in the real world, but who cares about the Internet, it’s an optional virtual space. For anything that’s not optional like banking, commerce etc. I’m completely OK with being not anonymous…

There are many people who have voiced this topic already. If you don't care about your privacy why do other people have to give it up ? It's a non-argument - nobody cares about your opinion.
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