Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided • Hacker News Board

Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

#351

Post by shakna » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 1:29 AM UTC

delusional wrote: post #343

shakna wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious question there is... Has it ever happened in yours?

I'd be surprised it you couldn't find some instances, but I'm also confident that those cases were dealt with by procedural enhancements. Just recently we had a case where an employee was caught snooping in some address and family data. The person was fired, reported to the police for investigation, and the relevant employer is now looking at their processes to make sure it doesn't happen again. Along with that, ever…

That doesn't seem like a reasonable response to me.

An employee was caught criminally stalking their family, and using the force of the government to do so.

Rather than being prosecuted, like happens outside the force, they were fired and let go to continue living their life - likely to be rehired in another police force if the pattern plays out as it regularly does.

That this can happen without large alarm bells, means that the checks on access are not effective - because it is not a once in a lifetime event.

I do see your trust. But I also see you yourself producing evidence suggesting such trust is unfounded.

Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

#352

Post by rockskon » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 1:47 AM UTC

delusional wrote: post #258

rockskon wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason to believe it wouldn't eventually be used to generate leads as opposed to needing a warrant to sift through.

Again, I'm no expert, but I do believe the law would be what would stop you. It could be poorly written, but then we should just rewrite it.

I don't quite understand your position. The intelligence community has shown time and again that they are happy to be innovative (and secretive) with interpretations of the law that enable them access to vast swaths of U.S. persons data without a warrant.

This is recent history, too. With the NSA interpreting the addition of the word "relevant" in Section 215 of the Patriot Act to mean "indefinite bulk collection of records on every U.S. citizen".

Where do you get your confidence from? The confidence that there will be robust public debate before an encroachment on the exploitation of data already collected on a country's citizens?

Do you believe this sort of bulk seizure and screening of the data of a country's citizens to be limited to the U.S.?

Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

#353

Post by int_19h » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 5:46 AM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #288

Timwi wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's something that would likely destroy any country that passed it What makes you say that?

Work deterrence, inflation, and the tremendous cost would devalue your own currency. In general most people work jobs solely and exclusively for the $$$. If they didn't need that $$$ they'd have much greater power to negotiate wages. That sounds amazing in theory, but in reality - how much money would it take for you to go scrub toilets when you could otherwise sit and home and live a comfortable life with your famil…

I don't see why having to pay significantly more to people cleaning the toilets is a downside. It's a shit job, the pay should reflect that. Of course when people are forced into the treadmill just to get fed, they will take it for pennies, but that doesn't mean that it's the right way to do things.

Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

#354

Post by int_19h » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 5:59 AM UTC

lupusreal wrote: post #163

Der_Einzige wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plato's "republic" (one of the worst books in human history) and every justification in that book and every book citing it is trotted out to argue for how bad direct democracy is. Now we act like it's not good because Athens got its shit pushed in by Sparta during the Peloponnesian war. Direct democracy is good. One person one vote, on all legislation, actually could work. We haven't even tried at scale in thousands…

I say only the patriarchal heads of households should get votes. Isn't that pretty much how Athens did it? No votes for slaves, women, anybody with mixed non-Athenian ancestry, no poors allowed to hold a political office... Anyway, I'm all for putting the sons of politicians on the front line, but don't think that will stop wars. The British Empire was infamous for putting nobleborn men directly in harms way, they wo…

The Brits had this as a custom back when it was viable on the battlefield. They tried to stick to it during WW1 with quite disastrous consequences, which is why they stopped. Well, some brave souls still tried it occasionally in WW2, but any British officer who'd try to do that kind of thing today would be considered an idiot endangering his unit.

Strong martial tradition or not, whether combat is seen as desirable depends a lot on the level of personal risk for those involved. Which, by the by, is why feudal nobility was much more enthusiastic about warfare than the peasants - having good armor significantly reduced risks, and chances were good you'd get ransomed if captured.

When applied to modern warfare, it pretty much depends on whom you're fighting. If it's a modern army (in the sense of military doctrine first and foremost) against premodern one, whether the latter is guerrilla or state, and you're in the modern army, your chances of survival are pretty good - look at casualty figures for Battle of Mogadishu or Desert Storm. But if you're on the other side, the casualty rate is so high that people need some other motivation to keep fighting (ideology, religion etc); very few would fight for loot or glory under such conditions.

And judging by how things are going in Ukraine, two modern armies going at each other isn't much better. Again, hard to be excited about being blown to pieces by an FPV drone the moment you poke your head out of the camo netting.

Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

#355

Post by delusional » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 7:10 AM UTC

shakna wrote: post #351

delusional wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be surprised it you couldn't find some instances, but I'm also confident that those cases were dealt with by procedural enhancements. Just recently we had a case where an employee was caught snooping in some address and family data. The person was fired, reported to the police for investigation, and the relevant employer is now looking at their processes to make sure it doesn't happen again. Along with that, ever…

That doesn't seem like a reasonable response to me. An employee was caught criminally stalking their family, and using the force of the government to do so. Rather than being prosecuted, like happens outside the force, they were fired and let go to continue living their life - likely to be rehired in another police force if the pattern plays out as it regularly does. That this can happen without large alarm bells, me…

> An employee was caught criminally stalking their family, and using the force of the government to do so.

So far he has not been caught criminally doing anything, because the system that found a brrach of process is not the system that determines criminality. Right now he has violated an internal process and been fired for that deriliction of duty.

> Rather than being prosecuted

He is very likely ALSO going to be prosecuted, since the system that found the violafion of the process also determined that such a violation is possibly illegal and activated the police. He is being investigated, and if they can prove anything criminal, he'll get convicted for that.

Obviously the bar for proving criminality is higher than the bar for dismissal.

> That this can happen without large alarm bells, means that the checks on access are not effective

This is exactly the debate that is happening right now because of this case. I'll end by quoting a professor that commented on this case recently:

"This should make us prioritize investing in security, investing in describing our processes and ways of working, such that you can find outliers. Maybe instead of investing in AI, which is fun to have but doesn't actually solve any of the serious problems"

Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

#356

Post by somenameforme » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 8:03 AM UTC

Ray20 wrote: post #347

somenameforme wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting yes on a war implies you're the one invading.

So you can just say that the war is defensive - and send those who voted against it to fight anyway? Or how does that work in your head?

In a defensive war - there is no vote whether or not to go to war. You are immediately at war because you have been invaded.

Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

#357

Post by somenameforme » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 8:29 AM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #353

somenameforme wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work deterrence, inflation, and the tremendous cost would devalue your own currency. In general most people work jobs solely and exclusively for the $$$. If they didn't need that $$$ they'd have much greater power to negotiate wages. That sounds amazing in theory, but in reality - how much money would it take for you to go scrub toilets when you could otherwise sit and home and live a comfortable life with your famil…

I don't see why having to pay significantly more to people cleaning the toilets is a downside. It's a shit job, the pay should reflect that. Of course when people are forced into the treadmill just to get fed, they will take it for pennies, but that doesn't mean that it's the right way to do things.

Ideally I absolutely agree with you - I think everybody would. The problem is reality. Companies that make/sell real things, and not software, have almost shockingly low profit margins, with labor costs generally being their greatest expense by far. WalMart's net profit margin, for instance, is less than 3%. And as they have an absolutely massive number of employees (they're the third largest employer in the world in fact), their profit per employee is quite low - somewhere around $7,000.

Software and tech companies don't treat their employees better because they care more about their employees, but because they're drowning in money owing to ridiculous profit margins. Apple's net profit margin is > 24% with a greater than $2 million profit per employee!! [1] They could buy every single employee a new Ferrari every single year and still have [literally] more money than they know what to do with.

So you have this imbalance in the economy that employees working jobs that pay stupidly high wages are the ones where the companies could generally afford to pay them even more, dramatically more, but instead just hoard all the money. Whereas low wage jobs are the ones where companies themselves are also just 'barely getting by', but at a large enough scale - that can translate to billions of dollars, even if it's not much per employee.

[1] - https://appleworld.today/2024/10/apple-generates-2-3-million...

Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

#358

Post by wizzwizz4 » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:10 AM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #344

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You not wanting to work "shit jobs" (without compensation you would consider excessive) doesn't mean that everybody doesn't want to work them (or even that everybody considers them to be "shit jobs"). I agree with your point about commercial productivity. I don't agree that it would crash the economy: it would crash GDP (by eliminating large classes of exploitative and abusive behaviour which currently prop GDP up),…

I wouldn't want to clean public toilets if I didn't need to do so. You'd be willing to do it for free. I think one of our views runs rather closer to the overwhelming majority of people, like 99.999%, than the other. This issue is really not the one you want to argue. But I understand that you have to argue it, because if you simply accepted this point then you must accept the fundamental problem. When everybody star…

It doesn't matter whether the overwhelming majority of people would be willing to clean toilets for however much money: what matters is whether enough people would that the toilets get cleaned. From what I can tell, the answer to that is "yes".

Given instructions, and absent other immediate obligations, I would do so much helping out, wherever I happened to be at the time. (The only reason I don't now is because I don't understand most jobs – my meddling could do more harm than good –, and they won't let me do jobs in my area of expertise.) I'm not unusual in this regard: perhaps I'm unusual in that I'll do this unprompted, but if it's a societal expectation that people clean up after themselves, and leave things in a slightly better state than they found them, people generally do it.

The problem is not a lack of workers. The problem is not a lack of things that need doing. The problem is a lack of "jobs". UBI (with the necessary patches to, e.g., prevent bad actors from redirecting all the money) is essentially employing everybody to do what they believe needs doing.

So the question becomes: do you believe direct democracy works at small scales? Your answer appears to be "no".

Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

#359

Post by Timwi » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:19 AM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #344

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You not wanting to work "shit jobs" (without compensation you would consider excessive) doesn't mean that everybody doesn't want to work them (or even that everybody considers them to be "shit jobs"). I agree with your point about commercial productivity. I don't agree that it would crash the economy: it would crash GDP (by eliminating large classes of exploitative and abusive behaviour which currently prop GDP up),…

I wouldn't want to clean public toilets if I didn't need to do so. You'd be willing to do it for free. I think one of our views runs rather closer to the overwhelming majority of people, like 99.999%, than the other. This issue is really not the one you want to argue. But I understand that you have to argue it, because if you simply accepted this point then you must accept the fundamental problem. When everybody star…

You're getting way too strung up on the specific example of cleaning toilets. You know what job vastly more people will want to do? Installing and maintaining a self-cleaning toilet. Bang, massive benefit to the local community. Focus on profitability creates a blind spot.

I don't see why you think inflation would suddenly happen. You haven't justified that claim.

Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

#360

Post by somenameforme » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 12:47 PM UTC

Timwi wrote: post #359

somenameforme wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't want to clean public toilets if I didn't need to do so. You'd be willing to do it for free. I think one of our views runs rather closer to the overwhelming majority of people, like 99.999%, than the other. This issue is really not the one you want to argue. But I understand that you have to argue it, because if you simply accepted this point then you must accept the fundamental problem. When everybody star…

You're getting way too strung up on the specific example of cleaning toilets. You know what job vastly more people will want to do? Installing and maintaining a self-cleaning toilet. Bang, massive benefit to the local community. Focus on profitability creates a blind spot. I don't see why you think inflation would suddenly happen. You haven't justified that claim.

Have you been in a public bathroom, in the US, in basically any urban area? Self cleaning doesn't cut it. People cause damage to bathrooms for no apparent reason, piss everywhere within a 10' radius, and on occasion feces isn't far behind. Oddly enough even women's bathrooms, at least on occasion, can be just as bad if not worse - as you can add blood to the entire disgusting mix, people flushing pads, and so on. Cleaning public bathrooms is an unimaginably awful job that nobody, in a million years, would do if they had any other remotely reasonable way to get money, let alone getting handed it for free.

Inflation happens because increasing labor costs will inevitably get handed right back onto the customer, especially on the scale we're talking about. And the customer isn't just the final customer, but every business operation from the raw goods all the way down to the final product, so it'd lead to rather dramatic inflation.