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Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools

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Re: Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools

#371

Post by fc417fc802 »

convolvatron wrote: post #249
fc417fc802 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whitelists have the exact same problem you're objecting to. Not everyone will agree what should or shouldn't be on one. In practice I don't think it's an issue. What I'm arguing for is the infra to facilitate self categorization and (likely) also a legal requirement limited to only a few specific categories. For example the government might mandate that porn, social media, and user generated content all be accurately…

the point being that instead of there being a kind of commission to create a schema, there are a whole bunch of different whitelists. so if your religion objects to the existence of mangoes, then you can subscribe to a mango-free internet filter. and instead of burdening the isp the publisher of mango sorbet recipes with ticking off all the right schema boxes, this can all be enforced at the consumer. all the rest of…

I think you've seriously misunderstood the system I described. I'm saying we need first and foremost a standard for communicating such tags. It wouldn't dictate any categories, merely provide a framework for communicating any number of arbitrary categories. It would be immediately useful for the same groups that publish whitelists by providing a standard interoperable way for anyone to communicate categorizations.

Separately, I'm suggesting that the self reporting of certain categories be given legal significance and mandated. Such as porn.

I never said anything about burdening the ISP. Only the publisher, and when you consider the "burden" of self categorizing a few legally defined categories that for the most part already exist I really don't see an issue. What did you think these ID law proposals were for if not restricting access to various legally defined categories?

Re: Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools

#372

Post by tardedmeme »

whateverboat wrote: post #304
tardedmeme wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't we all hate social media? From that standpoint, anything that makes it hard to use or come with direct negative consequences is good.

Age verification for social media looks like it is different from age verification for internet. But it really is not.

Is social media the internet? You could also open a website.

Re: Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools

#373

Post by chopin »

Fnoord wrote: post #361
chopin wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the trusted third party gets to know which sites you visit?

No, they don't have to (this is a common myth and FUD). That data can remain encrypted and private. For example, the token could be signed with the private key from person and TTP. They do know when people visit a website (or other entity requiring auth) but anyone with network access does. All the platform gets to know a person 18+ is visiting their platform. In their data analysis, they could add such information t…

How can the third party not know I visited pronhub when pronhub verifies a token with the third party handed to me by the third party?

This may protect my privacy towards pronhub if I am not logged in. But not my privacy against the third party where I need to be logged in and who likely knows my real identity.

Re: Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools

#374

Post by iamalizard »

cute_boi wrote: post #367
iamalizard wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easiest, and the fairest way in my opinion, is to realize parents can and should be responsible for what their children read. Just like you wouldn't give your kid access to your BDSM porn magazines from the 80s, you shouldn't let him online without supervision. Other than that, there is no "online harm". No root cause of anything that would need to be addressed, no problems whatsoever. It's just information passi…

Well, it seems people don’t realize that many parents need to go to work and can’t watch their kids 24 hours a day. Also, accessing a magazine requires much more effort compared to accessing a website, which is very easy to bypass.

[dead]

Re: Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools

#376

Post by selfhoster1312 »

knorker wrote: post #320
selfhoster1312 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested to know how it could be a good thing. I'm all for shutting down Facebook entirely and jailing their executives, but i don't think age verification is an appropriate answer. It's already common at least here in France for Facebook to request user ID cards (wtf) and that has not at all stopped harassment, nazism, fake news, etc...

Are you talking about the goal being bad, or the methods being bad, or that the goal inherently cannot be achieved without bad methods? E.g. I think something pretty uncontroversial would be a goal of blocking kids from the likes of TikTok & Instagram between 22:00 and 08:00.[1] But if I'm an adult, that's a different matter. Ok, so how do I prove I'm an adult, without society turning into a surveillance state, or su…

The goal is good. Like i said, i think those kinds of social networks are evil and their executives should be jailed.

That being said, the methods are really bad. Are they efficient? No. Kids can still access discord despite age verification. And some kids can still max out their parent's credit card despite not being old enough to own a bank account.

Do those methods produce other net negatives? Yes. Standardizing digital identity leads us one step closer to dystopian nightmares from sci-fi books.

Are there better alternatives? Yes. Jail the CEOs. And if your government is too corrupt for that, they could at the very least raise awareness. Governments didn't have to mandate fingerprint readers on cigarettes to fight smoking. They found other ways and there are less kids smoking now than in the previous generation. Also, they could still jail the tobacco CEOs who lied publicly (and under oath) for decades.

Re: Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools

#377

Post by Chu4eeno »

tardedmeme wrote: post #299
mort96 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, some people are misguided and think age verification can be done in a way that isn't the death of privacy and anonymity online.

Don't we all hate social media? From that standpoint, anything that makes it hard to use or come with direct negative consequences is good.

They should've social media outright if that was the point (it's no more healthy for adults).

Re: Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools

#378

Post by antirealist »

tardedmeme wrote: post #331
antirealist wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly disagree. When we consider a policy, it's not enough that the narrow outcome is good . What also matters are the broad outcomes and whether or not the policy is principled. We presumably all hate Alex Jones. Does that mean the goverment saying "Alex Jones is banned from communicating publically" is good policy? Even if we agree the direct outcome is good (which I do), the principle of "the governemen…

The categorical imperative should be used here. "Arrest people I don't like" fails the categorical imperative. However, "check things that destroy society and make everyone worse off except for a select few if left unchecked" easily passes the bar. Nothing is absolute. There is a spectrum without an obvious optimal point. The recent neonazi rally in the UK did a lot of damage that could have easily been prevented. Wh…

So I agree that "check things that destroy society and make everyone worse off except for a select few if left unchecked" might indeed pass as a valid categorical imperitive.

Putting aside the slew of problems with Kantianism, the main issue here is one of epistemology. You think social media is destroying society. Some people think a departure from traditional family values is destroying society. You might be pretty sure you're right, but they're pretty sure they're right too.

I'd argue it's better we all just agree these questions are ambiguous and should in principle be outside of the power of the state to mediate. Especially since people are free to not use social media if they don't want to, or to have traditional families if they do want to. Otherwise we're all just fighting to impose our vision on everyone else. And even if you are right - that social media is destroying society - these policies aren't going to stop social media. Even if they could in theory, they will in practive be shoddily designed and implemented and have lots of other messy consequences (e.g. requiring me to upload photos of my face to use things, trusting that companies forced to handle that data will not only not misuse that data, but also be unhackable).

> Why does most of Europe have such a higher standard of living? I'm not sure that's true, but even if it is the answer is much more complicated than that they have proactive goverments.

Re: Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools

#379

Post by knorker »

selfhoster1312 wrote: post #376
knorker wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about the goal being bad, or the methods being bad, or that the goal inherently cannot be achieved without bad methods? E.g. I think something pretty uncontroversial would be a goal of blocking kids from the likes of TikTok & Instagram between 22:00 and 08:00.[1] But if I'm an adult, that's a different matter. Ok, so how do I prove I'm an adult, without society turning into a surveillance state, or su…

The goal is good. Like i said, i think those kinds of social networks are evil and their executives should be jailed. That being said, the methods are really bad. Are they efficient? No. Kids can still access discord despite age verification. And some kids can still max out their parent's credit card despite not being old enough to own a bank account. Do those methods produce other net negatives? Yes. Standardizing d…

Ok, so step one is jailing the CEOs. Then what?

Any time someone builds a social network, they'll be equally liable for any danger for kids that result? De facto making social networks illegal?

Or is a moral/legal social network possible? If so, then it seems we're talking about two different things: 1. jail the CEOs of these companies… for… something (it's unclear to me. Not that I disagree, but you've not made the case). 2. How can we make social networks "a good"?

Surely you can't mean banning all social networks, because HN is a kind of social network.

What is an evil "kind" of social network? "I know it when I see it"?

Re: Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools

#380

Post by selfhoster1312 »

knorker wrote: post #379
selfhoster1312 wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal is good. Like i said, i think those kinds of social networks are evil and their executives should be jailed. That being said, the methods are really bad. Are they efficient? No. Kids can still access discord despite age verification. And some kids can still max out their parent's credit card despite not being old enough to own a bank account. Do those methods produce other net negatives? Yes. Standardizing d…

Ok, so step one is jailing the CEOs. Then what? Any time someone builds a social network, they'll be equally liable for any danger for kids that result? De facto making social networks illegal? Or is a moral/legal social network possible? If so, then it seems we're talking about two different things: 1. jail the CEOs of these companies… for… something (it's unclear to me. Not that I disagree, but you've not made the…

> Ok, so step one is jailing the CEOs.

I'm not sure that's step one. But at least it's a good selling point to say we can do something very quickly about that problem, and almost everybody agrees (except for a few tech bros and every government on the planet). Step one is taking back control: empowering alternatives, providing free psychological services for the people who've been harmed by Facebook & such, seizing all the money they have defrauded via tax evasion (double irish sandwich), etc...

And if society wants to put people on trial, don't forget to put the engineers up there. The CEOs/managers may give orders but the engineers also have personal responsibility. They knew what they were doing (a few spoke out), and they certainly make sure their own kids don't use their own products. Technology is not neutral, and following orders is not an excuse for cruelty (see also, Nuremberg trials).

> De facto making social networks illegal?

I think there's a margin for interpretation, though i'm neither a lawyer nor a judge. A few criteria which may already be illegal, to determine whether a social network is evil:

- leading and using research on attention/addiction to keep people hooked

- having platform-controlled advertisement (an incentive to keep people captive)

- having posts on "your" feed not determined by your own subscriptions, but by an opaque algorithm where the platform decides what you see

- mandating a civil identity to join the social network (sometimes even requiring users to submit an ID card), which was promoted 15 years ago as an anti-harassment measure but actually had the exact opposite effect

That's just a few criteria that came to mind. We can probably find more. HN, a mailing list or a forum fills exactly 0 of these criteria.

> What is an evil "kind" of social network? "I know it when I see it"?

I'm not sure. But i'm sure we as a society need to think about it, because the neo-fascist tech-bros running those social networks certainly have.

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