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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

#431

Post by inigyou »

an0malous wrote: post #102
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?

> Like it or not, there is a large constituency who wants to “protect the children”. Is there, though? The push is coming from lobbyists who seem to be largely funded by wealthy elites, corporations, and other opaque organizations. One of them seems to be Meta. It doesn’t look like a grassroots effort.

It's voters who actually want to protect children and then tech offers something protecting-children-shaped to politicians.

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

#432

Post by GoblinSlayer »

inigyou wrote: post #404
trashb wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No ID checks at clubs, bars, or other adults-only venues. Those are mostly there because of alcoholic drinks being served and the venue wants to create a certain atmosphere. There are plenty of parents that would take their kids there if they could. The rest is not just there for kids but also for adults (or elderly). There is a bunch of adults who would step in a hole in the ground or fall off a balcony.

So why are ID checks necessary at venues that serve alcoholic drinks in particular, out of all the venues that exist?

1) venue is in meatspace, 2) age can be eyeballed, 3) they don't routinely hoard data, 4) they don't routinely leak hoarded data, 5) they aren't monopoly with billions of users routinely extorted for PII, 6) they don't routinely leak all that hoarded data, 7) they don't have bots, 8) they aren't connected to PRISM for routine surveillance, 9) they don't routinely leak all the hoarded data, 10) they don't sell hoarded data on black market, 11) they don't sell hoarded data to thousands of business partners, 12) they don't have thousands business partners that routinely hoard, leak and resell data

Maybe that's why metabase was hacked - to conceal sale of data. "It's just a hack, it happens, we fixed the hole, nothing to see here until we find the next buyer".

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

#433

Post by happymellon »

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but the war on anonymity was first (just) passed in the US at a state level as porn laws before it passed in the UK.

Are we pretending that the porn id laws weren't a first attempt at getting forums like Reddit that might "accidentally" have naked pictures liable and therefore profile everyone?

Because this is leaning on blaming to UK for everything the US is doing to itself an awful lot.

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

#434

Post by inigyou »

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!"

This joke worked for previous presidents. You can't do it any more.

Also it's never been true you could just approach the American president or the Chinese one

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

#435

Post by brushfoot »

tangotaylor wrote: post #244
a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #231

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

Yeah we definitely have. Here's me and another dev opposing AB 1856 (would have criminalized open source in the name of age assurance): https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/hearings/279266#t=10... And here's like ~120 of us who showed up to oppose AB 2023 (the 3D printer spyware bill). It was incredible. https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/hearings/279741#t=19... I think the easiest way to get involved is to b…

This was inspiring to watch. Thank you for your work.

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

#436

Post by inigyou »

ColdStream wrote: post #200
iamnothere wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. My hope is that the rare earths shortage, memory shortage, and current focus on munitions will delay the era of drone-based policing until after the crisis.

I suspect the crisis isn't a short term economic shock but a long term decline from resource decline, possible water/food shortages amplified by climate blow back. Something that will not end in your lifetime or the next generations. Military's, intelligence agencies and actuaries have been warning about this for decades now and their language is getting very direct on this and the time lines nowadays. If you have ev…

I once read about a programming language designed for modelling dynamic numerical systems. The example given was world demographics. It was written in the 1980s or 90s. The output showed quality of life peaking in the 2010s, population peaking in the 2020s or 2030s, and then quality of life and population plummeting.

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

#437

Post by inigyou »

swed420 wrote: post #45
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noticed the same with some media publishing anti-work-from-home articles recently. "We need the plebs to want to mock people who work from home, to reduce the reticence in coming back to work in the office" "We need our commercial property values to go back up" Edited to add: "Our managers need to _feel_ as if they're actually managing people"

The entire back-to-normal narrative was and still is a total mindfuck: https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-co... The threat from COVID (and more importantly, long COVID) never went away, but they sure convinced the average person that it did. Today you can see an N95 in the wild once in awhile, so some people are paying attention, but they are less than 1%. Many others are suffering brain damage…

And now that the world's had a look at long COVID - it seems like COVID isn't the only virus that causes it, and a big part of aging is caused by the cumulative damage from viral infections.

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

#438

Post by tim333 »

I'd dispute there is a UK war on anonymity just because they've tried to stop showing kids porn and the like. The UK has always been kind of pro anonymity - there was ID during WW2 but it was scrapped after. There have been revolts against ID cards, you don't have to carry a driving license to drive and things like that. We've always had child protection though - film certificates, over 18 to buy porn mags etc. The new internet stuff seems like a half hearted child protection effort.

I'm a Brit who wastes time web surfing and the total impact on me so far is reddit asked for a selfie. It's very different from areas where they did have a war on anonymity like bank accounts and investments where you have to scan passports and stuff. I've heard no one at all suggest that for general web surfing.

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

#440

Post by akimbostrawman »

testfrequency wrote: post #385
akimbostrawman wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

don't think so, mate

Always makes me chuckle when brits believe their law enforcement is anywhere near as toxic and corrupt as america’s.

I think getting arrested over online posts, buying a baseball bat or butter knife while they refuse medical aid to a victim that is bleeding out because the foreign attacker with the open carry bloody ritual knife called them racist, could be called "toxic". Not even mentioning there part in covering up grooming gangs on national level for being political inconvenient.
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