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The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

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Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#461

Post by [deleted] »

defmacr0 wrote: post #399
akie wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very libertarian and ultimately low-trust forum where most people seem to think the government is out to get you, but I have to say: what's so great about having complete online anonymity anyway? I mean, seriously. Real life is not anonymous and consequence free either, why should online life be? It's not as if there are no downsides. There are, and some of them are so severe that they are impacting the who…

> Real life is not anonymous and consequence free either, why should online life be? In real life you are largely anonymous if you go to any place that is not in your social circle. If I go to any physical store under the sun and pay in cash I remain completely anonymous. The only exception is staff checking your ID for alcohol etc. if you look underage, but that datum is only stored in one persons brain for as long…

[deleted]

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#462

Post by dzink »

The goal should be to not repeat Star Wars - new technology that gives power and advantages is always adopted by companies first, then governments, and then it’s used to subjugate people. In Star Wars you have the trade federation abusing little planets. Little planet leaders go to government for help and vote a more “strong” approach to government that will “fight for the little guy”. An authoritarian leader steps in and uses the new technology to subjugate galaxies. In Foundation that leader can also clone himself, leading to 1000 years of fascism. Today prize camels and horses are being cloned in the middle east. Fiction is a guidebook sometimes.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#463

Post by iamnothere »

akie wrote: post #437
defmacr0 wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Real life is not anonymous and consequence free either, why should online life be? In real life you are largely anonymous if you go to any place that is not in your social circle. If I go to any physical store under the sun and pay in cash I remain completely anonymous. The only exception is staff checking your ID for alcohol etc. if you look underage, but that datum is only stored in one persons brain for as long…

> Unless you have absolute faith that your government will never do something you have a moral objection to, you can never be sure that anything you are, believe or do will not be censored or land you in jail in the future. Any solution that can convince the Germans, the most privacy obsessed sticklers on the whole planet, has my support by proxy. If they think it's safe enough, it most likely is. Almost no other cou…

> Perhaps, but that doesn't mean that we should not address the elephant in the room - the seriously degrading impact that social media has on our society.

I would argue that those crafting our policies are destabilizing society far more than social media, and that they, rather than social media, should be “regulated” (perhaps into a small cell).

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#464

Post by pif »

throwaway72587 wrote: post #439
pif wrote: post #386

I am always surprised that people get shocked when online privacy is put at risk, as if it was a fundamental human right. REMOTE PRIVACY NEVER EXISTED BEFORE A FEW DECADES AGO! And what happened in these decades are enough for the societies to wonder whether this new possibility in human connections (i.e. remote privacy) is globally a good thing. Just stomping your feet because the new toy may be declared illegal is…

This is 100% wrong. Privacy has been the norm every time someone wandered a week by feet from home, or sent a letter. Famous authors published for a whole lifetime under pseudonyms. We are living in a panopticon that never existed before.

> every time someone wandered a week by feet from home

Remote privacy means that you don't have to move from home.

> or sent a letter

Which anybody could just intercept and read.

> Famous authors published for a whole lifetime under pseudonyms.

But someone had to know who they were and where they lived, and they could be convinced to share such information.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#465

Post by pif »

yabones wrote: post #412
pif wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And any phone could be tapped with a signature by a judge.

This issue here isn't surveillance as per a signed warrant. I don't think anybody's really arguing against that. The problem is mass data collection without suspicion, probable cause, or warrants whatsoever. That's a brand new thing, other than the places in the world unfortunate enough to have roving gangs of police going door to door and searching homes without warrants. This facilitates it on a scale that's never…

> This issue here isn't surveillance as per a signed warrant. I don't think anybody's really arguing against that.

Everybody who talks about cryptography is arguing about that! With the digital technology we have, the options are very simple: either every man in the middle can read (even the villain), or nobody can (not even the justice departments). There's no middle ground.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#467

Post by mindslight »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #309
mindslight wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I imagine it could be not trivial to enforce (esp. for offshore web) It's quite trivial, actually - the parental control software is designed so that if there are no content tags, then the site does not display. The mandate for websites to tag their content would only need to apply to websites over a certain size, to bootstrap the network effects.

The other option is for the major browsers to refuse to load pages that don't include the tag. I don't think it's a good thing that they can unilaterally dictate web standards but that's the reality so might as well take advantage of it for the better I guess.

I think that's the same option? I'm imagining "parental controls software" as something built into browsers (/ app stores) that can be enabled when you're setting up a new device. Or it can be disabled, meaning no tags would be required, leaving the open web unaffected.

Given that we're at the point where big tech is pushing its regulatory capture legislation aimed at demanding mandatory identification ("age verification" fundamentally boils down to identity verification), I don't think it would be unreasonable for a legislative mandate for every site over a certain size to have to publish tags, and every mobile device manufacturer over a certain marketshare to have to include a parental control solution in the device setup.

Although I'm also left wondering what the state of the art really does look like here, and whether a mandate for tags is even what is needed. The real problems would seem to be twofold - parental controls software isn't included with most devices, and most parents won't go out of their way to seek out a third party option. And second, very few websites aim to serve people under 18, 13, etc to begin with. Rather they like the fiction that their services are "18+" regardless of who is using them. (Mandating tags would serve that last one, but perhaps there is a more direct approach?)

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#468

Post by jolmg »

pibaker wrote: post #236
drooby wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should it also be their decision that they can gamble? Smoke cigarettes? Get a job? Have sex? We draw the line somewhere because these things that "are the parents' decision" have consequences on broader society. They have consequences that impact you and me. And we also have a say. You can make the argument that it's just the parents' decision. But you have to say why.

The idea that browsing the internet is remotely comparable to smoking is utterly retarded.

Probably got downvoted for failing this guideline:

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

I agree. Browsing the internet is not remotely comparable to smoking.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#469

Post by redwall_hp »

wolvoleo wrote: post #222
johnc1 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a much easier solution that already exists - parental controls on children's devices. I honestly don't understand why is it not solving the problem? Yes, parents are responsible to set this up. But parents are also responsible to lock their alcohol, drugs or guns, condoms, etc., and many other things. Perhaps parental controls are not good enough? That's where the regulation could genuinely help - require ch…

Yeah. Didn't you find your dad's dirty VHS tapes when you were young? I'm sure most of us did. And we turned out fine. And no, porn isn't more extreme these days either. I remember seeing bukkake, golden showers etc on borrowed tapes and hacked pay TV. BDSM existed back then too. And I had some pics of a girls face surrounded by male members and their output. Never once did I think this would be a normal thing to do…

> I don't understand why we suddenly think that's the end of civilization.

Because they've been told to think it by the combined forces of Meta and the Heritage Project. They spelled it all out in Project 2025, a check list which has been followed nearly to the letter. They're also rampaging through libraries and trying to keep books of the shelves.

Conservatives don't like porn, because controlling sexuality is part of the cult playbook to control people. (Addendum: they don't like other people having it. They're hypocrites, of course.) They also want to, while instituting a backdoor ban on porn, define everything else they don't like as pornography. Project 2025 repeatedly uses the term "pornographic" as a synonym for for LGBT issues and other things.

The goal, after de-anonymizing the Internet, is specifically to control access to information and entrench their fascist Overton window shift.

They're really sore that many Millennials and Gen Z had the internet as an escape hatch from local, abusive churchy bubbles and want that locked down going forward.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#470

Post by bluefirebrand »

Geezus_42 wrote: post #230
bluefirebrand wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't comment at all on what the governments goals are Edit: I agree with you 100%, but the fact that governments want to track people online has no bearing on how technically possible it is to build a system where they can't An anonymous internet auth system (probably) won't get built, but it is possible to build

How is it possible to have something that both proves something about your identity but also does not allow ANYONE to deanonymize you?

That's probably too high a bar anyways? It's not like we have that today either.
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