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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

#491

Post by joenot443 »

autoexec wrote: post #141
joenot443 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government has a monopoly on violence and companies do not.

That's not really true though is it. The Sackler family caused over 500,000 deaths. Nestlé has killed millions of babies. DuPont and 3M poisoned every living creature on Earth. Nobody spent even one day in prison for any of it. Corporations all over the world routinely and knowingly poison, injure, or outright murder their employees and their customers. They spend massive amounts of money preventing the public from k…

From my perspective, the difference is that we societally condemn the Sackler family in the same way we societally condemn Robert Pickton or Ted Bundy.

It is absolutely failing of the government and the American legal system that nobody spent time in prison for Purdue's lies and poison, we're in full agreement there.

That said, this position alone doesn't suggest that otherwise law-abiding citizens should be more concerned about corporate surveillance than they are government surveillance.

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

#492

Post by joenot443 »

walrus01 wrote: post #60
joenot443 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government has a monopoly on violence and companies do not.

(yet). Contractors for the government that will be happy to help implement the violence are coming soon. If they're not already here by some metrics.

This is very true. There are a handful of countries, South Africa comes to mind, where the government lost that monopoly and security is a type of commodity which has to be purchased in the private sector.

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

#493

Post by foldr »

xienze wrote: post #488
happymellon wrote: post #433

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…

> Because this is leaning on blaming to UK for everything the US is doing to itself an awful lot. Hasn't the UK had a culture of surveillance (the famous CCTV cameras) and arresting people over online wrongthink for quite some time though? Who inspired who?

No, not really. This is a narrative that is pushed by certain segments of the American right (and some of their UK allies). It easily dominates online discussion in an environment where the majority of people posting have no direct experience of life in the UK. Actual life in the UK is very unlike what you would imagine on the basis of reading HN threads, or Elon Musk’s twitter feed.

I suspect that most people with first hand knowledge have simply given up trying to contribute to HN threads about the UK. There is plenty of legitimate criticism to be made of the UK, but here (as you can see from the title) the discourse has degraded to such an extent that the mythically awful UK is held responsible even for bad laws passed by American legislature.

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

#494

Post by cobbzilla »

slg wrote: post #210
cobbzilla wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it’s normal to worry about your kids. It’s normal for family and friends to worry about your kids. 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!

>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…

> You can't imagine someone genuinely caring for a child that isn't there own?

I just said the opposite. I can imagine many people genuinely caring for a child that isn’t their own.

I am skeptical when a politician who does not know my children claims to care about them.

To borrow an LLMism: It’s not cynicism, it’s the reality of history. We the people have been duped many times over. Caveat Emptor.

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

#495

Post by CommanderData »

codedokode wrote: post #480

Here's my idea how "safe mode" might be implemented without selfie, passport and without every app or website owner having to spend money on compliance. The mobile and desktop OS should have a checkbox "child mode" in the onboarding stage. Switching device to "child mode" allows only installing white-listed apps from the government list and opening white-listed websites from the government list. Parents may edit the…

I like this approach but this is a power grab similar to the purchase of Tiktok...

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

#496

Post by intended »

inigyou wrote: post #420
intended wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is coming up again and again because The current status quo does. Not. Work. There is direct evidence from trials, in which Meta researchers told executives that features like infinite scroll and others “ are inherently at odds with well-being” There is no effective fight for freedom if there is no effective understanding of the politics and social forces driving change. The freedom of the internet in the 90s wa…

Those who sacrifice freedom for a functioning society deserve neither. We should just keep doing the thing that doesn't work, because the alternative is sacrificing freedom.

Those who defend freedom should do so by being effective at it.

The internet was a magical thing when it was introduced to society at large. However this is NOT the same era.

If we are fighting for privacy and freedom, then why the heck is ad tech still allowed to be accepted as part of this conversation? If we are talking about freedoms, this is one of the greatest moments to say lets not sacrifice any privacy at all in the first place?

There is no functional and effective defense of our values if people are showing up to argue what they feel like fighting, instead of where the challenges actually are.

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

#497

Post by xyzelement »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #392
petepete wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be a nickname variant of Elizabeth.

This makes as much sense as Bill and William, or Bob and Robert.

Bill/Will and Bob/Rob are a lot more connected than "Buffy" and anything.

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

#498

Post by txrx0000 »

inigyou wrote: post #421
txrx0000 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should not ignore it, but firmly dismiss it with reason. The recent Illinois law that applies to all Internet-capable operating systems is blatantly unconstitutional. People should not be forced by law to disclose their age (or anything ) in order to engage in digital communication. That forced utterance of your own age is compelled speech, a violation of the First Amendment. For parents who are genuinely concerne…

You don't have to disclose your age. You have to disclose the age that you want your device's parental controls to work at. Doesn't have to be yours.

That doesn't change the fact that you're being forced to utter an age bracket in order to communicate digitally. It's the digital equivalent of having your mouth, eyes, and ears taped shut unless you utter "I am x years old" because the law wills it so.

Of course, it's well-established that human beings are capable of making stuff up, and you can claim to be whatever age, but that's not the point.

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

#500

Post by codedokode »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #487
codedokode wrote: post #480

Here's my idea how "safe mode" might be implemented without selfie, passport and without every app or website owner having to spend money on compliance. The mobile and desktop OS should have a checkbox "child mode" in the onboarding stage. Switching device to "child mode" allows only installing white-listed apps from the government list and opening white-listed websites from the government list. Parents may edit the…

Browsers already support safe browsing - a service that checks opened urls for fishing, so safety can be provided as a mode of such service (app store can check app url there). Also it doesn't really need to go through government, AFAIK DuckDuckGo and some DNS providers implement such feature independently.

No. SafeBrowsing is a black list, and it doesn't provide the necessary level of safety. I propose to use the white list. Also, SafeBrowsing works only within a browser and my proposal is to implement child mode system-wide.
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