The UK's war on anonymity has come to America • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by walrus01 » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 1:17 AM UTC

inigyou wrote: post #46

[flagged]

> I see you're putting "no internet access without scanning your ID"

Other countries have already implemented this or are making strenuous efforts towards it. In Pakistan right now you need to submit a copy of your national ID card and scan your fingerprints to get a live LTE data service SIM card. This is not hyperbole but is real practice in some places that is soon going to be imported to jurisdictions that traditionally have more "freedom".

https://www.pta.gov.pk/category/biometric-verification-77103...

https://www.biometricupdate.com/202607/pakistan-fast-tracks-...

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

#52

Post by inigyou » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 1:17 AM UTC

Avicebron wrote: post #36

anigbrowl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech people keep ignoring the fact that many people a) find the parental controls too hard to use and b) have no confidence that their kids won't find a way to circumvent them. If parents felt in control of technology they wouldn't be calling on governments to regulate it in the first place. I know a lot of tech people like to assume that government wants to control everything and these parents are fake front groups…

Plenty of us survived the internet when it was an even wilder west, IRC chats with strangers trying to learn perl, not putting your name and social security number into random websites. Being aware of predators. It's a very specific kind of power-hungry move fast and break things tech that refuses to accept responsibility of the fallout. Anonymity, the right to move privately and be private online is much bigger than…

It was a noncommercial wild west. You were up against some troll trying to get a reaction by linking you to goatse, not some trillion dollar international corporation with a literal army of addiction experts A/B testing how to maximize engagement.

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

#53

Post by iamnothere » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 1:17 AM UTC

doginasuit wrote: post #39

HN has this guideline for comments: > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says. If the same standard were applied for posts, this one would fail. I recognize that it is a popular perspective that these measures are essentially a war on anonymity, but that is not what they intend to fix, although it is quite possible that anonymity is a casualty of whatever war is at hand. I believ…

I disagree with you. Plans to eliminate anonymity have been discussed for years in elite circles, at Davos and similar events, and it’s most often framed in the context of social control (eliminating dissent or foreign influence).

Larry Ellison on surveillance: “Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.”

This is not new and it’s not about kids. This is the culmination of years of planning that began after the Arab Spring, when elites began to get concerned about how the Internet could be leveraged for domestic regime change.

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

#54

Post by kelseyfrog » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 1:18 AM UTC

steve_taylor wrote: post #48

anigbrowl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech people keep ignoring the fact that many people a) find the parental controls too hard to use and b) have no confidence that their kids won't find a way to circumvent them. If parents felt in control of technology they wouldn't be calling on governments to regulate it in the first place. I know a lot of tech people like to assume that government wants to control everything and these parents are fake front groups…

Parents can stop giving kids smartphones.

Why repeat the same argument if it clearly hasn't worked? Do you expect it to suddenly become effective?

Change in behavior can only follow from change in incentives. Parents must be held legally liable if they allow their children access to social media. That means jail time for negligence.

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

#55

Post by anonreeeeplor » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 1:18 AM UTC

It is very unlikely that “NGOs” have the funding influence and power to do this. The more likely source is state backed intelligence agencies. The NGOs are just there to create a buffer.

Ask yourself logically - who would pay these NGOs to do things like attempt to extort meta into a $500M+ settlement over “harming child mental health.”

This is all connected and intelligence agency backed. It’s far from innocent, it’s non corporate - some had suggested meta was behind it - but as we have seen meta is the one getting targeted.

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

#56

Post by inigyou » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 1:18 AM UTC

bigyabai wrote: post #33

anigbrowl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech people keep ignoring the fact that many people a) find the parental controls too hard to use and b) have no confidence that their kids won't find a way to circumvent them. If parents felt in control of technology they wouldn't be calling on governments to regulate it in the first place. I know a lot of tech people like to assume that government wants to control everything and these parents are fake front groups…

Parents aren't calling on governments to regulate it. Implementations like Apple's Client Side Scanning was not a populist movement, and many savvy parents spoke up about how it crossed multiple lines that set the stage for authoritarian abuses. Apple got so much flak for entertaining the idea that they had to drop it, there was no way to come out looking benign with it. This is the "Christian moms need Congress to r…

Can we stop pretending an online porn blocker is the same as AI scanning the photos you take and uploading ones it doesn't like?

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

#57

Post by Forgeties79 » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 1:18 AM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #29

anigbrowl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech people keep ignoring the fact that many people a) find the parental controls too hard to use and b) have no confidence that their kids won't find a way to circumvent them. If parents felt in control of technology they wouldn't be calling on governments to regulate it in the first place. I know a lot of tech people like to assume that government wants to control everything and these parents are fake front groups…

I recently put some thought into what I would have done if I had encountered "parental controls" to use the Internet when I first encountered it as a young teen in 1992. I would have made it my personal mission in life to circumvent everything and anything possible. I feel fortunate that no such controls existed and the adults in my life knew significantly less about the technology than I did. Was I exposed to some c…

I have a feeling we had a similar experience growing up. I generally agree, but also, we got QAnon/Alex Jones and such which have quite directly screwed up my country. So I don’t know, my opinion is often contradictory and fluid. I don’t know where I stand anymore. I believe in an “open internet,” but also, there’s people like Andrew Tate who have ruined the minds of people I care about.

We can debate if these systems and people existed before (they did), but the reach and scale is different now. My most controversial opinion these days is that not everyone should be allowed to upload to YouTube if it’s public facing. We need basic screening and filtering.

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

#58

Post by King-Aaron » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 1:18 AM UTC

donw wrote: post #26

matheusmoreira wrote: post #3

> These NGOs have converged upon a unified strategy: use the rhetoric of ‘child safety’ to advocate for digital ID laws that would prevent adults from using the internet anonymously. Of course. Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you into giving up your freedom for security. Whatever argument they make should be simply ignored and dismissed.

[flagged]

Conflating these two things is honestly astonishing.

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

#59

Post by samplatt » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 1:19 AM UTC

matchbok3 wrote: post #24

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"

It's 2026, the conspiracy theory that business people wanted RTO for office space value has been debunked 100 times. Such a silly, nonsense idea.

That'd be a lot easier to believe if you provided a source, which you should do if you care enough to comment in the first place, I think?

A cursory google suggests that the return-to-office movement is primarily driven by management's desire for voluntary turnover, avoiding the bad press of mass layoffs. But certainly doesn't show that it's 'been debunked 100 times'.

In my own experience, it's been 50/50 a desire for voluntary turnover, and also a control tactic. Employees are easier to strong-arm when they're immersed in the idea that company culture actually matters.

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

#60

Post by walrus01 » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 1:19 AM UTC

joenot443 wrote: post #38

BeaverGoose wrote: post #8

I'm always surprised how defensive people get in here about privacy when so many corporations have vastly more information about you than the government does.

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.