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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

#551

Post by inigyou »

autoexec wrote: post #98
kelseyfrog wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Supposedly the incentive already exists because parents want their children saved from the harms of facebook and social media. The story is that parents are clamoring for the government to do something about it. I don't think parents really are, or where they are the expectation is that the social media companies will be forced to change their behavior, not that parents will be forced to start parenting their childre…

Polls show overwhelming support for governments to do something about kids on social media.

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

#552

Post by like_any_other »

inigyou wrote: post #512
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…

Half the laws people are complaining about are literally this although instead of a checkbox, it asks you for the birth date of a hypothetical child whose protection you want the device to match. And they don't use a government whitelist, but expect sites to self-declare and reserve the right to take action against sites that use misleading classification.

I.e. they establish the framework for censorship and deanonymization by making everyone else responsible for child-safety, except the person that should be setting up the parental controls - all they get to do is select a "child" or "not child" option. The law doesn't require they be given any control besides that - no default whitelist of apps and websites that they could edit, no blacklist, no screen time limits, nothing. Just an easy way to hand off control to someone else. A way that would be unnecessary if they instead got real parental controls.

As explained in my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49256731

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

#553

Post by inigyou »

autoexec wrote: post #279
kelseyfrog wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but that is simply wrong. You're confusing desire/intention with incentive. Someone may have a desire or intention to lose weight. But unless they lose the weight they lack incentive. It's simple: incentives incite action. Don't make it more complicated to win an argument.

> Someone may have a desire or intention to lose weight. But unless they lose the weight they lack incentive. Here are just some of the incentives overweight people have to lose weight: They'll look better, to themselves and others. They'll have more clothing options. They'll feel better. They'll be healthier. They'll have drastically lower odds of many future heath problems. They'll live longer which means they can…

And the incentive to not lose weight: food is tasty

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

#554

Post by inigyou »

beej71 wrote: post #116
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…

Well, I'm sorry parental controls are too hard to use, but all of the parents who want all other adults to sacrifice their online anonymity just to make to for it need to get their heads screwed on straight. They're screwing a) themselves b) everyone else and c) their own children when they reach adulthood.

What about the ones who don't buy just want the government to say parental controls must work and every device must have them

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

#555

Post by account42 »

inigyou wrote: post #412
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!

There are no politicians worried about kids. There are politicians worried about the votes of people who worry about kids, which is effectively the same thing.

It's very far from the same thing. The former calls for solutions that protect kids, the latter calls for solutions that can be sold as protecting kids.

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

#556

Post by inigyou »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #337
Gigachad wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean yes, we should just ban it all, but I'll take banning it for kids as a first step rather than an all or nothing where we will get nothing.

Banning it just for kids requires identification and is strictly worse.

Consider the ID check as a soft ban. Adults will ban themselves because they don't want to provide ID.

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

#557

Post by inigyou »

gorgoiler wrote: post #289
iamnothere wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a term for this: a moral panic. Believe it or not, sometimes the best answer is to do nothing until the crowd moves on to the next panic, as with the “Satanic Panic” in the 1980s. Turns out D&D was not actually a gateway to Satan worship.

If we’re talking 80s, a better comparison would be He-Man . The FTC let the free-market run riot with children’s TV. Shows used commercials to push expensive plastic toys. The shows themselves became commercials for their associated product lines. Parents felt unable to resist the social pressure channeled through their children and congress eventually passed an act that let the FCC reign in the FTC’s damage. In the…

Unrelated, but He-Man is the funniest name ever, and I can't wait for the gender roles people to come out with some series called He-Man and She-Woman.

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

#558

Post by rescbr »

inigyou wrote: post #428
rescbr wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I was a middle-schooler in the 2000's, had my own PC in my own bedroom, we had broadband access and I, of course, was exposed to porn while I was trying to download cracks and keygens on Astalavista and other such sites. Mislabelled files on eMule too. Links to porn also were readily shared on IRC channels. But yeah, I can't say it had a damaging effect on me. It was a mix of being afraid of getting a virus f…

You see how that isn't nearly as bad as the current state of society though.

Eh, the ugly side of humanity was just a click away on the darknet, and I got my share of bait and switch beheading videos on IRC chats.

It was always there, society hasn’t changed. This shit wasn’t monetized back then though.

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

#559

Post by inigyou »

Aurornis wrote: post #179
josh_p wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the other commenter who replied to you. I don’t think this comes from actual parents. And the article suggests this latest push is from right-leaning groups whose goals are surveillance and censorship. That said, I’m a father of 3. I’m a millennial and tech worker. I have the digital literacy to teach my kids about the internet and its horrors in a safe way. Not every parent does, so passing this off as…

> I dunno if you can legislate “better parental control ux”, If we must have something, I’m in favor of the OS-level flag where a parent can set the device as belonging to a minor and the apps and browser can receive the flag. Lock it behind the most basic parental controls that can be protected and remotely monitored. There are some loopholes with kids downloading apps that allow custom web requests without the flag…

Several of the laws TFA complains about are literally what you just asked for. Like the California and Illinois laws. They are literally that.

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

#560

Post by intrasight »

judge2020 wrote: post #213
intrasight wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those in tech who study this already understand the need to hardware attestation. Everyone else will understand soon enough. Old hardware will have to be grandfathered. Old cars don't track us and that has created a market for old cars. Hardware age attestation will be a long timeframe project. The current work should be towards standards that can get us there. Finally, anonymity didn't exist for my grandparents. It…

> Hardware age attestation will be a long timeframe project. The current work should be towards standards that can get us there. Unfortunately it's so much easier for lawmakers to slap down a law that says "you must verify IDs right now if you want to continue to exist" with no requirement, and often not even support for, privacy preserving ways to make this happen. The laws are happening now. The chance of reform to…

And obviously we must push back strongly against laws that do not accomplish any collective benefit. I think the only law that makes sense is to say that at some future date hardware will be required to have age attestation.
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