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I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

neilzone.co.uk

631–640 of 645 posts

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#631
post #6

I was sitting in a room the other day with a young adult, we were searching for additional algorithm learning materials. They searched in Google, and accept the cookies. They clicked on a website, and accepted those cookies too. They then started entering their email address to access another service. I was completely taken aback. I'm the sort of person that either rejects the cookies, or will use another site entire…

I am in my mid forties, been working as a professional software developer for over 20 years. I click “accept the cookies” almost every time. I just personally don’t feel it’s worth the effort and cost to try to avoid it. What “dark pattern cookie trick” are you worried about? I just can’t come up with a scenario where it will actually harm me in any way. All the examples I have heard are either completely implausible…

Just as you have been programmed to do. Just because you are unable to percieve there is danger, does not negate the possibility that there is danger. And yes, you are being naive. Data brokers have a profile on you that contains billions of data points and they sell this information to anybody with the money to pay for it. It's designed to be easy and as unobtrusive as possible. It's a poor technical solution that has been exploited to help track you movements across all vectors, digital and real world. All the time, everywhere you go. Look up whether or not the city you live in hasd Flock cameras installed. Welcome to 1984. We aren't in kansas anymore.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being able to limit the influence of external bad actors is the main goal of ID verification. Age verification is a useful side effect that makes it easier to sell to the general public. How? People already sell their accounts to spammers. Why would that change?

Depending on the implementation, I could see that having rate limiting effects. There're only finitely many IDs so scaling sockpuppeting will saturate these IDs quickly but it's quite easy to spin up a new anonymous account. For example, I think the EU ID system has an upcoming way to create pseudo anonymous identifiers that can identify a user per website. This presents the problem of governments being able to gatek…

The internet is for the free exchange of ideas! Why would we want to limit it because some random gov somewhere is writing comments? Allow your citizens to think!

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Democracy" is when "bad actors" (as defined by the establishment) are shut out of all online discourse. The point of ID laws is not to stop "bots" or "sockpuppets", it's to enable governments to shut down the speech of their political adversaries by painting them as dangerous. That is not democracy, that is authoritarianism, even if you absolutely hate the people that are being shut up. Western countries are not i…

> The point of ID laws is not to stop "bots"... Then make it the point. The Internet is already all but dead. We could fix it (as I propose). Or we let it die. I'm fine with either outcome. > criminalizing dissent When has that not been true? Serious question. Socrates was compelled to commit suicide. Jesus was nailed to a cross. Journalist and activists are routinely murdered. How many political prisoners are there…

Yet we discourse here just fine. The internet isn't dead. It's just boring if you go to the boring parts.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#634
post #60

I'm fine with providing my identity for online banking and other finance platforms for legal & taxation purposes. I can't think of a single other use case in which I'd be willing to verify my identity. I'd rather go back to hosting email myself, and am fine with circumventing content access control for all other platforms for personal use. We're seeing the world slide towards authoritarian strongmen, and we want to g…

Honestly I think these age verification laws are blunt instruments responding to the decade of avoided moderation the big platforms have managed to pull off. I've run ad blockers for years now, but I'm still trying to forget those disgusting zit popping pictures that trended in ads for a while. Or those incredibly stupid life hack shorts, like the one where someone tied a cord around a mug and the hack to get it loos…

Heaven forbid their parents denylist the urls on their routers...

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#635
post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about you parent better and prevent your kids by educating them against the dangers of said things?Limit their time online and what they can do? Why should democracy be at stake and people's freedoms, just so you can get away with not parenting.

Ok, so what do you do when your child visits a friends house and they have unrestricted access to the internet?

You chat with the friend's parent in the same way that parent's ask about whether there are guns in the house and if they're locked up.

It's about the same process as any other vice: guns, drugs, etc.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen a channel demonetised because they showed how to use MP3 player and it was deemed "spreading piracy" by Google. So I guess flash drives would get illegal as well...

Which channel and which MP3 player? Cause if you're talking about Limewire...

This is from Polish internet bubble.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSxG8WHMw1g

Corrections: the channel was not demonetised, the video was removed

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is whether parents should bear this responsibility or the state.

Both. The same as for other materials we don't want kids to access, like alcohol. We can't expect parents to always be watching their kids. That's not how societies have ever worked. But what I'm actually questioning in my comment above is effectiveness of the technology solution proposed at the device level.

It's effective insofar as the parents secure the device. If it's a general purpose computer, and the parent forgets to lock the bios, kids will just live boot into Ubuntu or some other OS and do as they please.

Or they may install keyloggers (including hardware loggers) to get the parents' password and then go update their account.

Certainly this may help hinder them, but it won't take long for them to learn the basics of curcumvention, and the cost is regulated speech for OS manufacturers.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#638
post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ummmmm. The GDPR does outlaw unnecessary collection of personal data without explicit opt-in consent. It's baffling you appear ignorant of this.

Yet, Facebook and Google have a thriving business in the EU among I’m assuming EU companies. So you can pretend that the law is effective or you can admit that all it gave the world were cookie banners.

The "cookie banners" allow you to opt out of providing your personal data. That is the entire point!

Blame the parasitic ad-tech industry for their existence. Not the lawmakers who protect all our privacy.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point of ID laws is not to stop "bots"... Then make it the point. The Internet is already all but dead. We could fix it (as I propose). Or we let it die. I'm fine with either outcome. > criminalizing dissent When has that not been true? Serious question. Socrates was compelled to commit suicide. Jesus was nailed to a cross. Journalist and activists are routinely murdered. How many political prisoners are there…

Yet we discourse here just fine. The internet isn't dead. It's just boring if you go to the boring parts.

> The internet isn't dead.

I was referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory#Claims

> Yet we discourse here just fine.

True. But what makes HN an outlier?

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet we discourse here just fine. The internet isn't dead. It's just boring if you go to the boring parts.

> The internet isn't dead. I was referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory#Claims > Yet we discourse here just fine. True. But what makes HN an outlier?

Probably the lack of pictures. Maybe the moderation. Maybe the slight niche.

It could die if it becomes profitable to spamers. Or maybe it's dead now and one or both of us are llms.

But as long as the content quality meets my personal utility threshold, it makes sense for me to visit it, regardless of whether it is a victim of DIT. Ultimately it's probably up to webmasters to understand if the traffic on their site is either profitable or of a high enough quality to justify the operating costs of a hobby.

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