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…
I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services
631–640 of 645 posts
Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services
#632Earlier 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…
Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services
#633Earlier 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…
Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services
#634I'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…
Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services
#635Earlier 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?
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
#636Earlier 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...
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
#637Earlier 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.
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
#638Earlier 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.
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
#639Earlier 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.
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
#640Earlier 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?
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.