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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

#681
post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. First, maybe we can just eventually require Flock cameras to also record only to encrypted storage accessible by a judicial warrant. Presumably you are perfectly OK with that? Second, privacy advocates have much to say about being surveilled at all, regardless of whether the data is encrypted or not. They’re opposed to recording at all, not recording and then the judge gets to…

> maybe we can just eventually require Flock cameras to also record only to encrypted storage accessible by a judicial warrant This is a private company's proprietary photography and derivative works. While counties and states might be able to insist on such stipulations as conditions of use of public right-of-way, no such requirements would be legal otherwise. Home Depot's CCTV footage is no different than Flock's f…

Sure but that's all aligned with what I wrote here.

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

#682
post #585
post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it did not. Online right wing is trying to push narrative that is all.

The UK's culture on this stuff has been relatively famous since Orwell coined the term thoughtcrime. The major advantage the US has over the UK historically has been the oceans, but an interesting secondary one is the US was built by people who seemed to have a healthy fear of the extended groupthink sessions that the UK tends to fall into. It's always been something of a problem given how insular their upper class i…

> US was built by people who seemed to have a healthy fear of the extended groupthink sessions

Nah. Slavery in the south was enforced by massive amount of forced groupthink. They called themselves pro-freedom btw. See, limitations on slavery represented taking away freedom in their minds. And that conception stayed.

And anyway, USA is far from actual freedom including freedom of speech. It does not even rank that well in international comparisons. It is just strong in calling itself free or freedom minded. And huge bulk of that we are freedom rhetorics is from authoritarian fascists

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

#683

Here is a 2-minute tutorial video on how to turn on parental controls on an iPhone. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tv6vxRBEa2o Instead of asking parents to do this, you get these laws where you need to show your id to unlock your own device. Clearly.

This is a garbage UI and it looks like it was designed using "dark patterns" to ensure that nobody uses it. Look how many clicks (18 clicks, I counted) one needs to do in the correct sequence without a single mistake, and how many distracting and misleading options are there. It is a sabotage, it is a rebellion. Technically, yes, Apple can claim that they have "safe mode", but in practice it is unusable. Apple clearl…

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

#684

Here is a 2-minute tutorial video on how to turn on parental controls on an iPhone. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tv6vxRBEa2o Instead of asking parents to do this, you get these laws where you need to show your id to unlock your own device. Clearly.

This is a garbage UI and it looks like it was designed using "dark patterns" to ensure that nobody uses it. Look how many clicks (18 clicks, I counted) one needs to do in the correct sequence without a single mistake, and how many distracting and misleading options are there. It is a sabotage, it is a rebellion. Technically, yes, Apple can claim that they have "safe mode", but in practice it is unusable. Apple clearl…

> Also I hate watching vertical videos on a laptop.

Consider getting a mobile phone

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

#685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Locked down devices are kind of the only solution that both (A) preserves privacy and (B) solves the problem. However, it indeed strips a user of the freedom to use their device in the way that they want; although, safe to say that the US doesn't have all that much problem with that, given Apple's continued market dominance. The alternative is what we're getting right now: laws that require verifying ID documents, of…

Client-side filtering solves the problem, because children's clients are owned by their parents. We should mandate that websites and apps send metadata about the content being served (eg extending the Rating: RTA header from 20 years ago) and mandate that OSs/browsers allow filtering to be easily configured at setup. This is a more private but also much more granular/ useful solution, it's only difficult today becaus…

It's not difficult at all. It's not good enough for lawmakers. Their requirement is opt-in to adult content, not opt-out (i.e. the goal is parents don't need to interact with their child or set up parental controls themselves). Which is really bad.

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

#686
post #254

The right people to protect children are those responsible for them - their parents and guardians. If there is a problem with children not being sufficiently protected, that is the level at which to solve it. Give families tools and information to do so.

> The right people to protect children are those responsible for them - their parents and guardians.

How does the ability to successfully reproduce confer expertise in protecting children from perils of the 21st century, specifically internet porn, hate speech, cyber bullying, addictive platform design, etc?

> If there is a problem with children not being sufficiently protected, that is > the level at which to solve it.

Society creates the greater environment that kids grow up in. And we all then pay for the problems when they occur because of those sh*tty environments. Pushing fixing it all onto parents is like trying to get kids to be healthy when they are driven everywhere, surrounded by fast food joints and bombarded with junk food adverts. Claiming that it would be different with a little more public service information and tools on top ... well the obesity rates would beg to differ.

Ultimately, society creates the greater environment and lives with consequences, as such society cannot not be involved in any meaningful attempt to deliver improvements.

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

#687
UK has two competing governance models: The Round Table (decentralized, king as "first among peers") and the Tower of London (Centralized autocracy, originally imposed by the Norman conquerer William I).

The Star Chamber, as an extension of the Tower of London, served as an administrative tool to avoid trial by peers, lower the standards of evidence, while eliminating privacy and the spread of "libel" in favor of public stability. "The truth is no defense" in the Star Chamber model because libelous claims that were TRUE were more damaging to public stability.

There's a strong precedence in common law for supression of privacy and speech if it threatens the legitamcy of the administrative state.

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

#688
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half the laws we're complaining about (e.g. California, Illinois) are literally just regulating parental controls, and I can no longer give the benefit of the doubt to people who act as if this is the same as forcing internet users to scan their ID. People who conflate these two things are paid lobbyists of Meta to make sure Meta won't have to be safe for children even when the parental controls checkbox is turned on…

> Half the laws If you forgive the slight exaggeration in my use of "always", then I am half right - in fully half the cases, deanonymization is the first thing they try. But let's look at those "just regulating parental controls" laws, the California one [1]. What does it do? Does it give parents/the owner the tools needed to limit child access? Does it require vendors to include such tools? No, neither of those. It…

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

#689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's against the HN rules to suggest that some read the fine article, however the answer to your questions and more are in the first paragraph, and in picture format too!

Reading the article, I must clarify my question. You said that there was state level movements prior to the UK. Did you mean that prior to 2023 or 2017 there were US state level efforts? Where was that happening? Sorry for not being clear

I said they passed (just) before.

Example, Texas: HB 1181, effective 2023-9-1

United Kingdom: Online Safety Act 2023, effective 2023-10-26

I'm not saying this is all the US' fault (blame lies with big tech who need excuses to mine minors data), but the title blames the UK exporting id verification to the US when the US is very capable of doing it to itself.

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

#690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The UK "wrongthink arrests" were for stuff like calling for a building full of people to be burned down. While the US arrests you for criticising the police chief.

The UK arrests were also for stickers with: slogans such as “Reject white guilt”, “Nationalism is nurture”, “We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066” and “Diversity – designed to fail, built to replace” - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/16/uk-man-with-... "Stirring up racial hatred", even merely possessing material that could do so, is a crime in the UK: https://www.thelawpages.com/criminal-offence…

Burning the Koran isn't illegal: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgv785n23eo

Viewing far right propaganda does not carry a 15 year jail sentence, though conservative politician Rudd wished it did: your own article (did you even read it)

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