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Michigan 'digital age' bills pulled after privacy concerns raised

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Re: Michigan 'digital age' bills pulled after privacy concerns raised

#71

Post by bombcar »

Ylpertnodi wrote: post #45
plandis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A US based non-profit news organization isn’t going to spend money to pay lawyers to ensure they meet a regulatory burden that doesn’t affect their core demographic.

> A US based non-profit news organization isn’t going to spend money to pay lawyers to ensure they meet a regulatory burden that doesn’t affect their core demographic. I like being covered by gdpr. Though I really cannot see any country's gdpr peops taking anyone in the US to court. A very simple "Fuck you" (along the lines of The Pirate Bay) would end any legal conversations. It would be different if the news organi…

The UK is not part of the US (yet?) nor the EU, but they're currently fining US companies - it doesn't surprise me at all that many take the easy answer of "ban them by IP".

Re: Michigan 'digital age' bills pulled after privacy concerns raised

#72

Post by bombcar »

soopypoos wrote: post #57
forgotaccount3 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? That continent is not their target audience. It probably wasn't worth the effort to block foreign countries just from random unnecessary compute cost to serve a site to them, but when those countries start being serious about penalties you could face for serving their residents? Now it's justifiable to block non-US countries.

the thing is "We don't want to get legal advice" is a ridiculous justification for acting on legal advice

I'm sure they (or whoever sells the product they use to publish) did get legal advice, of the "what is the cheapest way to ensure this isn't an issue for us" and the response was "block 'em all, let God VPN them out."

After all, using a VPN doesn't absolve companies of the GDPR.

Re: Michigan 'digital age' bills pulled after privacy concerns raised

#73

Post by nonethewiser »

declan_roberts wrote: post #31

What's with the bipartisan push for these bills all of a sudden?

Well hackernews wont like this but the answer is because it's enforcing the status quo. Verifying age for age-related materials and services. Some internet related services had a defacto exemption from following the laws because the enforcement logistics just werent there. A physical store that sells porn has to ID whereas online you dont, for example.

In addition there are more services, such as social media, becoming age-gated.

The enforcement hurts the sensibilities of people like us on hackernews but it's common sense to a lot of people. We live in very polarizing times, but as you've noted, it has bipartisan support. The easiest explanation is the hackernews-friendly take of lack of enforcement mechanisms is the more radical one.

Personally I think it's a bit sad but inevitable. The laws are just catching up. And there will absolutely be some good coming from it, such as holding companies liable for breaking the law.

Re: Michigan 'digital age' bills pulled after privacy concerns raised

#74

Post by embedding-shape »

DeathArrow wrote: post #70
embedding-shape wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love seeing this, and love seeing regulations working exactly as wanted! What I see is basically "We're unable to serve this website without compromising your privacy, so instead of pretending or giving you a choice, we give you this message so you can turn around".

Or "we don't care about respecting stupid laws in your country. If you don't like being blocked, take the issue to your politicians."

But that's the thing, making them outright say "we don't care about respecting stupid laws in your country" (which for us means "we need to continue to be able to sell user data without notifying we do this") is not an "issue", that's the whole benefit of it in the first place.

Anyways, it sounds like a win-win here, they get to not care, and we get to be rejected with clear reasons why, so again, benefits all around.

Re: Michigan 'digital age' bills pulled after privacy concerns raised

#75

Post by 3form »

Minor49er wrote: post #54
colejohnson66 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should not need extensions for a business to respect my privacy. It's as simple as that. If you look at it through an equity angle, needing extensions relegates the negative effects to those that are already not "well off" — the technologically illiterate who don't know what to do or know someone who does.

Why is the government making efforts to increase technological literacy not an option?

A proper course in technological literacy would also necessarily include the fact that browser extensions are quite possibly not safe.

Re: Michigan 'digital age' bills pulled after privacy concerns raised

#76

Post by nonethewiser »

WarmWash wrote: post #42
declan_roberts wrote: post #31

What's with the bipartisan push for these bills all of a sudden?

People connect to the internet and do bad things (or have bad things happen to them) They need to pay a service provider to have the capability to do bad things (or be exposed to bad things) Why can't we just ask/compel the service provider to identify these people (or block the bad things). For any politician the line of thinking will be something like that. It comes off as incredibly long hanging fruit that would h…

> Why can't we just ask/compel the service provider to identify these people (or block the bad things).

Isn't that basically what's happening? Service providers, such as Discord recently for example, are asking for identification to prove users are of a certain age. If you punish service providers for providing services to minors then they will need to do age verification.

Re: Michigan 'digital age' bills pulled after privacy concerns raised

#77

Post by 3form »

hypeatei wrote: post #30
colejohnson66 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should not need extensions for a business to respect my privacy. It's as simple as that. If you look at it through an equity angle, needing extensions relegates the negative effects to those that are already not "well off" — the technologically illiterate who don't know what to do or know someone who does.

So someone's refusal to make a couple clicks to install an extension necessitates: 1) millions of users having to click to get the annoying popup off their screen, 2) installing an extension to block those anyway, and 3) a more fractured internet where website operators outright refuse to serve content because of liability? I'd bet a very large sum of money that the technologically illiterate don't read anything on t…

How does someone's refusal to install an extension necessitate millions of users having to close the popup? I guess you mean someone as in "vast majority of population"?

Re: Michigan 'digital age' bills pulled after privacy concerns raised

#79

Post by altairprime »

declan_roberts wrote: post #31

What's with the bipartisan push for these bills all of a sudden?

Facebook is theorized to be paying an advocacy group to launch these, so that they can externalize the legal problems of social networking onto age verification and piecemeal state laws; simultaneously lowering their damages costs in future lawsuits and also raising the drawbridge over the newly-difficult compliance moat against future competitors.

Re: Michigan 'digital age' bills pulled after privacy concerns raised

#80

Post by salawat »

bombcar wrote: post #62
colejohnson66 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Can we do X, Y, Z?" Yes? Or maybe later? It's so annoying. No means no, not "pester me later"!

Consent used to be "Yes" or "No" now it's "Yes" or "I'll give in later"

There's a reason the tech industry is said to be rapey. Such fundamental misunderstandings of consent likely do not ultimately stop at the digital.
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