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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

#701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of what you described is just disinformation though “We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066” is accurate: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/white-briton... Burning the Koran is not a statement of fact, so it cannot be disinformation. "young white girls are being raped by these grooming gangs" is also accurate (though the precise number is contentious, mostly because the police turned a bli…

> “We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066” is accurate Accurate as in someone said it? Centuries ago, people were worried that if the number of horses increased at the current rate, we would be waist-deep in horse manure. And you admit yourself that the "precise number is contentious".

> Accurate as in someone said it? Centuries ago, people were worried that if the number of horses increased at the current rate..

"Someone" being a population expert. Of course, "if we do nothing about it" is implied - if nothing could be done, why even bring it up? But of course you know this, and stretching a best estimate prediction by an expert to somehow qualify as "disinformation" is not arguing in good faith.

> And you admit yourself that the "precise number is contentious".

The man jailed did not state any number, and was not in jail for getting the number wrong, so that objection is irrelevant. I only add the caveat to avoid an argument about the number that the source cited.

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

#702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you” Any argument with such blatant oversimplifications is almost certainly lacking in nuance and can be ignored and dismissed. I get what you’re pointing at: politicians regularly abuse these arguments, but that doesn’t mean it’s 100% of all arguments involving children.

If they use blatant, binary positions and you try to be subtle and nuanced you've already lost.

[dead]

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

#703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you” Any argument with such blatant oversimplifications is almost certainly lacking in nuance and can be ignored and dismissed. I get what you’re pointing at: politicians regularly abuse these arguments, but that doesn’t mean it’s 100% of all arguments involving children.

Go ahead. Play their game. Be nuanced. Argue in good faith. Then watch as they accuse you of supporting pedophilia.

You said "Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you" - that's clearly not always true. Now it's OFTEN true, and in politics it's almost always used in bad faith. But that's still not everything, and your simple rule eliminates the well intentioned discussions, and that's throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Now if they are clearly acting in bad faith, then absolutely it's not worth treating that as a legitimate discussion. Now it's "kids", but yesterday it was "terrorists", way back it was "heretics" - there's always a magical word that ill intentioned people will use to bludgeon you with. But you shouldn't let them erase your ability to have honest discussions.

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

#704
post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't imagine someone genuinely caring for a child that isn't there own? I just said the opposite. I can imagine many people genuinely caring for a child that isn’t their own. I am skeptical when a politician who does not know my children claims to care about them. To borrow an LLMism: It’s not cynicism, it’s the reality of history. We the people have been duped many times over. Caveat Emptor.

>I just said the opposite. I can imagine many people genuinely caring for a child that isn’t their own. Sure, but limited to "family and friends". Following that up with "who does not know my children" indicates you clearly view empathy as extending to merely one's personal relationships and you seemingly can't imagine caring for a stranger's child. I'll grant you cyncism is not the correct description of that worldv…

Sure the school board parents are politicians too, they care about kids, no disagreement.

If you’d stop straw-manning me for a moment you might notice you still misunderstand my point.

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

#705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsers already support safe browsing - a service that checks opened urls for fishing, so safety can be provided as a mode of such service (app store can check app url there). Also it doesn't really need to go through government, AFAIK DuckDuckGo and some DNS providers implement such feature independently.

No. SafeBrowsing is a black list, and it doesn't provide the necessary level of safety. I propose to use the white list. Also, SafeBrowsing works only within a browser and my proposal is to implement child mode system-wide.

Safe browsing is filtering, and the result depends on what filter or service you use. It can be a black list or white list, it's an implementation detail invisible to the browser, it just sends a url and receives a reply whether it's ok to open. The only problem is that such filer is not provided yet, or maybe it is, I just don't know, and browsers don't implement switching to this filter.

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

#706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully appreciate that you care more about anonymity on principle, but it seems very naive to assume that principles are necessarily going to win out over the demands of aggrieved reactionary parents. Cranky parents are very consistent voters and providers of tax revenue in most polities and politicians want them to be reasonably happy and quiescent for the sake of stability. It seems to me you are wildly underestim…

You won't go far by calling everyone you disagree with, cranky, aggrieved, and reactionary. Maybe take some time to understand their concerns and you won't be so surprised when their vote wins.

Consider reading the thread more carefully. I'm arguing that it's foolish for people to be dismissive of parents as a political force even if they perceive the parents' disinterest in anonymity and privacy to be cranky or reactionary.

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

#709
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very aware of that. As I said in another comment, 'ID checks to exclude minors' is a simple and intuitive idea that's very easy to sell; qualities that are singularly lacking in alternative proposals. How should online services be regulated to mitigate algorithmic harms? To get something over the line politically, it needs to be simple enough that it can be articulated in a few sentences.

> How should online services be regulated to mitigate algorithmic harms? That would be a good conversation to have! Instead what is happening is moneyed interests are inputting hundreds of millions of dollars into organizations that otherwise wouldn't have it, which is giving an "unnatural" amount of political influence to those groups, which is changing our country, and not just on this issue. They're literally doin…

They are, but the tech community (ie the group that cares about anonymity privacy on principle) is not making a good counter-argument. To the general public, it comes off as a bunch of trolls and/or conmen arguing in favor of what's convenient for them. Pro-anonymity arguments need to address internet harms and suggest remedies that preserve anonymity.

The problem I'm at pains to points out is that many people show up in threads like this saying that aany 'think of the children' argument is fake and a cover for government intrusion, to the point of ignoring actual concerns about actual harms to actual children. I'm guessing that people saying that are not currently (or ever) interested in having children, but seem to have fallen into a pattern of thinking that the concerns of people who do have children somehow aren't real.

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

#710

We know what this is really about, its to give the UK intelligence services the ability to spy on US citizens and then pass the information on to US intelligence. We'll probably get similar laws in all the other five eyes as well.

Isn't that what mossad is for?
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