Live data from Hacker News

The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

effort.news

731–740 of 759 posts

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

#731

Here's my idea how "safe mode" might be implemented without selfie, passport and without every app or website owner having to spend money on compliance. The mobile and desktop OS should have a checkbox "child mode" in the onboarding stage. Switching device to "child mode" allows only installing white-listed apps from the government list and opening white-listed websites from the government list. Parents may edit the…

I also have a proposal for lawmakers. It's simpler, and it will address the digital parenting problem from the root, and also solve a bunch of other societal problems in the process: use antitrust to force hardware vendors to ship their smartphones without an operating system. End the mobile OS cartel and let there be competition. This digital parenting problem would have been solved long ago if hardware wasn't locke…

Your proposal doesn't even attempt to solve the problem these laws solve. If I'm a parent, how do I prevent my kid from telling some website that they are an adult? AB 1043 solves this by letting me set this on their OS account, which all other services will query.

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

#732

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but the war on anonymity was first (just) passed in the US at a state level as porn laws before it passed in the UK. Are we pretending that the porn id laws weren't a first attempt at getting forums like Reddit that might "accidentally" have naked pictures liable and therefore profile everyone? Because this is leaning on blaming to UK for everything the US is doing to itself an awful lot…

the UK has been doing this for years, but the recent round of "ID EVERYONE" is because facebook doesn't want to deal with liability for banned underage folks, and because Palantir wants to snoop on everyone's traffic in an attempt to mind control the masses.

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

#733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You said "Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you" - that's clearly not always true.

Then let's sharpen the statement.

"Anyone who brings up kids is either trying to manipulate you or is a useful idiot for the manipulators."

> But you shouldn't let them erase your ability to have honest discussions.

Tell that to them, not me. I've found that I'm perfectly capable of having honest discussions about pretty much any topic, no matter how controversial, except this.

When children are involved, even perfectly well intentioned people get whipped up into an emotional frenzy and are ready to double down on literally any half baked "solution" to whatever problem is placed in front of them. They cannot be argued out of such a state, and will lash out at anyone who tries. Your "heretic" comparison is apt.

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

#734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some country has laws that some other country dislikes, therefore they should be able to ignore them? Yeah, I think that's pretty much the definition of the right of asylum.

Not sure if asylum is relevant here. Crucially, asylum is granted when the person is already on the jurisdiction of the country that grants asylum. Granting asylum to someone on another jurisdiction and extraditing them is already problematic. Granting asylum remotely while they stay in that jurisdiction is unheard of. And a system admin or service provider like us mortals, don't have the authority to grant asylum. L…

[dead]

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

#735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He who gives up freedom for security ends up with neither.

So does he who gives up security for freedom. All things must be balanced.

"Kids are being harmed, so let's end privacy online and force everyone to ID" is not balance, it is the panopticon.

Hilariously, even the baroness cited in the article believes it's extremism. I've even seen her defend privacy and VPNs. She claims she's backing deanonymization because nobody is doing anything else. The ones who want a surveillance state are only too happy to oblige.

Balance is expecting parents to actually parent their children instead of offloading all the responsibility to the state.

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

#736

I simply do not understand the optaphobia of the tech literate. Social media already tracks it's users with or without laws. The general populace simply will not wish to anonymize themselves on the internet. So ID Laws only serves as a benefit by restricting children. Regarding pornography, the demand will always be there. Adding ID tracking will just shift the business model to be more covert, which is also a net be…

> And on the day the government decides to ban social media for adults, I say good riddance to it too.

The government's response to Facebook intentionally being toxic and preying on children was to strip rights from its citizens.

Banning social media is not on the table.

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

#737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is coming up again and again because The current status quo does. Not. Work. There is direct evidence from trials, in which Meta researchers told executives that features like infinite scroll and others “ are inherently at odds with well-being” There is no effective fight for freedom if there is no effective understanding of the politics and social forces driving change. The freedom of the internet in the 90s wa…

Those who sacrifice freedom for a functioning society deserve neither. We should just keep doing the thing that doesn't work, because the alternative is sacrificing freedom.

> We should just keep doing the thing that doesn't work

That's not what he said.

He said:

> Meta researchers told executives that features like infinite scroll and others “ are inherently at odds with well-being"

> Fighting for a status quo that didn’t work for children and even for many adults is a losing fight.

By "status quo" he means the exploitative and addictive business models of big tech.

Why are we bending over backwards to preserve big tech profits?

That's what all of this is. It's big tech lobbying for draconian laws that "solve" the problem in a way that simultaneously preserves their business models. It's big tech saying "sure it's harmful and addictive but look it's adult only now!"

Which is of course total bullshit. Their "get people addicted" business models are the root cause, and "kids are harmed" is merely a symptom of the problem.

Treat the root cause by wiping out their harmful business models.

Incidentally, that was the conclusion:

> Fighting for privacy and against ad tech, and against addictive design features for all users is a far stronger fight.

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

#738
post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are those kids who are not dying of X (thanks to the vaccine), are dying of something else? Now the picture is not so clear. Why is it not so clear? If they are not dying of X then the vaccine did the job and technically saved the kid’s life from dying of X. Notice that it doesn’t mean that they can’t die of other things.

Because just imagine that may be the underlying cause of death is malnutrition, or poor immune system. In this case the body won't be able to fight of any kind of infection. When you vaccinate such a person for X, that person is able to resist X. But since the immune system health is still weak or the person is still malnutrition, they could still succumb to an infection of Y. But that is one less death from X, and o…

> So the point being 1000 deaths from X to 0 deaths from X does not necessary mean X lives saved.

Yes, this statement is a non-sequitur. A vaccine preventing death from X does not prevent a death from other causes. That doesn’t mean X isn’t effective.

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

#739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pointing out a law you don't like in another country as justification to ignore local laws, or to critique internation relations policy, is a terrible argument. Some country has laws that some other country dislikes, therefore they should be able to ignore them? I think comes down to what influence you think you have. I'm a backend developer and sys admin, when it comes to international law, I think of it in relation…

> Some country has laws that some other country dislikes, therefore they should be able to ignore them? I don't know your political beliefs, but I'll say that conservatives make this nonsense argument all the time. Focus: the person you're responding to is talking about people going to jail for criticizing a leader or being gay or trans. These are violations of human rights. I can't speak for noir_lord, but for me, h…

Humans rights change over time and are different in different places.

Currently its not a human right to be able to marry an ai personality or a machine but it will be. 100 years ago it wasn't human right to marry same sex.

Human rights are not fixed in time. We may see privacy rights becoming a human right soon or not depending on how things play out. Should having a dark sky at night be a human right currently we don't think so but that could change.

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

#740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those who sacrifice freedom for a functioning society deserve neither. We should just keep doing the thing that doesn't work, because the alternative is sacrificing freedom.

Those who defend freedom should do so by being effective at it. The internet was a magical thing when it was introduced to society at large. However this is NOT the same era. If we are fighting for privacy and freedom, then why the heck is ad tech still allowed to be accepted as part of this conversation? If we are talking about freedoms, this is one of the greatest moments to say lets not sacrifice any privacy at al…

> If we are fighting for privacy and freedom, then why the heck is ad tech still allowed to be accepted as part of this conversation?

Completely agree. Adtech, most of big tech in general, is harmful, and is pushing these panopticon solutions to preserve their own existence and profits. We should treat the root cause.

Post reply on HN