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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

#781

Post by lern_too_spel »

txrx0000 wrote: post #752
lern_too_spel wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either comply with the law and utter an age, or you're breaking the law if you communicate online without such an utterance. Not you. The OS distributor breaks the law if they don't give you this ability. > And contrary to your claim, COPPA does not legally require service providers to ask every user how old they are, nor are users obligated to reply It requires service providers to ask if you are under 13 if they…

I disagree with your understanding of COPPA, but I'm not going to repeatedly argue over the precise boundries of COPPA because that's not the point. COPPA is not a First Amendment violation as I understood it, nor is California's AB 1043. The latter is still very bad, just not to the point of being unconstitutional (but it's close). AB 1043 would violate the First Amendment just like the Illinois one if it didn't add…

> The latter is still very bad

You have yet to give any harms.

> your entire ability to see/hear/say anything online is being gatekept by a legally-compelled utterance.

And? If there is no First Amendment violation, what is the problem with that? There are already many de facto compelled utterances required to communicate with other devices on the Internet.

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

#782

Post by andsoitis »

inigyou wrote: post #544
dawn3727 wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come to China; it is recognized worldwide as one of the safest countries.

Also highest quality of life, most technological progress, least corrupt government (executing people caught doing corruption helps with that). Main bad thing is you can't criticise the government or vote.

> Also highest quality of life, most technological progress, least corrupt government (executing people caught doing corruption helps with that). Main bad thing is you can't criticise the government or vote.

Where does it stand against other countries with respect to happiness?

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

#783

Post by lern_too_spel »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #690
like_any_other wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Nor is "merely possessing material" that could stir up racial hatred a crime. The law requires intent or likelihood of stirring up racial hatred. I don't know why you linked to a page filled with ads when the text of the law is available straight from the government that implemented it: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/data.html#key-a...

If a person presenting or directing the performance is not shown to have intended to stir up racial hatred, it is a defence for him to prove—

(a) that he did not know and had no reason to suspect that the performance would involve the use of the offending words or behaviour, or

(b) that he did not know and had no reason to suspect that the offending words or behaviour were threatening, abusive or insulting, or

(c) that he did not know and had no reason to suspect that the circumstances in which the performance would be given would be such that racial hatred would be likely to be stirred up.

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

#784

Post by gunsle »

kerkeslager wrote: post #756
ipaddr wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

There's a fundamental disconnect going on here. You're talking about what humans believe are human rights. I'm talking about what human rights are . The right to privacy is a human right, even if no government on the planet actually respects or formally recognizes it. The right to privacy was always a human right, it's just that formal protections of that right have become more necessary as technology and society hav…

You’re literally arguing nonsense. You have no way to define what a “human right” is outside of some kind of moral framework that others have no obligation to subscribe to. “Human rights” do not exist. The word right in this context literally makes no sense without some kind of moral underpinning, which again circles back to requiring some kind of moral framework (religion for example) that only work as far as a group of people agree on. There is no such thing as what “human rights are” there are only things certain groups of people have decided to agree is a “right” within their community.

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

#785

Post by gunsle »

foldr wrote: post #493
xienze wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because this is leaning on blaming to UK for everything the US is doing to itself an awful lot. Hasn't the UK had a culture of surveillance (the famous CCTV cameras) and arresting people over online wrongthink for quite some time though? Who inspired who?

No, not really. This is a narrative that is pushed by certain segments of the American right (and some of their UK allies). It easily dominates online discussion in an environment where the majority of people posting have no direct experience of life in the UK. Actual life in the UK is very unlike what you would imagine on the basis of reading HN threads, or Elon Musk’s twitter feed. I suspect that most people with f…

Right, so there isn’t currently hundreds of people in UK jails for simply saying “bad words” online? That must be algorithmic misinformation slop too huh?

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

#786

Post by ytoawwhra92 »

codedokode wrote: post #480

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…

> - based on liberal principles of voluntary participation rather than on totalitarian principles like most other proposals

Well, except for children, who under this proposal don't get to participate in anything online that hasn't been explicitly endorsed by the government or their parents. Too bad for that 17 year old who wants to get their news from Reuters rather than Fox.

I personally prefer proposals that treat children as human beings first and foremost, and only infringe on their rights in specific cases where the reduction in harm outweighs the infringement.

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

#787

Post by qsera »

pixelatedindex wrote: post #778
qsera wrote: post #767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That doesn’t mean X isn’t effective. No one said it. Don't put words in my mouth.

That’s fair pushback. I concluded that this was the underlying assumption because I couldn’t surmise anything else because you had said this: > The implication is that vaccines saved X lives. This could convince most of the people. But someone can ask. Are those kids who are not dying of X (thanks to the vaccine), are dying of something else? To me it assumes mutual exclusivity between not dying of X and dying of som…

It did not assume mutual exclusivity. But if the underlying cause of succumbing to a disease is poor general health or a poor immune system, then preventing a single disease might not really save the person.

But it still shows up as a life saved by the vaccine (because it prevented a specific disease incidence). That is misleading.

This can be made very clear by taking a small example. Imagine there is an island with a population of 100. Among these 50 are very weak. And every year, these 50 die due to various illness. And among these 50 deaths, 30 are caused by X.

So in order to save these 30 deaths, the government started vaccinating against X. The next year there is zero deaths due to X. But there were still 50 deaths in total that year too. Only that the 30 lives that used to be claimed by X, is now claimed by A, B and C (they are so weak that they will succumb to any infection).

This is not an unrealistic scenario. If you have a weak immune system, any minor infection could end up fatal. The only unrealistic thing in this story is the occurance of constant 50 people who have weak immune system every year. But that does not void the point.

So while the vaccine prevented disease incidence, it did not prevent any deaths.

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

#788

Post by GoblinSlayer »

inigyou wrote: post #772
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question was why they exist.

Allow me to quote the question in question: > So why are ID checks necessary Why are you gaslighting HN?

That's not a start of the discussion, so it doesn't set the topic, but I'm not against the idea that you tried to derail it.
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