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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

#791

Post by txrx0000 »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #779
txrx0000 wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AB 1043 doesn't solve anything. It just delegates parental responsibility to the tech companies - you're giving them your child's age and letting them decide what's good for the kid. > If I'm a parent, how do I prevent my kid from telling some website that they are an adult? You don't need to because all content filters and permissions can be implemented on the client-side at the OS and app level. Rather than every s…

> you're giving them your child's age and letting them decide what's good for the kid. No. It solves exactly the problem I described. Age-restricted services currently ask users for their age at signup. With AB 1043, it asks the OS, which was given the age at account creation time. Your solution doesn't do anything for this. If you buy an Android device, you can already do everything you proposed, but that doesn't so…

> No. It solves exactly the problem I described.

The problem you described is the wrong problem to solve. Not all parents want to hand over parental decision making to the corporation or the state. And even if you do, there's a better way to delegate that without building the instruments for top-down authoritarian governance. Someone else made a well thought out comment about this on one of the other replies, if you want to read it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49262748

> If you buy an Android device, you can already do everything you proposed

That's just blatantly false. Most Android devices are incredibly locked down nowadays, they're approaching iPhone-level. There was a brief period in Android's infancy where we were close, but the market wasn't allowed to develop before they started adding anti-competitive barriers at every layer of the stack.

If you want to understand the full scale and scope of the problems we're facing, see this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49118578

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

#792

Post by foldr »

gunsle wrote: post #785
foldr wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Where are you getting that figure from?

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

#793

Post by txrx0000 »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #781
txrx0000 wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The part of my comment that you quoted is exactly the reason why the Illinois law is a First Amendment violation, and why the California one is borderline. And as far as I'm aware, there are no other legally compelled utterances that bar ordinary citizens from all online communications at the moment. There are only instances where speech is compelled in a more local manner, and often not by law.

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

#794

Post by Blazara »

mancerayder wrote: post #581
happymellon wrote: post #433

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…

There are people in the replies below going back and forth about whether the US or the UK started the surveillance state first. I think as undemocratic as the US can behave in practice, it's hard not to argue that the UK won the CCTV surveillance race. London is heavily surveilled. And it doesn't help that someone just posted this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49255496

Most of the cameras in London are privately operated by residents and businesses, not the state.

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

#795

Post by [deleted] »

happymellon wrote: post #433

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…

[deleted]

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

#796

Post by txrx0000 »

ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #786
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…

Yeah, the First Amendment applies to children after all. We shouldn't give the government, tech companies, or even parents total control over children's online communications. The only exception is when they're very young, and even that should be actualized locally by parents rather than the online platforms or the government. I think a good test for maturity is whether they're able to purchase and use their own device. If the kid can figure out how to earn 100 dollars and buy a used phone off of Craigslist without your guidance, then it's time to let go or at least loosen your controls from device-level to the home router level. And when they can afford their own mobile data or figure out VPNs that can't be blocked by the filtering you set up on the router, I'd say they're ready for the open Internet.
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