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Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

bbc.com

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Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#861

Post by jbjbjbjb »

codedokode wrote: post #858
jbjbjbjb wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstood how the digital credentials api works. It keeps it in your phone’s secure element and lets you share just a “yes/no” proof like “over 18” without revealing anything else. It’s basically the cryptographically secure version of the isAdult bit you’re describing. It also has trust by cryptographically signing the proof and it can handle different jurisdictions.

Not keeping the ID in a phone is better than keeping it in a "secure element" and having to upload it there using closed-sourced software with unclear functionality.

I’m not sure it has to keep the id on the device, it keeps the signed digital credentials not the original id document. The government would sign the “facts” like isAdult etc and they currently issue and sign all current ids anyway.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#863

Post by extraisland »

autoexec wrote: post #487
msgodel wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a number of recent polls in English speaking countries young men have been one of the strongest anti-porn demographics actually. I think HN being tech adjacent with the history and practical reality of how the internet works along with being more libertarian (or at least liberal) is going to bias that more than the gender distribution.

I don't put much faith in polls generally, but I put even less faith in polls where people are asked how they feel about porn. I don't think you can come to any reasonable conclusion from data of such low quality as is typical of polling these days. Even in the absolute best circumstances where enough people are polled to be representative, and those people aren't asked any leading/misleading questions, and the ident…

There is a similar trend against drinking culture. Less people are going "out on the lash". So it is entirely believable.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#864

Post by yupyupyups »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #853
kelipso wrote: post #844

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decades? Generation? Make a good argument if you are going to make one. We are talking a few years here, say 12, 14, 16 to 18, and they get a steady customer.

The premise of "steady customer" is that they stick with you. Which, to begin with, is implausible because there are so many competing services, and even if it actually happened and that person subscribed to your service until they're 80 years old, those years are decades away.

Companies think both at a micro and macro scale. They chase individuals but they are also very interested in seeing the entire landscape be more interested in whatever they are selling. If porn peddlers were only targeting "that creepy uncle", and not thinking beyond that, the porn industry would not have been as big as it is today. The financial insentive is very real, and so is the desire to keep porn accessible to kids.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#865

Post by eru »

account42 wrote: post #848
eru wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be true in some theory, in practice you can find reasonably good alignment for most people at five or six viable parties.

No, in practice I don't find that. In practice I find people actively voting against their interests because no matter who they vote fore the party is going to push for something they don't want.

What countries (or states or counties or cities etc) or time periods do you have in mind here?

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#866

Post by qcnguy »

mcv wrote: post #854
qcnguy wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do if they are libertarian governments. Although it's popular to pretend they don't exist, there are plenty of examples of governments reducing their power over history. The American government is a good example of this having originally bound itself by a constitution that limits its own power. And Britain has in the past gone through deregulatory phases and shrunk the state. Unfortunately at this time Britain d…

> the conservatives have largely withered on the vine becoming merely another center left party. Excuse me, WHAT?! I can't imagine what else you could write to signal so clearly that nobody should take anything you write seriously. Even Labour barely comes across as center-left anymore. The Tories have never been. I would hope that the LibDems and the Greens would strongly oppose this use of the OSA, but I haven't se…

Sounds like you're Old Left? The left's positions have changed since 1900 you know.

Labour is fully committed to mass immigration and "diversity", refuses to reduce welfare by even a penny despite imminent financial crisis, has implemented big tax rises, has soaked the rich so much they're all leaving, and this article is about it enforcing heavy handed regulation of information distribution. All that sounds very left wing to me, judged by the modern goals the left have.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#867

Post by AnthonyMouse »

yupyupyups wrote: post #864
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The premise of "steady customer" is that they stick with you. Which, to begin with, is implausible because there are so many competing services, and even if it actually happened and that person subscribed to your service until they're 80 years old, those years are decades away.

Companies think both at a micro and macro scale. They chase individuals but they are also very interested in seeing the entire landscape be more interested in whatever they are selling. If porn peddlers were only targeting "that creepy uncle", and not thinking beyond that, the porn industry would not have been as big as it is today. The financial insentive is very real, and so is the desire to keep porn accessible to…

The dichotomy you're implying is "that creepy uncle" on one hand and a large proportion of the population on the other, but it's the latter in both cases. The people between the ages of 14 and 80 are nearly the same number of people as the ones between 18 and 80, and the people between 14 and 17 don't have money to pay you during those years anyway.

Targeting them has a lower return than targeting people who are of age.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#868

Post by fennecfoxy »

monooso wrote: post #501
drawfloat wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law was passed by the previous government and everyone assumed the next government would take great delight in reversing it. I wouldn’t be so sure that any next government (which, by the way, there is still a non zero chance could be Labour) will necessarily reverse this. Maybe Reform would tweak the topics, but I’m not convinced any party can be totally trusted to reverse this.

Every single Labour politician who voted on this bill voted against it. Peter Kyle was one such MP, and now he's making statements like: > I see that Nigel Farage is already saying that he’s going to overturn these laws. So you know, we have people out there who are extreme pornographers, peddling hate, peddling violence. Nigel Farage is on their side. It's maddening. The worst part is that they've somehow put me in…

That's politics/democracy for you. It's broken. It's just a popularity contest and it is this way because people vote for political parties like they're sports teams, rather than voting based on policy.

I feel like during an election, policies and election promises are what should be presented, make it illegal to vote for a specific candidate, or for specific candidates to say what their policies are; they can only register policies with the election process.

Then people vote on the policies/promises they'd like to see implemented and whoever made those then gets in.

If policies and promises are not upheld during an election cycle, then that is illegal and those involved get charged and sentenced, though allowing for mitigating circumstances (say if the Tories promised x houses built in the last cycle, the pandemic would be mitigating circumstance for fewer houses built - but not _not_ houses built).

But meh, nothing will change and I really cannot be bothered with many people out there. Nothing will change the way people act, how apathetic they are.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#869

Post by eythian »

BDPW wrote: post #621
yard2010 wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not working. A few decades later the biggest party is like 50% of the politicians. My theory is that power accumulates like money so you end up having few people with all the power. It's not that original, I must've read it somewhere.

Denmark, Sweden and Netherlands have the same system and it works reasonably well actually.

Netherlands currently has no government, so I'm not sure that's an argument :)

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#870

Post by subscribed »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #827
subscribed wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet homomorphic encryption is a thing. It's possible to process the encrypted request and be unable to see it. Similarly we could easily devise many solutions that can prove the age in the privacy - respecting ways (like inserting the age-confirming token inside the pack of cigarettes which an adult could then purchase with cash, etc) Many ways.

You're not understanding the dichotomy. It doesn't matter what kind of encryption you use, the system you're asking for can be made much simpler than this: Just use the same token for everyone and only give it to adults. It needs no cryptography at all, it just needs to be a random string that children don't have. You don't need anything to do with cigarettes, just print it on the back of every adult's ID or allow an…

Oh, I do agree with your last sentence very much.

I was just commenting on the claimed inability to make the system work AND be anonymous.

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