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Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act

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Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act

#1

Post by timje1 »

Hi HN - I made a site that takes a UK postcode, grabs the local MP's information and generates an AI mockup of what their ID might look like.

It's a small, silly protest at the stupidity of the Online Safety Act that just came into force.

edit - My open AI credits got hugged to death, please use a known postcode (like one from Kier Starmer's constituency, WC2B6NH) in the meantime.

Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act
use-their-id.com

Re: Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act

#3

Post by qualeed »

I like the spirit but wouldn't this run afoul of one or two laws? Identity fraud or some such?

I'm not in the UK, so I don't have any idea about their laws, but I'd be shocked to find this was above board. Your FAQ claims it's a parody site and claims "The ID number isn't valid and you can't use the card for anything real." but you've just confirmed here it can indeed be used for real things (discord, reddit).

Your domain registration is UK-based, so, be careful!

Re: Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act

#4

Post by Muromec »

>It's a small, silly protest at the stupidity of the Online Safety Act that just came into force. The IDs actually work (for Reddit, Discord etc.) which highlights how terrible this implementation is.

Could you give a short TL;DR of how ids are constructed so we can all laugh here in comments?

Re: Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act

#9

Post by Mindwipe »

qualeed wrote: post #3

I like the spirit but wouldn't this run afoul of one or two laws? Identity fraud or some such? I'm not in the UK, so I don't have any idea about their laws, but I'd be shocked to find this was above board. Your FAQ claims it's a parody site and claims " The ID number isn't valid and you can't use the card for anything real. " but you've just confirmed here it can indeed be used for real things (discord, reddit). Your…

The only way you'd ever get found out is if the affected MP was lying to the public and the identity documents do indeed get retained...

Re: Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act

#10

Post by timje1 »

Muromec wrote: post #4

>It's a small, silly protest at the stupidity of the Online Safety Act that just came into force. The IDs actually work (for Reddit, Discord etc.) which highlights how terrible this implementation is. Could you give a short TL;DR of how ids are constructed so we can all laugh here in comments?

it's literally just the MPs name. It's a fake DoB (because their DoB's aren't public knowledge anymore) all the numbers and such are nonsense, the images wouldn't fool a human for one second. The AI tools don't let you generate an ID for any real human being (because that sounds like all sorts of fraud) so you can't upload a picture of the MP or anything like that - so I just let the model fill in whatever face it thinks is appropriate for the given name.
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