Comment by isaacremuant
10 days ago
So many people advocating for this in HN and elsewhere when it's so clearly a draconian slippery slope for invasive surveillance and choice restriction. After these things get implemented people pretend it was always like this.
We don't need the governments to mass surveil us to protect us. We need them to sort the economy and stop invading countries and being deferential to corporate interests instead of the people they represent.
It's such an obvious push that If you don't want to see it, it makes me think you're shielding yourself to avoid contending with the reality: These politicians and govs all around, including the countries you claim "work" are absolutely power hungry and beholden to interests other than yours and will push for as much total surveillance as they can, including as much curtailment of freedoms as they can.
Obviously that won't mean elites will actually face justice or crimes will actually be solved because more surveillance is not accompanied with more government transparency, quite the opposite and bigger and more powerful burocracies, with more authoritarianism, allow for easy hidden exceptions that you can't question.
It's nothing new. Corruption is common. It's just mediocre to see "hackers" pushing for it just because the government and corporations tell them to, because foreign country bad, bad social media influences kids, drugs, word-ism, etc.
At the time this comment was posted there was only one other comment in this entire thread.
You say “so many people are advocating for this in HN” but this thread was empty except for one other comment (which was also critical of this) at the time you posted your comment.
I think if you use critical thinking to read you may easily find I'm talking about my experience with reading comments in relation to imposing age verification for online access, which means digital ID for internet access.
HN and even the GitHub comments mostly start with the assumption that of course we should do this. Of course we should restrict social media to under 16/18s and either are in favor of ID to access the Internet or pretend it won't happen by consequence of this.
Now try to address what I said instead of poorly calling me out.
Linking to some comments in favour of this might help your case.
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It's just information. Data. Bytes. We need a proper George Orwell for the digital age.
The internet used to be a bastion of freedom. That era ended around 2005.
I don't think you are fully wrong, but the issue is your rhetoric is very much used by conservatives or "both sides are bad" which are just mask-on conservatives who end up voting the same way. And the problem with conservatives is not really the ideals and ideas, but the fact that they vote Republican (or whatever the equivalent party is in other countries), that all pretty much are the exact opposite of those ideals.
Age verification is already a thing IRL, there is no reason to not extend it online considering so much of our lives is digital. Overall I think anonymity should be reduced on the internet in general - a big reason of the world issues, especially in USA is that ideas can grow in forums where people under etherial identities can tell lie after lie without any repercussion.
How can you criticize those for voting Republican when you're advocating for the extremely authoritarian and dystopian position of banning anonymous discourse online?
Im criticizing voting Republicans because in practice, they are the ones that vote for people who are actually in the process of implementing authoritarian measures in real life. So when those people start talking about anything they deem as authoritarian or dystopian, its a moot conversation because they are the LEAST qualified to talk about those things.
> a big reason of the world issues, especially in USA is that ideas can grow in forums where people under etherial identities can tell lie after lie without any repercussion.
See, I wouldn't have as much of an issue if you were honest about this real intention, because of how on the nose it is to reasonable people.
The idea that I will have to upload 3D models of my face and ID, or get permission from Google, just to go online because you don't like the idea of someone else's kids using the internet is absurd.
Please stop using appeals to children in your quest to "stop ideas from growing".
You don't have to upload your face, you just have to have a stable online identity that can be tied to you.
In the same way that you have a stable IRL identity that is your actual body so when you go into public places, you can be identified later if need be.
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> Age verification is already a thing IRL, there is no reason to not extend it online considering so much of our lives is digital. Overall I think anonymity should be reduced on the internet in general - a big reason of the world issues, especially in USA is that ideas can grow in forums where people under etherial identities can tell lie after lie without any repercussion.
Ah yes. Anonymity is the only thing that enables dishonesty and of course it's the government's moral duty to regulate it.
Once anonymity is banned, the world will be honest and good and True and we'll all look back on the Bad times thinking how silly we all were.
The best part of minority report was the way everything constantly tracked identity through retinal scans; i can't wait for the future!
> Once anonymity is banned, the world will be honest and good and True and we'll all look back on the Bad times thinking how silly we all were.
It's a shame you don't read the North Korean press. Otherwise you'd know that the elimination of anonymity on the Internet led to exactly this
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What is the most anonymous public website on the internet right now? And what kind of content does it have?
Anonymity is banned to ban honesty.
> it's so clearly a draconian slippery slope for invasive surveillance and choice restriction
It's a privacy preserving over 18 check.
Is it a "slope"? Sure, you can imagine an extension to the system that is "worse".
Is it "slippery"? This thing isn't draconian enough to be effective. It will be a minor speedbump that prevents exactly zero determined under-18's from accessing anything that they'd want to. So then the question is, does the government react by trying something more draconian, or does it give up?
Things like this are a pain in the ass for GrapheneOS users. It's not great to get locked out of legitimate usage of things when using an OS that actually puts privacy first.
Do you really think this will stop there? Websites need to contact an attestation server and the EU can just ban verification for any website they don't like.