Comment by thewebguyd
3 months ago
Correct.
None of these laws are actually about protecting children. That's not the real goal. The real goal is the complete elimination of anonymity on the web, where both private companies and the state can keep tabs on everything you do.
Not being able to be at least pseudo-anonymous has a real chilling effect on speech and expression. Even if there are laws in place protecting such rights, people will self-censor when knowing they are being watched.
It's how freedom of speech and expression dies without actually scratching that part off of the bill of rights.
It's a mix. I'm sure there are some people really trying to protect kids. There are other people that just want all porn off the Internet. And there are bad actors that want total surveillance. And they are all on the same side of this issue.
Yea. People which cured their children with lobotomy also thought that they we're doing something good. These usefull idiots are in some sense worse than the perpetuators it self because they are primarly the enablers of such behaviot simply because of their naivety or worse, ignorance.
> I'm sure there are some people really trying to protect kids.
yes, I believe the term for them is "useful idiots"
Not idiots necessarily, sometimes just long-time observers who have finally become cynical. People that were pro-guns for decades may watch several years of failure to adopt basic and uncontroversial gun-control regulation, then eventually become anti-gun. People that were in favor of regulating it once may suddenly become fearful for their safety, and want no regulations at all in case that regulation puts them out in the cold. Since both PR campaigns and any action on policy tends to cater to extremes, there's always pressure that is shrinking the middle
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Unfortunatwly "keeping kids and teenagers off of algorithmic social media" is one of the most worthy goals one can pursue right now; so is keeping them off infinite porn.
But this is not the way to go about it.
No, I believe the term is "parents don't want 8 year olds getting access to tits, violence and gore"
Given that kids need a device for school in a lot of areas (mine included) and the tools for stopping kids getting either access or bombarded by such stuff are either shit, require deep technical knowledge, or predatory, I can see why people are asking for it.
I presently hate the current system of handing over biometric data in exchange for tits. I don't want some shading startup having my biometrics so that when they go bust, pivot or get hacked, can be used to steal my stuff.
The middle ground is a system that _normal_ people can us to make sure kids who have access to devices can't easily access nefarious shit.
None of that is useful idiots.
When it get fun is the all or nothing crowd. The internet is going to be age gated, whether you like it or not. If you continue to go "INTERNET MUST BE FREEEEEEEE" without accepting that the tools that the populace _want_ don't exist means you get porn bans, or worse.
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Can you explain to me what is being exploited here? I had to do KYC for Hetzner, for anything crypto related in the last decade, and a number of other things.
Age-gating porn doesnt seem problematic to at all. In fact it's far less worrisome than any of the former, which are kind of important for commerce. What am I missing?
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I believe the term for them is evangelicals. I'm going to guess that a venn diagram of deeply religious people and people pushing for "protecting" the kids is just a circle.
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I'm pro protecting kids.
"useful idiots" was a Stalinist term for people willing to cover up for the murder of millions on the grounds that communism was good and would never do the holodomor.
I don't think it's good to conflate them really.
The term is “parents.”
I really don’t care about what’s on the internet, until my kids get exposed to it. How grownups talk to other grownups in private isn’t my concern.
But when kids - and I mean my kids - enter the loop it becomes my business, and ideological concerns go out the window.
I’ve ranted and raved about how terrible filtering software is, and how school provided computers contain massive workarounds.
The real concern isn’t porn sites — the real concern is poorly moderated social media sites. Ones where kids post things other kids see. And guess what the kids post?
But a lot of the nasty content shared in these poorly moderated sites gets it start elsewhere.
I’m cynical about any law, but my bias toward legal action is only increasing as the online situation is only getting worse.
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The goal was to put Company A in between you and the web. Collecting data and selling it for profit. It’s never about what they say it’s about. Lobbyists have bought every aspect.
I think you're right. Surveillance power is nearly a side effect of the personal enrichment.
> None of these laws are actually about protecting children. That's not the real goal.
I fear that for 90% of the supporters of such laws (just like with chat control) this statement is wrong, and they truly do want to protect minors from harm. But that only makes it worse, because this type of argument completely misses the mark while the other 10% get to laugh up their sleeves while continuing to manipulate public opinion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46154208
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. — Andrew Tanenbaum, 1981
How do you know this?
Technical people have been gleefully eliminating anonymity on the web for the last 20 years. Progressives should be the party on the side of maximal freedom but really in the US we have one neo-liberal party wearing two different disguises.
The problem is normies don't operate under assumed anonymity. So when the hordes of unwashed regular people joined the internet they wanted their face everywhere. People were shamed out of their handles. Some people gave up their anonymity to make yet another faceless bullshit blog-as-a-resume. Look at most of the top karma farmers on HN. Most of them post their personal information in the their bio. Pathetic.
> people will self-censor when knowing they are being watched.
This has been happening both in public and on the internet for over a decade now.
> Not being able to be at least pseudo-anonymous has a real chilling effect on speech and expression.
The normies would argue you have nothing to hide if you aren't doing anything wrong. The average voter, regardless of party, will happily surrender every ounce of freedom for the thought of security. Hell, I remember sometime around 2007 DEFCON became a first-name-basis conference!
> bill of rights
It's more of a bill of privileges given NGOs and PACs are regularly paying to erode the core rights granted to citizens. Either through lawfare by circumventing the courts and suing companies into bankruptcy, or by directly purchasing congressmen via donation.
What I have found in general is people who cry and complain about this kind of thing were, at one point, happy to have it happen to their political enemies. The laws that are paving the way for age-gated deanonymized internet were at one point used as a cudgel to beat their political enemies down. When the tables finally turn after the Nth "protect the children" bill, it's the other people left crying and now suddenly its a "problem".
This was inevitable on the day the Web ceased to be a third space and became an integral part of day-to-day life.
Some time between Facebook opening to the general public (mid 2006) and the launch of the iPhone (early 2007).
"Online" was no longer a meaningful distinction from there on out.
You may not be old enough to remember Edward Snowden or Mark Klein (who went unnoticed), but there never was anonymity.
My pet theory is that this requirement is part of a mob war and porn and whatever else the MindGeek people are involved with is being attacked for the much of the same reasons Ukraine attacks Russian oil refineries.
> The real goal is the complete elimination of anonymity on the web...
I'm ok with running this experiment (not sure how it really turns out) BUT only if everyone participates. Governments and businesses get to watch me... I get to watch them. If the death if anonymity is inevitable, as unpleasant as that sounds, the goal to shoot for then is universal application
>Not being able to be at least pseudo-anonymous has a real chilling effect on speech and expression. Even if there are laws in place protecting such rights, people will self-censor when knowing they are being watched.
This supposed golden era of communication lasted for a very short period. Why is is so important that freedom of speech also be anonymous? What you're asking for is the right to talk to anyone with all societal, cultural, and interpersonal contexts removed.
>Why is is so important that freedom of speech also be anonymous?
Because it is a shortcut for an otherwise extremely hard to enforce freedom.
Can you afford to defend your speech in court?
Can you prove that an action taken against you by someone in power is retaliation against your speech?
Can you handle social ostracism by a majority that disagrees?
If the answer to some is no, your freedom of speech has practical limits.
This is not to say that a world with anonymous speech is necessarily better, I’m just saying that in terms of guarantees it has a clear advantage.
Case in point: will you answer a workplace questionnaire the same way whether or not it is anonymous?
It is not only freedom of speech, but freedom of association that would also be jeopardized.
People long ago used to have to hide that they're gay, not only because they could be ostracized, but that people they associate with could also be under scrutiny.
Being able to track one's movements, or who they associate with, could reveal information that said person would want kept secret.
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If those are your concerns, then why is it so important that this freedom of anonymous expression only happens on the internet? I think what you are really asking for is private, encrypted comms but only to a certain subset of people. Otherwise, you should also argue for freedom of anonymous expression over any other medium.
And of course freedom of speech has practical limits. It's that very tempering that stops non-virtual discourse from turning into a cesspool. I worked for a company that permitted anonymous comments to the leadership team, which they would then review in front of the company. It was a total shit show, and I attached my name to any comments I made.
If you are not happy filling in your workplace questionnaire unless it's anonymous, then something needs to change about your company (and something that probably can't be fixed with anonymous comments).
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