Comment by triceratops
14 days ago
> Your idea will create a massive black market for “adult validation tokens”,
No bigger than the current black market for beer and cigs for kids. Adults have no need to resort to black markets. They can buy this stuff legitimately.
> Sure it’s sorta anonymous today, but then new government decides - “let’s make it mandatory to be sold with a binding identity and credit card.”
They're already trying to do that right now! If we can head them off with a system that's as robust as age verification for alcohol we take away the moderate voter's support for making everyone upload passports to access FaceTok.
> Every censorship system you build, even if it seems “good”, will eventually censor you and the things you care about
Hasn't happened to cigs or booze so far. How long is "eventually"?
> The very idea that you can realistically enforce Point of Sales age checks at scale is not sensible.
This needs strong evidence. My evidence is that we already do it for many products.
> Suddenly you need that token to log in to any public website. And Chinese, European and American authorities demand realtime access to the global logs
If you treat everything as a potential slippery slope you won't get anything done. Right now the threat is governments mandating actual ID and destroying everyone's anonymity under the guise of protecting the children. I fear they have the votes to ram it through. Unless we find a good enough alternative that preserves privacy.
> No bigger than the current black market for beer and cigs for kids.
I don't think this part is true. Kids are currently used to having access to all of these services. And there is a lot more utility to having access to the whole internet, than having a a few packs.
To say nothing of the fact that these codes can be distributed digitally once they have been purchased. So it's harder to deter.
> these codes can be distributed digitally once they have been purchased
How do the kids pay for them?
Crypto, dah. Are you living in the 90s?
A ten year old raised/scammed $10k in crypto meme tokens last week.
Join us in the 21st century.
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credit card, prepaid visas, gift cards, crypto atm, csam.
Hell, pay in cash and get the codes digitally separately.
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Everything is a slippery slope. Better nothing be done than keep inventing new ways to oppress humanity. Why does something need to be done anyway?
You can’t nerd harder and solve this problem. You have to fight these ideas at the root, and you my friend are being the so called “useful idiot” by raising and supporting such oppression and censorship.
>Better nothing be done than keep inventing new ways to oppress humanity
Well, you are correct. But you see people want to have a sense of control, so they think that doing SOMETHING is better that nothing, not realizing that often in some situations,s inaction is the best course of action. Among other examples where I think inaction is good are free markets and many cancer treatments.
It's coming either way. I prefer a future where I don't have to upload my passport for every website.
If you think you can fight it you're the "useful idiot" for the people who would prefer that we all upload our passports.