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Comment by lucb1e

16 hours ago

I'd rather have to do ID verification at a government site that gives out blindable RSA signatures to browse the web with using open source software, than this overseas tech company needing to lock down the whole device and tech stack and not have to 'show ID' at all. One of these two holds elections...

Music/movie corporations and game developers must look forward to an age where people can't access the cache files or hook up a debugger to their apps anymore

I guess history made us different. Personally I have reasons to be equally distrustful to anyone who wants to know too much about me, but much more afraid of my gov't than overseas entities.

  • In this specific case, why fear the government?

    My government has already seen my government-issued ID. If my government hasn't worked out my phone number, they can always ask the phone company. My address is required for the ID, voting, and filing taxes. I don't see how the government learns anything from this?

    Conversely, I would like to believe most companies do not have my government-issued ID, nor a lot of the information on it.

    • In this specific case your government can ban you from the web by refusing to verify. E.g. to punish dissidents abroad Belarusian dictatorship simply nullifies their IDs, and lists them as terrorists in public data. Apparently that's enough to ruin somebody's life worldwide. But at least they can use their browsers, which would be not that easy in a world where gov't-backed verification is norm on the net.

    • From an American perspective, i don't trust the government with the implementation details, nor do I trust our political climate, misaligned incentives, and general disinterest in good governance to implement something so sensitive.

      If I lived in say, Sweden, I feel much more comfortable trusting their government to implement. In America, I feel I must always vote in a way that prevents giving any power to the government that I wouldn't want my political opponents to have over me.

      3 replies →

    • > My government has already seen my government-issued ID.

      If you have a government ID and all you use it for is voting and paying taxes, then they know that you vote and you pay taxes.

      If you have to use it for accessing the internet then they know everything you do on the internet. What you read, who you talk to, what you post, when you sleep, where you are at any given time -- it's very much not the same thing as just having a picture of you and your name.

      9 replies →

one of these also rounds up people and sends them of to overseas concentration camps without due process. I think maybe white people still don't get what the rest of the world is living or experiencing.

Sorry, I trust Google more than my government for my data. I mean I trust photos, youtube, music, gmail, wallet, keep, etc. what is that I have left anyway? It's sad that we started from open web, but we ended up in the hands of few. Apple/Samsung, Google, Microsoft, Amazon decide basically how I live my life. I don't want to (and sometimes I try to hard), but I don't want to give up the convenience also, but not only mine, also for my family is in the same pot.

  • Given the chance, Google would kill you by accident.

    "We're very sorry, your access to G-Pacemaker was accidentally revoked when your accounts were closed for suspicious behavior after watching a YouTube video without subtitles in a language we hadn't realized you were learning. Unfortunately, there no is appeals process as your heartbeat was terminated immediately."