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There are a dozen popular live streaming apps in China where one can simply just stream what you're doing to everyone on the site and people can just watch them

by neya 9y ago

There are a dozen popular live streaming apps in China where one can simply just stream what you're doing to everyone on the site and people can just watch them for hours. You can think of it like Instagram stories or Snapchat per se. Or even Facebook live. This isn't some western media propaganda. I tried one of them very recently (I don't want to give them any undeserved marketing), they allowed me to sign up and the moment I clicked on my camera button it took me to a page asking me to "verify" my profile as apparently it was Chinese government's new regulation. Guess what? They asked me for my passport before I could upload a damn thing on their app. Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable like these regulations, while still gaining loyalty from their citizens to the point where these supporters will even defend the govt. everywhere online trying to explain how normal it is to submit your passport and your real identity to some random app company because you know, you just wanted to try it out and it's totally normal.

jackgavigan 9y ago
> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. It wouldn't surprise me if a Western government (probably the UK's) considers introducing legislation to require exactly this in the not-too-distant future, most likely under the guise of preventing the spread of extremist propaganda. If they do, companies like Facebook and YouTube will face a choice between acceding to the new regulation or incurring punitive fines. Guess which option most of them will choose? The only way we can prevent George Orwell's vision from becoming a reality is if we build a more decentralised web. However, that also threatens the walled gardens' revenue streams.
- bitL 9y ago
  If it comes to having the same legislation in the UK, it'd likely ban decentralized web as well, perhaps requiring submitting your ID upon connecting to Internet every single time.
  - notyourwork 9y ago
    I think in the far future, cloud computing and the web will morph into a single entity where you will login to your cloud. This idea of identifying yourself prior to accessing your resources and having your resources connect to others doesn't seem far fetched anymore. Especially with the way we are moving. Most people today are happy to use sso with services like facebook or google. Most people also have their real identify tied to their core profile they use to sign on to other services. The abstraction between the internet and the cloud is becoming more blurry to a internetizen that is technologically ignorant.
  - abpavel 9y ago
    you do have to provide your ID to connect to the Internet, except for the prepaid anonymous sim cards paid for in cash.
    - klibertp 9y ago
      Which are unavailable in many EU countries already. Practically the only way of connecting anonymously to the Internet is the old-fashioned wardriving, or getting lucky and finding a "free wifi" which is not limited to the Web only.
- lotsofpulp 9y ago
  Also under the guise of child porn. Terrorism and "won't anybody think of the children" are a winning combo for people looking to restrict liberties.
  - SCHiM 9y ago
    It's been known for ages of course, there's always been a bogeyman, I like how there's some older articles out there that have predicted which bogeyman it was going to be today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp... Wikipedia cites this term being coined in 1988 ;).
  - Banthum 9y ago
    If it's right-wingers, it'll be terrorism and "think of the children". If it's left-wingers, it'll be hate speech and "think of the women/minorities". Same outcome, of course.
    - darpa_escapee 9y ago
      I've yet to see any proposals from the latter camp whereas I've seen dozens of pieces of legislation successfully passed and attempt to pass from the former.
      - wyager 9y ago
        Are you aware of how the only people in the US to ever be successfully censored from the public internet for political (as opposed to legal) reasons are far-right websites? This literally happened in the last week; domain registrars (the only gateway the public has to critical public DNS infrastructure) decided to voluntarily censor various far-right websites citing "hate speech" as their justification. There is, evidently, a fairly powerful and far-reaching population of left-leaning people who believe and are willing to act on the idea that the internet should be politically controlled. I've never heard of this being done successfully against, say, a communist website.
- achamayou 9y ago
  I would be pretty surprised. Not everyone in the UK has ID, and since the NIC scheme failure, it's less likely than ever to happen. ID isn't even required to vote at the moment...
  - Freak_NL 9y ago
    That is a minor oversight that will probably be rectified at some point — other countries are doing it, it is already required in Northern Ireland, and in 2018 a pilot will be held introducing the requirement in a number of districts¹. People likely won't resist it too much. We've had this identification requirement imposed upon us in the Netherlands a few years ago, and while there is valid criticism on this requirement, it passed. So to vote now you need to bring a valid ID. If the British government wants to do this with a minimum of fuss, they'll do what our government did and make the driver's licence a valid identity card. That way the majority of adults will already have their ID on them as a matter of habit (and won't complain). Of course mentioning that it is needed to prevent Muslim voters from committing voting fraud (see¹…) will help push the bill trough. 1: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/27/voters-will-have-show-passports-combat-voter-fraud-vulnerable/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/27/voters-will-have-...
    - jawbone3 9y ago
      What is the objection to keeping track of who voted?
      - PoachedSausage 9y ago
        Its supposed to be a secret ballot. Of course, most people tell their friends which way they voted, but that's their choice.
        jawbone3 9y ago
        You mean you count not showing up to vote as an active vote choice that should be protected by secrecy? Because the secrecy of the physical votes is produced by the mixing of large numbers of indistinguishable containers prior to reading, not by the votes being handed in by strangers.
- andai 9y ago
  > However, that also threatens the walled gardens' revenue streams. However? Don't you mean, "as an added benefit"?
- avaer 9y ago
  You can't fix this with tech. No amount of decentralized web will help if ID is legally required to post things. Torrenting, encryption, and similar will simply be made illegal, since that's required for enforcement. Many of the established lobbies would support that, for the usual justifications. You can only fix this by not letting the law start on this crazy slippery slope.
  - CryptoPunk 9y ago
    While I agree that it's critically important to not get on the slippery slope of laws that restrict internet freedom, I think a decentralized internet infrastructure would make censorship significantly more difficult for governments to impose. Without centralised gatekeepers, the only viable way to censor the internet is to enforce laws on end-users, which is a daunting task for any government. And technologically, at least two of the necessary elements for a global meshnet are here: protocols for decentralized addressing and routing, like cjdns >1, and protocols for peer-to-peer electronic value transfer between nodes, like Raiden >2. The only major missing piece of the technological puzzle, AFAICS, is a technology for cheaply deploying telecommunication backbone links. >1 https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/doc/Whitepaper.md https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/doc/Whitepape... >2 https://github.com/raiden-network/raiden/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/raiden-network/raiden/blob/master/README.... DISCLAIMER: I am by no means a bonafide cryptopunk. I have contributed very little code and other meaningful technical work to privacy tech projects.
- Zak 9y ago
  Germany has recently started requiring identity verification of this sort to obtain prepaid phone service. I was shocked to learn that, and find it frighteningly close to what China is doing.
  - pas 9y ago
    The perps in the Paris attacks used Hungarian prepaid SIM cards. Of course the national defense agencies were so dumb they haven't noticed that a few guys registered hudreds of thoudands of accounts. So making phones more traceable doesn't really work against terrorists, when there are so many incompetent people watching us :(
    - grzm 9y ago
      > Of course the national defense agencies were so dumb they haven't noticed that a few guys registered hudreds of thoudands of accounts. Would you elaborate more on the background of this? Were the SIM cards sold and registered with a private company? I would suspect it is (or they were, if more than one). Which national defense agencies are you referring to? Did the national defense agencies search these records? Do you assume the agencies have access to this information by default? If it's through a private company, should the agencies have access by default? Do you think the private companies should have contacted the agencies if they didn't have access? There are answers to these questions, some of them factual, some of them ethical or legal, and up for debate. In only a few situations I think it would be fair to call the agencies "so dumb". What leads you to use those words?
      - zzzcpan 9y ago
        They are not dumb, they just don't work for the people and terrorism is not even a threat they care about. On the contrary, they consider the people a threat and consider terrorism a form of propaganda, that is useful to trick people into accepting all kinds of crap.
        throwaway575457 9y ago
- walterbell 9y ago
  NSTIC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Strategy_for_Trusted_Identities_in_Cyberspace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Strategy_for_Trusted_...
paradite 9y ago
To create a facebook account, you need either mobile phone number or email. To have an email, you still need a mobile phone number to register for gmail (the most popular choice). To have a mobile phone number, you need your passport or ID. Yes, in some cases you can get phone numbers without passport, but then again you can also get IDs and fake passports easily in China if you want.
- neya 9y ago
  > To have an email, you still need a mobile phone number to register for gmail (the most popular choice). > but then you again can also get IDs and fake passports easily in China if you want. I agree to a certain extent that your passport is indirectly linked to these online services. Where I don't agree is that you can still use an email service that doesn't require you to provide your phone numbers and you can use it to sign up for Facebook (not a legal offence, there is still a way to access the service). Use of fake passports is a criminal offence (And there isn't a viable alternative to use the service without committing a criminal offence).
  - paradite 9y ago
    To not use real names on Facebook seems to be a violation of ToS as well, and you still need to verify real names in order to use pseudonym: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_real-name_policy_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_real-name_policy_cont...
    - dEnigma 9y ago
      Still, it's not a criminal offense to violate TOS. Worst case your account gets deactivated.
- josteink 9y ago
  > To have an email, you still need a mobile phone number to register for gmail So don't use gmail? That wasn't hard, was it?
ManlyBread 9y ago
The Facebook thing is already happening to some extend, some of my friends had their account blocked because they didn't use their real name and the only way to unblock this account is to upload a scan of an ID or a passport.
- helloindia 9y ago
  M
ezVoodoo 9y ago
Only the Chinese government get away with this? Ever hear of the PRISM surveillance program?
the_mitsuhiko 9y ago
> Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable like these regulations Many countries do. To watch certain youtube videos in south korea you need to provide your social security number or something like that.
- dEnigma 9y ago
  Interesting. Is that supposed to restrict access to adult content? Do porn sites also ask for the social security number?
  - scaramanga 9y ago
    Internet porn is censored wholesale in korea. Edit: it actually redirects to a police warning, so presumably it's illegal to even access it.
- lsjdfkljdfwkwdf 9y ago
  South Korea implemented ID requirement for online posts under the disguise of stopping hate speech. How far is US left wing from demanding something similar?
- notyourwork 9y ago
  Wow, this is a baffling concept to me. Even in person I don't have to identify myself to purchase a ticket and watch.
- Larrikin 9y ago
  Which YouTube videos?
  - scaramanga 9y ago
    Anything with the most vaguely adult content at all. Doesn't even need to be nudity. See if you can figure out why Q_qoHCd3iuQ is age-restricted.
- dhruvrrp 9y ago
code_duck 9y ago
I know a lot of people who were using artist/business names as personal acct names on facebook, and were contacted and told they had to change to their legal names. In many cases, they were asked to submit a drivers license for proof, and lost access to their accounts until this was completed.
johnchristopher 9y ago
> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable like these regulations No. For what it's worth a very famous French website dedicated to FPS started asking for ID card scan before registering new members and to keep your account active. I don't know if they still do that though, at that point I stopped visiting the website as much as I used to. It was like ten years ago. > Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. I seem to remember in some case they are asking for it.
- dEnigma 9y ago
  The only time Facebook asked me for ID was after I copied the profile of my friend for a laugh. After a while the account was blocked and I would've had to provide identification to prove I was indeed my friend and unblock the account.
1001101 9y ago
They need to know the correct account to credit/debit for citizen points: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_Credit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_Credit
golergka 9y ago
In Russia, when you open Pornhub, it asks to verify your age with Voktakte (popular social network) account. Your can only register there with a working mobile number. And you can only buy a sim card with your passport. So, essentially, you can't even watch porn without an id now.
- tradersam 9y ago
  So... don't go to PornHub. I think for the #1 thing on the web you'd be able to find an alternative.
arthurfm 9y ago
> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. When I created an account with AirBnB I had to upload government-issued ID documents and a photo of myself [1]. Their Android app even asked me to scan the chip in my UK passport via NFC. [1] https://www.airbnb.co.uk/help/article/1237/how-does-providing-identification-on-airbnb-work https://www.airbnb.co.uk/help/article/1237/how-does-providin...
- yorwba 9y ago
  This was probably necessary due to instances where someone rented an AirBnB apartment under a fake identity, and then proceeded to completely trash the apartment. In cases like this, where anonymity allows users to cause serious damage without repercussions, I don't think identity requirements are problematic. However, extending this to harmless actions like commenting online is a completely different thing.
  - aw3c2 9y ago
    People can use commenting to call for genocide or push people into suicide, they can use communication to plot terrorist attacks, etc. The only difference is that it is not physical damage. I support anonymity, I hated what Airbnb made me do in terms of insecure exposing of my identify to them (and then had I use an empty gmail account to verify in the end).
    - arcticfox 9y ago
      I don't understand how you can expect to be anonymous in a service where the point is to physically show up. There are all sorts of practical safety considerations that don't apply to other services.
      - aw3c2 9y ago
        I feel perfectly comfortable giving even intimate details directly to the host. But I did not feel well sharing them with AirBNB itself.
ju-st 9y ago
You can't watch any 18+ movies on Amazon Prime without uploading your passport.
- KGIII 9y ago
  This may be a local thing. I've done nothing of the sort.
coldtea 9y ago
>Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. I can imagine it very well. Just like most countries require an ID to purchase a mobile account / SIM card.
coldtea 9y ago
>Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable like these regulations The US and EU have tons of those sort of things. Patriot Act? Mass surveillance programs? Required ID to get a mobile connection? UK's largest number of CCTVs on any place on earth? Heck, in the US they can trial you as an adult at 15 and send you to war at 17 but you need to be over 21 and show ID to drink a beer at a bar...
- JohnTHaller 9y ago
  I don't recall having to use my passport before posting online here in the US.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    That's because opinions in the US don't have the potential to go far. If they had, they'd be illegal. In China they can tumble a whole state of 1+ billion people and its unstable-is regime.
Markoff 9y ago
loyalty? what other options have people who don't like CCP - vote for different party, go to jail for actions against social order, move abroad? i don't see any of these changing status quo
agumonkey 9y ago
Few years ago I spent time on Omegle. I got to speak with Chinese guys. Their first question was often about how we liked China (maybe invested in national pride, or worried). I love most asian things so I could gladly list much many things I liked from China. Even after that happy introduction, the discussion went into "you know China is not all good" then listing a few problems. So far nothing surprising. But then a weird silence occured and all of a sudden, the other user started to nervously type "nono, forget it, I said nothing; oh my god .." * user disconnected * that's what real lack of freedom of speech is.
- zaro 9y ago
  > that's what real lack of freedom of speech is. Thats only half of it. For the other half : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    I'd call this deprivation of freedom of thought
zaro 9y ago
> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream No need to imagine anything. Right after Facebook started their war on fake news, my FB acount was locked and the only way to unlock it is to provide my ID/passport to prove the name of the account is my real name. Btw same thing happened on G+ few years ago.
apostacy 9y ago
Um, Facebook can arbitrarily lock out your account and demand a scan of government issued ID. It happened to a friend of mine. I think there is only a small step to the government working with Facebook to do this in the name of keeping people "safe".
codedokode 9y ago
> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable like these regulations, while still gaining loyalty from their citizens to the point where these supporters will even defend the govt. Many Western messengers try to obtain your phone number and phone contact list when installing the app, and some of them (Whatsapp, Telegram) require you to provide a phone number to register. Private companies and democratic governments are no less curious than Chinese government. They also want you to save your data into their "cloud" so NSA can look at any time. Russian major social network Vkontakte requires a phone number to register an account. Russia is also developing a legislation requiring all messenger apps to identify their users with a phone number. And by the way (I have read it somewhere) if you are trying to access pornhub from Russia it requires you to sign in with Vkontakte (social network with real names policy) account to prove that you are adult. So even if you want just to watch video you have to identify yourself first. I wonder, what are they going to do with that information? Will they post "videos you might like" to user's wall in Vkontakte? Or will they show who of your friends likes the same genre?
throwaway575457 9y ago
Sounds like all the Orwellian (paid for) proposals I was hearing back in India. "Soon Aadhar will solve all the world's problems." /s
tintinlotus 9y ago
as a Chinese, I can verify what you said, It's not something that is normal. You need to upload your ID card no to Ask a question? to comment one? It's just disgusting. The reason, in my opinion, is that the Chinese leadership is about to change recently, the 19th party meeting, Those who currently control the power just want everything under control. So the do not CARE about what the civilians care about. POWER is above all of that.
iofiiiiiiiii 9y ago
Facebook already requires many users to submit government ID scans, so... yeah, not so different after all.

by neya 9y ago

jackgavigan 9y ago

> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. It wouldn't surprise me if a Western government (probably the UK's) considers introducing legislation to require exactly this in the not-too-distant future, most likely under the guise of preventing the spread of extremist propaganda. If they do, companies like Facebook and YouTube will face a choice between acceding to the new regulation or incurring punitive fines. Guess which option most of them will choose? The only way we can prevent George Orwell's vision from becoming a reality is if we build a more decentralised web. However, that also threatens the walled gardens' revenue streams.

bitL 9y ago
If it comes to having the same legislation in the UK, it'd likely ban decentralized web as well, perhaps requiring submitting your ID upon connecting to Internet every single time.
- notyourwork 9y ago
  I think in the far future, cloud computing and the web will morph into a single entity where you will login to your cloud. This idea of identifying yourself prior to accessing your resources and having your resources connect to others doesn't seem far fetched anymore. Especially with the way we are moving. Most people today are happy to use sso with services like facebook or google. Most people also have their real identify tied to their core profile they use to sign on to other services. The abstraction between the internet and the cloud is becoming more blurry to a internetizen that is technologically ignorant.
- abpavel 9y ago
  you do have to provide your ID to connect to the Internet, except for the prepaid anonymous sim cards paid for in cash.
  - klibertp 9y ago
    Which are unavailable in many EU countries already. Practically the only way of connecting anonymously to the Internet is the old-fashioned wardriving, or getting lucky and finding a "free wifi" which is not limited to the Web only.
lotsofpulp 9y ago
Also under the guise of child porn. Terrorism and "won't anybody think of the children" are a winning combo for people looking to restrict liberties.
- SCHiM 9y ago
  It's been known for ages of course, there's always been a bogeyman, I like how there's some older articles out there that have predicted which bogeyman it was going to be today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp... Wikipedia cites this term being coined in 1988 ;).
- Banthum 9y ago
  If it's right-wingers, it'll be terrorism and "think of the children". If it's left-wingers, it'll be hate speech and "think of the women/minorities". Same outcome, of course.
  - darpa_escapee 9y ago
    I've yet to see any proposals from the latter camp whereas I've seen dozens of pieces of legislation successfully passed and attempt to pass from the former.
    - wyager 9y ago
      Are you aware of how the only people in the US to ever be successfully censored from the public internet for political (as opposed to legal) reasons are far-right websites? This literally happened in the last week; domain registrars (the only gateway the public has to critical public DNS infrastructure) decided to voluntarily censor various far-right websites citing "hate speech" as their justification. There is, evidently, a fairly powerful and far-reaching population of left-leaning people who believe and are willing to act on the idea that the internet should be politically controlled. I've never heard of this being done successfully against, say, a communist website.
achamayou 9y ago
I would be pretty surprised. Not everyone in the UK has ID, and since the NIC scheme failure, it's less likely than ever to happen. ID isn't even required to vote at the moment...
- Freak_NL 9y ago
  That is a minor oversight that will probably be rectified at some point — other countries are doing it, it is already required in Northern Ireland, and in 2018 a pilot will be held introducing the requirement in a number of districts¹. People likely won't resist it too much. We've had this identification requirement imposed upon us in the Netherlands a few years ago, and while there is valid criticism on this requirement, it passed. So to vote now you need to bring a valid ID. If the British government wants to do this with a minimum of fuss, they'll do what our government did and make the driver's licence a valid identity card. That way the majority of adults will already have their ID on them as a matter of habit (and won't complain). Of course mentioning that it is needed to prevent Muslim voters from committing voting fraud (see¹…) will help push the bill trough. 1: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/27/voters-will-have-show-passports-combat-voter-fraud-vulnerable/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/27/voters-will-have-...
  - jawbone3 9y ago
    What is the objection to keeping track of who voted?
    - PoachedSausage 9y ago
      Its supposed to be a secret ballot. Of course, most people tell their friends which way they voted, but that's their choice.
      - jawbone3 9y ago
        You mean you count not showing up to vote as an active vote choice that should be protected by secrecy? Because the secrecy of the physical votes is produced by the mixing of large numbers of indistinguishable containers prior to reading, not by the votes being handed in by strangers.
andai 9y ago
> However, that also threatens the walled gardens' revenue streams. However? Don't you mean, "as an added benefit"?
avaer 9y ago
You can't fix this with tech. No amount of decentralized web will help if ID is legally required to post things. Torrenting, encryption, and similar will simply be made illegal, since that's required for enforcement. Many of the established lobbies would support that, for the usual justifications. You can only fix this by not letting the law start on this crazy slippery slope.
- CryptoPunk 9y ago
  While I agree that it's critically important to not get on the slippery slope of laws that restrict internet freedom, I think a decentralized internet infrastructure would make censorship significantly more difficult for governments to impose. Without centralised gatekeepers, the only viable way to censor the internet is to enforce laws on end-users, which is a daunting task for any government. And technologically, at least two of the necessary elements for a global meshnet are here: protocols for decentralized addressing and routing, like cjdns >1, and protocols for peer-to-peer electronic value transfer between nodes, like Raiden >2. The only major missing piece of the technological puzzle, AFAICS, is a technology for cheaply deploying telecommunication backbone links. >1 https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/doc/Whitepaper.md https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/doc/Whitepape... >2 https://github.com/raiden-network/raiden/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/raiden-network/raiden/blob/master/README.... DISCLAIMER: I am by no means a bonafide cryptopunk. I have contributed very little code and other meaningful technical work to privacy tech projects.
Zak 9y ago
Germany has recently started requiring identity verification of this sort to obtain prepaid phone service. I was shocked to learn that, and find it frighteningly close to what China is doing.
- pas 9y ago
  The perps in the Paris attacks used Hungarian prepaid SIM cards. Of course the national defense agencies were so dumb they haven't noticed that a few guys registered hudreds of thoudands of accounts. So making phones more traceable doesn't really work against terrorists, when there are so many incompetent people watching us :(
  - grzm 9y ago
    > Of course the national defense agencies were so dumb they haven't noticed that a few guys registered hudreds of thoudands of accounts. Would you elaborate more on the background of this? Were the SIM cards sold and registered with a private company? I would suspect it is (or they were, if more than one). Which national defense agencies are you referring to? Did the national defense agencies search these records? Do you assume the agencies have access to this information by default? If it's through a private company, should the agencies have access by default? Do you think the private companies should have contacted the agencies if they didn't have access? There are answers to these questions, some of them factual, some of them ethical or legal, and up for debate. In only a few situations I think it would be fair to call the agencies "so dumb". What leads you to use those words?
    - zzzcpan 9y ago
      They are not dumb, they just don't work for the people and terrorism is not even a threat they care about. On the contrary, they consider the people a threat and consider terrorism a form of propaganda, that is useful to trick people into accepting all kinds of crap.
      - throwaway575457 9y ago
walterbell 9y ago
NSTIC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Strategy_for_Trusted_Identities_in_Cyberspace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Strategy_for_Trusted_...

paradite 9y ago

To create a facebook account, you need either mobile phone number or email. To have an email, you still need a mobile phone number to register for gmail (the most popular choice). To have a mobile phone number, you need your passport or ID. Yes, in some cases you can get phone numbers without passport, but then again you can also get IDs and fake passports easily in China if you want.

neya 9y ago
> To have an email, you still need a mobile phone number to register for gmail (the most popular choice). > but then you again can also get IDs and fake passports easily in China if you want. I agree to a certain extent that your passport is indirectly linked to these online services. Where I don't agree is that you can still use an email service that doesn't require you to provide your phone numbers and you can use it to sign up for Facebook (not a legal offence, there is still a way to access the service). Use of fake passports is a criminal offence (And there isn't a viable alternative to use the service without committing a criminal offence).
- paradite 9y ago
  To not use real names on Facebook seems to be a violation of ToS as well, and you still need to verify real names in order to use pseudonym: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_real-name_policy_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_real-name_policy_cont...
  - dEnigma 9y ago
    Still, it's not a criminal offense to violate TOS. Worst case your account gets deactivated.
josteink 9y ago
> To have an email, you still need a mobile phone number to register for gmail So don't use gmail? That wasn't hard, was it?

ManlyBread 9y ago

The Facebook thing is already happening to some extend, some of my friends had their account blocked because they didn't use their real name and the only way to unblock this account is to upload a scan of an ID or a passport.

helloindia 9y ago
M

ezVoodoo 9y ago

Only the Chinese government get away with this? Ever hear of the PRISM surveillance program?

the_mitsuhiko 9y ago

> Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable like these regulations Many countries do. To watch certain youtube videos in south korea you need to provide your social security number or something like that.

dEnigma 9y ago
Interesting. Is that supposed to restrict access to adult content? Do porn sites also ask for the social security number?
- scaramanga 9y ago
  Internet porn is censored wholesale in korea. Edit: it actually redirects to a police warning, so presumably it's illegal to even access it.
lsjdfkljdfwkwdf 9y ago
South Korea implemented ID requirement for online posts under the disguise of stopping hate speech. How far is US left wing from demanding something similar?
notyourwork 9y ago
Wow, this is a baffling concept to me. Even in person I don't have to identify myself to purchase a ticket and watch.
Larrikin 9y ago
Which YouTube videos?
- scaramanga 9y ago
  Anything with the most vaguely adult content at all. Doesn't even need to be nudity. See if you can figure out why Q_qoHCd3iuQ is age-restricted.
dhruvrrp 9y ago

code_duck 9y ago

I know a lot of people who were using artist/business names as personal acct names on facebook, and were contacted and told they had to change to their legal names. In many cases, they were asked to submit a drivers license for proof, and lost access to their accounts until this was completed.

johnchristopher 9y ago

> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable like these regulations No. For what it's worth a very famous French website dedicated to FPS started asking for ID card scan before registering new members and to keep your account active. I don't know if they still do that though, at that point I stopped visiting the website as much as I used to. It was like ten years ago. > Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. I seem to remember in some case they are asking for it.

dEnigma 9y ago
The only time Facebook asked me for ID was after I copied the profile of my friend for a laugh. After a while the account was blocked and I would've had to provide identification to prove I was indeed my friend and unblock the account.

1001101 9y ago

They need to know the correct account to credit/debit for citizen points: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_Credit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_Credit

golergka 9y ago

In Russia, when you open Pornhub, it asks to verify your age with Voktakte (popular social network) account. Your can only register there with a working mobile number. And you can only buy a sim card with your passport. So, essentially, you can't even watch porn without an id now.

tradersam 9y ago
So... don't go to PornHub. I think for the #1 thing on the web you'd be able to find an alternative.

arthurfm 9y ago

> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. When I created an account with AirBnB I had to upload government-issued ID documents and a photo of myself [1]. Their Android app even asked me to scan the chip in my UK passport via NFC. [1] https://www.airbnb.co.uk/help/article/1237/how-does-providing-identification-on-airbnb-work https://www.airbnb.co.uk/help/article/1237/how-does-providin...

yorwba 9y ago
This was probably necessary due to instances where someone rented an AirBnB apartment under a fake identity, and then proceeded to completely trash the apartment. In cases like this, where anonymity allows users to cause serious damage without repercussions, I don't think identity requirements are problematic. However, extending this to harmless actions like commenting online is a completely different thing.
- aw3c2 9y ago
  People can use commenting to call for genocide or push people into suicide, they can use communication to plot terrorist attacks, etc. The only difference is that it is not physical damage. I support anonymity, I hated what Airbnb made me do in terms of insecure exposing of my identify to them (and then had I use an empty gmail account to verify in the end).
  - arcticfox 9y ago
    I don't understand how you can expect to be anonymous in a service where the point is to physically show up. There are all sorts of practical safety considerations that don't apply to other services.
    - aw3c2 9y ago
      I feel perfectly comfortable giving even intimate details directly to the host. But I did not feel well sharing them with AirBNB itself.

ju-st 9y ago

You can't watch any 18+ movies on Amazon Prime without uploading your passport.

KGIII 9y ago
This may be a local thing. I've done nothing of the sort.

coldtea 9y ago

>Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. I can imagine it very well. Just like most countries require an ID to purchase a mobile account / SIM card.

coldtea 9y ago

>Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable like these regulations The US and EU have tons of those sort of things. Patriot Act? Mass surveillance programs? Required ID to get a mobile connection? UK's largest number of CCTVs on any place on earth? Heck, in the US they can trial you as an adult at 15 and send you to war at 17 but you need to be over 21 and show ID to drink a beer at a bar...

JohnTHaller 9y ago
I don't recall having to use my passport before posting online here in the US.
- coldtea 9y ago
  That's because opinions in the US don't have the potential to go far. If they had, they'd be illegal. In China they can tumble a whole state of 1+ billion people and its unstable-is regime.

Markoff 9y ago

loyalty? what other options have people who don't like CCP - vote for different party, go to jail for actions against social order, move abroad? i don't see any of these changing status quo

agumonkey 9y ago

Few years ago I spent time on Omegle. I got to speak with Chinese guys. Their first question was often about how we liked China (maybe invested in national pride, or worried). I love most asian things so I could gladly list much many things I liked from China. Even after that happy introduction, the discussion went into "you know China is not all good" then listing a few problems. So far nothing surprising. But then a weird silence occured and all of a sudden, the other user started to nervously type "nono, forget it, I said nothing; oh my god .." * user disconnected * that's what real lack of freedom of speech is.

zaro 9y ago
> that's what real lack of freedom of speech is. Thats only half of it. For the other half : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
- agumonkey 9y ago
  I'd call this deprivation of freedom of thought

zaro 9y ago

> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream No need to imagine anything. Right after Facebook started their war on fake news, my FB acount was locked and the only way to unlock it is to provide my ID/passport to prove the name of the account is my real name. Btw same thing happened on G+ few years ago.

apostacy 9y ago

Um, Facebook can arbitrarily lock out your account and demand a scan of government issued ID. It happened to a friend of mine. I think there is only a small step to the government working with Facebook to do this in the name of keeping people "safe".

codedokode 9y ago

> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable like these regulations, while still gaining loyalty from their citizens to the point where these supporters will even defend the govt. Many Western messengers try to obtain your phone number and phone contact list when installing the app, and some of them (Whatsapp, Telegram) require you to provide a phone number to register. Private companies and democratic governments are no less curious than Chinese government. They also want you to save your data into their "cloud" so NSA can look at any time. Russian major social network Vkontakte requires a phone number to register an account. Russia is also developing a legislation requiring all messenger apps to identify their users with a phone number. And by the way (I have read it somewhere) if you are trying to access pornhub from Russia it requires you to sign in with Vkontakte (social network with real names policy) account to prove that you are adult. So even if you want just to watch video you have to identify yourself first. I wonder, what are they going to do with that information? Will they post "videos you might like" to user's wall in Vkontakte? Or will they show who of your friends likes the same genre?

throwaway575457 9y ago

Sounds like all the Orwellian (paid for) proposals I was hearing back in India. "Soon Aadhar will solve all the world's problems." /s

tintinlotus 9y ago

as a Chinese, I can verify what you said, It's not something that is normal. You need to upload your ID card no to Ask a question? to comment one? It's just disgusting. The reason, in my opinion, is that the Chinese leadership is about to change recently, the 19th party meeting, Those who currently control the power just want everything under control. So the do not CARE about what the civilians care about. POWER is above all of that.

iofiiiiiiiii 9y ago

Facebook already requires many users to submit government ID scans, so... yeah, not so different after all.