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It’s a horrible invasion of privacy and personal liberty, but hey, it isn’t the government doing it and you agreed to this when you accepted the terms of servi

It’s a horrible invasion of privacy and personal liberty, but hey, it isn’t the government doing it and you agreed to this when you accepted the terms of service. /s

gruez 5y ago
Tencent: "show me your face or I won't let you pay my game", me: "fine I won't play your game then" Government: "show me your face or else[1]", me: "r-right away sir" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence
- rowanG077 5y ago
  So you expect people to live without any entertainment? Just work eat and sleep I guess.
  - gruez 5y ago
    Tencent has a monopoly on entertainment?
    - rowanG077 5y ago
      No but you are apparently oke with entertainment requiring face scans to access. If Tencent can do it it won't be long untill every large publisher does it.
      - CryptoPunk 5y ago
        If people only want to produce games that require giving up your privacy to play, then you have to make a choice between giving up games, or giving up privacy. Ultimately those are the only choices available to you that don't involve bending peaceful people to your will under pain of imprisonment. Perhaps a third choice, that also doesn't require resorting interfering with other people's private choices, with legal threats that emanate from the state's monopoly on violence, is to lobby to allocate a portion of public funds to subsidizing game publishers that respect privacy. In any case, even a modest portion of the population choosing to avoid privacy-compromising game publishers would establish a market for privacy-preserving games. So this is really a matter of consumers educating themselves and making responsible choices. The real problem here is likely the state stepping in to force all game publishers who attain Tencent's market reach to institute these kinds of measures.
        rowanG077 5y ago
        I'd be fine if the government would use their "monopoly on violence" to ensure companies don't step so far out of line. That's basically one of the central reasons governments exist.
        CryptoPunk 5y ago
        Governments exist to provide public goods. One such public good is protecting private citizens from having their rights violated by other parties, through a national defense system and a justice system. A collection of people not providing you with games on your terms is not a violation of your rights. You siccing the government on them is a violation of their right to choose for themselves what to work on and on what terms to offer it for sale. In the admittedly mainstream approach you endorse, the government is acting in contravention of its benevolent purpose, something Frédéric Bastiat wrote about at length 170 years ago: https://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basLaw.html?chapter_num=3#book-reader https://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basLaw.html?chapter_...
        rowanG077 5y ago
        So if all food companies decided to slightly poison all the food that people can buy. The government should not intervene at all? After all A collection of people not providing you with food on your terms is not a violation of your rights right?
        CryptoPunk 5y ago
        How is that at all comparable to this situation? That is putting in toxic ingredients that the buyer is not informed about. That's false advertising, fraud and criminal negligence. This is a company offering a game with terms of services clearly spelled out to you, with you free to accept or reject their offer with full knowledge of what they are offering. >>A collection of people not providing you with food on your terms is not a violation of your rights right? It is not a violation of my rights, but what you described is not that. That would be like if food providers all decided to offer food that is slightly poisoned, and disclosed that the food had been slightly poisoned. You would then have a choice to either take your chances on producing your own food, or taking their poisoned food.
    - Negitivefrags 5y ago
      It would be quite hard to be a gamer and completely avoid playing anything that Tencent doesn't at least partly own.
      - Aerroon 5y ago
        Maybe if you jump from game to game and try to play the "latest and greatest" all the time. There are plenty of people who mostly play a few games or niche games.
        ninkendo 5y ago
        Arguing that you can always just avoid Tencent in China is equivalent to standing under a tree to avoid the rain, then when it soaks through the leaves and makes you wet, saying “well I can always find another tree.” Tencent is doing this verification because the law of the land in China says they have to. If other companies in China don’t employ the same measures, it’s only a matter of time before they will as well.
- chitowneats 5y ago
  The article states that "authorities stepped in" and that this is at the very least some type of public-private partnership where "the gaming platform’s facial verification system" is "linked with big data from the central public security system". My inclination is to assume this is compelled by the Chinese state.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    Indeed, it's impossible to get access for China's government facial recognition server for a company, unless the government wants it to. Games were an anonymous chat outlet before, so they are closing on that now with radical actions. Now I believe they will be feeding game chats to their version of PRISM, and want to tie them to reliable real world identities. Basically, chicoms want to close any way for a chat message to not to have a reliable ID matched to it.
- lmm 5y ago
  The PRC government controls which organisations are permitted to publish games in China, so it's not as simple as just choosing to play some other company's games. Tencent et al are de facto arms of the government.
- test_epsilon 5y ago
  "Let me monitor and censor your private speech otherwise you won't be able to communicate with your friends and family on our platform they all use." The apologetics for corporate-government fascism digust me. No, it's not okay for the ruling class to contract out their oppression to corporations any more than it is for them to use the government for that purpose.
  - SantalBlush 5y ago
    >"Let me monitor and censor your private speech otherwise you won't be able to communicate with your friends and family on our platform they all use." This is how the internet has been for as long as I remember. When you use a website, you agree to its rules. Do people truly believe they are oppressed over this?
    - test_epsilon 5y ago
      Corporations are absolutely involved in oppressing people at the behest of government or other ruling class, yes. If you were deluded into thinking otherwise. You're okay if the government privatizes certain "problematic" services it provides and allows the now private organization to violate peoples' rights?
  - gruez 5y ago
    > "Let me monitor and censor your private speech otherwise you won't be able to communicate with your friends and family on our platform they all use." I might be out of the loop, but are the platforms canceling people for their private speech? That's news to me. >The apologetics for corporate-government fascism digust me I find it disgusting that you're comparing the plight of people having to live in fear of death squads to the plight of people having to... download another app.
    - test_epsilon 5y ago
      Speech is private speech. I'm also not surprised you don't know what fascism is.
    - 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kryogen1c 5y ago
  this really grinds my gears. the states monopoly on violence is a talking point of exteme libertarians and anarchocapitalists and its... real dumb. giving the state sole legal use of violence is one of the key advancements that unlocked society's forward advancement. just because it exists in authoritarian hellholes doesnt mean it's wrong. i bet people in north korea eat too, I'm not gonna stop doing that. unless you think that guy who honked at you in traffic should have dueled you to the death. then enjoy your AnCap paradise - somewhere i dont live.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    I will argue that monopoly on violence is more often than not a block on the society's forward advancement. There is a certain limit of outrage past which not taking things to violence would itself destroy any functioning society. People have morals, not only laws to follow. It's very naive to always defer to comparisons to "authoritarian hellholes." Sometimes you need to judge your own actions yourself.
  - logicchains 5y ago
    >giving the state sole legal use of violence is one of the key advancements that unlocked society's forward advancement. The greatest economic progress occurred in the US in the 1800s when the state was tiny and anyone was free to use violence to protect their own rights.
    - w0de0 5y ago
      This is not a nuanced historical analysis, and therefore unlikely to be correct or even useful as an abstraction. Some counter examples: 1861-1865, in which the Federal government raised an Army of the Republic to enforce its (just) will, going as far as burning Atlanta. 1880s, the brief period of the classic Wild West to which you perhaps allude, and in which the Sheriff - the personification of monopolized state force - was the totem of peace and prosperity; the mythical wanton violence of Billy the Kid etc was notable as a feared exception, not a norm. 1890s, the gilded age, the exception that proves the horror and economic maladaptation of private violence: Pinkertons, privately employed, violently suppressing the mere whisper of power and stability accruing to working men. The economic progress of the 1800s in the US almost certainly had more to do with a frontier of development pressing across a vast and wealthy continent, fueled by prodigious immigration - and by the assurance that the government was the ultimate arbiter of disputes. There were, as a rule, no private armies removed from state legitimization. When there were, as in bloody Kansas, economic growth did not increase.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

It’s a horrible invasion of privacy and personal liberty, but hey, it isn’t the government doing it and you agreed to this when you accepted the terms of service. /s

gruez 5y ago

Tencent: "show me your face or I won't let you pay my game", me: "fine I won't play your game then" Government: "show me your face or else[1]", me: "r-right away sir" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

rowanG077 5y ago
So you expect people to live without any entertainment? Just work eat and sleep I guess.
- gruez 5y ago
  Tencent has a monopoly on entertainment?
  - rowanG077 5y ago
    No but you are apparently oke with entertainment requiring face scans to access. If Tencent can do it it won't be long untill every large publisher does it.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      If people only want to produce games that require giving up your privacy to play, then you have to make a choice between giving up games, or giving up privacy. Ultimately those are the only choices available to you that don't involve bending peaceful people to your will under pain of imprisonment. Perhaps a third choice, that also doesn't require resorting interfering with other people's private choices, with legal threats that emanate from the state's monopoly on violence, is to lobby to allocate a portion of public funds to subsidizing game publishers that respect privacy. In any case, even a modest portion of the population choosing to avoid privacy-compromising game publishers would establish a market for privacy-preserving games. So this is really a matter of consumers educating themselves and making responsible choices. The real problem here is likely the state stepping in to force all game publishers who attain Tencent's market reach to institute these kinds of measures.
      - rowanG077 5y ago
        I'd be fine if the government would use their "monopoly on violence" to ensure companies don't step so far out of line. That's basically one of the central reasons governments exist.
        CryptoPunk 5y ago
        Governments exist to provide public goods. One such public good is protecting private citizens from having their rights violated by other parties, through a national defense system and a justice system. A collection of people not providing you with games on your terms is not a violation of your rights. You siccing the government on them is a violation of their right to choose for themselves what to work on and on what terms to offer it for sale. In the admittedly mainstream approach you endorse, the government is acting in contravention of its benevolent purpose, something Frédéric Bastiat wrote about at length 170 years ago: https://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basLaw.html?chapter_num=3#book-reader https://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basLaw.html?chapter_...
        rowanG077 5y ago
        So if all food companies decided to slightly poison all the food that people can buy. The government should not intervene at all? After all A collection of people not providing you with food on your terms is not a violation of your rights right?
        CryptoPunk 5y ago
        How is that at all comparable to this situation? That is putting in toxic ingredients that the buyer is not informed about. That's false advertising, fraud and criminal negligence. This is a company offering a game with terms of services clearly spelled out to you, with you free to accept or reject their offer with full knowledge of what they are offering. >>A collection of people not providing you with food on your terms is not a violation of your rights right? It is not a violation of my rights, but what you described is not that. That would be like if food providers all decided to offer food that is slightly poisoned, and disclosed that the food had been slightly poisoned. You would then have a choice to either take your chances on producing your own food, or taking their poisoned food.
  - Negitivefrags 5y ago
    It would be quite hard to be a gamer and completely avoid playing anything that Tencent doesn't at least partly own.
    - Aerroon 5y ago
      Maybe if you jump from game to game and try to play the "latest and greatest" all the time. There are plenty of people who mostly play a few games or niche games.
      - ninkendo 5y ago
        Arguing that you can always just avoid Tencent in China is equivalent to standing under a tree to avoid the rain, then when it soaks through the leaves and makes you wet, saying “well I can always find another tree.” Tencent is doing this verification because the law of the land in China says they have to. If other companies in China don’t employ the same measures, it’s only a matter of time before they will as well.
chitowneats 5y ago
The article states that "authorities stepped in" and that this is at the very least some type of public-private partnership where "the gaming platform’s facial verification system" is "linked with big data from the central public security system". My inclination is to assume this is compelled by the Chinese state.
- baybal2 5y ago
  Indeed, it's impossible to get access for China's government facial recognition server for a company, unless the government wants it to. Games were an anonymous chat outlet before, so they are closing on that now with radical actions. Now I believe they will be feeding game chats to their version of PRISM, and want to tie them to reliable real world identities. Basically, chicoms want to close any way for a chat message to not to have a reliable ID matched to it.
lmm 5y ago
The PRC government controls which organisations are permitted to publish games in China, so it's not as simple as just choosing to play some other company's games. Tencent et al are de facto arms of the government.
test_epsilon 5y ago
"Let me monitor and censor your private speech otherwise you won't be able to communicate with your friends and family on our platform they all use." The apologetics for corporate-government fascism digust me. No, it's not okay for the ruling class to contract out their oppression to corporations any more than it is for them to use the government for that purpose.
- SantalBlush 5y ago
  >"Let me monitor and censor your private speech otherwise you won't be able to communicate with your friends and family on our platform they all use." This is how the internet has been for as long as I remember. When you use a website, you agree to its rules. Do people truly believe they are oppressed over this?
  - test_epsilon 5y ago
    Corporations are absolutely involved in oppressing people at the behest of government or other ruling class, yes. If you were deluded into thinking otherwise. You're okay if the government privatizes certain "problematic" services it provides and allows the now private organization to violate peoples' rights?
- gruez 5y ago
  > "Let me monitor and censor your private speech otherwise you won't be able to communicate with your friends and family on our platform they all use." I might be out of the loop, but are the platforms canceling people for their private speech? That's news to me. >The apologetics for corporate-government fascism digust me I find it disgusting that you're comparing the plight of people having to live in fear of death squads to the plight of people having to... download another app.
  - test_epsilon 5y ago
    Speech is private speech. I'm also not surprised you don't know what fascism is.
  - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kryogen1c 5y ago
this really grinds my gears. the states monopoly on violence is a talking point of exteme libertarians and anarchocapitalists and its... real dumb. giving the state sole legal use of violence is one of the key advancements that unlocked society's forward advancement. just because it exists in authoritarian hellholes doesnt mean it's wrong. i bet people in north korea eat too, I'm not gonna stop doing that. unless you think that guy who honked at you in traffic should have dueled you to the death. then enjoy your AnCap paradise - somewhere i dont live.
- baybal2 5y ago
  I will argue that monopoly on violence is more often than not a block on the society's forward advancement. There is a certain limit of outrage past which not taking things to violence would itself destroy any functioning society. People have morals, not only laws to follow. It's very naive to always defer to comparisons to "authoritarian hellholes." Sometimes you need to judge your own actions yourself.
- logicchains 5y ago
  >giving the state sole legal use of violence is one of the key advancements that unlocked society's forward advancement. The greatest economic progress occurred in the US in the 1800s when the state was tiny and anyone was free to use violence to protect their own rights.
  - w0de0 5y ago
    This is not a nuanced historical analysis, and therefore unlikely to be correct or even useful as an abstraction. Some counter examples: 1861-1865, in which the Federal government raised an Army of the Republic to enforce its (just) will, going as far as burning Atlanta. 1880s, the brief period of the classic Wild West to which you perhaps allude, and in which the Sheriff - the personification of monopolized state force - was the totem of peace and prosperity; the mythical wanton violence of Billy the Kid etc was notable as a feared exception, not a norm. 1890s, the gilded age, the exception that proves the horror and economic maladaptation of private violence: Pinkertons, privately employed, violently suppressing the mere whisper of power and stability accruing to working men. The economic progress of the 1800s in the US almost certainly had more to do with a frontier of development pressing across a vast and wealthy continent, fueled by prodigious immigration - and by the assurance that the government was the ultimate arbiter of disputes. There were, as a rule, no private armies removed from state legitimization. When there were, as in bloody Kansas, economic growth did not increase.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]