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There is a massive issue here of which this is merely a symptom. The amount of harmful content available today is orders of magnitude more than it was 30 years

There is a massive issue here of which this is merely a symptom. The amount of harmful content available today is orders of magnitude more than it was 30 years ago. Sure, there has always been porn and abuse etc. but the scale that is permitted now due to the internet is massive. There are questions around how to reduce demand for content that feeds illegal activity including child abuse but also drugs, terrorist materials, human trafficking from certain porn etc. It isn't just how do we protect children but how do we protect society from becoming so numb to this that it just continues? How do we teach children that some snuff movies are real? That you cannot unsee an execution? That most porn content is either fake or coerced? How can you teach people that just because someone is called Doctor, doesn't mean their anti-vax conspiracy is true. Sure, you cannot stop them seeing it but we definitely have to think of some way of deciding what is and isn't acceptable and having much better cross-border enforcement for people who peddle this stuff. I think removing E2E encryption is a piss poor tool unless you fix the bigger problem.

dsign 5y ago
You are making a really good point. I do like E2E and privacy, but for the broader aim of getting people to generally distrust the Internet, any step that makes its use a hazard is good, simply put. The Internet has incredible value, I can't say that there will come a time when we will give up on messaging and e-commerce because everything else we do there is so fraught with danger. But sometimes the future is unpredictable. What if ten years from now armies of hackers operate AIs that pollute absolutely everything with false information, impossible to distinguish from true facts? Those information wars are being waged now, only by humans, and yet, often with great effect. Imagine a time when a small agency can deploy an AI that creates hundreds of thousands of fake profiles looking like actual people, each posting slightly biased opinions on a slew of topics. At that point, the biggest social good may be to outright ban a big chunk of the Internet. And yes, it would be a sad day.

dsign 5y ago

You are making a really good point. I do like E2E and privacy, but for the broader aim of getting people to generally distrust the Internet, any step that makes its use a hazard is good, simply put. The Internet has incredible value, I can't say that there will come a time when we will give up on messaging and e-commerce because everything else we do there is so fraught with danger. But sometimes the future is unpredictable. What if ten years from now armies of hackers operate AIs that pollute absolutely everything with false information, impossible to distinguish from true facts? Those information wars are being waged now, only by humans, and yet, often with great effect. Imagine a time when a small agency can deploy an AI that creates hundreds of thousands of fake profiles looking like actual people, each posting slightly biased opinions on a slew of topics. At that point, the biggest social good may be to outright ban a big chunk of the Internet. And yes, it would be a sad day.