8 ms·
Yes the internet will become a slum of AI robots and loners. What we need is a government sponsored regulated social media where we identify ourselves with eID
by INTPenis 2y ago
Yes the internet will become a slum of AI robots and loners.
What we need is a government sponsored regulated social media where we identify ourselves with eID, so that anything you do or say is actually tied to your person. Americans won't understand this but many European countries are already primed for it.
If you want to go slumming you're free to do so, but I want a stable and safe social media as an alternative.
- wizzwizz4 2y ago> so that anything you do or say is actually tied to your person So, Facebook? "Real-name systems" are all, unequivocally, bad.
- BoredPositron 2y agoThe nice thing is you don’t have to participate if you don’t want to.
- balamatom 2y agoYeah, just like you don't have to own a smartphone if you don't want to.
- aleph_minus_one 2y agoI know quite some people who do by conscious decision not own a smartphone considering these are surveillance bugs with an inbuilt phone function, for which you even have to pay.
- markhahn 2y agonot to be persnickety, but you don't have to pay for cellular service. the trackability you're criticizing is not inherent to the smartphone concept.
- balamatom 2y agoThe trackability is not inherent to the cellular service, but to the sensor hardware, operating system, and business model.
- akimbostrawman 2y agoCellular service is very much inherently trackable. See cellular triangulation.
- wizzwizz4 2y agoAnd their lives are made unnecessarily difficult.
- BoredPositron 2y agoWat den eenen sin Uhl, is den annern sin Nachtigall.
- balamatom 2y agoЗа кокошка няма прошка, за милиони няма закони!
- alex1138 2y agoNot strictly accurate if a) they create shadow profiles b) it's almost impossible to permanently delete an account c) the site puts a login wall on every single page forcing you to have an account to access anything
- fc417fc802 2y agoYou left out d) required for some important task.
- alex1138 2y agoYeah like connecting with people you'd like to reach (which Facebook doesn't do a terribly good job of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6090712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6090712) but people here seem to think email/calling is the only acceptable form of social media (but what if you don't have someone's contact info? well, that gets justified as "nobody needs to connect with long lost contacts")
- BoredPositron 2y agoIf you're not banned, why not simply create an account and message them properly? If following the platform's basic guidelines feels like too much effort, perhaps the communication wasn't that important to begin with. The barrier to entry is quite low (for a human) and you don’t even need to connect the account in anyway to your other online personas. The biggest benefit would also be that YOU can be found when people want to connect with you…
- fc417fc802 2y ago"Banned", "too much effort", these are straw men. Real name systems (for routine discourse) are bad. Walled gardens are bad. I should not need to forsake my privacy unless I wish to or alternatively a material need exists. Don't need to connect the account? What sort of joke is that? They require you to use your government recognized name.
- nodoll 2y ago>What we need is a government sponsored regulated social media.. There is no need for social media, a ten thousand idiots does not make one smart man.
- Mountain_Skies 2y agoWhat does it make when those same "idiots" are voters?
- burningChrome 2y agoSocial media when it started was originally more about creating communities of people with similar tastes and interests. In the early days for me, it contributed a lot to my journey as a newly minted developer. I'm not sure I would've learned as much or so fast without it. The amount of stuff I discovered and learned just from being on Twitter and other platforms was simply incredible. Obviously that's not what it is any more and would agree you could argue that its not really needed any more - but it started out well, not sure when or where it went completely off the tracks.
- nodoll 2y ago> In the early days for me, it contributed a lot to my journey as a newly minted developer. Yea, it is like a catapult. You need to let go of it at some point to keep moving forward, or it is going to pull you back or at least stop you from making further progress. >but it started out well, not sure when or where it went completely off the tracks. Good intentions or In this case, moderation. You know that I cannot go into detail here without pissing the moderators here, right? Yea, exactly my point.
- msy 2y agoAgreed. Europe won't be sovereign until it fully controls its social media, having American billionaires (or the Chinese state) able to manipulate the narrative at will is unviable. Look at the recent situation in Romania with Călin Georgescu or Musk's pro-AFD meddling. It makes the pearl-clutching in the UK about the ownership of the Telegraph look hilariously quaint.
- okeuro49 2y agoIn the UK, if you hold opinions that are the same as the state, then expressing yourself using your name is safe. If you don't, then you risk having a police officer show up at your door. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cev9nxnygzpo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cev9nxnygzpo
- DrScientist 2y agoActually you've got that wrong - the government/establishment agrees with Pearson, it was a member of the public that complained about her characterising pro-Palestinian protestors with a hate slur. Back to the issue of overweaning government power - if you think the above is fixed by some sort of pseudo-anonymity online which is heavily tilted towards governments ( they know who people are, it's just you that doesn't ) - then I think you are sadly mistaken. Ultimately the sunlight of transparency is much better than the murky darkness of anonymity - as comfortable as the blanket of anonymity is ( and yep I'm using that pseudo-anonymity right now ).
- 7bit 2y agoAll the Chinese activists are truly happy about all the transparency about their person and their beliefs. I can hear them rejoicing in their cells.
- DrScientist 2y agoYou are looking at the problem the wrong way. If you have a democracy then the laws of the land should be those that are agreed by general consent - give or take - and as such applying those laws to people in a way that means they are accountable for their actions isn't a problem - in fact it's the long standing bedrock of civilisation. The problem in China isn't that they can catch people breaking their laws, it's a problem with how those laws are set in the first place. So the real issue is stopping a move towards authoritarianism which is a whole larger conversation. So in the issue above - about the journalist - the question should be about whether the particular hate speech law is correct, rather than worrying about if they appear to breach it whether they can be caught.
- Bancakes 2y agoFirst we need social media infrastructure that isn’t made for quick dopamine hits.
- balamatom 2y agoWho's "we" - the AI robots, or the loners?
- Mrdarknezz 2y agoNo that is a pretty terrible idea
- m2024 2y ago[dead]
- fc417fc802 2y ago> so that anything you do or say is actually tied to your person I don't need to link letters to a government issued ID to use the postal service. Why should government provided social media or email or whatever be any different?
- MiiMe19 2y agoI agree with your point, but you do need to use your address to use the postal service...
- fc417fc802 2y agoAt least in the US, regardless of what the official rules might be (I've never checked) you only need a return address if you want the item to come back to you in the event that delivery fails. If you omit it and drop it in a public box with the correct postage it will reliably show up. This makes sense because the only realistic way to enforce a non-falsified return address would be to verify government issued ID when accepting the parcel. It's an interesting point thought that receiving messages does require a physical address. I guess the analogy would be needing to log in to browse the message board but not to post? That would be quite strange.
- nextts 2y ago[flagged]
- latexr 2y agoWe definitely do not “need” that. We already had enough years of real name social media before LLMs to know that real names do not stop people from being publicly abusive and that social media is bad for us. What you’re advocating for is making a bad system worse. Your suggestion won’t solve any problem and will introduce new ones, like making manipulation and censorship easier. You’re advocating for an authoritarian’s wet dream (and a treasure trove for data miners). Right now, including in Europe, that’s the last thing we need. I vote a hard no on your proposal. I’m opposed to it like I am to Chat Control. Signed, A European
- m2024 2y ago[dead]
- indigo945 2y ago> Your suggestion won’t solve any problem and will introduce new ones, like making manipulation and censorship easier. This is absolutely untrue for manipulation. Currently, private (both American and Chinese) social media platforms have become mouthpieces of authoritarian propaganda and misinformation. Russian bot farms cooperate with American billionaires to push destabilizing extremist propaganda and suppress moderate voices. And I agree that outlawing all non-ID media would open the floodgates for government censorship. But that is not the proposal here: the proposal is to provide an alternative, which guarantees that the opinion you read is, in fact, the opinion of a real (European) person, not the output of an LLM trained on the hateful ramblings of the Yarvins and Dugins of this world. If that's not what you want, you're free to go back to TikTok, X or Facebook. We are in agreement on "chat control" and similar anti-encryption political schemes, but the social media question pertains to public, not private, communications. Signed, Colin Emonds (of Cologne, Germany) A European
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago> And I agree that outlawing all non-ID media would open the floodgates for government censorship. It wouldn't only update the floodgates, it's rather the idea behind these proposals. :-)
- deleted 2y ago
- Ukv 2y agoAre sites that currently try to enforce real name usage, like Facebook, noticeably better for it than mostly-pseudonymous sites like HN/Reddit? It doesn't really fix people being gullible (so will spread spam/scams or fall for phishing) or angry about some polarizing topic. Conceivably it could encourage civility, but if anything I feel I've seen arguments turn ugly far more often due to the personal nature.
- Lanolderen 2y agoFacebook is pretty dogshit at it. I have 2 fake accounts, one is named, in translation, Secret Dontknow, the other got hacked at some point and after recovering it it had a nice fake attractive asian woman persona on it. I just changed the location and ran with it. Both have yet to face any issues and they are at least 10 y/o accounts. I don't use them all that often but still.. Secret Dontknow is pretty obvious..
- borgdefenser 2y agoI think using your last name, counter intuitively makes discussion less civil. In a form like this, if someone is insulted, it is just the idea and words that have been insulted. When using your last name, it is the real person's identity that has been insulted. Then it goes both ways in a feedback loop involving two real people's real identity without the constraint that face to face confrontation would impose. The only way to make that worse then would be to have ML algorithms running on top trying to nudge people to but heads for engagement. Maybe we could design a system that is worse that in order to join you have tell someone using both real names that their newborn baby is ugly and instead of collecting a list of friends you collect a list of enemies. Short of that though we seemed to have really done a great job figuring out the worst possible form of communication.
- markhahn 2y agoI don't follow your logic - surely communicating from behind a mask encourages rudeness, no? Your comments seem to focus only on the recipient's authenticity or maskedness. Are you assuming that the author's own identity will always be masked or throwaway like a sockpuppet? That seems very much like a design choice of the forum.
- _Algernon_ 2y agoThis is not something I want. I want social media to disappear. The main issue with social media are the recommendation algorithms, and I don't want the government or private companies to be in control of them. In fact, I don't want anyone except myself to be in control of them.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago> The main issue with social media are the recommendation algorithms, and I don't want the government or private companies to be in control of them. In fact, I don't want anyone except myself to be in control of them. Quit being friend in real life with people who have a social media account on one of the "big" platforms (yes, I do know quite some people who do this!).
- pacifika 2y agoYes it would make for a good law that whenever a recommendation algorithm is used the user must be able to fully control how the results are filtered and ordered including disabling it, and the service must remember the preference.
- erikerikson 2y agoThen why are you on here?
- _Algernon_ 2y agoIf a tree falls in a forest and I'm not around to hear it, does it still make a sound?
- phatfish 2y agoIsn't https://news.ycombinator.com/newest https://news.ycombinator.com/newest every new submission chronologically? That should tick off the main compliant about algorithms.
- erikerikson 2y agoI was responding to: > I want social media to disappear I often read people trashing on social media who are doing so on this site which is very much social media. I don't use other social media sites and appreciate that this one is different than the normal ones. It's still social media as I understand it. Assuming I'm not wrong about this being social media... If they want social media to disappear, why are they creating more of it by participating here? I mostly keep my mouth shut, but the embedded contradictions sometimes make me comment to scratch my itch. Well it is true that newest gives chronological listing. Most of us visit the front page which does not. Instead, it uses the algorithm of user vote aggregation.
- amiga386 2y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgtsBm0IQ1Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgtsBm0IQ1Q "That is when we present our solution. Mandatory digital identity verification for all humans, at all times." (This video is a pitch-perfect parody of MGS2 but also prescient commentary on modern trends)
- RGamma 2y agoSome cryptographic trust anchor and a web of trust yes, government sponsored no.
- jiriknesl 2y ago[flagged]
- executesorder66 2y agoAs a non-American this is a horrendous idea. People need to accept that assholes and misinformation exist. And you will encounter it in real life and on the internet. You can't expect a nanny state to protect you from every slight discomfort you experience. Learn how to deal with it.
- 7bit 2y ago> What we need is a government sponsored regulated social media where we identify ourselves with eID, so that anything you do or say is actually tied to your person. Speak for yourself, please, would you? I (a Europeean) don't need this. I dont want to have everything I write archived forever and linked to my identity, so when an extremist political Party gains Power I'm fucked because I have expressed opinions that dont align with their world View. No thanks. I feel whenever people express thoughts like yours, you completely ignore all the damage this may cause to individuals and democracy alike.
- markhahn 2y agoUnderstood - but is it actually realistic to expect pseudonyms to protect expression (in the face of bigdata correlation), or to expect the "right to be forgotten" to actually work?
- borgdefenser 2y agoThis is actually the complete opposite of what I want. I would love to go back to people not using their real name and an internet that is wild, free and maybe even a little bit dangerous.
- blueflow 2y agoBack to the classic imageboards? They still exist.
- betaby 2y agoYes. Mostly hosted in the USA. Problem is that regional forums in Europe died because of the regulations.
- mvc 2y agoWhy do you care where a forum with no regulations is hosted?
- gnarlynarwhal42 2y agohe mentioned regional forums, so I assume a large part of what is missing is a common culture/language instead of whatever conglomeration comes out of the US. the EU regulations made it harder/less attractive to host a small local forum and I think that was his point
- immibis 2y agoWhich regulations specifically? GDPR? It may just be because people in Europe interact in real life more and don't need an online forum.
- jvidalv 2y agoThe biggest forum in the world is european. forocoches(dot)com And I have more: mediavida(dot)com ( it means half-life :) ) And then I have random ones: redcafe(dot)net foro.acb(dot)com I read them, and post on them daily, forums are alive and kicking it on europe :)
- cbsks 2y agoWhy not start now, Mr. INTPenis?
- ninalanyon 2y agoI really don't want to use my folkeregister ID to connect to a social media site. I present as feminine but I am not out to everyone in my family and I really don't want to forced to dox myself ahead of time.
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y agoBig "I" Internet will further splinter into more "dark" and un-indexed niches along with walled gardens. Basically, the pre-web internet days (1980s). I await the new AOL or whatever.
- MiiMe19 2y agoplease tell me this is bait. I refuse to believe there are genuinely people with this opinion.
- Terr_ 2y agoOh god no. That's dangerous and unnecessary. When you get down to it, what's our real minimum requirement for curbing scams and spams? We do not need to know someone's legal identity, in fact we don't even need to know if they're a person rather than a person-with-a-program, we just need to know that they have a person-sized footprint of "skin in the game", as opposed to sockpuppets in a botnet.
- Terr_ 2y agoTo spitball an annoying but way-less-Orwellian response... Imagine your local City Hall has a physical vending-machine. This machine allows you to pay $2 to a charity of your choice in exchange for a kind of special anonymous token that can be used to prove that the $2 donation happened. Then when you sign up to a site like HN, the administrator has a policy: "New accounts must supply proof from the last year which hasn't already been used on this site before." There's a lot of technical detail we could go into about how to maximize user privacy (so that you can't be tracked across sites) and prevent a site from "stealing" and reusing things that were shared with it... but the key point is that 99% of sites do not need identity-information to accomplish their moderation goals or personalized block-lists. Such a system could actually be cheaper and more equitable than one based on permanent government IDs.
- throwaway545673 2y ago> Yes the internet will become a slum of AI robots and loners That has already happend. Though the algorithm(s) trained the lonely humans to do it. Happening right here, right now.
- zoobab 2y agoBelgian minister of Digital just proposed a law which will force mandatory eID for "social media platforms" (whatever that means). If it is the case, I will leave to greener pastures.