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"> Furthermore, the next massive threat to digital civil liberties is already on the agenda: Next up in the ongoing trilogue, lawmakers will negotiate whether m
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 8mo ago
"> Furthermore, the next massive threat to digital civil liberties is already on the agenda: Next up in the ongoing trilogue, lawmakers will negotiate whether messenger and chat services, as well as app stores, will be legally obliged to implement age verification. This would require users to provide ID documents or submit to facial scans, effectively making anonymous communication impossible and severely endangering vulnerable groups such as whistleblowers and persecuted individuals."
Perhaps this is bad news for "messenger and chat services, as well as app stores" who solicit "users" to exploit them for commercial gain, for example _if_ users are unwilling to accept "age verification" and decide to stop using them. The keyword is "if"
The third parties know it's possible for capable users to communicate with each other without using third party "chat and messenger services" intermediaries that conduct data collection, surveillance and/or online ad services as a "business model". Thus the third party "tech" company intermediaries strive to make their "free services" more convenient than DIY, i.e., communication without using third party intermediation by so-called "tech" companies
But users may decide that "age verification" is acceptable. For many years, HN comments have repeatedly insisted that "most users" do not care about data collection or surveillance or online advertising, that users don't care about privacy. Advocates of "Big Tech" and other so-called "tech" companies argue that by using such third party services, users are consciously _choosing_ convenience over privacy
Perhaps the greatest threat to civil liberties is the mass data collection and surveillance conducted by so-called "tech" companies. The "age verification" debate provides a vivid illustration of why allowing such companies to collect data and surveil without restriction only makes it easier for governments that seek to encroach upon civil liberties. While governments may operate under legal and financial constraints that effectively limit their ability to conduct mass surveillance, the companies operate freely, creating enormous repositories that governments can use their authority to tap into
- sveme 8mo agoThere's a fairly non-invasive way to do age verification: ID cards that connect to a smartphone app that only provide a boolean age verification to the requesting service. Requesting service can be anonymous to the ID app and the requesting service can only receive a bool. That most implementation will try to collect far more data is the real concern.
- gzread 8mo agoThere's an even easier one: When you buy a phone, the salesman checks your ID and sets the phone to child lock mode or unlocked mode.
- matheusmoreira 8mo agoPhones should have no locks unless the user installs them and holds the keys.
- School-Cotton 8mo agoWhy?
- matheusmoreira 8mo agoBecause if we don't have the keys to the machine, then we don't actually own our computers. If we don't own our computers, then we have no freedom. Because everything the word "hacker" ever stood for will be destroyed if this nonsense gets normalized. The day governments get to decide what software "your" computer can run is the day it's all over.
- School-Cotton 8mo ago> Because if we don't have the keys to the machine, then we don't actually own our computers. It is not self-evident to me that people under 18 should "own [their] computers" or have unrestricted "freedom".
- fc417fc802 8mo agoThink about how the proposed idea would most likely be implemented. It would be used as justification for manufacturers to sell devices that the end use doesn't control. They already do that; this would give them legal justification.
- 8mo ago
- Saline9515 8mo agoSo you are against paid services? Who manages the servers, updates apps, and distributes them?
- kode-targz 8mo agoI'm not sure about op, but as someone who agrees with their comment, yes, I absolutely am. I despise 99% of all digital """services""" that exist. Whether it's cloud, music/movies/series/whatever streaming, subscriptions of almost any kind... They're all extremely dystopian and anti-human. I sail the high seas for almost everything I consume digitally. When I want to support a creator I enjoy, I pay them directly (buy their merch, buy a physical copy of their album, purchase their game and dlcs, or simply directly donate). In my opinion, corporations being allowed free reign and control over the internet and digital world in general without guardrails was *THE* biggest legislative mistake (although I believe it was done on purpose )in the past century, considering how the internet will most definitely be the defining factor of the era we're currently living in in future textbooks; if we make it that far at least. I don't think most people understand the sheer magnitude of the damage that corporate slop, control, anti-competitiveness and pursuit of infinite growth at all costs has done to our technological capabilities and advancement. Hardware is the only area of tech that continually gets better, whilst software continually regresses and gets worse. 90% of "new" code is web-based slop (and now AI generated web slop) that hogs memory and cpu usage, completely undermining all advances in hardware just because companies weren't willing to pay the extra buck to program a native solution that wouldn't force its users to purchase new machines. If it wasn't for corporate (and many programmers') lazyness, computers from over a decade ago would still be fully functional, fully usable machines that could do the most bleeding-edge of tasks, safe for maybe the most graphically-demanding games and rendering. And then maybe programmers could focus on actually advancing the science that is writing code, instead of building yet another fucking REST API and React UI. And don't forget to package it all in electron to fuck your users as much as possible, and dodge any need for real engineering. Companies can just keep offloading costs unto the user, making users buy machines 10x as powerful as the ones they had 5 years ago, just to do the exact same tasks, but 20x slower. But at least they have a nice looking UI right?
- 8mo ago