4 ms·

Its going to be funny when there are married 17 year olds driving cars with guns and children but who can't install linux or access facebook without calling the

Its going to be funny when there are married 17 year olds driving cars with guns and children but who can't install linux or access facebook without calling their dad. Why are so many bi-partisan bills so bad?

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
OhMeadhbh 6mo ago
I don't think that's what this bill is about. I think they want to be able to attach a government issued ID to logins for various services. They tried claiming it was to fight terrorism, but that didn't really work so now they're saying "it's for the children!"
- Morromist 6mo ago
  Yeah, you're probably right. I couldn't find the text of the bill in the link. I'm sure the effort to do this kind of thing goes back to the 90s: like a lot of the really intense copyright bills - the CASE Act (ability for big companies to easily fine people who they think are breaching their copyright for $5,000 + legal fees without anything resembling a trial or evidentiary hearing) has been popping up in different forms for decades - but in its current name they took 5 years of trying to pass it, but the main idea was officially proposed in 2006 - so 14 years to get the bill passed, but then it was a thing long before it was officially proposed by a house comittee too. I guess they figure if they keep trying they'll eventually get it passed - which is probably true.
  - Longlius 6mo ago
    Most of these "online safety" acts have been sitting around in congress for half a decade at this point. Mike Johnson keeps blocking them because he has serious doubts about their constitutionality (which keep getting borne out whenever the laws end up in court).
- dotwaffle 6mo ago
  Someone came up with a good theory a while ago that I'm inclined to believe: The social media companies (esp. Meta as I understand it) were looking at huge fines for showing adult content to under-18s, so they lobbied hard to ensure that the burden of proof for age verification was on anyone else but themselves, hence why the OS vendors are being targeted now. Ultimately, they seem to have realised that they can't stop adult content from being shared, so the easiest way to get there was to mark anything even vaguely possible of being adult, and require age verification -- which comes with a lot of political cover vs. just deleting it. Of course, if you stoke up the right people, you end up with lots of support from the puritanical brigades, and label all naysayers as putting children in harm's way.
  - trollbridge 6mo ago
    They could stop adult content from being shown to minors; it would just take effort on their part to do so, so why not shift the effort on to everyone else?
    - phkahler 6mo ago
      >> They could stop adult content from being shown to minors; it would just take effort on their part to do so If you voluntarily sensor content, you might be in danger of being held responsible for various things since you control what people see. Phone companies in the US are "common carriers" which means they just connect people, but are not responsible for what people do over the phone (plotting crime or whatever). Social Media is still trying to have it both ways - censor some stuff but not be responsible for anything. IMHO that will eventually fail.
      - heavyset_go 6mo ago
        Section 230 allows for as much censoring as you want, you are not liable for user generated content as an interactive computer service provider if you censor or don't.
    - packetlost 6mo ago
      I'm really quite confident I don't want these companies collecting face and ID scans to prove age, so no I think this being an OS problem is actually a very reasonable solution.
burnt-resistor 6mo ago
This is being pushed by dark money billionaire PACs and lobbyists all over the world. Techbro feudal lords demand total control, de-anonymization of users, and monetization of such data but sell it as "think of the children" "safety". It's also why Flock is popping up to bring Big Mommy while it's using taxpayer money to force privacy elimination and mass surveillance by continuously tracking innocent people.
- varispeed 6mo ago
  That also reveals true (at least) two tier law enforcement. Banana republic level of corruption is fine as long as it's called lobbying and law enforcement looks the other way.
  - foxglacier 6mo ago
    This is an endless complaint I've heard for many years but Americans always vote for lobbied parties. They are clearly happy with this compared to whatever other reasons they have to vote. Somehow there's always something more important that makes them think "I'll tolerate a bit of corruption because at least he's promising XYZ".
    - Morromist 6mo ago
      As an american voter I confess you're right. - but also there aren't many good alternatives for us. Say you have 3 people running for senate to choose from. Canidate A and B have super PACs that spend $80 million each on ads. Canidate C doesn't. You could vote for canidate C, but he will likely lose - nobody sees anything about them, they can't employ many people to work their campaign, they don't get interviewed on tv. It feels better to vote for someone who has a chance to win. Also candiate A is a nutjob who thinks we should take over Tierra del Fuego as our 51st state and all young boys should have a year where their schooling is just learning how to throw knives really good like a Ninja, so you really want them to lose - you pretty much have to vote for Canidate B.
      - 6mo ago
varispeed 6mo ago
Because of corruption, sorry lobbying. Big corporations want the data.
- Izmaki 6mo ago
  They already have the data and much more of it. This has nothing to do with “Big Corp” wanting to know how old their users are.
  - varispeed 6mo ago
    It's not about the age, but whole identity. You know you are serving ads to a real person and not a bot and so on and you can correlate person across different services with 100% accuracy. Currently you can still reasonably easy fake a persona.
    - figassis 6mo ago
      If this is the case, this can be gamed. People can use stolen documents. Nothing says a person can’t own multiple computers so what happens if someone uses your id in 20 laptops? Will the companies just claim “but the machine said they where old enough?” The law may not have teeth, but will violate privacy. Something like https://protocol.humanidentity.io https://protocol.humanidentity.io (disclaimer: I built it, sorry for the plug) or any other privacy preserving service might work better. A platform can then require that a person verifies age in a privacy preserving way before viewing adult content.
      - natpalmer1776 6mo ago
        I really like your solution. Have you considered making connections with well connected individuals and potentially making small compromises on your products integrity to appeal to the people who would make this a legislated standard across the board? Or perhaps golfing at the right clubs to make it a defacto industry standard like ID.me seems poised to become? I hate seeing stuff like this once and then never again due to people who are capable of making something this… Good being unable to “play the game” or whatever optimize to break the social-moral glass ceiling for a given problem space.
cik 6mo ago
For years people have been able to legally murder on behalf of their country, with not have a beer. This is another item that will operate as intended.
downrightmike 6mo ago
they are work arounds to get what they are really after

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

OhMeadhbh 6mo ago

I don't think that's what this bill is about. I think they want to be able to attach a government issued ID to logins for various services. They tried claiming it was to fight terrorism, but that didn't really work so now they're saying "it's for the children!"

Morromist 6mo ago
Yeah, you're probably right. I couldn't find the text of the bill in the link. I'm sure the effort to do this kind of thing goes back to the 90s: like a lot of the really intense copyright bills - the CASE Act (ability for big companies to easily fine people who they think are breaching their copyright for $5,000 + legal fees without anything resembling a trial or evidentiary hearing) has been popping up in different forms for decades - but in its current name they took 5 years of trying to pass it, but the main idea was officially proposed in 2006 - so 14 years to get the bill passed, but then it was a thing long before it was officially proposed by a house comittee too. I guess they figure if they keep trying they'll eventually get it passed - which is probably true.
- Longlius 6mo ago
  Most of these "online safety" acts have been sitting around in congress for half a decade at this point. Mike Johnson keeps blocking them because he has serious doubts about their constitutionality (which keep getting borne out whenever the laws end up in court).
dotwaffle 6mo ago
Someone came up with a good theory a while ago that I'm inclined to believe: The social media companies (esp. Meta as I understand it) were looking at huge fines for showing adult content to under-18s, so they lobbied hard to ensure that the burden of proof for age verification was on anyone else but themselves, hence why the OS vendors are being targeted now. Ultimately, they seem to have realised that they can't stop adult content from being shared, so the easiest way to get there was to mark anything even vaguely possible of being adult, and require age verification -- which comes with a lot of political cover vs. just deleting it. Of course, if you stoke up the right people, you end up with lots of support from the puritanical brigades, and label all naysayers as putting children in harm's way.
- trollbridge 6mo ago
  They could stop adult content from being shown to minors; it would just take effort on their part to do so, so why not shift the effort on to everyone else?
  - phkahler 6mo ago
    >> They could stop adult content from being shown to minors; it would just take effort on their part to do so If you voluntarily sensor content, you might be in danger of being held responsible for various things since you control what people see. Phone companies in the US are "common carriers" which means they just connect people, but are not responsible for what people do over the phone (plotting crime or whatever). Social Media is still trying to have it both ways - censor some stuff but not be responsible for anything. IMHO that will eventually fail.
    - heavyset_go 6mo ago
      Section 230 allows for as much censoring as you want, you are not liable for user generated content as an interactive computer service provider if you censor or don't.
  - packetlost 6mo ago
    I'm really quite confident I don't want these companies collecting face and ID scans to prove age, so no I think this being an OS problem is actually a very reasonable solution.

burnt-resistor 6mo ago

This is being pushed by dark money billionaire PACs and lobbyists all over the world. Techbro feudal lords demand total control, de-anonymization of users, and monetization of such data but sell it as "think of the children" "safety". It's also why Flock is popping up to bring Big Mommy while it's using taxpayer money to force privacy elimination and mass surveillance by continuously tracking innocent people.

varispeed 6mo ago
That also reveals true (at least) two tier law enforcement. Banana republic level of corruption is fine as long as it's called lobbying and law enforcement looks the other way.
- foxglacier 6mo ago
  This is an endless complaint I've heard for many years but Americans always vote for lobbied parties. They are clearly happy with this compared to whatever other reasons they have to vote. Somehow there's always something more important that makes them think "I'll tolerate a bit of corruption because at least he's promising XYZ".
  - Morromist 6mo ago
    As an american voter I confess you're right. - but also there aren't many good alternatives for us. Say you have 3 people running for senate to choose from. Canidate A and B have super PACs that spend $80 million each on ads. Canidate C doesn't. You could vote for canidate C, but he will likely lose - nobody sees anything about them, they can't employ many people to work their campaign, they don't get interviewed on tv. It feels better to vote for someone who has a chance to win. Also candiate A is a nutjob who thinks we should take over Tierra del Fuego as our 51st state and all young boys should have a year where their schooling is just learning how to throw knives really good like a Ninja, so you really want them to lose - you pretty much have to vote for Canidate B.
    - 6mo ago

varispeed 6mo ago

Because of corruption, sorry lobbying. Big corporations want the data.

Izmaki 6mo ago
They already have the data and much more of it. This has nothing to do with “Big Corp” wanting to know how old their users are.
- varispeed 6mo ago
  It's not about the age, but whole identity. You know you are serving ads to a real person and not a bot and so on and you can correlate person across different services with 100% accuracy. Currently you can still reasonably easy fake a persona.
  - figassis 6mo ago
    If this is the case, this can be gamed. People can use stolen documents. Nothing says a person can’t own multiple computers so what happens if someone uses your id in 20 laptops? Will the companies just claim “but the machine said they where old enough?” The law may not have teeth, but will violate privacy. Something like https://protocol.humanidentity.io https://protocol.humanidentity.io (disclaimer: I built it, sorry for the plug) or any other privacy preserving service might work better. A platform can then require that a person verifies age in a privacy preserving way before viewing adult content.
    - natpalmer1776 6mo ago
      I really like your solution. Have you considered making connections with well connected individuals and potentially making small compromises on your products integrity to appeal to the people who would make this a legislated standard across the board? Or perhaps golfing at the right clubs to make it a defacto industry standard like ID.me seems poised to become? I hate seeing stuff like this once and then never again due to people who are capable of making something this… Good being unable to “play the game” or whatever optimize to break the social-moral glass ceiling for a given problem space.

cik 6mo ago

For years people have been able to legally murder on behalf of their country, with not have a beer. This is another item that will operate as intended.

downrightmike 6mo ago

they are work arounds to get what they are really after