8 ms·

I am completely baffled by this wave of new laws and proposals... they feel dystopic and can seemingly only lead to brutal restrictions on the internet. What wi

• shaftoe 6mo ago
  I'm confused where all of this censorship is originating from. What wave of efforts is culminating? I can't really explain this from any movement I can see.
  • OccamsMirror 6mo ago
    It's all coming from Meta: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/reddit-user-uncovers-behind-meta-154717384.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/reddit-user-uncovers-beh... Big tech wants regulatory capture.
    • mannanj 6mo ago
      And Meta is captured by spy agencies. Don't be tricked at any point into thinking this is just a tech thing. And, spy agencies, who captured them?
      • 2ndorderthought 6mo ago
        I wouldn't say captured. Zuckerberg has been cutting deals with the new administration so often people were seeing him at the Pentagon. It's a partnership
        • mannanj 6mo ago
          It goes way before that, it isn't recent.
          • iamnothere 6mo ago
            In-Q-Tel
    • uncircle 6mo ago
      I keep reading this but I don't understand how a company might want to push censorship on users. What is the economic benefit of censorship? Does Meta's bottom line increase if there is no illegal content and every user is age verified on the site? Would Meta care if you use a VPN? The ones that stand to benefit the most are the governments themselves and their surveillance network.
      • tylerchilds 6mo ago
        Rug pull Ladder pull It’s just that “Move fast, break things, regulate impossible to repair.”
      • luisfmh 6mo ago
        I've read a take somewhere that seemed to make sense. They don't want to get stuck with the liabilities of the content that gets posted on their platforms. So by forcing the age verification onto the users, forcing users to identify and track themselves, they can have a "clean" route to someone who posts illicit content on their platforms. It just sucks that that's all in sacrifice of our privacy.
        • kmeisthax 6mo ago
          The thing that makes this plausible is that the California and Colorado bills are specifically written to either allow or outright require self-attestation. Children will just lie about their ages because if they don't, the computer is basically useless. So it would give Meta the ability to dodge lawsuits, but still actually have kids on their dangerous platforms, with the argument of "well, the law makes us trust this unreliable indicator".
          • bryan_w 6mo ago
            > Children will just lie Not if the parents are setting it up beforehand (like with small children) then their iaccount or Google account will be under parental controls from that point on. It seems reasonable that if a parent enables their child to visit sites after that, then that's just their prerogative (like giving your kid beer)
    • progval 6mo ago
      There is no evidence it is actually coming from Meta. The Reddit researcher the article cites generated their entire "analysis" in three days using Claude: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659552 Their website also added this page since I posted that comment: https://web.archive.org/web/20260411112604/https://tboteproject.com/notice/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260411112604/https://tboteproj... where they claim their website is under "surveillance" because it got a few thousand requests from Google Cloud et al, most of them to a single page. This shows how low their standards are.
      • JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
        > There is no evidence it is actually coming from Meta My personal view that social media should be age gated is caused by Meta. But broadly, polling shows a commanding majority (60+ percent) of Americans believe in restrictions for under 14s.
        • davkan 6mo ago
          Is there broad support for digital ID, age verification, etc? Or is it a broad sentiment that kids shouldn’t be on social media. Everyone I know agrees with latter but almost no one supports the former.
          • Avicebron 6mo ago
            The parent commenter is conflating two things. Your right, there can be broad general sentiment that "kids probably shouldn't on social media, or better framed, social media in it's current iteration isn't healthy for people especially kids" but that doesn't imply people are asking for intrusive surveillance or to be monitored at all times when they are online.
            • davkan 6mo ago
              Yes, i was asking which one the polling they were citing was about.
  • 2ndorderthought 6mo ago
    It looks like a coordinated effort from multiple defense companies like meta, and I believe openai, and I think palantir.
    • TiredOfLife 6mo ago
      Also Soros and the lizard people of Venus. Surprisingly lizard people of Mars are against it.
    • tailscaler2026 6mo ago
      Yep. I brought this up yesterday on the Roblox thread but HN has been ingesting the propaganda for too long to understand their beliefs about Roblox are misled. Time to adjust your priors y'all. This is a concentrated effort toward surveillance, controlling who we talk to, and what information we're fed.
    • red-iron-pine 6mo ago
      palantir got all of the social security numbers in the US and now want to correlate all traffic against them. yalls gonna have "social credit" scores real soon
  • mvdwoord 6mo ago
    Maybe the desire is always there, but somehow the momentum is just in an upswing now?
    • 2ndorderthought 6mo ago
      They finally have the tools to mass read everything aka LLMs. Does that make sense?
  • Guestmodinfo 6mo ago
    My guess is bots. Govts and law makers are afraid of the barrage of bots DDOSing them so they are slowly and surely tightening the noose around the internet. I'm all for net neutrality and anonymity on the internet and I don't like the age laws one bit, but I too am afraid of the bots scorching the internet. I still hate these growing dystopian laws but I also want the bots to be driven away from the "human internet" .
  • verdverm 6mo ago
    Heritage Foundation, Meta, and generally the Oligarchy
  • bilbo0s 6mo ago
    It's the inevitable culmination of their plan. Pretend to be anti-censorship. Get voted in. Fast track all of the censorship and surveillance through congress. When I saw certain billionaires talking up anti-censorship and anti-surveillance a few years ago, I knew we would be screwed. (I knew the same billionaires had large positions in censorship and surveillance tech.) No one ever talks against their own book unless they're planning on screwing you.
  • Aurornis 6mo ago
    > What wave of efforts is culminating? I can't really explain this from any movement I can see. Look at any thread about social media, TikTok, smartphones, or porn sites on Hacker News: They are instantly filled with comments claiming that the internet is to blame for all of society's ills with younger generations. The HN threads fill with comments proposing that we ban children from having smartphones until they're 16 or 18 and similar ideas. Abstract ideas about banning kids from social media or porn sites are weirdly very popular even here, mostly from people who haven't thought about what that would mean for privacy for everyone. These ideas have become pervasive, even inside tech communities. It was so easy to blame social media and the internet for everything for years, and now lawmakers are riding that wave for political points. It's "think of the children" built on top of the current moral panics.
    • wartywhoa23 6mo ago
      > Abstract ideas about banning kids from social media or porn sites are weirdly very popular even here It's absolutely not weird. HN is the propaganda outlet for the geeks.
  • wartywhoa23 6mo ago
    Easy: from the fascist psychopaths at the whelm of the world. People started to understand too much about who's the real enemy, and are not willing to kill and die in meatgrinders of the new world order for the interests of the unelect 0.001%.
• deknos 6mo ago
  > What will we end up with? Only attested modems / endpoints in the home? you might laugh/cry, but there was a time in germany, when the telephone at home was owned by the state (the "Post") and you were NOT allowed to tinker with it. personally, i guess, things like sneakernet, lorawan and hamradio will become a lot more popular over time.
  • butvacuum 6mo ago
    Same for the US- until the feds broke up Bell between 1974 and 82. but, there were no technical hurdles. Anybody have a toy whistle?
    • rationalist 6mo ago
      My understanding is that the phone company owned the phone, not the state.
      • mvdwoord 6mo ago
        If there is only 1 telephone company, either owned by the state, directly or indirectly, or even just a monopoly... what is the difference?
        • NewJazz 6mo ago
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine
      • estebank 6mo ago
        In many countries the state owned the phone company.
      • somat 6mo ago
        And who gets to tell the phone company how to operate? We try and segment it into governments and corporations. But really there is no real differences between the two. They are all governing policies for groups of people arranged in a sort of heirical pattern. The big top level group, the one that managed to gain control of physical territory is the nation-state or perhaps more accurately the Government(capital G) of which. allocating control to various lesser groups. Including physical sub territories and for profit enterprises (The incorporation). The point being, even in the most rampant capitalist[1](an economic policy favoring freedom of operation in it's sub groups) nation the for profit enterprises are licensed and regulated and if needed(see world war 2) controlled by the state. 1. As opposed to communism, an economic policy favoring fairness of operation in it's sub groups. Or fascism, an economic policy where no one knows what it is but every one agrees is bad. fascism really is hard to pin down, used as the default bogey man by everybody, but original Italian theory suggests it favors having the most successful sub groups run the state, which would be in the capitalist corner. however the largest wielders of the theory(1930's Germany) used it as a social fairness issue, which is in the communism domain.
• throw848tjfj 6mo ago
  We will end with correct and desired behaviour. If you misbehave, you get internet ban, and lose your livelihood. Driving licences, passports, electricity, banking... etc already work this way. Technical details are irrelevant. You should not be able to criticise current or previous government!
  • peddling-brink 6mo ago
    What previous government? We have always been at war with Eurasia.
    • throw848tjfj 6mo ago
      Who today even declares wars? We can be best allies, while you blow up our pipelines!
• dgellow 6mo ago
  > they must have some technical advisors who can explain to them that the solutions they propose will not work I would expect they mostly listen to special interests advocating for those laws. They don’t come from nowhere
• 2ndorderthought 6mo ago
  Utah hosts I think the biggest nsa data center. Honestly, I would like my ISP to block all traffic to and from Utah if this law passes. I can't think of anything I want or need that involves that state.
  • mvdwoord 6mo ago
    Without it being good or bad (long term, second order effects), I do think all of these (proposed) laws and where we are heading will balkanize the internet. Alternative tech may sound appealing to the tinkerers, and they may keep certain important channels alive (think radio amateurs... they know this game) but for the masses? I already happily block entire countries or regions to my VPS as there is zero benefit for me to not drop them at the FW level.
    • 2ndorderthought 6mo ago
      I wish there was an easy way to geolocate ip addresses by us state. It's not too hard to block everything from say russia.
      • wartywhoa23 6mo ago
        Let's all block whole countries just because our propagandists brainwashed us so, yay, what an Internet that'll be!
        • 2ndorderthought 6mo ago
          I haven't had a single person in my life or social media inform me of a single thing I have missed out on since blocking Russia and several other hostile nations with my firewall. I've been doing this for about 15 years. No regrets so far. I understand your philosophy but it doesn't match my reality.
          • wartywhoa23 6mo ago
            Am I a hostile one for you, being a Russian who has to bypass both domestic blocks of the outbound traffic and (much more rare) "hostile nation" geoip blocks on the other side via VPNs just to read that damn article, mind you, not to hack anyone?
• mannanj 6mo ago
  Remember the conspiracy theorists talking about this for decades? I do. This is the goal of a bourgeois class of people who want to save their livelihoods and status in the world though don't want any circumstances they can't control - legislators are out of touch with the majority of people as they are funded by any really serve those bourgeois.
• onetokeoverthe 6mo ago
  [dead]
• gilrain 6mo ago
  The country is descending into fascism. If you’ve previous endulged in the politics of “I don’t care about politics”, it’s time to stop and look around you.
• pyaamb 6mo ago
  when can we hold lawmakers personally responsible for any consequences resulting from passing bad laws?
  • bluecheese452 6mo ago
    You can.
    • cindyllm 6mo ago
      [dead]
  • red-iron-pine 6mo ago
    you can hold them responsible on election day. you can hold them responsible by taking time out of your day to knock on doors, protest, hold up signs, or get involved. you can hold them responsible by donating to parties, movements, and organizations that back consequences for passing bad laws.
• toss1 6mo ago
  >>they must have some technical advisors who can explain to them that the solutions they propose will not work You are assuming good faith on the part of those legislators. That is an error. There is no good faith to be had and they could not care less about physical restrictions, incompatibilities, or impossibilities. Their goal is to maximize their power and minimize or eliminate people's power, regardless of whether it is legitimate or desired by the people they claim to represent. You would be more productive summoning the ghost of Richard Feynman to explain quantum physics to a dung beetle than to have a network expert attempt to enlighten those pseudo-legislators.
  • hilbert42 6mo ago
    Try 'teaching calculus to a dog', it's easier to visualize.
• morkalork 6mo ago
  We will end up with what China, Russia and Iran have. The American right has come to grips with the fact that their ideas and beliefs will not will not win on merit alone so they're moving to restrict and eliminate alternatives.
  • gnerd00 6mo ago
    LOL - its just "the right" eh?
    • xbar 6mo ago
      Who is supporting this law?
      • AngryData 6mo ago
        The majority of politicians in general it seems.
    • ozlikethewizard 6mo ago
      I mean if you're discussing strictly America, you lot haven't had any form of government that's been anything but right wing for at least a few decades (was not born before this lol).
• Spooky23 6mo ago
  The people making these decisions are religious fanatics. They don’t care. This is one of the reasons why the purge of the federal government and military has happened. Surveillance state stuff was pretty scary from day 1… doubly so now that the leadership is all toadies who will remain embedded for decades.
• JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
  > they must have some technical advisors I dare you to get half a dozen people with a technical background to call their electeds and explain why these rules are stupid. (And, if they insist on implementing age gates, as seems to be popular, the least worst ways to do it.)
• rapnie 6mo ago
  > I am completely baffled by this wave of new laws and proposals... they feel dystopic Baffled? The whole country's democracy is diving off this cliff, seems to me.
  • martin-t 6mo ago
    It's not just the US though, EU too. I don't like far fetched conspiracy theories but I really want to know where all this is coming from. Did politicians suddenly all get the same idea or are there groups lobbying for this who benefit in terms of money/power?
    • tardedmeme 6mo ago
      The EU has different norms. Bafflingly to me, it feels like the EU had an existing expectation of linking everything you do to your full name and address and then trusting the police to stop you getting swatted. I don't understand this attitude myself but you can see it in impressum laws for example, business registrations, needing your personal info to give feedback to parliaments, it's clearly a pervasive social norm over there. I suppose the reason they don't get swatting is that the police will verify the ID of the person who calls in the report.
      • maxerickson 6mo ago
        Imagine believing the police shouldn't murder you based on an anonymous report.
    • wartywhoa23 6mo ago
      It's the whole world. I'm sorry to tell this, but everyone will soon realize that the far-fetched conspiracy theories are in fact severly underestimated conspiracy practices. If they still have any remaining gut to face the reality, that is.
      • martin-t 6mo ago
        Extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence, please...
• jmyeet 6mo ago
  The only baffling thing is taht it took this long. In the physical world, we can limit the types of businesses. We can limit access to them. Casinos, adult entertainment, drinking establishments, etc require efort to go to and there's enforcement (not always effective, obviously) to keep, say, minors out. The Internet has broken down that structure such that there are no limitations and, like it or not, that's really harmful. Widespread access to sports betting and crypto gambling is just a negative. There is nothing positive about this. Gambling preys on desperate people and gambling addiction quite often leads to suicide. So I think it was inevitable that lawmakers would get involved. The only question now is what kinds of restrictions we get, how they work and what the enforcement mechanisms are. Some will say "this is a parenting issue". That's shown to be completely insufficient. My point is that fighting this is (IMHO) a losing battle. There are a lot of predictable outcomes here. For example, Meta thinks age verification should be enforced at the OS level. Shocker. The company that has no OS thinks OS should be responsible and, more importantly, liable. IMHO private companies shouldn't be trusted with verifying IDs. The government should do that because, you know, they're the ones who issued the IDs. I also think the minors simply shouldn't be able to create Apple or Google accounts. Child accounts should belong to an adult account and that adult is responsible for setting the age correctly. The child account should become an adult account when they turn 18. Attacking VPNs, as Utah is doing here, is... a choice. I don't think that's a winning strategy but we will see. I also think that location of a user is going to be increasingly enforced and verified. NVidia actually does something like this to try and block their cards being used in China. The cards will ping various locations to try and establish location. I think sites will start doing that too. Take social media sites like Twitter, for example. There are obviously bots. But there are also people in developing nations who have figured out they can monetize being controversial. I think it would actually be value if we know that Debra the MAGA influencer is actually in Nigeria.
  • lxgr 6mo ago
    > The Internet has broken down that structure such that there are no limitations and, like it or not, that's really harmful. Widespread access to sports betting and crypto gambling [...] Your analysis disregards the evidence of several decades in which the Internet existed, but gambling was still broadly illegal and getting around those laws was anything but trivial (since blocking financial flows is, or at least used to be, pretty effective). Now it's explicitly legal in many states, and I think this can explain for the recent boom much more than the availability of offshore on-chain betting. > IMHO private companies shouldn't be trusted with verifying IDs. The government should do that because, you know, they're the ones who issued the IDs. This requires trusting the government in the first place. Easy in some places; not so much in others.
• wartywhoa23 6mo ago
  Well, people who call a fascism a fascism are always wrong until they suddenly aren't.
• nine_k 6mo ago
  It's not the first time when people who despise liberty of others and want to force them jump through unreasonable hoops shoot themselves in their feet. Saying "you're unwelcome here" to a large enough number of well-meaning people usually backfires. I hope this will be felt during the next elections in Utah.
• CamperBob2 6mo ago
  I am completely baffled by this wave of new laws and proposals Follow the money. Ten to one, it all leads back to Zuckerberg.
• pseudosavant 6mo ago
  When discussing Utah, you shouldn't ignore the role that Mormonism's theocratic authoritarian culture and embrace of the MAGA movement has had. Human rights, like right to privacy, will always be trampled by their desire to legislate their morality. The Utah territory was literally founded as a theocracy.
  • Barrin92 6mo ago
    exactly, there's an entire commercial ecosystem for this too, so called 'shameware' (or in their own parlance 'accountability software') apps that exists to put you under religious surveillance (https://archive.ph/RkgYn https://archive.ph/RkgYn) I really hate this tinfoil hat nonsense you see here every day now, Utah is not censoring online content because of tech bros in California lol.
• altairprime 6mo ago
  One could infer that they’re trying to make porn illegal in their legislature’s desire to build the United and Puritanical States of America, which itself stems from the hope that increasing the internal sexual pressures in men will reverse the growing trend of intolerance for misogyny among both men and women. That reversal most benefits today’s adherents of misogyny, a population that is strongly represented in Utah, and comes at a cost — viewed as a net transfer of control from women to men — that is societally acceptable for them to make subservient women pay. (If this were various other states like South Carolina or Oregon, I’d point out the usual labor-economics connection to replacing more-illegal race-based slavery with less-illegal gender-based slavery now that the former’s illegal, but Utah’s home to a large religious group that has and remains focused on the gendered form first, so it doesn’t seem applicable here.)
• Simulacra 6mo ago
  The end goal is a government license to access the internet. But I think it's less regulatory, and more poli-social. There are individuals within the political stratosphere that are adamantly against anonymity on the Internet because they want to be able to attach speech to specific individuals, and punish if necessary for wrong-think.
• CamperBob2 6mo ago
  Also notice that even on here, a site ostensibly for "hackers" and other traditionally civil liberty-minded users, we don't tend to hear about these proposed laws until they're already passed or otherwise too late to stop. Some might find that a bit odd.
• bigbadfeline 6mo ago
  > I am completely baffled by this wave of new laws and proposals... I'm not surprised in the slightest, the direction's been clear for more than 20 years now, so I've stopped looking for technical solutions, they will always be stop-gap measures if politics isn't fixed.