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In Russia, they claimed that new measures to block websites are necessary to protect the children online. Of course, they immediately used these new capabilitie
by Andrew_nenakhov 4mo ago
In Russia, they claimed that new measures to block websites are necessary to protect the children online. Of course, they immediately used these new capabilities to block opposition websites and sources critical of the government.
Now, seeing many European governments tirelessly push for these new measures to protect the children, I'm pretty sure that the children are finally going to be safe online.
- crims0n 4mo agoIt is really disheartening to see the sentiment around privacy erode like this. Fifteen or even ten years ago this would have been unanimously and vehemently opposed, but now it is somehow up for debate?
- satvikpendem 4mo agoOpposed, yeah right. People don't care back then just as they don't now. Only small groups of technical users like us care.
- Symbiote 4mo agoThere has been 15 more years of highly motivated psychologists tuning their social media systems to create addiction, time for those who've grown up through this to become adults, foreign interference with democracy etc. Though I think banning it for children is the wrong approach. Ban the addictive and dangerous features for everyone, adults included — no more infinite scroll, and no more feeds showing content from outside social connections.
- pigpop 4mo ago> no more feeds showing content from outside social connections So, kill all news agencies and reporters I guess? or would there be a carve out for incumbents so they can cement their market share? who controls the approval list?
- drdexebtjl 4mo agoNews agencies don’t do personalized curation. Every reader, at least from the same city, gets exactly the same content.
- TeMPOraL 4mo ago> Every reader, at least from the same city, gets exactly the same content That alone is a value add people don't realize even as they're losing it: it created a shared reality you and locals inhabited, that you could have a conversation about.
- iamnothere 4mo agoIt also helped quite a bit with narrative enforcement.
- TeMPOraL 4mo agoMaybe. But then at least there was a narrative, which is valuable in itself.
- ben_w 4mo agoIf a social media feed is purely social, news agencies have no more right to be there than to force themselves onto your table in a pub or a board games group. Even if you want expand from social and allow commercial activity on them, it should still only be whoever you actually chose. It's not like Fox News can interrupt a BBC News broadcast on TV, or The New York Times can substitute itself for your normal copy of The Cambridge News: you chose what source you get, not an algorithm. (And there is a specific named editor to blame if some false story gets in that wasn't checked first for actually being true).
- Symbiote 4mo agoThey get no special treatment. They would only show up in my feed if one of my contacts shares a link.
- umvi 4mo agoBan infinite scroll? Sounds like a slippery slope and also hard to enforce. I don't even know how you would craft such a law.
- LadyCailin 4mo agoThe same way you do age assurance laws, I guess.
- HDBaseT 4mo agoOn the fly with legislation that actively harms privacy whilst also not protecting anyone at all? Australia did this, now everything is worse with no tangible improvement to "child safety" or protection from brainrot.
- shevy-java 4mo ago> tuning their social media systems to create addiction Except this has nothing to do with social media nor with children nor with addiction.
- Symbiote 4mo agoThe first sentence of the article "under-16 social media ban".
- cultofmetatron 4mo agoThis is far more to do with different people having different definitions for what constitutes a genocide with one very well funded minority group having a large stake in their version being the accepted one.
- petermcneeley 4mo agoWhat are you afraid of?
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- oliwarner 4mo agoSocial media got worse. We've had time to witness the damage of a dopamine-doomscroll. I personally know children who've posted too much, and children who've been solicited directly by adults, both to try and meet and for nudes. And we've seen the complete lack of positive action from platforms. Roblox is full of paedophiles and Grok was letting you nudify your classmates just a few months ago. These places aren't suitable for kids. I don't want a ban on VPNs. That isn't being suggested, just making sure they're also age-checked. But some inconvenience is a price worth considering.
- sylos 4mo agoMaybe they should get the pedos out of the government instead of a foolish attempt at restricting and harming everyone else? It's not ever going to protect or make children safer. It never was.
- oliwarner 4mo agoWhy doesn't it make children safer? I'm trying to discuss this in good faith but that wasn't even an argument. A bland accusation wearing a tin foil hat.
- mjhay 4mo agoThe onus is you to show it makes children safer - you’re the one advocating these privacy-harming rules.
- Symbiote 4mo agoIf you insist on that approach, then for the sake of argument, you could pretend the discussion is about Australia which already has a similar law. You could argue the benefit to children in repealing it.
- Hizonner 4mo agoNope. The burden is on whoever wants to restrict people. If you want a new restriction, the burden is on you. If you want to keep an existing restriction, the burden is still on you.
- soupbowl 4mo agoUs peasants cannot stop this, Canada will roll this out soon also, its being rammed through no matter what people feel.
- tlb 4mo agoIn terms of political power, programmers are more like yeomen than peasants. Yeomen have power due to their essential skills because if a good fraction of them stopped working the system would collapse. (Whereas if peasants stop working, they just starve.) If a sufficient number of programmers said "We're not going to implement or support privacy-invading systems" the government would have to back down.
- phs318u 4mo agoSadly, your faith is entirely quixotic. Like all other segments of society, there’s always a cohort willing to do anything - regardless of ethics, legality or morality. They are entirely nihilistic, not giving a shit about anything or anyone. And it only takes a small number of such people to do great harm.
- FerretFred 4mo agoThey've somehow managed to breed several generations who's only criteria for "computing" is "it just works". All consumption, little-to-no understanding of how stuff works. As long as it does what it does, and it's "free", that's all that matters.
- downrightmike 4mo agoMore like the dumb people keep breeding and the magic rocks keep showing pretty colors
- Gud 4mo agoYou need to get out of your nations borders more. Not every country that exists is like that. People aren’t inherently “dumb”. Uneducated, sure.
- b00353 4mo ago[dead]
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> disheartening to see the sentiment around privacy erode like this Coders went from being civically active—calling their electeds and showing up to events to defend privacy in the 90s—to being comfortably rich and content with maybe voting in generals. That’s had a direct effect on policy quality.
- Ferret7446 4mo ago"And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Keir Starmer. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent." - totally benign film set in the UK
- port11 4mo agoThe glasses might be too rosy, I doubt people would’ve fought that much “ten or fifteen years ago”. The general public never gave much thought to privacy, security, or freedom of choice when it came to tech.
- dryarzeg 4mo agoThe only (probably) good thing here is that one can at least try to apply Russian experience at circumventing the censorship, where it's currently way more severe, up to the point when entire companies have their workflows disrupted because remote workers can't connect through the VPN (which is blocked). Maybe that will help.
- Andrew_nenakhov 4mo agoYou see, the problem is that all exit points of our VPNs are in Europe. These too can be banned quite easily. Where to will we run next, given that this cancer tends to spread?
- dryarzeg 4mo agoChange the protocols, I guess? Move to some kind of self-hosted or community-run infrastructure? Because to block all of that (EDIT: to block that reliably, I mean), you will have to block the entire EU network sector, and we're likely not in "V for Vendetta" or full-blown 1984 scenario for this to be possible.
- malfist 4mo agoLiterally, tor.
- dryarzeg 4mo agoWhich will get blocked and go down, like, in no time. That's literally what happened in Russia - Tor is mostly unusable, you can't even bootstrap properly without some "tricks", so to speak.
- yurish 4mo agoDon't know, I use tor every day in Russia. Without it Internet would be unusable. The only problem I see is how to get initial distribution since the tor site is blocked.
- delfinom 4mo agoNon-nationalist parties that have been in power in Europe for so long are shitting their pants at the growing rise of nationalist parties and are absolutely planning to censor the shit out of them. I'm not even taking a side here and what they are trying to do is obvious.
- netsharc 4mo agoSomehow the "center"'s answer to the rise of right-wingers is stupid censorship, instead of fighting ideas with better ideas. Alternatively, the center starts trying to attract right-wing voters by adopting right-wing ideas like anti-immigrant views or "well, we can sacrifice the climate a bit more" positions. Keir Starmer is from a "left" party but his actions has shown him to be a centrist, Ursula von der Leyen is quite right. Then again, these are European positioning, as someone's said years ago, the European right-wing would be liberal in the US. And with the currently openly racist regime of the USA, even more so!
- hparadiz 4mo agoThey will establish censorship laws to try to stem the tide only to be surprised Pikachu face when inevitably at some point in the future one of these right wingers will win and then use all these things against them. No one ever learns.
- basisword 4mo agoHow is that happening? In the UK fringe nationalist parties are typically given as much airtime on main stream media as the governing parties. They've also setup their own 'news' stations to further spread propaganda. Any notion that they're being censored in the UK is ludicrous. They're pandered to.
- b800h 4mo agoThis isn't an axis from freedom to control, with the country sitting at an identifiable point. All of these things are happening, antagonistically, at the same time. Right wing people set up a television station, government cracks down on the internet, courts protect people's rights to express philosophical beliefs, police record "non-crime hate incidents" for things written online. It's all chaotic.
- karp773 4mo agoI also do not believe that this is primarily aimed at ptotecting children. I think the goal is to counteract the bot-farms that spread disinformation, instigate violence, and so on. Which Russia, by the way, pioneered and scaled up to make a material difference in elections in the West. It is a real problem for which no effective solution has been found.
- baxtr 4mo ago"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." H.L. Mencken
- kelseyfrog 4mo agoThe Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
- ekianjo 4mo agoit would be great if they cared as much about the safety of kids in the streets
- WarOnPrivacy 4mo ago> it would be great if they cared as much about the safety of kids in the streets car culture < childhood This isn't a cynically curated viewpoint. It's some* of what we have and what that cost. * we also have trespassing culture & stranger-danger culture. we ruined roaming and the childhood development it nurtured.
- petermcneeley 4mo agoYou think there wernt cars when I was a kid? I lived in the subs. Kid utopia! Can you imagine bringing up cars in this thread?
- WarOnPrivacy 4mo ago> You think there wernt cars when I was a kid? I lived in the subs. Kid utopia! I believe you. I'm likely older than you, so there were even fewer cars when I was a kid. I'm confident my utopia was even better than yours. Between then and now we have a gradient of loss. My kids grew up under 24/7 adulting and had nowhere to go.
- petermcneeley 4mo ago"My kids grew up under 24/7 adulting and had nowhere to go." Yes but this has nothing to do with cars. What are you even protecting kids from anyway?
- WarOnPrivacy 4mo ago>> "My kids grew up under 24/7 adulting and had nowhere to go." > Yes but this has nothing to do with cars. What are you even protecting kids from anyway? It has everything to do with cars. Once my kids cross the yard, in all directions are the risk from cars, the risk of trespassing charges and that's about it. In a few generations, kids went from countless square miles of free roam area to the few sq ft of their own property. ref: https://old.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/v8cyi7/map_comparing_four_generations_of_kids_how_far/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/v8cyi7/map_compar... > What are you even protecting kids from anyway? Their reality is their reality. I didn't create it.
- _el3m3n7 4mo agoIf you are talking about the recent blockades of VPNs, the Russians made it pretty clear that they did not want western information sources inside the country. I am not sure it was ever in the guise of protecting the children
- dmantis 4mo agoThe first law about building technical and legal infrastructure to enable website blocking in Russia in 2012 was passed under the name of children protection. Everything else is an addition. People from duma (the russian parlament) also publicly stated it would never use it for anything but children protection.
- _el3m3n7 4mo agoCertainly that could be the case. But I was specifically referring to the recent VPN crackdown
- swat535 4mo agoSame with Iran, they clearly said that their control of internet access it prevent Western influence, as a national security issue. China did something similar with their firewall. I personally think the era of free and unrestricted Internet is coming to an end. All the nations in the West are following suit, including Canada with the introduction of C-34.
- basisword 4mo agoIt's easy to blame the governments in this - and some of their decisions are idiotic - but most of the blame should go on the tech companies. The fact they think "our ToS says you have to be over 13" or a popup asking "are you over 18" is sufficient while they make billions is a disgrace. They're the reason the governments are sinking to these levels. It's not like they haven't been given every opportunity to do the sensible thing over decades.
- shevy-java 4mo agoYeah. The children are just the excuse. They hate us for our freedome. Nobody is surprised that Russia resorts to this. They are a potemkin dictatorship. But that the UK is also acting as a dictatorship - now that's interesting.
- WarOnPrivacy 4mo ago> But that the UK is also acting as a dictatorship - now that's interesting. VPN banning is part of the same compulsion for control that made London a global leader (in surveillance of people not suspected of a crime). ref: https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2020-08-14/the-top-10-most-surveilled-cities-in-the-world https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2020-08-14/the-t...
- nbevans 4mo agoThat's already happening in the UK too. Shortly after the Online Safety Act went into operation, there was politically charged/sensitive/opinionated content on X mysteriously disappearing for UK users but nobody else in the world.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> seeing many European governments tirelessly push for these new measures to protect the children, I'm pretty sure that the children are finally going to be safe online There is strong, popular will for age gating social media. At the same time, at least in America, there is a deep streak of laziness and nihilism in the tech community that makes it civically useless. When combined, you get politicians getting calls every day to limit social media and little from experts on how. So you get folks reaching for the first solution on the shelf, and then getting wedded to it. The correct approach is making this the social-media companies’ problem. If they wind up with users under N years old, they get fined. If you want to use social media, you put up with their BS. If not, you’re not affected. Unfortunately, I’ve worked on privacy and technical policy enough to be sceptical that anyone will actually pitch that to their elected. So we get this, instead. (And at the end of the day, I’ll take an imperfect solution over a perfect one that goes nowhere. Though the UK, as usual, seems to have found the worst of the bunch.)
- mc32 4mo agoAlso the UK arrests people for online posts more than Russia, China or Belarus. It seems clear the gov wants to control all forms of speech and if they could control speech at home they would too further, I have little doubt if they could control your thoughts they would too. They’d be more than delighted to have people wear shock collars that shock wearers as they stray from received though patterns.
- phs318u 4mo ago> the UK arrests people for online posts more than Russia, China or Belarus Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. You’ve made an unsubstantiated assertion. I won’t hold my breath waiting for any references to support your ridiculous claim.
- mc32 4mo agoHere you go: https://pa.media/blogs/fact-check/fact-check-international-data-on-online-comments-arrests-not-comparable/ https://pa.media/blogs/fact-check/fact-check-international-d... Now, there is one big issue for a couple of countries and that's that Russia and China probably don't report on the same level as the UK and Germany though for the UK, not all jurisdictions returned an answer, so the stats are likely higher for the UK. Then again in Russia, you can comment all you want if you avoid the one subject, well, maybe two subjects.
- phs318u 4mo agoInteresting. I suspect that in Russia and China there’s a fair bit of self-censorship going on as a result of their restrictions. Which implies that if the UK proceeds down this path, there would be a lagging drop in arrests (once people get the hint after a few well publicised incidents).
- duxup 4mo agoAll these children laws end up as putting the onus on the adult to expose themself to whomever. It used to be "don't give your name to anyone online" and now it's "hand it over when you're told".
- hactually 4mo agoThe UK government have at least made it clear that they intend to ban right wing media and parties that aren't aligned. A leaked strategy document from UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer's chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, outlined their "Kill Musk's Twitter" to diminish the platform through advertiser pressure and regulatory action
- ben_w 4mo agoThe excuses used by a propagandising dictatorship (for basically everything they do not just this) wouldn't be effective propaganda if they didn't touch a percieved need. Even as adults, many find Facebook and Twitter in particular to be repugnant, and use them anyway as an addiction. LinkedIn is more the butt of jokes about how everyone is excited by their new future even when they're newly looking for work, but at least they have minigames now. YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok have a reputation for funelling people into conspiracies, but IDK if that's totally fair or them getting painted with the same brush in a moral panic.