15 ms·

The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

• DrammBA 4mo ago
  Also a very good game, https://store.steampowered.com/app/239030/Papers_Please/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/239030/Papers_Please/
  • HelloUsername 4mo ago
    Better, official link https://papersplea.se/ https://papersplea.se/ since it has been released on multiple platforms
• gchamonlive 4mo ago
  Who'd have guessed hitting the library would become an act of rebellious defiance
  • OnionBlender 4mo ago
    How is hitting the library an act of rebellious defiance? Getting a library card requires an ID and proof of address. The library then tracks which books you've signed out. Unless you're reading the books inside the library without signing them out.
    • deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
    • nathan_compton 4mo ago
      I'm pretty sure I didn't provide an address or an id when I got my library card.
      • Ifkaluva 4mo ago
        In the US? I think you most likely need to provide proof of an address
        • ghaff 4mo ago
          I'm pretty sure I had to provide some proof of residency for a library card from my town or state in the US.
        • gchamonlive 4mo ago
          What if you are homeless? Can you at least sit and read there?
          • Ifkaluva 4mo ago
            Certainly, but I think you need to have a library card to use the computers. I do see folks who look homeless using the computers, so I assume there must be a special accommodation for them. But, if you’re just a regular middle class joe looking for anonymity on the internet, I don’t think the library is the place for you—it’s tied to your library card which knows your address, and anyway what would you want to be private that you would be ok to broadcast in an open library setting? Nobody watching corn or browsing whatever successor to Silk Road. Usually the login screen says something about fairly restrictive terms of use, even for the WiFi on a personal device, and I don’t know if you can install software on the library computers. When I look around at library patrons using the computers, it’s usually lower income folks applying to jobs or similar, and people playing chess.
          • Geezus_42 4mo ago
            You can. You just have to ignore all the privileged people being annoyed that they have to see you. They love posting on Nextdoor about how much they hate homeless people.
        • tayo42 4mo ago
          I think some will just limit the books you can take out at a time if you don't have proof.
    • EvanAnderson 4mo ago
      My library, at least, is fanatical about their patron's privacy. I don't know what their retention time is on circulation records, but beyond aggregate statistics for culling materials that aren't circulating I bet it isn't too long. Now I want to go check. My library also only keeps 24 hours of video surveillance because they didn't want to be able to fulfill requests from the cops for footage of patrons. I really liked that. Edit: In the patron portal it permits me to disable "borrowing history" and says it permanently deletes my records. I do contract IT work for them so next time I'm engaged I'll ask about the details. They're moving to Koha later this year (free / open-source ILS) so I could go look at the code to see what it does (which is nice). On the theme of their privacy fanaticism: Over a decade ago the library got a grant to do outdoor public WiFi in the park behind their building. As part of that grant they needed to report the number of distinct users using the WiFi each day. Their UniFi controller tracks MAC addresses of associated stations. I used a query against the underlying MongoDB to get the usage reports to satisfy the grant. To minimize the potential of tracking individual users the library director had me write a script to grovel thru MongoDB, do a SHA-1 hash of each public MAC address tracked concatenated with a randomly-generated salt for that day, then write back the first 48 bits of the hash over the original MAC. The library gets their daily statistics and long-term traffic trend data, they don't double-count associations for the same device in the same day, but they can't track individual people over a span of multiple days. Now that devices randomly-generating MACs are mainstream it's much less necessary. I thought it was really cool she thought this. (The whole salting/hashing bit was my idea. She just wanted to be able to fulfill the grant reporting requirements amd be unable to track people.)
    • HoldOnAMinute 4mo ago
      Start your own library. Write your own books. Make your own music.
    • StanislavPetrov 4mo ago
      My library card has no picture on it. Me and 100 of my closest friends could easily share the same card.
    • doginasuit 4mo ago
      A library is supported by local property taxes, so requiring proof of residence serves a practical purpose. Of course they are going to track loaned books too. This is not the same thing, by any stretch. If they are somehow making that information available beyond the scope of the library system it is a breach of trust.
  • __MatrixMan__ 4mo ago
    Do you know any librarians? Public libraries have always been a bit punk rock.
    • TheRoque 4mo ago
      In your country maybe.. In mine it's super boring and intellectual
      • derwiki 4mo ago
        The punk rock is? I would be interested in checking that out! (/s)
    • jazz9k 4mo ago
      Punk rock has always been right wing. Libraries are about as far from this as they can get.
      • krapp 4mo ago
        The anti-authoritarian, anti-government, anti-fascist, anti-capitalist music genre punk rock? Always right wing? I mean, Nazis have always been attracted to punk because they like the loud noise but are too stupid to understand lyrics, but they tend to get their shit kicked in by punks more often than not. I don't think that's the same thing.
        • jplusequalt 4mo ago
          I've seen a lot of confidently incorrect takes on this site, but "punk rock is right wing" may be the worst.
          • nephihaha 4mo ago
            Some punk rock is. The idea that it is always on the left was not true, even in the early days.
        • 4mo ago
  • dredmorbius 4mo ago
    "You know what the most dangerous thing in America is, right? N* with a library card." - Brother Mouzone / Ed Burns & David Simon, The Wire (2003) S2E10 "Storm Warnings" The scene is apparently on YT, though ... you'll have to sign in to confirm your age to view it best I can tell: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCioIwagYxM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCioIwagYxM> (If this link works, you'll get the full unbowdlerised quote. For those unfamiliar with the series, the speaker is Black.)
• sublinear 4mo ago
  I'm not sure "social media" is the best example. You've never had complete freedom of speech on there. It's been true for decades in the USA that if they want to arrest you, they will. The age verification doesn't make this situation better, but at this point it's almost just a formality.
  • ggm 4mo ago
    Freedom of speech is contextually misunderstood. It's about political speech and the commons. Social Media is overwhelmingly private space, subject to contract terms and conditions. It may be a de-facto commons to some people but I do not believe this axiomatically, or legally makes it so, for the purposes of law and constitution. Law and constitutional bounds on speech online hit the international nature of the media very quickly. Extra-territorial issue are huge here. What is the limit of the boundary on a given nations constitution and law? How much does the economy of the user, the hosting company, the owning company, the receiving parties matter? Social Media has advertising and publishers. It has people who can effect editorial control over what is seen and by who and to who it is "said" -And that imposes obligations on them, and on people lodging content. Differentially depending on their economy, the reach of law, registration of legally incorporated entities. All of this is being implemented somewhat haphazardly internationally, enforced differently, subject to legal and financial and social pressures differently depending on the times and the context. If you want to ask questions about America, about Americans, using American companies, speaking to Americans, believe me you don't neccessarily have a simpler task here. It may well be clearer to some of you, but to me, its just as fraught. It's just not clear to me "free speech" is the bastion rule which applies here. The EFF may think so, I don't think they have actually demonstrated it all the way to the end.
• lovich 4mo ago
  My privacy is already decimated. For 2 decades we’ve already known about the NSA slurping up everything[1] on top of the Snowden leaks. Then you have the mega corps like Facebook who can figure out every detail about you even from merely _not_ using their system because of the hole you leave in your social network that does use them. The only privacy left is from anonymous troll farms claiming to be an American while talking about how the Texas oblast is valuable for its warm water ports. I am fine for privacy on consumption of content, but you should be forced to identify yourself for posting so the common man at least has a chance to evaluate your statements instead of being misled, all while, as stated above, our governments and corporations don’t have that limitation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
  • pclowes 4mo ago
    I disagree because the people who have the most important things to say have the most to lose by saying it. Also anonymity can actually improve social media polarization (see Chris Bail’s research)
    • lovich 4mo ago
      Can you link said research? I have never seen anything but division pushed by anonymity. Also again, the corporations and governments(for certain levels of government like the members of the Five Eyes) can pierce this veil of anonymity, the people who have a lot to lose already are risking it by speaking. Edit: this also isn’t a newly diagnosed phenomena, I remember seeing this satirical description of the behavior as a kid back when Web 2.0 and social media was starting to change the internet[1] [1] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboards-and-other-anomalies https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa...
  • derf_ 4mo ago
    > ...you should be forced to identify yourself for posting... The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the right to anonymous speech is inherent in the first amendment [1] [2]. See also The Federalist Papers or Common Sense, without which the US might not exist at all. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/362/60 https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/362/60 [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-986.ZO.html https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-986.ZO.html
• trumpdong 4mo ago
  Age verification is identity verification... except when it's in California or Illinois?
• miiiiiike 4mo ago
  I’m glad this is finally becoming the cause célèbre du jour. This feels like THE FIGHT or at least one of the TOP 3 THE FIGHTS and it hasn’t had even a fraction of the public’s attention until now.
  • andy99 4mo ago
    Unfortunately I don’t think it has the public’s attention, it’s still very niche. Nowhere near enough to change anything yet.
    • miiiiiike 4mo ago
      At least it's a start.
  • krapp 4mo ago
    >I’m glad this is finally becoming the cause célèbre du jour. It really isn't, though. Don't mistake the internet for reality. The majority of people in the US and Europe support laws like these, and most of the rest don't care. Even on Hacker News the consensus is mostly in favor of anything from age restriction to making all social media illegal.
    • miiiiiike 4mo ago
      > Even on Hacker News the consensus is mostly in favor of anything from age restriction to making all social media illegal. That doesn't sound right. Put up a poll. I'd put money on 90%+ choosing some flavor privacy/anonymity on the internet.
      • ricree 4mo ago
        The main issue is that they are very careful not to frame it like that. In broader contexts, it's always framed as something like "do you favor limiting children's access to social media" without a word on what it would cost to actually institute such a ban.
• sscaryterry 4mo ago
  This just legitimises the existing practices. They already know who you are.
  • customguy 4mo ago
    "just"?
  • wartywhoa23 4mo ago
    Hilarious. So if they know, then why all the fuss and the the need to enforce ID on the Internet? Just for the heck's sake? Ah, that's for legitimization. In other words, "by producing your digital ID, you herein fully acknowledge the fact that you're a slave to the system in which all we knew about you illegaly, is now known legally"?
    • sscaryterry 4mo ago
      It was tongue-in-cheek, a bit of satire :)
      • wartywhoa23 4mo ago
        Sorry then, I failed to parse it :)
• andrewlin247 4mo ago
  privacy online is already largely gone
• j2kun 4mo ago
  There are at least some technological solutions here, such as anonymous credentials. [1] Modern versions of this technique allow one to associate metadata (like a proof of age exceeding a threshold) in such a way that the verifier can't even correlate repeated requests across users. Governments that are serious about age verification and individual privacy (which, doubtful they truly are) should agree on a protocol and set up certificate issuers that are associated with a digital ID. Then age verification will not be an invasive procedure or risk data leaks or insider threats. [1]: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2026/03/02/anonymous-credentials-an-illustrated-primer/ https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2026/03/02/anonymou...
  • gruez 4mo ago
    >Modern versions of this technique allow one to associate metadata (like a proof of age exceeding a threshold) in such a way that the verifier can't even correlate repeated requests across users. If it's unlinkable, what's preventing someone from setting up a site that hands out anonymous tokens for anyone to use?
    • discodachshund 4mo ago
      Using cryptographic signatures from approved signers, like a government
      • gruez 4mo ago
        No, I'm meant me, using my 18+ ID to generate a bunch of tokens that can't be linked back to me, and then giving it to random < 18 year olds for the lulz.
        • quotemstr 4mo ago
          There are multiple approaches. One, which the Europeans use, hardware-locks the token. Each age attestation is unlinkable, but the cryptographic credentials you need to make the attestation aren't portable. Of course, this model requires a big statist apparatus that does implementation certification, but it does achieve the narrow goal of unlinkable, privacy-preserving age attestation that doesn't instantly decay to mass copying. Other approaches are possible. I'm particularly keen on ones that treat attestations as anonymous digital currency and use cryptographic penalties like slashing to discourage copying post-hoc instead of relying on EU-style implementation certification. There's a huge literature on the subject I don't want to reproduce here. The point is that yes, we do have the technology to do attestation without sacrificing privacy, which makes all the calls for non-privacy-preserving attestation awfully curious.
• kulahan 4mo ago
  I can’t think of a better solution to the issue of children being so aggressively harmed by the internet. That doesn’t remove any of the problems associated with this.
  • 999900000999 4mo ago
    Parents taking responsibility for their kids. I grew up in a neighborhood full of drug dealers. Street sellers, not the classy Walter White kind. Ironically being on a computer all day kept me out of trouble. But with these laws in place I guess you might as well start doing stupid ish in real life.
    • kelseyfrog 4mo ago
      So what happens when parents don't? Too bad?
      • iamnothere 4mo ago
        What happens when parents don’t lock the liquor cabinet? When they smoke in front of their kids? When they leave porn laying on the table? Too bad!
        • kelseyfrog 4mo ago
          How is it more like leaving a liquor cabinet open than not buckling them up with seatbelts? I'm glad we're discussing parental liability. It seems no one else is advocating for "social media access is criminal neglect," so I appreciate the novelty.
          • iamnothere 4mo ago
            I would love to have this be the argument. Parents would typically agree that giving your kids heroin, for instance, should result in prison time. Yet I doubt they would argue the same for social media! Perhaps there should be discussions about what neglect looks like with regards to internet access and whether or not we need societal boundaries around this, enforced via punishing parents, rather than punishing everyone.
• dools 4mo ago
  How is it any different from being required to identify yourself to get a phone or electricity account? Identifying yourself on the internet is long overdue.
  • stackghost 4mo ago
    You need to identify yourself to the phone and electricity utilities so they know where to send your monthly bill. My ISP knows my name because I pay them for connectivity. I am okay with this. If I misbehave here, dang can just ban me. There's no reason HN needs to know my real name. The only reason to mandate blanket age and identity verification is to control online speech.
  • stevenjgarner 4mo ago
    [dead]
  • HoldOnAMinute 4mo ago
    Thought experiment: How do you get a phone or electricity in the most impoverished, backwards parts of the USA?
  • StanislavPetrov 4mo ago
    You aren't required to identify yourself to get a phone. You can get a prepaid phone with no ID. You are required to identify yourself for an electricity account because it is essentially extending you credit. You use the electricity first, and then they bill you for it later. They also only identify the person who is receiving the bill. You could have a house with a dozen people in it but the electric company only knows the name of the person responsible for the bill. You are free to identify yourself on the internet right now. People who are intelligent and/or believe in freedom and free speech are opposed to this authoritarian power grab.
    • dools 4mo ago
      > You aren't required to identify yourself to get a phone. You can get a prepaid phone with no ID. Not in Australia
• madrox 4mo ago
  I'm pretty sure this is a "pick your poison" problem. We as a society are damned no matter what we do or do not do. For my part, we need to do something, because things are not fine the way they are, including the half ass Australian solution. We can't keep putting the onus on private enterprise to address social issues. I may sound crazy for saying so, but I think the answer is more government run infrastructure for enabling identity-based operations, like payments and authentication, with rules about standards, open source, contractor selection, and audit that make operation transparent. It can work if technical operations are legislated instead of "left for the engineers to figure out." Then at least the evolution of systems can become real political issues that map to election cycles. My stance is probably a polarizing one, but this is precisely why we need to be able to debate the minutae of these systems through our political discourse instead of just "will we; won't we" legislation. This should be debated in democratic process.
  • bigbuppo 4mo ago
    And yet as the article mentioned, the "problem" is a lie... an excuse to justify the surveillance state.
    • madrox 4mo ago
      I think the lie is to look at the problems we have that the internet has enabled and say "things are ok as they are don't try to do anything to solve it."
      • bigbuppo 4mo ago
        If the problem is "social media bad for kids" then any parent that allows their children to access social media is as guilty of abuse or neglect as a parent that lets them play in traffic. Throw the parents in prison and put the kids in foster care. Problem solved.
        • madrox 4mo ago
          If you think any attempt at a solve goes immediately to 11, sure, but I hope you believe in nuance or else we’re all lost.
• HoldOnAMinute 4mo ago
  Assuming no revolutionary changes are coming to the USA, I am planning to opt out of the digital world when I retire. Physical media only. No subscriptions. Spend lots of time in the library. Find like-minded people and meet in person. Will only keep the bare minimum for survival, like banking.
  • echohack5 4mo ago
    Which is precisely why powers will try to make all these illegal
    • Jtarii 4mo ago
      I don't think they are going to make libraries illegal mate.
      • pluralmonad 4mo ago
        But what about entering one anonymously?
        • u8080 4mo ago
          You could download few terabytes from torrent site which will contain almost all books published prior to current date and use it offline btw.
          • Hendrikto 4mo ago
            No, you won’t be able to do that, because going online, or even logging into your PC will require ID verification.
            • u8080 4mo ago
              But why wait? Do it right now and just store somewhere
            • 4mo ago
• clickety_clack 4mo ago
  This was in part caused by the general public’s comfort with federated identity for OAuth. If everyone already has one anyway (the thinking may go), why not mandate it?
• g023 4mo ago
  Anything to close Pandora's box. "They" liked the eras they could control the communications, and therefore the narrative. Boomers on their last legs, question is, will the future undo the unjustness that was forced upon them? Restore the rungs of the ladders that were removed, so they could have a chance too? Or are they going to stay in the fear narrative, and make this tragedy worse?
• motohagiography 4mo ago
  The discussion is not about whether it's a good or bad idea, but whether we will yield the power to these people to ratchet in further oppressive laws onto formerly free countries. Tech companies should ignore it and just publicly name whoever attempts to prosecute them and see how the population responds. I think people today are orders of magnitude more informed about their privacy and the consequences of digital ID laws. A few countries are on the edge of revolt at the moment anyway, and this would be a good way to get young people into the streets. 20 years ago, people would have had no defense against it or understanding of what was being imposed on them. Today, normal people use Signal and encrypted messengers, faraday bags, and leave their phones at home. Where we were nerdy security guys back then, non-technologist women and girls use spy tradecraft level electronic opsec for their own safety and security from middle school. People are much more sophisticated about their privacy now. They're ready to take this on. The laws coming into force are on people who are not in favour of them, and I'm so optimistic that I will not interrupt the enemies of privacy and human dignity while they are making a mistake.
  • deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  • boppo1 4mo ago
    >Tech companies should ignore it and just publicly name whoever attempts to prosecute them The most powerful tech companies are in favor of this.
• AJRF 4mo ago
  The path ahead in the next few years (at least for the UK) 1. Age gating + VPN ban under the guise of protecting children from social media 2. Few years pass, Identity Passport gets ushered in under guise of convenience of not having to repeat those pesky age verification checks. 3. Utilities start to require ID Passport. Including signing up with an ISP. 4. Renting starts to require ID Passport. 5. Work requires ID Passport. 6. Well done, you built the torment nexus!
  • ajb 4mo ago
    Renting and work already require ID in the UK. Every landlord and employer is supposed to take a copy of original documents proving the right to rent/work in the UK. Technically you can do that without handing the docs to the government, but there's less potential liability to do so via the Home Office website.
    • AJRF 4mo ago
      You miss the point - they are stitching it all together in a way that deanonymize you to your ISP under the guise of save the kids and then convenience
      • akie 4mo ago
        This is a very libertarian and ultimately low-trust forum where most people seem to think the government is out to get you, but I have to say: what's so great about having complete online anonymity anyway? I mean, seriously. Real life is not anonymous and consequence free either, why should online life be? It's not as if there are no downsides. There are, and some of them are so severe that they are impacting the whole of society. People can impersonate to be 500 or 5000 or 500000 people from another country and all echo some detrimental or even treasonous sentiment, critically influencing and steering voters, which changes politics and election outcomes and thereby the trajectories of whole countries. I cannot understate how serious that is. If we can make sure that every real person can only have 1 social media account per platform, and if we can check that someone is an adult, and if (and only if) we can do that in a privacy preserving manner... then honestly, I don't see why I would be against that. I'm ok with being held accountable for what I do online. I want to pay that price to prevent the severe outside interference we've seen in elections and in our politics. You and many others might not be, but it seems like you've lost the argument.
• tqi 4mo ago
  > You’re not happy about it, but you hand over a photo of your passport and hope it doesn’t come back to haunt you. I think for this argument to carry weight with voters, privacy advocates need to be much more specific about what "coming back to haunt you" looks like. They do a little bit of it later on[1], but I think most people do a rough cost benefit in their head and decide that the small benefit outweighs the small risk (to them). [1] "And that creates a lot of risks for data breaches, overly broad data collection and retention, censorial legal demands for collected data, corporate and governmental malfeasance, pressure to self-censor, and perhaps blatant First Amendment violations. Every new layer and every new mandate brings more potential for risk. As we’ve unfortunately seen many times over the years, people including high-level government officials will maliciously seek to root out the identities of their critics, so the more layers of anonymity we can preserve in online speech, the better."
  • kklisura 4mo ago
    > privacy advocates need to be much more specific I'm starting to think we need to lean on conspiracy theories in order to get broader population on train with this - and I'm saying this in utmost regret. That's a borrowing game from a right wing/extremist playbook. Start with this: requiring IDs online is a first step in micro-chipping the population. ...or how about this: marxists/atifa/nazis/zionists/islamist/whoever-group-people-think-is-in-power want to erode your privacy online so it can be used against you. Some nefarious group what to know your every move! ...or how about this: remember Epstein files!? Well the pedos now want to id your children online! I simply saying truth/evidence/rational based approach to this will not get people attention. People just don't care.
    • malwrar 4mo ago
      Perhaps “censorship” & manufacturing consent? I think both political extremes have their own angles: liberals might be concerned that conservative censors will censor kids from learning about LGBT people and minorities, conservatives will be concerned that liberals will force too much LGBT and minority content onto kids. Or whatever issue, they want to control what your kids read! This will almost certainly be used to censor adults too, the only reason we aren’t doing that is because it hasn’t been possible to consistently identify people before. Considering who is pushing for this, they’re absolutely going to tie this into advertising, and if they know who you are so do all of the spooky upper echelons who could implement a true censorship regime. “The only way they can do this is by controlling what you read, shouldn’t that be the parent’s choice?”
• zaptheimpaler 4mo ago
  This seems more like a technical problem that we could actually solve well if we wanted to and had competent people advising the governments. You go to DMV and they generate a keypair and an entry in a DB. App looks up your age with your public key + signed private key authorization from you. Apps can ask for specific checks like is_over_21, is_citizen or whatever without any more data. Something like that, details are probably off ;) The whole infrastructure could be open source. Age verification doesn't need to equal identity verification by a 3rd party company that will leak your IDs.
  • pornel 4mo ago
    This still criminalizes sharing "adult" information with people who are not on the government's approved list (the things states do to crush dissent are not safe for children.)
  • dylan604 4mo ago
    why would any site on the internet need to give a damn about is_citizen? That's just gross to me at the mere suggestion. If it's a government service site, then they already know that information. If you're trying to use something like social media, then it couldn't possibly matter less.
    • intrasight 4mo ago
      To use frontier AI
  • CSSer 4mo ago
    They want it to equal identity verification! When virtually every top tech executive who wants a favor is at the inauguration and you have companies doing 180 degrees on support for something they previously furiously opposed, someone is getting something they wanted. It seems naive to think otherwise. Furthermore, the current administration in the U.S. fired or ignored the competent people to which you’re referring, and those people oppose a centralized repository of various metadata because it creates a central point of failure, otherwise known as a target, that is generally a bad idea for both our nation and our citizens. Of course there are agencies in the federal government that possess this information already, but they possess it for their purposes only. This is good because it means that it’s both more difficult to abuse internally in addition to being more cumbersome to collect externally.
• lokar 4mo ago
  Is a 10% reduction that bad?
• InvertedRhodium 4mo ago
  No, it won’t. The internet is just getting smaller from my perspective because there’s no way I’m handing over my identification and allowing every connection made to a server to be tracked back to me. It’s simply not on the cards, and I live a frugal enough life in a high paying industry that I can retire in a few years. If I was willing to bank on inheritance then I could retire now. I feel for the people that are forced to engage though. But too many of them simply don’t care about privacy, which is why we’re here.
• mossTechnician 4mo ago
  I appreciate the wealth of technical solutions that don't violate privacy, but isn't this overlooking an important point: that children don't need to be connected to the Internet at all times from such an early age? Many internet and cell phone providers seem to take it for granted that children must be online, which is already a net loss for their privacy as they mature.
  • jszymborski 4mo ago
    I mean its only a hope and a skip away from having to validate ones age to turn on the router.
  • hasteg 4mo ago
    I agree, I think kids should have limited access to the internet. I pretty much did and it worked out for me but I have seen so many reports about it causing harm in schools and personal life. (Specifically I think LLMs should not be used in education also, but different point) However, I think the main problem people have with this "think of the children" narrative is that it will force EVERYONE to give up their credentials to access the internet, not just kids. And the general consensus is that we as adults do not want to and should not have to prove our identity to access the internet.
    • mossTechnician 4mo ago
      I am wholeheartedly against identity verification, especially when it comes to giving up privacy. And I hope these "think of the children" arguments can be pushed back at from multiple angles. If the danger is real, then by the time a child is online, 4 out of 5 in them in Australia can apparently access social media anyway. So even if everyone's privacy was somehow an acceptable price to pay, these requirements do nothing.
      • hasteg 4mo ago
        Lol yeah exactly, if kids want to go on social media they will 100% find a way around it.... putting in these identity requirements will literally do nothing except require us as adults to give over more information. I'm sure everything will pass through congress fine though because "someone think of the children!!!!".
• TurdF3rguson 4mo ago
  Maybe it will kill social media? And maybe that's a good thing?
  • nephihaha 4mo ago
    If it was just social media and pornography, I wouldn't be too bothered but it's not.
• deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
• flenserboy 4mo ago
  There will be your internet-connected computer which will be assumed to be compromised, & which little, if anything of use will be kept on, & then there will be the airgapped system you do work on, which will probably be the last trusted version of a Linux distro you have multiple copies stashed away of. It will be a very old-fashioned experience, & moving/sharing data will become a dicey business.
  • derwiki 4mo ago
    Renaissance of LAN parties and SneakerNets?
  • monssooon 4mo ago
    Yes I fear this is true. It does not sound like progress ;(
  • wartywhoa23 4mo ago
    An airgapped system to be used just outside of the FOV of the government thin client's camera, with a hair glued to the power button to detect covert physical intrusions in the owner's absence. In which book did I encounter a similar setup? Let me recall..
• 4d4m 4mo ago
  Wait till someone liberates all this poorly protected data
• greatgib 4mo ago
  What scary me a lot, is the amount of people here or in real life that are not concerned about that, and that are like "it is to protect the children, so whatever it is, it worth it. And what else we can do?". And often it goes on with things like "anyway, social media are bad, they ruin people even adult, so good thing". Literally they all look like repeating a carefully crafted propaganda without that much more deep thinking. Basically, to mean it is brain rot. The problem is that it might concern a big part of the population and that is why we have such laws. To me, it is exactly what was described in G. Orwell "Animal farm" book. Pigs are now in control and big part of the crowd are "sheeps". Afterward, we always have hard time to understand how people could have let Nazi, Stasi, or Stalin come in power and do such awful things. But it never came in one day, and with the "i don't care, they probably now better" attitude of the current western country populations, you understand easily how all of that could have happened in a first place. In the recent, and most recent history, let's not forget what happened to Putin's Russia. Russia was opening and on a very good course for individual freedom and rights, then a ex-KGB officer took control of the power and little by little, year after year, suppressed freedom, privacy, and opposition to reach the point of today where the country is a total nightmare for human rights and liberty.
  • smallstepforman 4mo ago
    Mate, you have to revise your stance on Russia, more people are imprisoned annually in the UK for speaking than people in Russia in a decade. The UK banned RT while you can access any western propaganda outpost from within Russia. You’re on Hacker News, this website is known for attracting open minded free thinkers that do not fall under the influence of government financed propaganda. Learn and reassess your thoughts.
    • u8080 4mo ago
      >you can access any western propaganda outpost from within Russia You cannot without VPN. Anyway, this stupid polarizing "my cow is dead, but neighbor's two cows dead so I am happy" approach is just sad and enables more govt tyranny globally.
    • greatgib 4mo ago
• jauntywundrkind 4mo ago
  Singing: nobody wants this everybody hates you! Governments burning their capital hard to try to prove what tough guys they are against the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace.
• josefritzishere 4mo ago
  This would never be used to do evil of course...
• dmfdmf 4mo ago
  So everyone is on the same page on this issue. The First Amendment is the right to anonymous free speech. I doubt they teach it in the govt schools but the Federalist papers, which argued for the US Constitution, was published anonymously.
• paulsutter 4mo ago
  Interesting trivia: 90% of people don’t know the definition of decimate
• SidewaysView 4mo ago
  And we all know why lolberts are worried about kids and privacy online... Regret voting for Trump yet, chuds? You can't hide once we know who you are.
  • derwiki 4mo ago
    Have you ever heard the joke, how do you know if someone does CrossFit? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you In my experience Trump supporters aren’t exactly quiet about it.
    • SidewaysView 4mo ago
      Oh, not all of them. There were too many for that to be all of them. But this "secret ballot" nonsense won't protect them for much longer. Consequences.
• agentultra 4mo ago
  > * whether you’re protected from hackers or data breaches* Not a matter of if, but when, a breach happens.
• Kuyawa 4mo ago
  There is absolutely no privacy on the internet, Snowden told us 13 years ago but we all forgot. The government already knows everything about us, and I mean everything. It is extremely naive to think they don't or that you are safe behind a VPN.
  • Retric 4mo ago
    The government is largely incompetent about proactively sifting through vast amounts of information for relevant bits. That’s minimal defense, but it’s worth remembering the difference between what it in theory knows and what its actually paying attention to.
  • cucumber3732842 4mo ago
    There is a difference between the NSA knowing and being every petty burocrat being a trivial administrative subpoena away from everything.
  • xboxnolifes 4mo ago
    If they already know everything, why is there always a push toward adding friction to the process they already know everything about?
    • wartywhoa23 4mo ago
      Alreadists don't treat such questions as answer-worthy.
  • wartywhoa23 4mo ago
    If they already know, why all the fuss about ID enforcement?
• epsteingpt 4mo ago
  it is the fight, but the game is already over. what do people think the billions of billions of pattern matching used in ads will be used for? people think 'anonymous' credentialing will work here? they've captured scroll patterns, typing patterns, language patterns, all sorts of fingerprinting. the game unfortunately is basically already over.
  • sdfsdfsd3443f 4mo ago
    Unrelated, but you remind me of how absolutely useless ad technology is. The literal second I cross the border into Spain on holiday all I see is completely Spanish ads for stuff I never heard of and aren't even appropriate for my gender. This is for a ten year old YT account that basically knows everything there is to know about me. Even when I continue and look for English videos they keep shoving Spanish bullshit into my face. Even at home I still get ads for music festivals, shoes and toothpaste, none of which are withing a thousand yards of my personal preference. The times I saw an ad for mechanical keyboards, interesting APIs, IDEs etc I can count on literally one hand and that's being online for decades. iPhones' builtin autocomplete, Netflix and Spotify's recommendations all have robbed me of the illusion that smart people are actually working on this problem. If they are, it ain't working. The money printer works but not because of clever tech. YT's ad tech basically boils down to a geolocation of IP and I sometimes even question that.
• HackerThemAll 4mo ago
  My Google account is 21 years old already. Is that enough of a proof?
  • timbit42 4mo ago
    It might be if this was about age verification, but it isn't, so it isn't.
• uwagar 4mo ago
  if i run a pain vanilla website with no need for user accounts, do i have to age verify? will icann also ask for id when i register a new domain?
• hendersoon 4mo ago
  All I can say is I will never vote for any politician who votes for any form of this. Even if the bill fails to pass, they will never, ever get my vote.
• cableclasper 4mo ago
  I think it was Ethan Zuckerman who once said that Congress is ill-equipped and incompetent to solve this kind of problem and that we need to design systems that guarantee outcomes and cites Signal as an example. We need to have that mindset now: a clarion call to software engineers.
• kevinten10 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• ares623 4mo ago
  The internet will just stop being the "cool place". Young people will need to find some other avenue or medium to congregate away from their nannies' watchful eyes. That has been the one constant across the multiple technological revolutions we've had in the last few decades, younger generations looking for a place to call their own. Meta, etc. obviously know this, hence the "metaverse" and AI slop. But what they refuse to believe is that it can't be manufactured and forced top-down, it needs to be bottom-up.
• dackdel 4mo ago
  try out nostr instead of just complaining and whining
• luciana1u 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• chr15m 4mo ago
  > you’re criticizing a powerful politician, or talking about your experiences with abuse or addiction, or discussing embarrassing medical issues you’re facing This is not the problem. Even if, like millions, you are not talking about these things online, these systems still place you in danger. Even if you are a perfect, clean, compliant citizen these privacy-destroying systems place you in danger. Fundamentally these systems expose you to coercion, extortion, blackmail, ID theft, etc. by criminals and immoral people who want money or power over you. There are countless examples of bad actors inside and outside these systems obtaining access to innocent people's private data and misusing it to their detriment. This is the strongest argument against these bad ideas. Arguments that paint innocent, privacy-seeking people as suspicious or immoral in any way, should not be used. It is rational and moral to seek privacy for your own safety and the safety of those you care for. Don't let them argue otherwise.
  • scotty79 4mo ago
    > these systems expose you to coercion, extortion, blackmail, ID theft, etc. by criminals and immoral people I'd prefer to have safety from that regardless of privacy. I think privacy is a stopgap semi-solution to those problems that might lessen the pressure to actually solve them in a reasonable manner.
    • iamnothere 4mo ago
      It is impossible to “solve” problems like this, only manage them intelligently. Human societies have certain failure modes that are constant across history, and it’s foolish to assume that you will ever fully eliminate them. This means that reducing potential methods of political repression (via privacy, for instance) is more critical than attempting to create an impossibly perfect, airtight system, at least if you care about individual liberties.
      • scotty79 4mo ago
        > Human societies have certain failure modes that are constant across history, and it’s foolish to assume that you will ever fully eliminate them. Technology shapes every bit of human culture. Nothing is constant. While I agree that solving anything 100% is rarely ever achieved, there should be, at some point, an ability to mostly solve things in multiple ways. Even some that don't utilize privacy.
• globalnode 4mo ago
  The internet is dieing just like mobile phones before that. Correction: mobiles were stillborn due to no open standards or O/S. Cant even buy a modern TV without privacy concerns -- lel.
• papersplz84 4mo ago
  If they wanted to verify your age or that you are a real person with ID/selfie it could always be done on device locally to respect privacy which of course they don't because its not about that I even googled just now and see is solutions for this like PrivateID
• __MatrixMan__ 4mo ago
  It's just the web we're losing. The internet is still free. As for the web, good riddance, let's build something new.
  • globular-toast 4mo ago
    The internet is not free. We've been running out of IP addresses for ages and most people don't have direct internet access these days so are completely dependent on man-in-the-middle servers. All it would take is a broad ban on VPN and end-to-end encryption. Governments have been wanting to ban strong encryption ever since the public got access to it in the 90s (see PGP/Zimmermann).
• chris_explicare 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• vanrohan 4mo ago
  [dead]
• monssooon 4mo ago
  Do you think that this will lead to a new version of a alternative "internet" where people try to avoid the government control? And is that even possible? Or will we all just comply?
  • debesyla 4mo ago
    Only if it can be turned into gray market business: additional layers of proxies and VPNs, and whatever new is invented. As simple "I care about privacy" need is not a reason to bother with setup for a regular person. So it could work only if it's as easy, as current internet. And for profit businesses provide it. As for another protocol all together: there are some experiments already, but again, why use those?
    • monssooon 4mo ago
      Yeah profits is a problem. I consider mesh-nets for home use... We already use walkies in the house...
  • vlian2088 4mo ago
    only for a short while longer. US, EU, China, and Russia are all on the same page about you-vill-ovn-nothing-und-you-vill-be-happy kind of future, and they will bully the rest of the world into compliance.
    • monssooon 4mo ago
      It is such a sick idea. But i cant really figurer out if they want to force this on us or they just anticipate that type of poverty will become normal for the new "middle class" and they want to make everyone accept it with some "crisis argumentation".
      • wartywhoa23 4mo ago
        > if they want to force this... or they want to make everyone accept it with some "crisis argumentation". False dichotomy, both parts are equivalent.
• fithisux 4mo ago
  [dead]
• zhusjsjskkais 4mo ago
  Privacy or accountability, pick one. Everyone holds your identity or pointers to it. They - pinky promise - won’t weaponize it until it becomes advantageous or ordered by the government. In the end someone has to be held accountable. Society does not work without accountability and never has. We were living in temporary illusory world made by nerds. Now the rest joins in.
• lifeisstillgood 4mo ago
  I hold an unpopular opinion here, but well regulated digital IDs might not be a benefit to us all. Almost all big tech giants are frankly paper tigers (can I survive without facebook, sure, without next day delivery, harder, without banking or secure ways to talk to my utility providers, waaay harder. Having a way to get rid of bots that sour our Online discussions, lovely. To reduce billion in bank fraud, sounds great. I feel as privacy advocates we need to be clear on the difference between secrecy (that’s gone unless you stay offline.) and privacy (your neighbour knows you are having sex in the afternoons but does not say anything.
• norome 4mo ago
  This could be good to make the lack of privacy online more explicit to users, and actually cause people to be more cautious online, which all the snowden revelations failed to do. If we start using the internet the same way we use government websites, log in, do the thing, log out. I feel we are still living in this bubble that treats the internet as some sort of utopian democratic institution. For certain people with strong mental gating it can be the case. But I'd say it's a massive projection from intelligent technologists on the rest of humanity. Most people really need some guardrails to avoid becoming hopelessly addicted to the worst material. I hope this creates pressure for new technologies and media that answer some of the problems of communication which the internet couldn't. I guess people will find new bubbles of anonymity like Signal/Whatsapp groups to get information and discuss. Hopefully which reward some degree of contribution and proper thinking. Revive the genuine social sphere rather than tuning into the corporate filtered simulacrum of a town square. The truth I've seen is that the current internet is pure poison to most minds, and anonymity is just one less bit of friction to mindlessness.
• itssoover1 4mo ago
  What privacy? With the enactment of the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001 it was game over. Were you not born then?
• hn_5063xaw 4mo ago
  [dead]
• jjgreen 4mo ago
  Sounds better in German: https://mises.org/mises-wire/papiere-bitte-papers-please https://mises.org/mises-wire/papiere-bitte-papers-please
• d--b 4mo ago
  Online privacy is already an illusion. I mean, your ISP knows your IP, the government can know your IP, Google knows your IP, Meta knows your IP, all the websites you log on know who you are and what you're IP is, and forward your data to 3rd parties, many of these connect the dots between the various websites you visit. If there is one benefit to true ID verification on the internet, is that people won't feel as if they're browsing things anonymously while they're not.
• maybelsyrup 4mo ago
  320 comments and no one has mentioned Gaza
• ben_w 4mo ago
  "X will decimate your privacy" [please accept the following tracking cookies, including for 3rd party ad analytics from a company whose CEO has called its users "dumb fucks" for trusting him with their data] Don't get me wrong, just because it's a hypocritical headline doesn't mean it's incorrect. Just still rankles to see it, is all.
• A_Duck 4mo ago
  There is a real problem here to be solved. Whenever I speak to someone who's planning to vote Reform (UK hard-right party) their views are primarily shaped by seeing AI slop videos on TikTok/Instagram, showing immigrants doing crimes etc etc Reform will probably win the next election because of this, unless we find a way to make platforms manage the situation. Interesting example: https://www.londoncentric.media/p/london-tiktok-fake-news-creator-hate-immigrants https://www.londoncentric.media/p/london-tiktok-fake-news-cr...
  • Tangurena2 4mo ago
    The simplest cure, even though it is US law but would also benefit the UK, would be to repeal Section 230 safe-harbors when the platform uses an algorithm to curate content. If they are covered by the "safe harbor" then they are not responsible for the content. Otherwise, they'd be liable for libel/defamation/conspiracy stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230 A "safe harbor" is a section of the law where they basically say "as long as you do X, those other laws won't apply". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_harbor_(law)# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_harbor_(law)#
• braza 4mo ago
  That's one of the reasons why I opted for multiple citizenships. I was fortunate to have the option to rehash parts of my name, and I am using my birthplace country's passport as a throwaway for everything, and my other citizenships docs only the governments and legal system know about. Plus, like others mentioned, I am preparing my future self to be in a total offline/unplugged world and be a semi-ghost digitally, and even now in 2026 I found a bunch opportunities already doing it in a semi-agorist way (e.g. second hand, cash on hand, offline remote physical work, hunting/fishing, farming/a little farm, etc).
• pif 4mo ago
  I am always surprised that people get shocked when online privacy is put at risk, as if it was a fundamental human right. REMOTE PRIVACY NEVER EXISTED BEFORE A FEW DECADES AGO! And what happened in these decades are enough for the societies to wonder whether this new possibility in human connections (i.e. remote privacy) is globally a good thing. Just stomping your feet because the new toy may be declared illegal is not helping anyone. Governments are expressing serious doubts: this discussion needs serious interventions, not temper tantrums.
  • harvey9 4mo ago
    How do you define remote privacy? Beyond a few decades ago I could use a phone booth and pay in coins.
    • pif 4mo ago
      And any phone could be tapped with a signature by a judge.
      • Hendrikto 4mo ago
        Which is a MAJORLY different system than general surveillance of the whole populace.
      • yabones 4mo ago
        This issue here isn't surveillance as per a signed warrant. I don't think anybody's really arguing against that. The problem is mass data collection without suspicion, probable cause, or warrants whatsoever. That's a brand new thing, other than the places in the world unfortunate enough to have roving gangs of police going door to door and searching homes without warrants. This facilitates it on a scale that's never really been seen before in human history.
        • pif 4mo ago
          > This issue here isn't surveillance as per a signed warrant. I don't think anybody's really arguing against that. Everybody who talks about cryptography is arguing about that! With the digital technology we have, the options are very simple: either every man in the middle can read (even the villain), or nobody can (not even the justice departments). There's no middle ground.
• felooboolooomba 4mo ago
  Meta has spent $2B lobbying for Age Verification Tech: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47410870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47410870
• antonvs 4mo ago
  It won’t decimate my privacy, it’ll just digitally marginalize me. I don’t have any ID that any of these sites will accept.
• shevy-java 4mo ago
  I am glad that more and more people wake up to the highly criminal age sniffing movement. That age sniffing movement, sometimes called age verification to insinuate a more harmless movemet, wants to destroy the anonymous internet as we knew it; see their fight against VPNs. This is not accidental - this is very integral to this evil movement. The only logical consequence and response to that is to completely abolish those lobbyists that work against freedom.
• estetlinus 4mo ago
  Imagine there’s a hit list circulating on Signal with your name on it, and an anonymous user is offering $5,000 for your head. Or imagine your daughter is getting blackmailed by some anonymous pedophile freak over Snapchat. Nah, I need stronger arguments for why anonymity on the web is a human right.
• tokai 4mo ago
  Is the general public really so politically illiterate that you have to call autocracy for papers, please era? We are screwed.
• utopiah 4mo ago
  Might want to check https://github.com/helloyanis/agechecker.net-bypass/ https://github.com/helloyanis/agechecker.net-bypass/ and help.
• NinjaTrance 4mo ago
  First observation: if you use social media, your privacy is already decimated. So the article is not really defending privacy; it's simply defending social media. (Under-16s are an important demographic they don't want to lose). That said, the article is forced to concede: > Australia does order that personal information collected for age verification “must be destroyed once all purposes have been met.” Let's repeat: Social media MUST DESTROY all personal information collected for age verification. But let's be honest: if you really value your privacy, you shouldn't be using social media.
• GL26 4mo ago
  Feels like identity control is not such a bad thing (prevents bots, identity thefts, cyberbullying, ect...). The questions is not "if it happens", its more a "who controls it?". If an NGO controls it, or a company that has "no political or national ownership", or something that is decentralized like BTC is, it's not a problem, but if it's a huge corp that only belongs to one single company which is backed and "piloted" by a government, that's when problems emerge.
• delusional 4mo ago
  My what now? What privacy do I have on the corporate internet? I'm already being observed. My data integrated in vast "AI" models that try to predict me. We have seen tons of examples of the current tech giants farming out content moderation, hiring empoverished workers in the 3rd world to view all my videos and listen to all my conversations. What privacy are we protecting here?
• dzink 4mo ago
  The goal should be to not repeat Star Wars - new technology that gives power and advantages is always adopted by companies first, then governments, and then it’s used to subjugate people. In Star Wars you have the trade federation abusing little planets. Little planet leaders go to government for help and vote a more “strong” approach to government that will “fight for the little guy”. An authoritarian leader steps in and uses the new technology to subjugate galaxies. In Foundation that leader can also clone himself, leading to 1000 years of fascism. Today prize camels and horses are being cloned in the middle east. Fiction is a guidebook sometimes.
  • dredmorbius 4mo ago
    It's not that the Internet is repeating Star Wars. It's that Star Wars was a fictitious allegory of what power and capabilities provide, and should serve as a warning of what might happen ... or is happening. (I'd hesitate to call The Force a technology per se, though there are other technologies portrayed in the series ... little of which I've watched since Ep. 4-6.) Technology is a force multiplier, genenerally, and new technologies, after an initial period of disruption, tend to either be adopted by existing power elites, or form new power elites, often a combination of both. I've only come to realise this myself relatively late in the game. It's instructive to revisit much of the early writing of the Internet. Much of that was strongly hagiographic and deludedly optimistic, but there were exceptions. Andrew J. Shapiro's The Control Revolution (1999) got far more right than wrong. <https://www.worldcat.org/title/41076267 https://www.worldcat.org/title/41076267> <https://archive.org/details/controlrevolutio0000shap https://archive.org/details/controlrevolutio0000shap> <http://libgen.vg/book/index.php?md5=9CCE57E117DD4213F395FE0722352BF7 http://libgen.vg/book/index.php?md5=9CCE57E117DD4213F395FE07...>
• deaton 4mo ago
  I think thats kinda the point. Tracking everything everyone does in an identifiable manner is extremely lucrative.
• Funes- 4mo ago
  We'll move permanently to the dark web, then. Ideally, we should maintain resilient wireless community networks that can withstand government abuse, as well.
  • monssooon 4mo ago
    Do you think there could be legislation that prohibits use of tor and mesh?
    • Funes- 4mo ago
      Absolutely. If they end up making access to the deep and dark web impossible through commercial Internet infrastructure, the next logical step is cracking down on alternative Internet infrastructure. Overlay networks like I2P, Tor or Hyphanet can be a temporary safe haven, but ultimately a government can make it extremely hard for uncontrolled platforms to stay up. I guess we'll have to fight for it if push comes to shove, and it's looking very bleak.
      • monssooon 4mo ago
        I agree. Even creating a mesh node could become an illegal act
• breakpointalpha 4mo ago
  The day reddit asks me to upload an ID to shitpost about the NBA is the day I stop using reddit.
  • monssooon 4mo ago
    Haha stop already friend
  • izacus 4mo ago
    You don't need to sell this THAT hard.
• NoImmatureAdHom 4mo ago
  You're on HN. You likely have lots of extra money. Donate to FIRE: https://www.fire.org/donate https://www.fire.org/donate Donate to the EFF: https://supporters.eff.org/donate https://supporters.eff.org/donate Any others?
  • dredmorbius 4mo ago
    ACLU: <https://www.aclu.org/ https://www.aclu.org/> EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center): https://www.epic.org/ https://www.epic.org/ Further lists: Data privacy advocates and associations <https://privacybee.com/data-privacy-advocates-and-associations/ https://privacybee.com/data-privacy-advocates-and-associatio...> Privacy Focused Organizations You Should Know About <https://identityreview.com/18-privacy-organizations-you-should-know/ https://identityreview.com/18-privacy-organizations-you-shou...> Privacy & Information Law Research Guide <https://guides.ll.georgetown.edu/c.php?g=468955&p=3962183 https://guides.ll.georgetown.edu/c.php?g=468955&p=3962183> (oriented more at research but some overlap)
• nottorp 4mo ago
  Just a minor nitpick: "decimate" means killing one out of then. Try "devastate" maybe.
  • dredmorbius 4mo ago
    s/then/ten/
    • nottorp 4mo ago
      I blame the idiotic iOS spell checker. I swear it was better 5 years ago...
      • dredmorbius 4mo ago
        I manage far worse with no assistance whatsover ;-)
  • zuzululu 4mo ago
    doesnt' impact the author's original meaning.
• burke 4mo ago
  Far worse than "decimate", which implies that nine tenths of it survives.
  • dredmorbius 4mo ago
    "Annihilate" needs to come back into literary fashion, most especially where it's accurately descriptive.
• zftnb666 4mo ago
  Soon you'll need a passport to read a Wikipedia article
  • SidewaysView 4mo ago
    > Soon you'll need a passport to read a Wikipedia article Hopefully you'll need a passport to edit a Wikipedia article, since they can't be bothered doing anything about all the neckbeards writing them.
• ahmedehab_01 4mo ago
  The sad thing is that any actual bad actor will find a way to circumvent this, but it will just invade your privacy and lead to a worse Cambridge Analytica-style breach of privacy.
• jaycarter 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• throwawayffffas 4mo ago
  I love the complete lack of reflection of the top comment in the website. > All those policies are created with one single goal in mind - to catalogue and enumerate ALL human beings on the planet, not just kids. 1. Your government already has you catalogued, you have a birth certificate, you pay taxes don't you? 2. All these platforms are doing exactly that, do you think you are fooling anyone with that nickname? (come on lets face it you have at least one account with your real name).
  • wartywhoa23 4mo ago
    ... and by all means, we will always persuade the frogs that the temperature in the pot was already pleasantly warm. - from "The frog cooking scrolls of the grannies"
• everdrive 4mo ago
  Only if I keep using the internet. It's time to move back to books. I hope you have an MP3 (or FLAC, etc) collection. The internet is dying, and it's difficult to imagine in 20-40 years that it's much use except for functional stuff. Paying bills, buying products, accessing medical records, etc. It's not a place to be or spend time anymore.
• ike2792 4mo ago
  While obviously requiring real-world ID verification will reduce privacy, is there really any actual privacy left on today's internet? Every company from your ISP to Google to every vendor you shop at can read your browser fingerprint and IP address, which in most cases is enough to uniquely identify you. For serious privacy-concerned users there are ways around all of this but the vast majority of internet users don't really seem to care. What additional level of privacy reduction do the ID-based plans cause beyond what we already have today?
  • edot 4mo ago
    If everyone else jumps off a bridge, do you want to be forced to jump off a bridge?
  • fsflover 4mo ago
    The privacy tools that are working today will be much easier to block. Hence, any activists and journalists that the government dislikes will become even more vulnerable. We need to fight this and not give up.
  • ranyume 4mo ago
    > While obviously requiring real-world ID verification will reduce privacy, is there really any actual privacy left on today's internet? Privacy is not an on and off switch or an all or nothing. You have to defend the privacy you have and also fight to expand it as a human right.
  • originalcopy 4mo ago
    I agree. Also, it's not like the whole internet will be under ID check. One can still opt out and don't use the main stream social media? My hope is that ID check is targeting never ending feeds of crappy content. That said, I am very concerned about how things work privacy wise today (even without ID check).
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 4mo ago
  The question no one seems to be asking Does the www, i.e., its users not its profiteers, need "social media companies"
• klik99 4mo ago
  An administration that ran on anti-war, less regulation, free speech, and the news is war, AI models being regulated, and requiring identification for speech. Maybe the current administration are accelerationists who want to show how bad all these things are by doing them really badly? That seems to be the only valid read here (/s for those who need it).
• fattybob 4mo ago
  Reading the first paragraph and I’m thinking that in the UK that era is already here!
• Varelion 4mo ago
  I am torn. I have bore first-hand witness to the scale of the PsyOps war waged on the American people by institutions near and far. Artroturfing to sew division to one means of another. In all these operations, anonymity is what drives it. I was born and raised in the anonymous internet, and tasted its freedoms. I oppose censorship. But, at this point, I have come to wonder it it would be best to always have your real-life personality attached to all you do. At least to any action that feeds an algorithm or creates something someone else can see. It is the nature of the internet that you could never achieve absolute censorship -- and maybe anonymity should belong to the hackers and tinkers with the will and drive to hunt and craft for it. I do not like holding this opinion, because it feels as though it is on the similar boat as that of those who 'pull up the ladder after themselves'. Increasingly, I see it as pulling shut the trapdoors to hell.
• Bender 4mo ago
  The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy Others perhaps, not mine. I will not participate in the 3rd party madness. It will be local stores for me, private forums for the local community self contained within the ISP. At most I will add RTA headers to my private and semi-private sites that are already hard to reach by bots. Any process that involves 3rd parties or magic math is going to expose many people both adults and children to risk they did not consent to and that will harm them throughout the rest of their lives.
• notjunk 4mo ago
  Soft-core.
• segrio 4mo ago
  [dead]