5 ms·

In fairness, the evidence is that people already pretty firmly against things like chat control and the will to push it through tends to come from the political

by roenxi 4mo ago

In fairness, the evidence is that people already pretty firmly against things like chat control and the will to push it through tends to come from the political circles more than popular belief it is a good idea. I expect that if the measure itself went to a general vote, the majority would be against it once they have to deal with a specific proposal. It takes repeated pushes by the authoritarians looking for an opportunity to get things like speech controls or privacy violations through and the politicians mysteriously give up trying to roll it back no matter what the public pressure might be. That being said, any expectation of thoughtfulness at all makes politics frustrating. Even basic things like why people keep making small random changes when most of these problems and solutions haven't changed in more than 2 millennia. And there is a pretty easy consensus to come to about what works. The repeated failures of authoritarianism to get to a good place are so consistent it is wild that people keep trying it.

chii 4mo ago
Stupid things like brexit was put to a vote, but really important things such as age verification and mass surveillance are never put to any vote.
- godwinson__4-8 4mo ago
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE
- shevy-java 4mo ago
  But Brexit was a vote, by the people. Yes, the pro-leave campaign lied to no ends, but people still made a choice on their own and the majority for leave was quite slim. This is very different to age sniffing here. Age sniffing is not being queried via public votum - lobbyists push it through without any resistance. It's amazing how this works.
  - graemep 4mo ago
    The pro-remain campaign lied too and I would argue a great deal more. Take a look at the predictions of the immediate effect of Brexit vote (for 1017-18) on page 9 of the Treasury report: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a80772140f0b62305b8b510/hm_treasury_analysis_the_immediate_economic_impact_of_leaving_the_eu_web.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a80772140f0b... This whole argument is why we do not have more direct democracy. The people in power and people who benefit from the status quo do not want the hoi polloi taking the "wrong" decisions. We might end up nationalising things or taxing big business effectively or all sorts of terrible things. Better to just give people the illusion of choice by letting them choose between two "neo-liberal" parties.
    - graemep 4mo ago
      That should read for 2017-18
- teiferer 4mo ago
  In what way was Brexit a stupid thing? It was an extemely important decision, directly affecting everybody's life. If asking people about anything then isn't that what it should be? You might not like the outcome (I don't) but I consider the question of Brexit important.
  - epihelix 4mo ago
    Should we also have a referendum on reducing the tax rate to zero? It would also be an extremely important decision, directly affecting everybody's life. If asking people about anything, then isn't that what it should be? Not all referenda that might win a "yes" vote are sensible to propose.
    - teiferer 4mo ago
      If you ask me personally, then no, we don't need to have such a vote. But if the point is that country wide referendums should only be held for important questions but then exclude Brexit because "it's stupid" then that's an inconsistent argument. Surely the question whether the UK should leave the EU was a very important decision to make. That the vote went a certain way which you don't like does not make it less important of a decision. Unless the actual point is "referendums should only be held for questions that are important and will go the way I like". You can have that opinion but then please be honest about it instead of disguising it with supposedly neutral musings about democracy. (Hint: Democracy does not mean that only what you want will happen.)
      - chii 4mo ago
        for such a wide ranging effects, brexit's vote had only 2% margin of error, with 48% against. The people's stupidity is why "important" questions like that should not be put to a vote; they can't be expected to understand the entirety of the outcome and consequences. As the other comment has posted: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE
  - ben_w 4mo ago
    Analogy: Cancer surgery is an extremely important decision, directly affecting many people's lives. What happened with Brexit was a analogous a bunch of salesmen on TV saying "that mysterious ache you have, don't listen to doctors who say it's fine, call our surgical team today! It's cancer! We can fix this quickly and you'll be back to your old self within a week!" for two decades, then the country agreeing, going to surgery, and waking up to find they'd had half their liver removed, the post-surgical biopsy results said it was fine and not cancerous at all, it took 6 months to recover and they could never drink alcohol again. And the ache was still there. If it had been an honest "we know it will cost X, we are willing to spend this because otherwise what is the point of money", that would have been totally fair. Instead, problems that weren't caused by the EU were blamed on it for decades, while the benefits of membership were treated as the natural state of the world to the extent that talk of losing them was equated with "being punished".
beezlewax 4mo ago
I emailed my local TD minister in Ireland about the inherent dangers of chat control. They had some lacky respond with an email that framed the conversation in a way that made it look like I was interested in the illegal content and not privacy/control or nefarious future governments.
- monssooon 4mo ago
  This is what I fear the most. It is gas lighting and just manipulation. The idea of privacy will become associated with crime. Further down the line technical solutions that are private will become illegal and in general not being pro survailance will get you in trouble
  - ShinyLeftPad 4mo ago
    Do you acknowledge that for many people and practically e2ee and crime are connected? e2ee is a very useful tool for crime and combined with crypto useful tool for monetizing crime. Criminals used to speak in code, meet clandestine, use burner phones and websites were easy to shut down. Now they don't need to. The solution to privacy problem is not to shout while closing your ears but to make it clear that you see their side, how new tech create new problems, and help solve it in least privacy invasive ways. Otherwise you will always be seen as somebody who has shady agenda. It's just reality. Ordinary people do not care about e2ee. Gotta read the room. But chat control and age verification are different things.
    - teiferer 4mo ago
      > Ordinary people do not care about e2ee. Gotta read the room. It's a matter of phrasing things. Moxie had this illustrative take: If your chat is not e2ee, it'a a group chat. It's you, your mom, every secret service in the world and some ISP employees as well. If we could clarify to our social circles and broader society that every non-e2ee chat can be browsed by some overpaid freckled 20-something borded out of his mind at a FAANG or an ISP then the viewpoint could change.
friendzis 4mo ago
When you think about it, the idea of a representative democracy is rooted in the technical difficulties of implementing a direct democracy: both spread of information/discussion to the masses and organizing the votes. In this day and age, probably with a relatively tiny investment into public access points, we could very reasonably have a technically functional direct democracy. The legislative cycle is already authenticated so there's no need to solve "authenticated anonymous vote" problem, European countries already have functional eIDAS systems to back the authentication part and the legislative systems are already to some degree digitized. On one hand, the problem "what if someone sells their vote" is already present and unsolved, in the shape of lobbying. What's interesting, though, that we have built entire systems to shape public opinion and entrenched them into our daily lives, which are used by corporations and politicians alike. This begs a question: is there such a thing as unbiased public opinion without authenticated internet access? inb4: direct democracy does not mean parliamentary systems could be abolished altogether, central spaces for debate would still help solve discussion exchange problems
- lelandbatey 4mo ago
  Is there such a thing as "unbiased public opinion" at all though? The memetic effects of language and communication means propaganda and similar tools of rhetoric and leveraged communication will always work, with or without an internet. There's no "solution", only "good enoughs". Direct democracy is cool, but also impractical. I do not want to vote on every counties appropriations for road maintenance. So what's a level of direct democracy that's "good enough"? How do we make sure we're directly voting in things relevant to our lives? What if "relevant to our lives" is unrelated to our geographic location and is very interests based? If anyone can vote for anything, but most folks don't ever vote for most things, how do you prevent brigading of votes via coordination by groups who see that their group alone can swing what would be a small local vote whatever way they want by virtue of sheer numbers? How do you prevent trolls from going through every vote and just voting no on every "community center paper-and-ink budget" across the entire country? There are so many questions I have about direct democracy systems! Do you have more information?
  - 4mo ago
gigatexal 4mo ago
But it’s not about critical thinking or governing well it’s about getting re-elected. So the argument will go to “think of the children” which is a guise for more control and then pretty soon we are living in the dystopian future of 1984 or the UK where the film V for Vendetta took place. This same kind of thinking gets idiots like Trump elected because people don’t have any sense of the commons and become single issue voters (sic). “Oh just reduce my taxes on my carried interest… reduce my taxes… I’m a xenophobe I hate immigrants let’s not do anything systematic let’s just hard close the border or the world is flat America only exists we don’t need allies or trading partners (JD Vance) … and so on”
maccard 4mo ago
I’m not in favour of Chat Control; > the evidence is that people already pretty firmly against things like chat control and the will to push it through tends to come from the political circles more than popular belief it is a good idea. This is quite the statement. What evidence do you have that of this? Here in the UK, the equivalent bills are pretty widely supported across he board. > I expect that if the measure itself went to a general vote, the majority would be against it once they have to deal with a specific proposal This is likely true of pretty much anything, though. Imagine suggesting that people collectively fund a national road network by paying 20% of their income to the government (or whatever number your state/country/municipality chooses). All of a sudden it’s a terrible idea!
egorfine 4mo ago
> the evidence is that people already pretty firmly against things like chat control I'm not sure about that at all. All my normies friends have no problem immediately submitting their documents to any KYC service that requests it. And talking about chat control they happily parrot the propaganda points, which is something very normal given that they have no insight as we do. So unfortunately I believe that the laymen are all in favor of chat control.
- klad_majoor 4mo ago
  Jonathan Haidt sure ain’t no layman and is very much against online anonymity
lopis 4mo ago
> the evidence is I don't believe this. I believe us more tech oriented people live in a dangerous bubble that reassures us that obviously people are against it. But that's very likely not true.
Ouman 4mo ago
I agree that it is not always mass public demand for authoritarianism. Often it is more like institutional persistence plus vague moral framing
pc86 4mo ago
The problem is that "the authoritarians" (read: almost every politician at every level of government, but a drastically increasing percentage the higher you go) only need to get something passed once then it is there forever. Every law should have an automatic sunset period of 1-10 years that requires it to pass the entire legislative process again, or at least both full chambers + signing.
- intrasight 4mo ago
  That would indeed solve many problems. It would also focus legislative minds now and in the future. Not sure it would be beneficial for the judicial branch. Also beneficial perhaps would be to have it be necessary that the law spells out the technical implementation. Sort of like patents do.
- goalieca 4mo ago
  I remember the patriot act.
  - pc86 4mo ago
    In this very comment I started talking about the patriot act two or three times but kept deleting it because I didn't want to ramble. But yeah that's exactly what I was thinking of - for people who care about privacy and freedom it was really one of the worst pieces of legislation in modern US history, and permanently changed the country for the worse.
  - hvs 4mo ago
    The Patriot Act is perfect example of the adage, "Never let a crisis go to waste."
    - wartywhoa23 4mo ago
      Or rather "Always construct crises proportionate to the desired delta of the current Overton window's position".
      - 4mo ago
themaninthedark 4mo ago
I disagree, if anything the last 12 years or so have shown that there are groups on both sides of the political spectrum that are quite willing to engage and justify censorship. From "Muh freeze peach" to the actual government requested censorship during COVID everyone is rushing to get a new shiny stick they can use to beat their political opponents with.
akoboldfrying 4mo ago
> The repeated failures of authoritarianism to get to a good place are so consistent it is wild that people keep trying it. Lee Kuan Yew would like a word. The world is complicated. There may be more than one way to get to a good place, if we can even agree on what good looks like. Most people, even libertarians, think that some kind and degree of authoritarianism is beneficial in a government, we just disagree on the details.

by roenxi 4mo ago

chii 4mo ago

Stupid things like brexit was put to a vote, but really important things such as age verification and mass surveillance are never put to any vote.

godwinson__4-8 4mo ago
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE
shevy-java 4mo ago
But Brexit was a vote, by the people. Yes, the pro-leave campaign lied to no ends, but people still made a choice on their own and the majority for leave was quite slim. This is very different to age sniffing here. Age sniffing is not being queried via public votum - lobbyists push it through without any resistance. It's amazing how this works.
- graemep 4mo ago
  The pro-remain campaign lied too and I would argue a great deal more. Take a look at the predictions of the immediate effect of Brexit vote (for 1017-18) on page 9 of the Treasury report: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a80772140f0b62305b8b510/hm_treasury_analysis_the_immediate_economic_impact_of_leaving_the_eu_web.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a80772140f0b... This whole argument is why we do not have more direct democracy. The people in power and people who benefit from the status quo do not want the hoi polloi taking the "wrong" decisions. We might end up nationalising things or taxing big business effectively or all sorts of terrible things. Better to just give people the illusion of choice by letting them choose between two "neo-liberal" parties.
  - graemep 4mo ago
    That should read for 2017-18
teiferer 4mo ago
In what way was Brexit a stupid thing? It was an extemely important decision, directly affecting everybody's life. If asking people about anything then isn't that what it should be? You might not like the outcome (I don't) but I consider the question of Brexit important.
- epihelix 4mo ago
  Should we also have a referendum on reducing the tax rate to zero? It would also be an extremely important decision, directly affecting everybody's life. If asking people about anything, then isn't that what it should be? Not all referenda that might win a "yes" vote are sensible to propose.
  - teiferer 4mo ago
    If you ask me personally, then no, we don't need to have such a vote. But if the point is that country wide referendums should only be held for important questions but then exclude Brexit because "it's stupid" then that's an inconsistent argument. Surely the question whether the UK should leave the EU was a very important decision to make. That the vote went a certain way which you don't like does not make it less important of a decision. Unless the actual point is "referendums should only be held for questions that are important and will go the way I like". You can have that opinion but then please be honest about it instead of disguising it with supposedly neutral musings about democracy. (Hint: Democracy does not mean that only what you want will happen.)
    - chii 4mo ago
      for such a wide ranging effects, brexit's vote had only 2% margin of error, with 48% against. The people's stupidity is why "important" questions like that should not be put to a vote; they can't be expected to understand the entirety of the outcome and consequences. As the other comment has posted: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE
- ben_w 4mo ago
  Analogy: Cancer surgery is an extremely important decision, directly affecting many people's lives. What happened with Brexit was a analogous a bunch of salesmen on TV saying "that mysterious ache you have, don't listen to doctors who say it's fine, call our surgical team today! It's cancer! We can fix this quickly and you'll be back to your old self within a week!" for two decades, then the country agreeing, going to surgery, and waking up to find they'd had half their liver removed, the post-surgical biopsy results said it was fine and not cancerous at all, it took 6 months to recover and they could never drink alcohol again. And the ache was still there. If it had been an honest "we know it will cost X, we are willing to spend this because otherwise what is the point of money", that would have been totally fair. Instead, problems that weren't caused by the EU were blamed on it for decades, while the benefits of membership were treated as the natural state of the world to the extent that talk of losing them was equated with "being punished".

beezlewax 4mo ago

I emailed my local TD minister in Ireland about the inherent dangers of chat control. They had some lacky respond with an email that framed the conversation in a way that made it look like I was interested in the illegal content and not privacy/control or nefarious future governments.

monssooon 4mo ago
This is what I fear the most. It is gas lighting and just manipulation. The idea of privacy will become associated with crime. Further down the line technical solutions that are private will become illegal and in general not being pro survailance will get you in trouble
- ShinyLeftPad 4mo ago
  Do you acknowledge that for many people and practically e2ee and crime are connected? e2ee is a very useful tool for crime and combined with crypto useful tool for monetizing crime. Criminals used to speak in code, meet clandestine, use burner phones and websites were easy to shut down. Now they don't need to. The solution to privacy problem is not to shout while closing your ears but to make it clear that you see their side, how new tech create new problems, and help solve it in least privacy invasive ways. Otherwise you will always be seen as somebody who has shady agenda. It's just reality. Ordinary people do not care about e2ee. Gotta read the room. But chat control and age verification are different things.
  - teiferer 4mo ago
    > Ordinary people do not care about e2ee. Gotta read the room. It's a matter of phrasing things. Moxie had this illustrative take: If your chat is not e2ee, it'a a group chat. It's you, your mom, every secret service in the world and some ISP employees as well. If we could clarify to our social circles and broader society that every non-e2ee chat can be browsed by some overpaid freckled 20-something borded out of his mind at a FAANG or an ISP then the viewpoint could change.

friendzis 4mo ago

When you think about it, the idea of a representative democracy is rooted in the technical difficulties of implementing a direct democracy: both spread of information/discussion to the masses and organizing the votes. In this day and age, probably with a relatively tiny investment into public access points, we could very reasonably have a technically functional direct democracy. The legislative cycle is already authenticated so there's no need to solve "authenticated anonymous vote" problem, European countries already have functional eIDAS systems to back the authentication part and the legislative systems are already to some degree digitized. On one hand, the problem "what if someone sells their vote" is already present and unsolved, in the shape of lobbying. What's interesting, though, that we have built entire systems to shape public opinion and entrenched them into our daily lives, which are used by corporations and politicians alike. This begs a question: is there such a thing as unbiased public opinion without authenticated internet access? inb4: direct democracy does not mean parliamentary systems could be abolished altogether, central spaces for debate would still help solve discussion exchange problems

lelandbatey 4mo ago
Is there such a thing as "unbiased public opinion" at all though? The memetic effects of language and communication means propaganda and similar tools of rhetoric and leveraged communication will always work, with or without an internet. There's no "solution", only "good enoughs". Direct democracy is cool, but also impractical. I do not want to vote on every counties appropriations for road maintenance. So what's a level of direct democracy that's "good enough"? How do we make sure we're directly voting in things relevant to our lives? What if "relevant to our lives" is unrelated to our geographic location and is very interests based? If anyone can vote for anything, but most folks don't ever vote for most things, how do you prevent brigading of votes via coordination by groups who see that their group alone can swing what would be a small local vote whatever way they want by virtue of sheer numbers? How do you prevent trolls from going through every vote and just voting no on every "community center paper-and-ink budget" across the entire country? There are so many questions I have about direct democracy systems! Do you have more information?
- 4mo ago

gigatexal 4mo ago

But it’s not about critical thinking or governing well it’s about getting re-elected. So the argument will go to “think of the children” which is a guise for more control and then pretty soon we are living in the dystopian future of 1984 or the UK where the film V for Vendetta took place. This same kind of thinking gets idiots like Trump elected because people don’t have any sense of the commons and become single issue voters (sic). “Oh just reduce my taxes on my carried interest… reduce my taxes… I’m a xenophobe I hate immigrants let’s not do anything systematic let’s just hard close the border or the world is flat America only exists we don’t need allies or trading partners (JD Vance) … and so on”

maccard 4mo ago

I’m not in favour of Chat Control; > the evidence is that people already pretty firmly against things like chat control and the will to push it through tends to come from the political circles more than popular belief it is a good idea. This is quite the statement. What evidence do you have that of this? Here in the UK, the equivalent bills are pretty widely supported across he board. > I expect that if the measure itself went to a general vote, the majority would be against it once they have to deal with a specific proposal This is likely true of pretty much anything, though. Imagine suggesting that people collectively fund a national road network by paying 20% of their income to the government (or whatever number your state/country/municipality chooses). All of a sudden it’s a terrible idea!

egorfine 4mo ago

> the evidence is that people already pretty firmly against things like chat control I'm not sure about that at all. All my normies friends have no problem immediately submitting their documents to any KYC service that requests it. And talking about chat control they happily parrot the propaganda points, which is something very normal given that they have no insight as we do. So unfortunately I believe that the laymen are all in favor of chat control.

klad_majoor 4mo ago
Jonathan Haidt sure ain’t no layman and is very much against online anonymity

lopis 4mo ago

> the evidence is I don't believe this. I believe us more tech oriented people live in a dangerous bubble that reassures us that obviously people are against it. But that's very likely not true.

Ouman 4mo ago

I agree that it is not always mass public demand for authoritarianism. Often it is more like institutional persistence plus vague moral framing

pc86 4mo ago

The problem is that "the authoritarians" (read: almost every politician at every level of government, but a drastically increasing percentage the higher you go) only need to get something passed once then it is there forever. Every law should have an automatic sunset period of 1-10 years that requires it to pass the entire legislative process again, or at least both full chambers + signing.

intrasight 4mo ago
That would indeed solve many problems. It would also focus legislative minds now and in the future. Not sure it would be beneficial for the judicial branch. Also beneficial perhaps would be to have it be necessary that the law spells out the technical implementation. Sort of like patents do.
goalieca 4mo ago
I remember the patriot act.
- pc86 4mo ago
  In this very comment I started talking about the patriot act two or three times but kept deleting it because I didn't want to ramble. But yeah that's exactly what I was thinking of - for people who care about privacy and freedom it was really one of the worst pieces of legislation in modern US history, and permanently changed the country for the worse.
- hvs 4mo ago
  The Patriot Act is perfect example of the adage, "Never let a crisis go to waste."
  - wartywhoa23 4mo ago
    Or rather "Always construct crises proportionate to the desired delta of the current Overton window's position".
    - 4mo ago

themaninthedark 4mo ago

I disagree, if anything the last 12 years or so have shown that there are groups on both sides of the political spectrum that are quite willing to engage and justify censorship. From "Muh freeze peach" to the actual government requested censorship during COVID everyone is rushing to get a new shiny stick they can use to beat their political opponents with.

akoboldfrying 4mo ago

> The repeated failures of authoritarianism to get to a good place are so consistent it is wild that people keep trying it. Lee Kuan Yew would like a word. The world is complicated. There may be more than one way to get to a good place, if we can even agree on what good looks like. Most people, even libertarians, think that some kind and degree of authoritarianism is beneficial in a government, we just disagree on the details.