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> These NGOs have converged upon a unified strategy: use the rhetoric of ‘child safety’ to advocate for digital ID laws that would prevent adults from using the

> These NGOs have converged upon a unified strategy: use the rhetoric of ‘child safety’ to advocate for digital ID laws that would prevent adults from using the internet anonymously. Of course. Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you into giving up your freedom for security. Whatever argument they make should be simply ignored and dismissed.

nzeid 3mo ago
Worth noting that there's no security in a system that abusively collects your data. That goes for children as well.
- walrus01 3mo ago
  Or guarantee that even if you provide such data to a nice, friendly, democratically run and ethically managed administration, that some future regime change to a completely different group of people won't result in catastrophic misuse.
  - King-Aaron 3mo ago
    Which is no longer a hypothetical
  - switchbak 3mo ago
    This is the issue I have with most of my well meaning but somewhat politically uninformed friends. The idea of “wouldn’t it be good if …” (idealized scenario), is never followed up with a “yes, but …” (realistic evaluation of how politics actually works). Yes it might actually work out ok if a mythical benevolent dictator could manage things with infinite precision and unlimited compassion. I would imagine that has never happened at any reasonable scale. The Conservative folks seem to phrase this as a desire to “keep government small” - which always seemed a little clunky given the stakes and track record of these governments.
    - spawarotti 3mo ago
      > is never followed up with a “yes, but …” (realistic evaluation of how politics actually works). OK, but following this logic, shouldn't we disband the government altogether and have mafias rule us all? When is it acceptable to hope that something is actually going to work well enough when handed over to the government?
      - paulryanrogers 3mo ago
        > OK, but following this logic, shouldn't we disband the government altogether and have mafias rule us all? Conservatives seem to be fine with mafia rule, so long as the don has the correct party affiliation. > When is it acceptable to hope that something is actually going to work well enough when handed over to the government? Mob rule doesn't with very well as a defacto government, or oligarchy. Nor food and drug safety or national defense. Some things just have to be tackled by society as a larger group. Ideally as locally as possible, but not so locally that minorities are crushed or rule becomes petty and micromanaged.
        kraken_cult 3mo ago
        US is currently recovering (fever breaking) from the petty and micromanaged stage. We haven't been coherent as a nation for like 20+ years.
        Finbel 3mo ago
        Seen from the outside, the US seemed a lot more coherent pre-Trump.
      - Terr_ 3mo ago
        > OK, but following this logic, shouldn't we disband the government altogether and have mafias rule us all? Only if "following this logic" means "extrapolate to an unreasonable extreme." Compare: 1. "Just eat healthy food and you'll be healthy!" 2. "Yes, but [things are complex]" 3. "Following that logic, we should just eat trash."
  - andsoitis 3mo ago
    > Or guarantee Not possible. You can strengthen defenses but you cannot guarantee it can withstand any possible, dynamic and adaptive attack strategies. So what you say is impossible to do.
  - spwa4 3mo ago
    That's partly because congress, including state congresses and judges/dept of justice just don't care about that. They are totally unable to see either the consequences of their own imperfection or even just limits to their power. A LOT of damage is done that way.
- matheusmoreira 3mo ago
  He who gives up freedom for security ends up with neither.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    So does he who gives up security for freedom. All things must be balanced.
    - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
      "Kids are being harmed, so let's end privacy online and force everyone to ID" is not balance, it is the panopticon. Hilariously, even the baroness cited in the article believes it's extremism. I've even seen her defend privacy and VPNs. She claims she's backing deanonymization because nobody is doing anything else. The ones who want a surveillance state are only too happy to oblige. Balance is expecting parents to actually parent their children instead of offloading all the responsibility to the state.
- account42 3mo ago
  There is security for those in control of the government.
hatsix 3mo ago
rhetoric all the way down
like_any_other 3mo ago
Note how they always ignore parental controls, and skip straight to deanonymize everyone.
- anigbrowl 3mo ago
  Tech people keep ignoring the fact that many people a) find the parental controls too hard to use and b) have no confidence that their kids won't find a way to circumvent them. If parents felt in control of technology they wouldn't be calling on governments to regulate it in the first place. I know a lot of tech people like to assume that government wants to control everything and these parents are fake front groups established to manufacture consent, but this is infowars-type conspiracy thinking. Most people are just not that facile with technology and people who have kids are atavistically opposed to anything that could harm their kids. Tech people's unwillingness to even engage with concerns about harm to children (eg the GP) more or less guarantees more aggressive regulation. IT's a self-defeating position.
  - walrus01 3mo ago
    I recently put some thought into what I would have done if I had encountered "parental controls" to use the Internet when I first encountered it as a young teen in 1992. I would have made it my personal mission in life to circumvent everything and anything possible. I feel fortunate that no such controls existed and the adults in my life knew significantly less about the technology than I did. Was I exposed to some clearly adult content? Yes. But I didn't find it particularly compelling, the video games I could download and other things I could explore were more interesting. It is also concerning to me that gen-alpha (or whatever the age bracket is called) people are increasingly being pushed into walled garden, app-based social media platforms instead of actually learning what the Internet really is, and what it's capable of.
    - Forgeties79 3mo ago
      I have a feeling we had a similar experience growing up. I generally agree, but also, we got QAnon/Alex Jones and such which have quite directly screwed up my country. So I don’t know, my opinion is often contradictory and fluid. I don’t know where I stand anymore. I believe in an “open internet,” but also, there’s people like Andrew Tate who have ruined the minds of people I care about. We can debate if these systems and people existed before (they did), but the reach and scale is different now. My most controversial opinion these days is that not everyone should be allowed to upload to YouTube if it’s public facing. We need basic screening and filtering.
donw 3mo ago
[flagged]
- undersuit 3mo ago
  No, we're not going to do anything about climate change.
  - bdangubic 3mo ago
    it is ok, the climate change will do something about us
- King-Aaron 3mo ago
  Conflating these two things is honestly astonishing.
- ColdStream 3mo ago
  I suspect that the blow back from climate change and resource depletion IS why they are much more interested in added surveillance. When things start to get rough, they want to ensure compliance where possible. This is why they tend to come down hard on climate change protestors.
shimman 3mo ago
Sounds like a good way to cede the argument to the opposition and let those that do believe them make up the rules.
- Gigachad 3mo ago
  Especially when there are very obvious and tangible harms from modern social media. Either you participate and help drive privacy preserving methods to solve the problems, or someone else will solve it in a way less desirable to you.
  - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
    Bringing attention to their methods is much better than dignifying the "think of the children" nonsense with a response. You just posted the answer: > Especially when there are very obvious and tangible harms from modern social media. The addictive and manipulative dark patterns of the big techs are harmful and should be banned straight up for everyone. No need to spare the children and let adults get abused. No need to verify age at all. So why don't we just ban it? Because that'd eat into profits so much it could actually kill their business models. All this "children" bullshit is just them trying to preserve their business models. It's them saying "year we're harmful and addictive and gambling tier but look we're adult only now". This is why Meta's among the corporations lobbying for this stuff. Manipulation stops working when the other party is aware of it. Bring their manipulation out into the light.
    - Gigachad 3mo ago
      I mean yes, we should just ban it all, but I'll take banning it for kids as a first step rather than an all or nothing where we will get nothing.
      - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
        Banning it just for kids requires identification and is strictly worse.
zamadatix 3mo ago
In the inverse, none of the opposition matters until it can solve the problems the universal surveillance approach doesn't even solve anyways. Whatever argument they make should be simply ignored and dismissed. It's a tradeoff situation and nobody wants to leave it as such to find an answer which serves the best balance. Instead, we are doomed to discuss the absolutes of freedoms vs the absolutes of child safety. I'd really like to see something like a required parental controls architecture products had to support (but not every device had to force universally). These kind of solutions only goes as far as the problem is a technical one, e.g. a kid on their dad's office computer they weren't supposed to access can still see things they shouldn't, but such is the truth with any pure technical approach to the problem which is not actually fully technically bound.
txrx0000 3mo ago
We should not ignore it, but firmly dismiss it with reason. The recent Illinois law that applies to all Internet-capable operating systems is blatantly unconstitutional. People should not be forced by law to disclose their age (or anything) in order to engage in digital communication. That forced utterance of your own age is compelled speech, a violation of the First Amendment. For parents who are genuinely concerned about child safety, you are being used to push an agenda. If we want to solve the digital parenting problem, we have to understand how the problem came to be in the first place and why there isn't a good solution at the moment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49118578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49118578
- inigyou 3mo ago
  You don't have to disclose your age. You have to disclose the age that you want your device's parental controls to work at. Doesn't have to be yours.
  - txrx0000 3mo ago
    That doesn't change the fact that you're being forced to utter an age bracket in order to communicate digitally. It's the digital equivalent of having your mouth, eyes, and ears taped shut unless you utter "I am x years old" because the law wills it so. Of course, it's well-established that human beings are capable of making stuff up, and you can claim to be whatever age, but that's not the point.
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      I also need to utter my device's PIN code, is that compelled speech too? And to drive to a protest I need a driver's license which requires me to answer questions about the road rules. Compelled speech?
dionidium 3mo ago
> Whatever argument they make should be simply ignored and dismissed. This makes very little sense. People sometimes appeal to the safety of children cynically, but it's very often sincere, since parents genuinely do worry a lot about their kids. You can tell people to ignore these appeals, but it won't work, and you'll be leaving better arguments on the table.
- cobbzilla 3mo ago
  Yes it’s normal to worry about your kids. It’s normal for family and friends to worry about your kids. When a politician is worried about your kids, you should be worried about your rights and freedoms. Not only for your own sake but for your kids too!
  - slg 3mo ago
    >When a politician is worried about your kids, you should be worried about your rights and freedoms. Not only for your own sake but for your kids too! What rights and freedoms should I worry about when a politician wants to make sure my child is fed by supporting food stamp programs or free hot lunches at school? The idea that any attempt to help a child is inherently suspect honestly says something distrubing about your own worldview. You can't imagine someone genuinely caring for a child that isn't there own?
    - GiorgioG 3mo ago
      Politicians don’t care about your kids, they only care about your vote.
      - slg 3mo ago
        This level of cynicism is only possible if someone has never interacted with people on a local political level. Once again, it's more a reflection of your own worldview than an accurate reflection of all of humanity. There are some people who genuinely have empathy for others and want to do good. The way some of you refuse to believe that is truly disturbing.
ColdStream 3mo ago
Comes down to something I have said for a long while. Anyone that wants power, who is saying it, why are they saying it and why do people believe them. That one can get deep really quick.
anonreeeeplor 3mo ago
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samsin 3mo ago
There's an ongoing debate in Australia to ban gambling advertisements. One of the arguments that is supportive of a ban says that children shouldn't be exposed to gambling advertisements during sports broadcasts, as they should be family friendly. Should that argument be ignored too?
- andrew_lettuce 3mo ago
  Kids can't gamble so yes we should enforce laws and ignore that one too. We can then debate if sports gambling itself should be legal or advertised at all.
  - samsin 3mo ago
    The laws you want enforced to prevent kids from gambling were the subject of debate too.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
switchbak 3mo ago
“Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you” Any argument with such blatant oversimplifications is almost certainly lacking in nuance and can be ignored and dismissed. I get what you’re pointing at: politicians regularly abuse these arguments, but that doesn’t mean it’s 100% of all arguments involving children.
- andrew_lettuce 3mo ago
  If they use blatant, binary positions and you try to be subtle and nuanced you've already lost.
  - switchbak 3mo ago
    [dead]
- matheusmoreira 3mo ago
  Go ahead. Play their game. Be nuanced. Argue in good faith. Then watch as they accuse you of supporting pedophilia.
  - switchbak 3mo ago
    You said "Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you" - that's clearly not always true. Now it's OFTEN true, and in politics it's almost always used in bad faith. But that's still not everything, and your simple rule eliminates the well intentioned discussions, and that's throwing the baby out with the bath water. Now if they are clearly acting in bad faith, then absolutely it's not worth treating that as a legitimate discussion. Now it's "kids", but yesterday it was "terrorists", way back it was "heretics" - there's always a magical word that ill intentioned people will use to bludgeon you with. But you shouldn't let them erase your ability to have honest discussions.
    - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
      > You said "Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you" - that's clearly not always true. Then let's sharpen the statement. "Anyone who brings up kids is either trying to manipulate you or is a useful idiot for the manipulators." > But you shouldn't let them erase your ability to have honest discussions. Tell that to them, not me. I've found that I'm perfectly capable of having honest discussions about pretty much any topic, no matter how controversial, except this. When children are involved, even perfectly well intentioned people get whipped up into an emotional frenzy and are ready to double down on literally any half baked "solution" to whatever problem is placed in front of them. They cannot be argued out of such a state, and will lash out at anyone who tries. Your "heretic" comparison is apt.
onetimeusename 3mo ago
> Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you into giving up your freedom These are NGOs not parents. And "child safety" is often a euphemism. The point is it's hard to argue against child safety. For example, if opaque NGOs demand deanonymization to stop CSAM, I am assuming most people would not want to seem like they are in favor of CSAM. So you need an organized effort to argue in favor of privacy and even then anyone who does it can easily be smeared as a CSAM user. So child safety can backdoor something else.
6r17 3mo ago
The worse is - we say it's about child safety - but that same rhetoric is actually defending kids to have a smartphone.
ulnarkressty 3mo ago
"The government says all children need to show an ID when browsing the internet in order to be safe" "The government says all children need to be vaccinated in order to be safe" I'm not saying these arguments are equivalent, but they seem equivalent because they induce the same feeling of loss of agency. And one cannot simply ignore and dismiss something like this.
- matheusmoreira 3mo ago
  > loss of agency That's exactly what this is. They want to build an internet where it is structurally impossible for children to be harmed in any way. This requires the destruction of the very concept of agency. You can't just do things. You need government approval.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    No they don't? Laws can't really make anything "structurally impossible" unless they criminalize a lot more - such as hosting a website without full government review (this is illegal in China). These laws are quite clearly targeted at the harm that is happening today and not at locking down the entire internet. You do have to take enforcement into account when evaluating these laws. Some HNers interpret this as you go to jail for not scanning an ID (which makes sense to programmers because it's a simple if/then), but most of them are actually written as product safety laws, so the government can order you to comply or take your product off the market.
    - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
      > Laws can't really make anything "structurally impossible" Require age verification. Kids lie and claim they are 18. Require better age verification, implemented at the operating system level so that only the parent's administrator account can override it. Kids install a live Linux operating system on a USB drive and boot it, and now they have full access to the web. Require computers to be cryptographically locked down so that only approved child-protecting operating systems may ever run. For the sake of the kids. Computing freedom has now been destroyed. It is now structurally impossible for you to be free. It's not your computer anymore, it's the government's, and you better believe they are going to do a lot more than just prevent kids from accessing harmful content.
ycombinator_acc 3mo ago
In the modern discourse and context, 99 times out of 100, indeed they are, and indeed it should be.
TacticalCoder 3mo ago
> These NGOs have converged upon a unified strategy ... Not just for the war on anonymity. NGOs, often funded by government money (so missing two third of their name), have unified on other topics. One example that comes to mind is teaming up to organize the biggest influx of migrants into the EU following the arab spring movements: there have been hidden camera recording NGO employees explaining how to dodge controls, how to answer questions (by lying), and they've been actively helping sneaking people illegally in the EU. A good question one could ask itself before downvoting me is this: if it's a fact that NGOs are teaming up, worldwide, to lie using the rethoric of "child safety" [1]... On which other topics did NGOs lie? Or are we to believe all NGOs are good and well-meaning, except those working to end anonymity? And before I forget: in Africa for example it's fully well known that NGO typical means "DGSE": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directorate_General_for_External_Security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directorate_General_for_Extern... There are french "doctors" in some of those NGOs who know less about medicine than what I know about medicine by having ex-girlfriends that were doctors. By squinting one's eye just a little it look like NGO is not that far from a synonym of "shady undercover gov op". And btw why should any of my taxpayers dollars go to even a single NGO if it's non-governmental? And another big one: while some of those NGOs have been hard at work passing legislation which as a a result gets people arrested for "hate speech" (or even just for saying "christian prayers in their heads") in the UK, other NGOs are even harder at work making sure that the absolute most horrible of all hate speech cannot ever be criticized "because it's religious". The double standards are literally insane. If I was in the UK, I'd GTFO. And not to the EU. [1] speaking of which, btw, there are serious allegations about NGOs participating in child trafficking, for example in the Haiti SNAFU
- Try1275 3mo ago
  > If I was in the UK, I'd GTFO. And not to the EU. Where would you go?
seizethecheese 3mo ago
Same for the environment and construction. And there’s a correlate for rhetoric too, such as comparing people to Hitler or Stalin.
mianos 3mo ago
> Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you into giving up your freedom for security. The immediate reply is the accusational: "why are you trying to trying to prevent safety for kids". It's a simple next step to accuse you of hiding your own child abuse ring. This sounds like hype, but it's the normal path here in Australian.
- matheusmoreira 3mo ago
  Which is precisely the point. Children are political weapons. Precisely crafted to shut down any opposition to whatever it is you're pushing. Oh you're against this? Pedophile. You don't argue with these people. You summarily dismiss them. You recognize the game they are playing and you refuse to play it. Call attention to their methods instead: they are exploiting and weaponizing children to push their big tech friendly surveillance agenda.
  - mianos 3mo ago
    The flaw in 'calling attention to their methods' is that you rarely have a meaningful opportunity to argue against a bureaucratic system that operates this way. Whether individuals inside the system are true believers or cynical operators, the response to calling out their methods will be identical: If they genuinely believe the rhetoric: They will simply double down and say, 'Yes, and protecting the children makes this absolutely necessary.' If they know it is a manipulation tactic: They will still reply with, 'It is for the children,' because they know it is an impenetrable PR shield that gets them their way. In either scenario, the bureaucracy is entirely immune to the criticism. Exposing the game might help persuade third-party observers, but it does absolutely nothing to stop the bureaucratic machine from using that exact same line to steamroll the agenda forward.
- nickcox1 3mo ago
  Yep. And if not child abuse then terrorism.
  - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
Der_Einzige 3mo ago
This but unironically.
somenameforme 3mo ago
You're straw manning most people by trying to insist upon this, as most Americans support a ban on social media for children. [1] That turns into the overwhelming majority if you consider only Americans with children. And the percent of Americans that oppose things like age verification for the usage of social media sites is in the single digits. So it will most likely happen especially because you are certainly right, in part, that no government has ever said no to actions that'd give them more power, let alone ones that are widely supported. But the point of this is that rather than having this as some sort of red-line no, I think it'd be much more pragmatic to try to argue for identity verification regulations that would be most palatable. [1] - https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54969-eight-in-ten-parents-say-social-media-use-has-a-negative-impact-on-children https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54969-eight-in-ten-parents...
- intended 3mo ago
  Conversations on age verification tend to split into 2 streams. Conversations where the root submission talks about failures at social media firms and the evidence of harms, or evidence from trials. Conversations on the attacks against freedom and privacy. I see very little hope that an actual rebuttal or alternative to the desire to muzzle tech will be forged, because the two conversation streams seem to rarely intersect. We are not in the 90s anymore. Tech as most people experience it is not the new new thing, and most parents are tired of tech. A more recent pew survey showed that nearly half of teens think that social media is bad for teens. We know that Meta went ahead with features even after their own internal research told them it was bad for teen mental health. How in hell, is there any effective response created, if the social pressure parents and children are driving, is being dismissed as a conspiracy? This should be the time that the business models and incentives that allow loot boxes and addicting design mechanisms should be discussed. There needs to be an actual solution that addresses the issues users are facing, or else they are simply going to choose to sacrifice freedoms for the hope of gaining some control.
  - somenameforme 3mo ago
    In general I would agree with you, but one issue I have here is that I think social media even done fully responsibly would end up being very undesirable for children. Even if we have no algorithm and just 'friend on friend' stuff, social media tends to significantly amplify a lot of the nasty stuff that happens at every school - bullying, rumor milling, conspiratorial stuff (like kids falsely reporting somebody else to try to get them in trouble), and so on. There's also the typical image crafting stuff that drives envy, insecurity, and so on - kids aren't sharing when they eat left overs mashed up in a bowl, but they are sharing when they go eat at an expensive steak restaurant. That bias already significantly affects adults perceptions of others' life/lifestyle, let alone children. And even without 'the algorithm', there's going to be FOMO and the general addictiveness of updates that's going to leave kids as zombies to their phones rather than interacting with each other as much in real life. So I'm not really sure it's viable to try to 'fix' social media. You can certainly make it better than it currently is, but I think the issue is that we have horrible companies managing a horrible product.
red_admiral 3mo ago
> Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you into giving up your freedom for security That argument loses you most of the population in a vote, myself included. Parents may disagree, for a start; I reckon most women (especially outside of tech) read that and mark you down as "creepy man I don't want near kids". It's also wrong, as there are lots of rules that are in fact designed to protect children. I recommend reading up on the history of child abuse in the Boy Scouts of America (now Scouts BSA), FBI agent Kenneth Lanning's investigation, and the safeguarding and leadership training that scout leaders must take today. The UK has a system, I think it's called the DBS, which depending on the level of check ranges from "is this person a convicted sex offender?" to "non-crime hate incidents". One can argue a lot about what the correct level should be, no-one has yet convincingly explained to me why specifically "non-crime" actions should be in a secret police record. But I am on board with someone convicted by a court for child sex offences not being allowed to become a schoolteacher.
jiaosdjf 3mo ago
No, do not ignore them, do not dismiss them and do not underestimate them. These people are the enemy, they are smart and resourceful and they have managed to do the unthinkable - convince 2 of the most pro-free-speech nations in the history of the world to start censoring the internet. The idea that I would ever need a VPN to view adult content in the UK would have been laughable 5 years ago and now it's a fact that puts us in the same basket as literal authoritarian hell holes. I guarantee they will come for the VPNs, that is 100% certain, these traitors will stop at nothing. Only Luigi can save us.

nzeid 3mo ago

Worth noting that there's no security in a system that abusively collects your data. That goes for children as well.

walrus01 3mo ago
Or guarantee that even if you provide such data to a nice, friendly, democratically run and ethically managed administration, that some future regime change to a completely different group of people won't result in catastrophic misuse.
- King-Aaron 3mo ago
  Which is no longer a hypothetical
- switchbak 3mo ago
  This is the issue I have with most of my well meaning but somewhat politically uninformed friends. The idea of “wouldn’t it be good if …” (idealized scenario), is never followed up with a “yes, but …” (realistic evaluation of how politics actually works). Yes it might actually work out ok if a mythical benevolent dictator could manage things with infinite precision and unlimited compassion. I would imagine that has never happened at any reasonable scale. The Conservative folks seem to phrase this as a desire to “keep government small” - which always seemed a little clunky given the stakes and track record of these governments.
  - spawarotti 3mo ago
    > is never followed up with a “yes, but …” (realistic evaluation of how politics actually works). OK, but following this logic, shouldn't we disband the government altogether and have mafias rule us all? When is it acceptable to hope that something is actually going to work well enough when handed over to the government?
    - paulryanrogers 3mo ago
      > OK, but following this logic, shouldn't we disband the government altogether and have mafias rule us all? Conservatives seem to be fine with mafia rule, so long as the don has the correct party affiliation. > When is it acceptable to hope that something is actually going to work well enough when handed over to the government? Mob rule doesn't with very well as a defacto government, or oligarchy. Nor food and drug safety or national defense. Some things just have to be tackled by society as a larger group. Ideally as locally as possible, but not so locally that minorities are crushed or rule becomes petty and micromanaged.
      - kraken_cult 3mo ago
        US is currently recovering (fever breaking) from the petty and micromanaged stage. We haven't been coherent as a nation for like 20+ years.
        Finbel 3mo ago
        Seen from the outside, the US seemed a lot more coherent pre-Trump.
    - Terr_ 3mo ago
      > OK, but following this logic, shouldn't we disband the government altogether and have mafias rule us all? Only if "following this logic" means "extrapolate to an unreasonable extreme." Compare: 1. "Just eat healthy food and you'll be healthy!" 2. "Yes, but [things are complex]" 3. "Following that logic, we should just eat trash."
- andsoitis 3mo ago
  > Or guarantee Not possible. You can strengthen defenses but you cannot guarantee it can withstand any possible, dynamic and adaptive attack strategies. So what you say is impossible to do.
- spwa4 3mo ago
  That's partly because congress, including state congresses and judges/dept of justice just don't care about that. They are totally unable to see either the consequences of their own imperfection or even just limits to their power. A LOT of damage is done that way.
matheusmoreira 3mo ago
He who gives up freedom for security ends up with neither.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  So does he who gives up security for freedom. All things must be balanced.
  - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
    "Kids are being harmed, so let's end privacy online and force everyone to ID" is not balance, it is the panopticon. Hilariously, even the baroness cited in the article believes it's extremism. I've even seen her defend privacy and VPNs. She claims she's backing deanonymization because nobody is doing anything else. The ones who want a surveillance state are only too happy to oblige. Balance is expecting parents to actually parent their children instead of offloading all the responsibility to the state.
account42 3mo ago
There is security for those in control of the government.

hatsix 3mo ago

rhetoric all the way down

like_any_other 3mo ago

Note how they always ignore parental controls, and skip straight to deanonymize everyone.

anigbrowl 3mo ago
Tech people keep ignoring the fact that many people a) find the parental controls too hard to use and b) have no confidence that their kids won't find a way to circumvent them. If parents felt in control of technology they wouldn't be calling on governments to regulate it in the first place. I know a lot of tech people like to assume that government wants to control everything and these parents are fake front groups established to manufacture consent, but this is infowars-type conspiracy thinking. Most people are just not that facile with technology and people who have kids are atavistically opposed to anything that could harm their kids. Tech people's unwillingness to even engage with concerns about harm to children (eg the GP) more or less guarantees more aggressive regulation. IT's a self-defeating position.
- walrus01 3mo ago
  I recently put some thought into what I would have done if I had encountered "parental controls" to use the Internet when I first encountered it as a young teen in 1992. I would have made it my personal mission in life to circumvent everything and anything possible. I feel fortunate that no such controls existed and the adults in my life knew significantly less about the technology than I did. Was I exposed to some clearly adult content? Yes. But I didn't find it particularly compelling, the video games I could download and other things I could explore were more interesting. It is also concerning to me that gen-alpha (or whatever the age bracket is called) people are increasingly being pushed into walled garden, app-based social media platforms instead of actually learning what the Internet really is, and what it's capable of.
  - Forgeties79 3mo ago
    I have a feeling we had a similar experience growing up. I generally agree, but also, we got QAnon/Alex Jones and such which have quite directly screwed up my country. So I don’t know, my opinion is often contradictory and fluid. I don’t know where I stand anymore. I believe in an “open internet,” but also, there’s people like Andrew Tate who have ruined the minds of people I care about. We can debate if these systems and people existed before (they did), but the reach and scale is different now. My most controversial opinion these days is that not everyone should be allowed to upload to YouTube if it’s public facing. We need basic screening and filtering.

donw 3mo ago

[flagged]

undersuit 3mo ago
No, we're not going to do anything about climate change.
- bdangubic 3mo ago
  it is ok, the climate change will do something about us
King-Aaron 3mo ago
Conflating these two things is honestly astonishing.
ColdStream 3mo ago
I suspect that the blow back from climate change and resource depletion IS why they are much more interested in added surveillance. When things start to get rough, they want to ensure compliance where possible. This is why they tend to come down hard on climate change protestors.

shimman 3mo ago

Sounds like a good way to cede the argument to the opposition and let those that do believe them make up the rules.

Gigachad 3mo ago
Especially when there are very obvious and tangible harms from modern social media. Either you participate and help drive privacy preserving methods to solve the problems, or someone else will solve it in a way less desirable to you.
- matheusmoreira 3mo ago
  Bringing attention to their methods is much better than dignifying the "think of the children" nonsense with a response. You just posted the answer: > Especially when there are very obvious and tangible harms from modern social media. The addictive and manipulative dark patterns of the big techs are harmful and should be banned straight up for everyone. No need to spare the children and let adults get abused. No need to verify age at all. So why don't we just ban it? Because that'd eat into profits so much it could actually kill their business models. All this "children" bullshit is just them trying to preserve their business models. It's them saying "year we're harmful and addictive and gambling tier but look we're adult only now". This is why Meta's among the corporations lobbying for this stuff. Manipulation stops working when the other party is aware of it. Bring their manipulation out into the light.
  - Gigachad 3mo ago
    I mean yes, we should just ban it all, but I'll take banning it for kids as a first step rather than an all or nothing where we will get nothing.
    - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
      Banning it just for kids requires identification and is strictly worse.

zamadatix 3mo ago

In the inverse, none of the opposition matters until it can solve the problems the universal surveillance approach doesn't even solve anyways. Whatever argument they make should be simply ignored and dismissed. It's a tradeoff situation and nobody wants to leave it as such to find an answer which serves the best balance. Instead, we are doomed to discuss the absolutes of freedoms vs the absolutes of child safety. I'd really like to see something like a required parental controls architecture products had to support (but not every device had to force universally). These kind of solutions only goes as far as the problem is a technical one, e.g. a kid on their dad's office computer they weren't supposed to access can still see things they shouldn't, but such is the truth with any pure technical approach to the problem which is not actually fully technically bound.

txrx0000 3mo ago

We should not ignore it, but firmly dismiss it with reason. The recent Illinois law that applies to all Internet-capable operating systems is blatantly unconstitutional. People should not be forced by law to disclose their age (or anything) in order to engage in digital communication. That forced utterance of your own age is compelled speech, a violation of the First Amendment. For parents who are genuinely concerned about child safety, you are being used to push an agenda. If we want to solve the digital parenting problem, we have to understand how the problem came to be in the first place and why there isn't a good solution at the moment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49118578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49118578

inigyou 3mo ago
You don't have to disclose your age. You have to disclose the age that you want your device's parental controls to work at. Doesn't have to be yours.
- txrx0000 3mo ago
  That doesn't change the fact that you're being forced to utter an age bracket in order to communicate digitally. It's the digital equivalent of having your mouth, eyes, and ears taped shut unless you utter "I am x years old" because the law wills it so. Of course, it's well-established that human beings are capable of making stuff up, and you can claim to be whatever age, but that's not the point.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    I also need to utter my device's PIN code, is that compelled speech too? And to drive to a protest I need a driver's license which requires me to answer questions about the road rules. Compelled speech?

dionidium 3mo ago

> Whatever argument they make should be simply ignored and dismissed. This makes very little sense. People sometimes appeal to the safety of children cynically, but it's very often sincere, since parents genuinely do worry a lot about their kids. You can tell people to ignore these appeals, but it won't work, and you'll be leaving better arguments on the table.

cobbzilla 3mo ago
Yes it’s normal to worry about your kids. It’s normal for family and friends to worry about your kids. When a politician is worried about your kids, you should be worried about your rights and freedoms. Not only for your own sake but for your kids too!
- slg 3mo ago
  >When a politician is worried about your kids, you should be worried about your rights and freedoms. Not only for your own sake but for your kids too! What rights and freedoms should I worry about when a politician wants to make sure my child is fed by supporting food stamp programs or free hot lunches at school? The idea that any attempt to help a child is inherently suspect honestly says something distrubing about your own worldview. You can't imagine someone genuinely caring for a child that isn't there own?
  - GiorgioG 3mo ago
    Politicians don’t care about your kids, they only care about your vote.
    - slg 3mo ago
      This level of cynicism is only possible if someone has never interacted with people on a local political level. Once again, it's more a reflection of your own worldview than an accurate reflection of all of humanity. There are some people who genuinely have empathy for others and want to do good. The way some of you refuse to believe that is truly disturbing.

ColdStream 3mo ago

Comes down to something I have said for a long while. Anyone that wants power, who is saying it, why are they saying it and why do people believe them. That one can get deep really quick.

anonreeeeplor 3mo ago

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samsin 3mo ago

There's an ongoing debate in Australia to ban gambling advertisements. One of the arguments that is supportive of a ban says that children shouldn't be exposed to gambling advertisements during sports broadcasts, as they should be family friendly. Should that argument be ignored too?

andrew_lettuce 3mo ago
Kids can't gamble so yes we should enforce laws and ignore that one too. We can then debate if sports gambling itself should be legal or advertised at all.
- samsin 3mo ago
  The laws you want enforced to prevent kids from gambling were the subject of debate too.
deleted 3mo ago
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switchbak 3mo ago

“Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you” Any argument with such blatant oversimplifications is almost certainly lacking in nuance and can be ignored and dismissed. I get what you’re pointing at: politicians regularly abuse these arguments, but that doesn’t mean it’s 100% of all arguments involving children.

andrew_lettuce 3mo ago
If they use blatant, binary positions and you try to be subtle and nuanced you've already lost.
- switchbak 3mo ago
  [dead]
matheusmoreira 3mo ago
Go ahead. Play their game. Be nuanced. Argue in good faith. Then watch as they accuse you of supporting pedophilia.
- switchbak 3mo ago
  You said "Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you" - that's clearly not always true. Now it's OFTEN true, and in politics it's almost always used in bad faith. But that's still not everything, and your simple rule eliminates the well intentioned discussions, and that's throwing the baby out with the bath water. Now if they are clearly acting in bad faith, then absolutely it's not worth treating that as a legitimate discussion. Now it's "kids", but yesterday it was "terrorists", way back it was "heretics" - there's always a magical word that ill intentioned people will use to bludgeon you with. But you shouldn't let them erase your ability to have honest discussions.
  - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
    > You said "Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you" - that's clearly not always true. Then let's sharpen the statement. "Anyone who brings up kids is either trying to manipulate you or is a useful idiot for the manipulators." > But you shouldn't let them erase your ability to have honest discussions. Tell that to them, not me. I've found that I'm perfectly capable of having honest discussions about pretty much any topic, no matter how controversial, except this. When children are involved, even perfectly well intentioned people get whipped up into an emotional frenzy and are ready to double down on literally any half baked "solution" to whatever problem is placed in front of them. They cannot be argued out of such a state, and will lash out at anyone who tries. Your "heretic" comparison is apt.

onetimeusename 3mo ago

> Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you into giving up your freedom These are NGOs not parents. And "child safety" is often a euphemism. The point is it's hard to argue against child safety. For example, if opaque NGOs demand deanonymization to stop CSAM, I am assuming most people would not want to seem like they are in favor of CSAM. So you need an organized effort to argue in favor of privacy and even then anyone who does it can easily be smeared as a CSAM user. So child safety can backdoor something else.

6r17 3mo ago

The worse is - we say it's about child safety - but that same rhetoric is actually defending kids to have a smartphone.

ulnarkressty 3mo ago

"The government says all children need to show an ID when browsing the internet in order to be safe" "The government says all children need to be vaccinated in order to be safe" I'm not saying these arguments are equivalent, but they seem equivalent because they induce the same feeling of loss of agency. And one cannot simply ignore and dismiss something like this.

matheusmoreira 3mo ago
> loss of agency That's exactly what this is. They want to build an internet where it is structurally impossible for children to be harmed in any way. This requires the destruction of the very concept of agency. You can't just do things. You need government approval.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  No they don't? Laws can't really make anything "structurally impossible" unless they criminalize a lot more - such as hosting a website without full government review (this is illegal in China). These laws are quite clearly targeted at the harm that is happening today and not at locking down the entire internet. You do have to take enforcement into account when evaluating these laws. Some HNers interpret this as you go to jail for not scanning an ID (which makes sense to programmers because it's a simple if/then), but most of them are actually written as product safety laws, so the government can order you to comply or take your product off the market.
  - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
    > Laws can't really make anything "structurally impossible" Require age verification. Kids lie and claim they are 18. Require better age verification, implemented at the operating system level so that only the parent's administrator account can override it. Kids install a live Linux operating system on a USB drive and boot it, and now they have full access to the web. Require computers to be cryptographically locked down so that only approved child-protecting operating systems may ever run. For the sake of the kids. Computing freedom has now been destroyed. It is now structurally impossible for you to be free. It's not your computer anymore, it's the government's, and you better believe they are going to do a lot more than just prevent kids from accessing harmful content.

ycombinator_acc 3mo ago

In the modern discourse and context, 99 times out of 100, indeed they are, and indeed it should be.

TacticalCoder 3mo ago

> These NGOs have converged upon a unified strategy ... Not just for the war on anonymity. NGOs, often funded by government money (so missing two third of their name), have unified on other topics. One example that comes to mind is teaming up to organize the biggest influx of migrants into the EU following the arab spring movements: there have been hidden camera recording NGO employees explaining how to dodge controls, how to answer questions (by lying), and they've been actively helping sneaking people illegally in the EU. A good question one could ask itself before downvoting me is this: if it's a fact that NGOs are teaming up, worldwide, to lie using the rethoric of "child safety" [1]... On which other topics did NGOs lie? Or are we to believe all NGOs are good and well-meaning, except those working to end anonymity? And before I forget: in Africa for example it's fully well known that NGO typical means "DGSE": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directorate_General_for_External_Security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directorate_General_for_Extern... There are french "doctors" in some of those NGOs who know less about medicine than what I know about medicine by having ex-girlfriends that were doctors. By squinting one's eye just a little it look like NGO is not that far from a synonym of "shady undercover gov op". And btw why should any of my taxpayers dollars go to even a single NGO if it's non-governmental? And another big one: while some of those NGOs have been hard at work passing legislation which as a a result gets people arrested for "hate speech" (or even just for saying "christian prayers in their heads") in the UK, other NGOs are even harder at work making sure that the absolute most horrible of all hate speech cannot ever be criticized "because it's religious". The double standards are literally insane. If I was in the UK, I'd GTFO. And not to the EU. [1] speaking of which, btw, there are serious allegations about NGOs participating in child trafficking, for example in the Haiti SNAFU

Try1275 3mo ago
> If I was in the UK, I'd GTFO. And not to the EU. Where would you go?

seizethecheese 3mo ago

Same for the environment and construction. And there’s a correlate for rhetoric too, such as comparing people to Hitler or Stalin.

mianos 3mo ago

> Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you into giving up your freedom for security. The immediate reply is the accusational: "why are you trying to trying to prevent safety for kids". It's a simple next step to accuse you of hiding your own child abuse ring. This sounds like hype, but it's the normal path here in Australian.

matheusmoreira 3mo ago
Which is precisely the point. Children are political weapons. Precisely crafted to shut down any opposition to whatever it is you're pushing. Oh you're against this? Pedophile. You don't argue with these people. You summarily dismiss them. You recognize the game they are playing and you refuse to play it. Call attention to their methods instead: they are exploiting and weaponizing children to push their big tech friendly surveillance agenda.
- mianos 3mo ago
  The flaw in 'calling attention to their methods' is that you rarely have a meaningful opportunity to argue against a bureaucratic system that operates this way. Whether individuals inside the system are true believers or cynical operators, the response to calling out their methods will be identical: If they genuinely believe the rhetoric: They will simply double down and say, 'Yes, and protecting the children makes this absolutely necessary.' If they know it is a manipulation tactic: They will still reply with, 'It is for the children,' because they know it is an impenetrable PR shield that gets them their way. In either scenario, the bureaucracy is entirely immune to the criticism. Exposing the game might help persuade third-party observers, but it does absolutely nothing to stop the bureaucratic machine from using that exact same line to steamroll the agenda forward.
nickcox1 3mo ago
Yep. And if not child abuse then terrorism.
- matheusmoreira 3mo ago

Der_Einzige 3mo ago

This but unironically.

somenameforme 3mo ago

You're straw manning most people by trying to insist upon this, as most Americans support a ban on social media for children. [1] That turns into the overwhelming majority if you consider only Americans with children. And the percent of Americans that oppose things like age verification for the usage of social media sites is in the single digits. So it will most likely happen especially because you are certainly right, in part, that no government has ever said no to actions that'd give them more power, let alone ones that are widely supported. But the point of this is that rather than having this as some sort of red-line no, I think it'd be much more pragmatic to try to argue for identity verification regulations that would be most palatable. [1] - https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54969-eight-in-ten-parents-say-social-media-use-has-a-negative-impact-on-children https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54969-eight-in-ten-parents...

intended 3mo ago
Conversations on age verification tend to split into 2 streams. Conversations where the root submission talks about failures at social media firms and the evidence of harms, or evidence from trials. Conversations on the attacks against freedom and privacy. I see very little hope that an actual rebuttal or alternative to the desire to muzzle tech will be forged, because the two conversation streams seem to rarely intersect. We are not in the 90s anymore. Tech as most people experience it is not the new new thing, and most parents are tired of tech. A more recent pew survey showed that nearly half of teens think that social media is bad for teens. We know that Meta went ahead with features even after their own internal research told them it was bad for teen mental health. How in hell, is there any effective response created, if the social pressure parents and children are driving, is being dismissed as a conspiracy? This should be the time that the business models and incentives that allow loot boxes and addicting design mechanisms should be discussed. There needs to be an actual solution that addresses the issues users are facing, or else they are simply going to choose to sacrifice freedoms for the hope of gaining some control.
- somenameforme 3mo ago
  In general I would agree with you, but one issue I have here is that I think social media even done fully responsibly would end up being very undesirable for children. Even if we have no algorithm and just 'friend on friend' stuff, social media tends to significantly amplify a lot of the nasty stuff that happens at every school - bullying, rumor milling, conspiratorial stuff (like kids falsely reporting somebody else to try to get them in trouble), and so on. There's also the typical image crafting stuff that drives envy, insecurity, and so on - kids aren't sharing when they eat left overs mashed up in a bowl, but they are sharing when they go eat at an expensive steak restaurant. That bias already significantly affects adults perceptions of others' life/lifestyle, let alone children. And even without 'the algorithm', there's going to be FOMO and the general addictiveness of updates that's going to leave kids as zombies to their phones rather than interacting with each other as much in real life. So I'm not really sure it's viable to try to 'fix' social media. You can certainly make it better than it currently is, but I think the issue is that we have horrible companies managing a horrible product.

red_admiral 3mo ago

> Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you into giving up your freedom for security That argument loses you most of the population in a vote, myself included. Parents may disagree, for a start; I reckon most women (especially outside of tech) read that and mark you down as "creepy man I don't want near kids". It's also wrong, as there are lots of rules that are in fact designed to protect children. I recommend reading up on the history of child abuse in the Boy Scouts of America (now Scouts BSA), FBI agent Kenneth Lanning's investigation, and the safeguarding and leadership training that scout leaders must take today. The UK has a system, I think it's called the DBS, which depending on the level of check ranges from "is this person a convicted sex offender?" to "non-crime hate incidents". One can argue a lot about what the correct level should be, no-one has yet convincingly explained to me why specifically "non-crime" actions should be in a secret police record. But I am on board with someone convicted by a court for child sex offences not being allowed to become a schoolteacher.

jiaosdjf 3mo ago

No, do not ignore them, do not dismiss them and do not underestimate them. These people are the enemy, they are smart and resourceful and they have managed to do the unthinkable - convince 2 of the most pro-free-speech nations in the history of the world to start censoring the internet. The idea that I would ever need a VPN to view adult content in the UK would have been laughable 5 years ago and now it's a fact that puts us in the same basket as literal authoritarian hell holes. I guarantee they will come for the VPNs, that is 100% certain, these traitors will stop at nothing. Only Luigi can save us.