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"Can we do X, Y, Z?" Yes? Or maybe later?

It's so annoying. No means no, not "pester me later"!

That would be enough to get me to spend those 30 days migrating all my spreadsheets to a new format.

The phone backup is one toggle. The 30 individual ones are for syncing data for apps.

If you aren’t using iCloud for any of this, why use it at all? I believe you can still use an iPhone without an iCloud account, can’t you? Without any cloud sync, I’m not sure what the value is, just sign out.

I’m sure you’d lose the ability to download apps, but most of those are also using iCloud to sync data.

For what it’s worth, Apple seems fairly decent about not opting users in to new stuff. When they released Messages syncing via iCloud, I had to explicitly turn it on for my various devices. The same was true for several other things.

I don't disagree. But defaults are important, and you are in a tiny minority with wanting to disable iCloud. 90% of people using Apple phones want or expect things to be magically backed up for them

That coordinated effort also includes the buying up of US media sources by billionaires and gigacorps to control the content of not just news sources and social forums, but every electronic window we have onto the world.

Remember, the panopticon observed people who were in a prison.

They likely don't even really care about the panopticon - they see a way to build a moat that even billion-dollar startups won't be able to easily cross.

Regulatory capture is real.

I hate privacy, even down to the idea itself. I will buy out politicians, and push relentlessly until every trace of privacy is eliminated from the world. I love being watched. The idea of a panopticon makes me feel amazing and I want to force it on everyone until the end of time.

> a coalition including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc., corporations that profit greatly from mandatory identity verification online.

This is not being pushed by private companies. There is no money in it. It is being pushed by governments, and those governments use those private companies as (willing) vehicles to do things that it is illegal for them to do directly. And it is not being pushed by the democratic portions of governments, which have been minimized and weakened to the point of invisibility. None of this makes it to the ballot, "both" sides support it.

Since the turn of the millennium, all powers have been pushed to the Executive, in every Western country. And the Executive wouldn't be the Executive if he/she weren't completely compromised. Governing with 20% of the support of the public is the norm now in Western governments and institutions. If more than 20% of people support you, you're a "populist dictator."

Thank you for saying this. I've been similarly baffled.

The call to ban children from social media seemed like it was coming loudest from tech people - like HN users.

How did they think this was going to work?

> the discussion turns to implantation details

Do not try and derail this thread with facts about vaccines!

> Why can't we just ask/compel the service provider to identify these people (or block the bad things).

Isn't that basically what's happening? Service providers, such as Discord recently for example, are asking for identification to prove users are of a certain age. If you punish service providers for providing services to minors then they will need to do age verification.

Physical stores look at your id, they don't take a copy. Same for home delivery of alcohol at least in the UK.

> It is not illegal to ask a user's age in the US online.

Note that this is not what I said. You overgeneralized it - I will assume without bad intention. The question is if it's illegal to require porn companies to verify the age of their users.

> Can you let us know what your source is?

The Free Speech Coalition and Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson of the Supreme Court, to start. That was their minority opinion in the suit filed against Texas for requiring online porn companies to verify the age of users. The plaintiff argued it was a violation of the first amendment - it is a common argument.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/06/court-allows-texas-law-on...

The argument against the legality of these laws has always been highly suspect. There is a common sentiment that these laws are not good - but when pressed to explain why they aren't legal you get crazy arguments like this, that it violates the first amendment.

Neither are they gonna lose the potential of getting the data of any of their visitors, hence they're in this catch-22.

A burden that's proportional to how much user data you mine, process and/or share with third parties. Hence the irony

> A US based non-profit news organization isn’t going to spend money to pay lawyers to ensure they meet a regulatory burden that doesn’t affect their core demographic.

I like being covered by gdpr. Though I really cannot see any country's gdpr peops taking anyone in the US to court. A very simple "Fuck you" (along the lines of The Pirate Bay) would end any legal conversations. It would be different if the news organisation had an office in the EU. Anyway, i have a vpn, so....

> "We're unable to serve this website without compromising your privacy... "

More accurately, "we do not have the staff or funds to figure out what every single random law around the globe requires of us, and since foreign countries are not a realistic advertising market for a local Michigan newspaper, there's really no reason for us to try."

Or "we don't care about respecting stupid laws in your country. If you don't like being blocked, take the issue to your politicians."

What does GDPR get you that browser settings and an extension don't? I'm genuinely curious how random websites refusing to serve content / spamming cookie banners is a good thing?

The data download and removal side of GDPR seems useful for more "entrenched" use cases where you have an account and a long history on a service but... fly-by website visits should not be this heavily regulated. Blocking cookies and scripts is trivial.

Right... as if can trust some random American or other non-European website that it really respects the law. What are you gonna do if it breaks the GDPR law? GDPR ruined the Internet.

It's illegal for us to steal from you, so we won't invite you inside.