Hacker News

what's the current solution that's impossible for kids to bypass with a borrowed or stolen id, say?

I don't see any proposals yet that will actually work for what they say they'll do.

I often joke that every technical measure that prevents teens from watching porn is a way to make teens more tech-savvy.

Kids these days have it too easy, we need stronger protections or the next generation will make pathetic hackers.

SKG has fared pretty well, what do you mean?

I think the scenario posited here is the worse possible one where we are still chronically online but on a dead internet while being fully and relentless surveilled.

I'd rather have the internet healed

When people say things like this, they mean the good parts of the internet, e.g. real people who are able to be honest because a pseudonym allows them to say things they would be punished by evildoers for saying if the evildoers could identify them. Taking that away doesn't get you out of the engagement-optimized ad funnel, it just makes that be the only thing left.

You mean a VPN?

You need to first provide a passport image + 5 angled selfies + bank statement + proof of employment to the Peoples Democratic European Union before you can sign.

You may be overthinking this. It is privacy that means little to the regular joe. The internet they use every day and it being changed beyond recognition is much more tangible than privacy being curtailed just a little bit more.

And these authoritarian politicians will destroy the internet with these actions. Maybe they will even change society as we know it, and not for the better.

The problem is thinking such initiatives will achieve anything in a bureaucratic system devoid of honest debate and actual democracy.

These citizen's initiatives must at least be tried but simultaneously we must create a new internet forever out of politician reach.

Agreed.

I think it's time that "please let 1800 analytics firms monitor your every browsing habit in exchange for this content" was seen in the same light as "please let 1800 private foreign espionage and propaganda agencies spy on you".

"Stop enabling pedophiles in government"

And keep pushing this until it passes. Keep repeating like they do chat control.

Great point. Reminds me of Biden’s constant whisper-scream “the future of democracy is at stake!”

Like, yeah, it was an accurate statement, but total shit if your goal is to get people up off the couch and into voting booth. Way too abstract and high-minded

Yeah I've been wanting ID for years. Because i neighbor Russia and their propaganda game is top notch. One person one account.

You don’t need IRL identity, you just need persistent reputation. That reputation can be attached to a pseudonymous identity or an IRL one. But the design of most modern social media is to detach the “content” from the context of the author. The feeds you subscribe to are funnels that channel atomized bits of content to you. Some of it may be authored by them, but it’s the platform that intermediates your relationship to that content more than the creator. The creator is subordinated to it.

A different design logic, and the logic of the blogosphere that preceded it, much more tightly prioritized following a blogger or poster and interpreting everything you see in light of who was posting it. The trust is placed in the account you follow.

It would be nice to have a digital referendum on this topic. I could think of some tech that makes it happen, something like a digital ID maybe?

Usually the delivery person asks for ID when delivering the wine?

#1 isn't entirely true. It's a soft-gate but you are legally required to verify age on your site before completing the purchase (I run a boutique cigar brand [1]).

[1] https://philosophercigars.com

Is teens ordering wine a big issue in the US? Bigger than social media?

not all parents are screaming this. Only the parents who refuse to parent their children, and conveniently scapegoat society for their parental failings

>securely and anonymously

Not possible. Why do advocates of age verification bring this argument up again and again? It is not possible.

I'm a parent and would rather ban age verification. So it's certainly not everyone...

There are also fascists screaming at the government to do other wildly illegal stuff. The lousy parents begging the government to "tread on me" would get wildly better results by spending less time trying to create an authoritarian state and more time with their kids they claim to care so much about.

They're children. They have the internet access you give them. This isn't some unsolveable problem that needs government intervention, my parents were setting up filters so long ago that they're grandparents now.

They don’t seem to oppose any of that if you read the intro

> We call on the European Commission to propose legislation ensuring that digital identity and age-assurance systems used to access online services in the Union remain voluntary, privacy-preserving and non-discriminatory. Citizens must not be forced to identify themselves to access lawful online content or services unless strictly necessary, proportionate and provided by law. The legislation should require anonymous or pseudonymous proof-of-age, data minimisation, selective disclosure, open-source implementation, independent security audits, prohibition of cross-service tracking by relying parties, and equivalent alternatives for citizens who do not use a digital wallet.

> What methods could be implemented to take money away from governments that implement with such things?

Right now the most important thing to inhibiting a dystopia is to break the lock Apple and Google have on approval of mobile code, because it gets used as a fulcrum by authoritarians. Want to ban VPNs? Make the app stores do it. Censor social media? Have them ban every social media app that doesn't censor. Want to track everyone everywhere? Make the phone provide sites and apps with a persistent cross-service tracking ID.

Whereas if ordinary people had devices that worked like PCs traditionally have, banning a VPN from the Microsoft store doesn't prevent you from installing one directly from the developer etc.

And getting this to be possible could be done by any sufficiently large market. If a sufficiently large market e.g. bans attestation and enforces antitrust, it allows an open platform to develop in that country by starting with compatibility with the apps of existing platforms, and then that platform can expand into other markets. Or you can get an iPhone there that you can install a VPN on and Apple can't prevent it, and then those iPhones can be exported into authoritarian countries.

And if you want a financial incentive for this, how about every country outside the US not wanting their local businesses paying the 30% tax to a foreign monopolist?

> As far as I know the only thing that influences change is money.

You are incorrect. The NIMBY movement has been extraordinarily successful despite severe opposition from moneyed interests. Bloomberg lost embarrassingly despite setting records for campaign spending. There are countless similar examples.

They control the last mile of the Internet so it would require satellite networking run by another country to cut them out like this.

Another thing that influences change reliably is a good old (threat of) violence.

This is bad but it's no reason to adapt a defeatist attitude.

What is UA?

The EU didn't bring us cookie banners, tech companies performing malicious compliance with the EU mandates did