Age checks could turn internet into an ID checkpoint and would kill anonymity, Proton CEO says
1mon 20d ago by mander.xyz/u/Deep in technology from proton.me
Online threats to children are real, but the headlong pursuit of age verification that we’re seeing around the world is unacceptable in its approach and far too broad in scope — and we simply can’t afford to get this wrong.
To be clear, parents’ concerns are valid and sincere. Few people would argue that kids should have unfettered access to adult material, to self-harm how-tos, to social media platforms that manipulate them and expose them to abuse.
But it’s the very depth of those worries that is being cynically exploited. Age verification as is currently being proposed in country after country would mean the death of anonymity online.
And we know exactly who stands to gain: The same tech giants who built the privacy nightmare that the internet is today.
He has a vested interest in saying that, but he's right, and it would be awful
It's interesting what people expect of Proton Mail. I've used it for a long time but for only one reason really: their revenue stream is my subscription and not ads. I've never even given a second thought to all their encryption claims. Even with Proton Mail if I ever wanted to send a "secret" email I'd wrap the content in my own personal keys.
With respect to IP addresses of email logins, I'm surprised they ever claimed they don't have logs. You've always been able to review the IP of a login through the web UI as far as I remember. Was the idea that that was also supposed to be encrypted?
Personally I'm OK with them complying with court orders, but I understand that "the definition of criminal is state defined" and that poses serious issues. It kinda seems like if you want to do something that could be considered criminal at some point in your life by your country you should consider something other than a 3rd party email provider for those messages. Signal would be a step up in that regard if you still wanted to use a third party.
It's interesting what people expect of Proton Mail.
It's quite mundane actually: people expect what they advertise on their front page.
Their advertising is a stretch at the best of times, and (as seen on my first link) so terrible that it needs to be removed at other times.
Lol, ok, fair.
I guess I see a lot of wiggle room in the marketing speak of their page and I haven't actually "looked in to" Proton Mail's claims in a loooong time. So I guess what I really wanted to say is that it's interesting to me that people take that marketing at face value if they're actually trying to maintain secrecy. I've always just taken it as a given that third party services aren't particularly good at that, especially as they grow in complexity like Proton has. Signal has been easier for me to believe because of the singular focus and the reputation of the founder in the crypto community; although I guess he's long gone.
They have to comply with court orders. You can't run a business and ignore the government and legal system; they will throw the book at you.
Don't use proton to do anything that could be considered a crime in the EU.
This sounds like something you should take up with Proton's marketing: "Outside of US and EU jurisdiction"
Which is both correct, but makes them still subject to swiss law, and swiss law enforcement will comply with foreign requests - although it took some serious misrepresenting by the French by citing terrorism laws to get the swiss courts to sign the warrant, forcing proton to log the next IP the user used to log in. Had the user used protons own VPN or TOR to login, the resulting data would have been useless.
If Proton users try to sign up with Tor, they are asked for an email address, which Proton stores and turns over to law enforcement. Your complaint is legitimate, but you are speaking to the choir here, they need to know. At bare minimum, so they don't get in legal trouble for misrepresentation (although I hope people here presume they have a higher ethical standard than legality)
I mean, I've got boxes full of physical books and self hosted movies and Tv. At that point, I'll just stop using the internet. I need to go outside more anyway.
Finally all my friends that been giving me shit about having a dvd collection can eat shit.
I was finally ready to clean out my closet and get rid of all my old movies and games. But now...
I've got a mean collection myself. I have saved every cassette, record , DVD , VHS , book , magazine ( some bit the dust but anything with good info stayed) , zine and CD I've ever baught since I was a young teen ( and their many versions of various players for the many formats)
I've had more than a few people appear angry that I have kept all these "things" in my life. Blows my mind that they never saw this coming. ...I guess I can rent my dad's and books
I put my 500+ collection of DVDs into several of those old CD storage sleeves cases you used to see back in the 90s. They are safe and sound, ready for when things go too far.
Mine are ready to go at a moment notice 🙌
Your TV is missing
This was fun to zoom in on and check the titles. Also, good to see an All Elite fan in the wild.
I’ve been watching wrestling since the late 80s and I enjoy all the promotions. I stopped watching regularly around 2002ish. I came back when AEW debuted. I tried watching WWE but it just lost its spark for me. I keep up with news and clips but I don’t watch the weekly programming.
Any standout movies?
Cube 2 is an obscure gem for me. I really like ‘where are we and how did we get here?’ horror movies. Not sure if you saw Cube 3 but it was… not aa good, lmao.
I have only seen the first one, but I did hear Cube Zero was the weakest of the lot.
Disc rot is still a thing. Warner Bros DVDs produced between 2005 and 2009 are especially affected.
Yeah. You probably want to rip them asap. But that would be quite a PITA with that many DVDs
Did not know that and will now be ripping as many as I can.
The next step will be to make more essential services online only, so people have to use the internet.
My mother in law got me essentially the bible of DIY gardens for the Flemish region. I learned that there are differences just in tool styles an hour drive away from eachother already.
I could read that for a years and still learn things!
Exactly, well go a step back, communities will thrive.
Harder to organize protests though. Like if they implement a new renter’s/homeowner tax, or sales tax, or whatever, that means we’d have to sell our books to make ends meet. And then make “digitally inciting” protests illegal too maybe so you don’t feel comfortable even discussing it on your devices. (Not that our opsec today is sufficient, wager it’s not for like 95+% of us, but this feels yet worse)
Scary stuff
Make social media unprofitable instead of this.
Basically don't allow ads for kids and only show social media posts from their friends in chronological order instead of any fancy algorithm. Also make them liable for showing scams to minors. That kills most profit.
Kill it from the other direction. Make it illegal to algorithmically adjust a users experience to prioritize interaction regardless of whether that's positive or negative. Ultimately that's the problem with places like Facebook, they weigh an angry rant the same as a positive one, higher even in a lot of cases. Things that make people angry generate a lot more interaction than positive things so it drowns people in hate and fear. If you treat any interaction as a positive signal things just devolve.
Great, now how do you tell who's an adult?
They'll just implement age verification anyway.
Or nobody verifies their age because it's a hassle, social networks become unprofitable and die.
Yeah right lol
People are already providing ID en masse for registration.
My parents have trouble typing on their password. Try having them do anything more complex and they'll give up.
Facebook asks for ID nowadays, so does YouTube for adult content I believe. It's been happening for years. It's also easier than typing a password if you're on mobile.
It'll be normalised whether or not there's laws requiring it :/
i barely used commercial social media (bsky excepted), but when australia brought in the the ID thing, I just didn't bother going back. I used bsky a lot prior to the social media ban, but last time i logged in, it asked me for ID. I thought "fuck giving my ID to some random fucking company. My GOVT ID!"
This would be awesome. I would buy myself a fake ID again! This time the other direction.
Clearly this man is a genius.
Anyone who could not see that Trump was going to extort business for his own personal gain was clueless to Trump and his cabinet of blackmailers.
Anyone of color giving support to White Nationalists is fucking insane and shows a complete lack of understanding of current US politics.
Yeah, but the vast majority are so far beyond clueless they voted for him, again.
The nightmare trap of the Two Party System is that you can look at one party cozying up to Big Tech (Obama in 2009) and conclude the other party must be reflexively in opposition.
Trump was fully surrounded by Thiel goons before he'd even left office in '21. And the relationship only got tighter with his Elon Musk Bromance. But hey, if you'd just elected Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney Tim Walz to the White House, I'm sure nobody would be talking about how much of their cabinet was stuffed with Silicon Valley cutouts.
It's not like a cartel of trillionaires can buy up both parties at once, right?
Sort of, but my point is he made a specific point of praising a demented rapist and lauding the pedophile party as heroes. Silicon Valley cutouts that support Democrats commit the unforgivable sins of praising diversity or working to solve climate problems. They’re not surveilling hospitals for ICE. This guy loves trump because he believes trump has any opinion or knowledge of tech monopolies.
Tone deaf doesn’t cover it. If he sold shoes, it’d be one thing. But he jumped head first into the cesspit for no reason other than he believed it.
And so, even though our opinions on age verification coincidentally align, he can fuck right off.
he made a specific point of praising a demented rapist and lauding the pedophile party as heroes
He made a point of praising a President's pick for the Antitrust Division of the DOJ. He didn't praise Trump and he certainly didn't praise pedophilia.
Slater's tenure at DOJ was short-lived and unremarkable. So feel free to mock Yen on those grounds. But this has dick all to do with Epstein. It has nothing to do with the bloated ICE budget (which received bipartisan approval) or the assorts nightmarish cabinet appointments, many of which enjoyed supermajority support in the Senate (Rub'em All Out Rubio was appointed unanimously ffs).
he jumped head first into the cesspit for no reason other than he believed it.
He's a Tech Goon and Trump had a ton of Tech Goons on his team. These people aren't partisan, they're corporate lemmings. By 2028, I'm sure Yen will be lining up to brown nose the incoming Dem administration. By 2032, he'll be back on Team R, shocked at how the party that did everything Tech wanted has betrayed his customers again. Oh, and incidentally, insisting that the only way to protect yourself from Mean Old Big Government is by upping your Proton License to Double Super Secure.
And so, even though our opinions on age verification coincidentally align, he can fuck right off.
He's endorsing the poison so he can sell the antidote.
He didn't praise Trump and he certainly didn't praise pedophilia.
Disagree. “Great job Mr. president!” is praising trump, and praising trump is praising pedophile protectors. It’s noteven a big leap, or unconfirmed rumors. We have multiple witness accounts to his actions and nothing has been done - legally- following the initial release of many documents.
It has nothing to do with the bloated ICE budget (which received bipartisan approval) or the assorts nightmarish cabinet appointments, many of which enjoyed supermajority support in the Senate
Also disagree. Eighth-graders know what trump is about. Andy Yen knows what trump is about. Corruption, fascism, incompetence. Yeah let’s send a hoo-rah tweet to my (whatever # followers)
(Rub'em All Out Rubio was appointed unanimously ffs).
Yeah that’s disgusting. Although I assumed he was just stupid and corrupt, not flat out evil as has revealed himself to be.
These people aren't partisan, they're corporate lemmings.
He’s both. There’s no non-partisan support of trump, he’s made sure of it.
By 2028, I'm sure Yen will be lining up to brown nose the incoming Dem administration. By 2032, he'll be back on Team R, shocked at how the party that did everything Tech wanted has betrayed his customers again.
Yeah, that’s probably right, but all the reason I’m kicking him to the curb now.
Yeah, this was inexcusable. Trump's been cozying up to the tech billionaires for years.
Crazy I was screamed at on Reddit for pointing out this guys hypocrisy. Glad I left his miserable platform.
Proton Mail Says It’s “Politically Neutral” While Praising Republican Party
lol
Anyone think that's not the point?
"Age Verification" is just them attaching "THINK OF THE CHILDREN" to their push to have every single bit of information about every person on the planet.
All the more ironic when you realise that some of the big businessmen and lobbyists pushing for mandatory age verification checks are in the Epstein Files. Basically the kind of people who you don't want to be thinking of the children...
Social media functions as a kind of gatekeeper for public interactions, not unlike credit scores, driver's licenses, and college degrees. The absence of a presence on social media is not only socially debilitating (you're cut out of the information stream for local events and public amenities) but a red-flag for college recruiters and employers. It's much like how not using a credit card regularly in your teens/20s impacts your ability to access low-interest lending in your 30s/40s. Or not having a driver's license interferes with your right to vote.
State officials have been searching for a kind of uniform, iron-clad, easily verifiable public ID for ages. Linking your online presence (a thing that you need for a myriad of daily tasks) to your ID becomes a pathway to this goal. Universal, non-transferable digital ID becomes a wicked two-edged sword as it both exhaustively tracks the "documented" individuals and neatly severs the "undocumented" from society.
Na bro social media is nothing like credit score. You're totally fine not having facebook, all these municipalities have websites, you don't need social media for anything.
And even credit scores, you just want it for like two years before buying a home, it's no problem at all especially in contrast to the challenge of actually saving up enough money to buy a home.
State officials have been searching for a kind of uniform, iron-clad, easily verifiable public ID for ages
What are you talking about? People have been voting, paying taxes, applying for driver's licenses, for ages online, they all have usernames and passwords with uploaded proof of ID for their online government transactions.
Na bro social media is nothing like credit score.
You might want to talk to folks in recruiting or HR. Everyone checks your social media history when they're evaluating you.
Exactly, i dont have them so they can't. It can only hurt you if you have embarassing stuff.
i dont have them so they can’t
"Please provide any social media as part of your application"
"Haha. Well, guess what, dipshits. I don't have any. Checkmate!"
Sound of resume hitting the bottom of the trash can
Well idk somehow ive stayed employed my whole adult life, including one fortune 500 company so i guess im really lucky
Hey, it's the Internet. You can aim higher.
Say you're the CEO next time.
Probably couldn't be a ceo without social media lol you have a point there
Man, parents not wanting anything to do with their kids' upbringing will believe anything, huh. They'd rather offload any and all responsibilities to automation than spend one minute teaching kids how to protect themselves.
Then again, they probably don't know, either.
I think you’re correct in both aspects for sure. Parents are certainly less involved, for the most part, in informing their kids of literally anything. It is much easier to ‘offload any and all responsibilities’ as you put it. iPad kids are a good example of this. Handing a 2yr old a video device and walking away is not parenting. This is an issue with many many topics from internet safety, to general life things, to talks about their bodies. Parents do not want to parent.
I’d also agree, largely, the parents just don’t know, or care. Privacy is, unfortunately, a niche thing to know and care about.
I see this as more like the patriot act- gover ent and big tech are pushing to elevate concerns of "the children's safety" to violate our privacy and sell data. Same way the patriot act is so you can "keep all the evil bad man terrorists" at bay but really it's an excuse to violate our rights "legally" in the name of "safety".
I have siblings like that. Literally never seen them parent. I've changed more of their kids' diapers than I have seen them do, and I have no kids. It's kind of irritating in an understatement kind of way. My poor niblings
But look at you, being the village, awesome job, stepping in and helping them grow up to be rounded little people. I have 7 niblings, and they're all a mix of neurodivergence, I've been gathering them all and taking them to events and teaching them, playing with them, since day dot. Even though I have kids of my own. It's so hugely necessary to be in the kids in your life, lives, like that. You can't parent from an empty cup, and the ability to refill that cup has been removed from us. You taking that time, also gives time for the parents to recharge. You're amazing, keep it up!
It seems like a pretty common thing for people to expect that the luxuries of modern technology include not having to do anything you don't want to, including being present for your own life.
People make self-destructive choices every day. (insert "always have been" 🌏🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀)
There's two ways to view what you just said there. Parents aren't parenting, but you can't speak for someone elses emotions about it. And it's more constructive to a problem (rather than adding to it) to ask why, to figure out what's happening, with compassion, so as to help it be repaired.
Here's another example, drug addicts, quite often you will hear people judging and shaming their behaviours, without asking why, or looking at their choices with compassion and an eye to repair the problems for them. Most often, very very abused children, grow up to self medicate their internal agony, caused by what they've lived through. You wouldn't then choose locking them up in jail to help repair.
You're talking about kids, maybe some of them go on to be these same drug addicts.
I would suggest this whole problem with the unsupervised parenting / disconnected parenting is capitalism. And it's by design.
People have kids (mostly) because they want them, they love them. I would argue very few would want to be parenting poorly. So why are they?
Could it be that there's no opportunity to stay home and raise kids. Raising kids, is work, and it is hard work, has been so hugely devalued, intentionally, so as to be able to remove it as needing space in people's lives. Who thinks it's admirable to stay home and raise kids? That is an opinion that has been societally planted, to serve the bourgeois.
Actual paid work, who can live without working? Multiple jobs, even. That's also by design.
Capitalism also designed this system we are all currently using, of a family in a singular home. It wasn't like that, previously. So no village, no desperately needed support for raising kids.
Jobs burn you out, we aren't designed to live like this, but there's little to no flexibility, and parenting burns you out, and theres little to no support for that, now. Who has energy left after that, to also find all the ways in which tech is attacking this week.
I would argue, partially, the solve for poor parenting, would be to start rolling out some guillotines.
But also, raising a kid is supposed to be the job of a village, I'm sure you've heard that. To be a good parent, you need a full tank, but all the avenues for refilling your tank have been removed.
We should all care about fixing this, it is our next generation. I don't believe hating on the singular parents trapped in this hellhole, is the answer.
Can we make a new internet?
Yes, have a look at reticulum. No centralized addressing authority. No centralized domain naming system. Everything is globally routeable. It also just got support for transferring HTTP with RServer and MeshBrowser.
I always figured we would go to tor when this day came. But I keep seeing people mention all of these alternatives I have not heard of. Is this reticulum better?
Its decent....but VERY hard to set up. At least at the moment.
Ive played around and contributed a tiny bit over the last couple of years. You basically set it up piecemeal and then you have an actual decentralized server/client setup on a number of devices. Phones, lora, etc.... can all work with it.
Ive sent myself some pictures/voice/internet packets via two heltek v3 at one point using nothing but the system and a laptop not connected to the internet. It does what is says on the tin.
But it took quite a bit of time and effort to get there. And while it was neat, no one else is really using it and things go down all the time. So I moved on to "easier" projects like meshtastic/core.
Tor/onion is MUCH easier than using reticulum but also is dependent on quite a number of internet nodes all being up and doing their thing. reticulum can run on the equivalent of 1W (or less) helteks.
Meshtastic sounds cool. Can one use it to host webpages like the WWW or Tor?
Tor is if you can still access the Internet in general. Reticulum is a network that can exist outside the Internet physically, with long-range radio waves. Think Bluetooth, but the waves travel farther, and carry much less information.
How hard would it be with a bored cop or activist with a $100 scanner off Amazon to find the nodes for a local Reticulum network and knock them down, or identify the people hosting them?
Moderate. Reticulum can work over almost any medium. Ethernet, wifi, LoRa, HF, serial, paper qr codes, etc. If I remember correctly, real-time communication only requires a medium capable of doing 5 bits per second.
What is meshbrowser? Ive done work with reticulum but never heard of MeshBrowser?
I only heard about it a couple of weeks ago. It's a chromium-based browser that will do regular HTTP over TCP but will also do HTTP over reticulum and you just enter in like http://reticulum_destination_hereand it loads the web page. To host HTTP sites you need Rserver which is its companion.
Yeah, we ( you guys ) should fork the internet.
There's Meshtastic and the like ( I think ) but then again what we'll build there? Another fediverse ? I don't see the difference with what I have now.
Isn’t there already an au instance that is somewhat complying with age verification by asking security questions?
If true, I'm not aware. Feels bad man.
One of the Aussie communities AFAIK. Also here, outside of the fediverse, all mainstream porn sites require age verification. lol no thanks I'll just VPN somewhere sane, wow problem solved.
There's i2p and freenet as far as I am aware
How long before we get a Meshtastic style, decentralized internet?
What can I, as a regular guy, do to help make this happen?
I know you mean a Meshtastic style internet in general. But this is too fascinating to not share. Meshtastic is amazing:
Meshcore has worked far better in my exp although there's been some controversy recently
I have to admit I am a fan from afar, I just enjoy keeping up with new devices and so on.
But I do love drama, so I'll go check that out now!
Yeah some guy named Andy used the brand to advertise ai made software
Meshtastic does seem very cool
While Meshtastic is great, I believe Reticulum has a more suitable approach for this: https://reticulum.network/
I definitely agree. Meshtastic has its uses but being a wide area network replacement is not one of them. Reticulum seems to be the mesh we all want and the technology is here, we just need to organize to make it happen.
Wifi HaLow is a bit closer to capable of early 00s internet speeds while reaching 1km, meshtastic and mescore reach 100x further and are good enough for text but not really capable of any media.
More people need to adopt both, here's hoping.
That's quite obviously the end goal here.
This whole conversation is such a false dichotomy. The laws can absolutely be written such that companies are required to suspend service to any suspected child without requiring ID to use the service.
But just like pollution and everything else we've let them push the buck to us.
The problem is that politicians don't want to legislate enforcement/oversight entities as those would piss off their owners.
Democracies need to replace their lame duck politicians with ones that aren't bought and owned by the shareholder class who also own the social media corporations.
The laws can absolutely be written such that companies are required to suspend service to any suspected child without requiring ID to use the service.
The laws shouldn't focus on "harming children" so much, but on "harming humans".
The big tech companies should be held responsible for the actual damage they are inflicting upon society, and their methods to artificially inflate "engagement" (or whatever the hell they call it) should be held to scrutiny. Whether or not the damage is inflicted upon an underage person or an adult, is merely a distraction.
Those assholes would love it if we all had to identify ourselves and prove our age, if it means they get to keep inflicting their shit upon us.
I agree but like that's a much bigger discussion.
I think there is an immediate opportunity to mitigate harm in the long term that doesn't require us finding a perfect solution to corporate-greed(capitalism).
Similar to how prohibiting tobacco sales to minors has drastically reduced the number of smokers. Ask anyone over 70 when they started smoking. Almost all of them started when they were young teenagers.
"Could" is a funny way of saying "are obviously intended to". Stop playing around, call it out directly. Points where you must have your ID checked are, in fact, ID checkpoints.
It bothers me that we know that this bullshit has nothing to do with the kids and is probably being lobbied by the genocide gang and AI companies, even more that it has become obvious that the only value AI has is mass monitoring, but nobody abords the real issue. We are playing their book.
99.9% navigate the system and grow up perfectly fine, or fine enough. We shouldn't have to completely surrender our anonymity for the tiny percentage that went wrong.
Before the Internet, some people got weird, and in the Internet era, some people are going to go weird. Age verification isn't going to change that.
This isn't about the kids. We all know it.
Kids don't have unfettered access if they are supervised, lol. And age gating will fail regardless. So it's a failure followed by another failure, sigh.
Indeed, unfettered in a literal sense cannot happen even with the most minimum supervision, but regardless of the threshold in parenting (I am not going to pardon parents responsibility on this, but good luck asserting 100% supervision), circumventions will always take place, so with more reason it cannot be used the "kids safety" argument to bring Orwellian levels to everybody's lifes
just out of curiosity, what do you consider minimum supervision to be?
The theoretical minimum would be sharing any instant of their lives, during which they could not sustain an unfettered access to anything, not like I would consider it a decent minimum in any case (I was revolving around the "unfettered access" concept of the previous comment), but I cannot imagine how it would exists any threshold of supervision above which you can exclude any unfettered access at any given moment of their existence, risk of harmful exposition never drops to zero, so argue an Orwellian measure for the indiscriminate shake of their safety has no sense to me...
Maybe Kaczynski had a point by running off to the woods and living in a cabin.
Let's just go all the way back to Walden pond.
No that's too far I like espresso. How about the coffee shop half a block from Walden?
"It's for the KIDS, you COMMIE!"
It's time we stop accepting that rationalization as valid.
Theres a big wide internet beyond apps and social media.
I miss stumbleupon :(
it was GREAT for new websites to discover.
that space is already pretty much dead, at least here in germany. If you create your own website, you need to have a valid legal notice. if you set up a web forum, you're liable for everything that gets posted there.
This is basically FUD. Pick a different jurisdiction if your own country are assholes. Its very easy to participate in the small corners of the internet. Just don't expect to commercialize it and its easy.
this is not fud. as long as the website is accessible in germany and is not purely private (content only accessible by friends and family), a valid legal notice is required. fines can be up to 50k €.
Stating the obvious.
META was a major lobbyist for all of the state bills we’ve seen so far. There’s probably more. Or META is taking the lead because most hate them already, which provides a nice distraction from anyone else involved.
Tech and data centers want our data. What better way for a complete data set is there? I’m sure Palantir is in there somewhere.
If this becomes widespread, I just won't use any websites that require it. There will always be ways around it or alternatives for people opposed to losing their privacy. There already are at least 2 Internets. There's reddit and Facebook and Twitter and all the corporate news sites, and then there's Lemmy and archive.org and the dark web and dev pages and independent websites and piracy. I find I rarely care about the former anyway. It'll just mean being blocked off from all the corporate slop, which may be a blessing in disguise.
I am readying myselft for the end of internet since years. I guess we are at the end of the dead internet theory where they have to ID humans to be able to differentiate them from bots and be able yo target them more specifically.
Lol, is that why? Advertising dollars.
It's tough for millennials, who saw the potential and the promise of the Internet.
It's important to note the Arab Spring and the One Piece (whatever we'll name it).
Even now the remnants of the forth estate, are literally vlogging news on tube sites and substack.
But yeah, Internet is ever inching forward to becoming TV or radio. Centralized information is power.
I maintain that we lost the Internet when we accepted asynchronous data connection.
This moron is also a MAGA appologist and enabler. I left Proton for other alternatives. They want to claim they are "politically nuetral" well if you really were you wouldnt be commenting at all on politics would you?
I must have missed a bunch. I only recall him saying he liked trumps pick for one role.
And afaik that was it. It has been blown out of proportion many times since by people forming opinions based on headlines. If there was anythung else I'd like to know too though
Oh no, there was much more.
Proton’s official Reddit account posted "Here is our official response," stating “Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.”
Thanks for sharing, I don't think this is much more. Corporate Dems are an issue and I wish I was in the timeline where Bernie became president. Saying Republicans are better (in 2025) is either extremely naive or insane. Either way, it does not give me the faith I would like to stay with Proton long term. Posting official stuff, pulling it back, now claiming neutrality... confidence is eroded enough.
I have the Duo plan until mid next year and see it as my inbetween from iCloud to self hosting most of my services. Currently trialing Mullvad for the VPN and it can keep up with Proton easily.
The biggest difference isn't what was said (like you mention, it's basically the same thing), it's who was saying it (the company, not just their chief) and how it was said (officially, and then denied)
Proton VPN and Mullvad will likely have different use cases.
How so? They have differences under the hood, but so far I've used them the same way I would any VPN
If you would have read past that part in the same post you could have read that he also thinks republicans are sticking up for the little guy and the democrats are in bed with big tech. After that he also never said anything to the contrary. I also use his product and I wish he were a better guy too, but he said what he said and stuck with it.
So yes, you are either misinformed by not reading past the first few words of his post or disingenuous by purposely leaving out the rest.
Only idiots want politically neutral, anyways. I want clear biases for the people open and free forms of communication. That’s HIGHLY political.
Politically neutral supports fascism, always.
Dark web 2.0, here we come!
“Turn into” ?
Moreso. It can always get worse, and indeed everything is.
As of right now it is optional.
People forget that the current antitrust actions against Big Tech were started under the first Trump admin
His earlier words did not age well
That's the goal.
The positive thing about age checks is the technology that will come out to by pass the system.
I'm working on ways it right now. Aliexpress wants me to do a face check for some items. I've been a customer long enough to have been born and become a legal adult as a customer!
They don't want my face for verification. It's an excuse to feed their AI, which is already scary good at voice.
I'm only surprised they've taken this long to get anonymity removed from the internet. Using kids as the lever isn't surprising either.
Now that the dead internet theory is spreading company start to wonder if the stats reported by advertising company are not 90% bots.
Next up, bots get IDs
Time for a different internet then.
Another one. Or two.
well to be pedantic, this really affects the web, which runs in the application layer of the internet. since i am sure they arent going to require refrigerators to have id, the intetnet should remain open. we will just communicate over different protocols
Time to become a refigerator i guess
love your optimism
Could? Will.
I other words, a pipe dream for the likes of weird freaks like Yarvin and Thiel and Musk and Zuck and Bezos and Ellison...
I'd be ok with age verification if it can be done in an anonyomous way.
Nym's coconut credentials could do this.
https://constructiveproof.com/posts/2020-03-24-nym-credentials-overview/
Of course the people pushing for this won't try to do it that way because protecting the children isn't really their motive. Surveillance is and something like coconut creds would render that moot.
I’d be ok with age verification if it can be done in an anonyomous way
People lost their shit over a local API with an easily fake-able age bracket.
The problem with hyperventilating over everything, is that there is no benefit to even trying to write reasonable laws as they get painted dishonestly anyway.
Is there anything stopping me from uploading an ID for Shrek or something? I foresee an explosion of popularity of fake IDs.
Which is WHY I SUPPORT it!
-Proton CEO who Endorses the Politicians MAKING this a Reality!
https://proton.me/blog/anonymity-vs-privacy
These guys are such clowns. They stop just short of saying anonymity is bad by saying things like you can't use your logging if you anonymously log in (duh) and bizarrely you may be more secure without it.
"A good example of this is Proton Mail‘s optional authentication logs feature. Enabling this prevents you from logging into your account anonymously, but it improves your security by allowing you to detect suspicious logins (for example, a login from another country).
For most people, privacy is a great deal more important than anonymity'
They won't provide it with their own service and instead push it onto the user. For instance, most recently they have been known to log credit card data. A company really concerned with security would not store this data on their own servers and there are practical ways to accomplish this.
This company makes its money on security theatre. I swear they are a honeypot for criminals actors and they know it hence why they downplay anonymity.
Shocking news! The sky is blue
It's been fun lads. Let's make agreements for where we will touch grass together when this happens. Follow-up events will be decided on location
I think these laws are not for we'll just get around it or not use services that require it, for now at least.
its to cut off things like organization, information to keep people ignorant. they only dream of able to turn off internet like iran does to keep people ignorant.
I'd argue that most things that are currently in the crosshairs for exclusion under age verification are also harmful to at least a third of the adult population and to society in general.
Actually maybe that's just for profit algorithm based social media and / or mass scale surveillance and personal information gathering and advertising.
The point being, if you're going to make a case for something being harmful to kids, you need to also make a case for it's being OK for adults or maybe it just needs banning outright for the good of society, see also smoking. Personally I'm in favor of leaving this in the hands of the individual and parents, and perhaps making easy tools for less technically adept parents to use.
TLDR: If Facebook is bad for kids, why isn't it bad for adults?
No shit
Fuck proton and especially fuck the proton CEO.
Damn, I think my proton vpn is stopping me from commenting on here
"invest in crypto" Also Proton. Fuck Proton.
Fuck the CEO, perhaps. But it feels like letting perfection be the enemy of good to dismiss all of Proton, which at the end of the day is still serving its users well.
"Veah ahh yo pay puz?"
thanks democrats
Nobody has better solutions to fight against botnets and targeted misinformation. Like, these are big deals that every Nation needs account for some way some how. A non-anonymous internet for the masses, and anonymous internet for those who know how to get around it should be the standard.
To boil it down further - this is a individual vs collectivism. YOU want privacy and anonymity because, being on lemmy, you have a higher chance of being more technically literate and inclined. The vast majority are not so inclined and are at a disadvantage.
Aaaaand they got you
Did they or is that just my collective opinion after growing up with the internet and seeing what it's turned into?
Do you not think botnets exist or do you not think those botnets pose as citizens?
Maybe you don't think that the online narratives from social media (Reddit, Facebook, X, Mastadoon, whatever) are driven by botnets boosting signals? Maybe you think online discussion happens organically?
Do you think the average person can distinguish between an AI image and a real image? Photoshop? Do you think the average person would realize that they're discussing a topic with an LLM? How about a foreign agent?
I don't know, maybe you don't think that governments are using this against one-another's citizens to shake up democracy and promote distrust in their institutions?
I think that both (ours and rival) governments and wealthy individuals (or cabals) use online discourse to drive narratives and through that action (or inaction). I think that by doing nothing we leave the majority of the uneducated at the mercy of those devices. Adding another layer of security makes sense to filter these out.
Personally, I'd much rather have a National Firewall so that there's the Nations Intranet and then the World Wide Web Internet, but if we have to have something and nobody is fighting for anything better, nobody is finding solutions to these social problems we've created, then this'll have to do. At least a Firewall can be gotten around if you know how - it's mostly for the general populace. Incoming traffic could be marked and monitored separately.
This isn't just an issue that's affecting the U.S. - every Nation has to find a solution to this problem. We either have to combat it with better, alternative solutions, or we have to accept it as a solution to an evergrowing problem.
I don't know why you think an online ID will stop botting, people get viruses and hacked all the time. All this does is make people's data more valuable, and create a valuable repository of people's personal information. Not to mention the centralization of user data, which will no doubt be used to monitor average people. Both by governments looking for dissenters, and by advertisers, who will use that data to squeeze every last cent out of you via Surveillance pricing.
What do you think will happen when the nations collective web browsing information inevitably gets leaked and anyone can look up anyone's name, see their license and what they've watched on YouTube or elsewhere? It's creepy tech, not protection.
The solution to these 'social problems' is funding education. But that doesn't work quickly, costs money, and various groups of people in power oppose widespread critical thinking. Making sure people aren't exhausted because they can't afford anything and are always working would help too, but it's not 'sexy' to uplift people's standard of living I guess
All this does is make people’s data more valuable, and create a valuable repository of people’s personal information.
This happens regardless, there's no way around the security problem of needing to verify someone's identify. On a National level, on a State level, on a Country level. We have to, as a society, verify someones identity for security purposes - there's no getting around that. Decentralization doesn't solve the security problem here.
Both by governments looking for dissenters
They can already do this.
by advertisers, who will use that data to squeeze every last cent out of you via Surveillance pricing.
This is a separate issue, and they're already doing this. We already know, as a lemmy users, we need better laws for data protection and tech in general (online and physical).
What do you think will happen when the nations collective web browsing information inevitably gets leaked and anyone can look up anyone’s name, see their license and what they’ve watched on YouTube or elsewhere? It’s creepy tech, not protection.
This is a separate issue, and they're already doing this. Everything you purchase is available online through data brokers. People are connected to a lot of stuff, and all that data is amassed through brokers. What do you think predictive models were made for?
The solution to these ‘social problems’ is funding education.
You're 100% right, but Education is a long-term solution already facing an uphill battle. If we were more progressive as a society, then we would have insulated our National Security 10+ years ago, but we're not, and technology moves fast.
But that doesn’t work quickly, costs money, and various groups of people in power oppose widespread critical thinking. Making sure people aren’t exhausted because they can’t afford anything and are always working would help too, but it’s not ‘sexy’ to uplift people’s standard of living I guess
No rebuttals on the rest, 100% correct.
The number of uneducated, the absolutely absurd amount of data that is already available, and the growing predictive model tech are all reasons why each Nation needs to figure out their tech security, some way, some how - the sooner the better. OS level security is one of the better options. National Firewall, like China, would be the next best bet.
Surely it's the death of anonymity for those who want to access stuff which would be age restricted in any other scenario (like a real shop). The rest of the population (most?) don't care to access that stuff & don't want it and can carry on being anonymous.
And yes that gives the likes of Facebook et al a problem because they'll have to categorise their content, but the whole point of this current fad for governments to legislate to restrict stuff is that the big tech companies could have (made efforts to) fix it but chose not to because it's (waves hands and wails) hard.
kids dont get unrestricted access unless the parent is too lazy and not putting limiations on thier devices. ive seen them give a toddler under 5 a PHONE TO play with.
When done correctly, and someone's ID remains anonymous from the general public if they wish so, then I'd also be fine with that. Way too many trolls and other forms of bad actors on the Web who intentionally or unintentionally use ad hominems or other toxic communication, it's so hopelessly divisive and draining.
I recently saw a documentary about looksmaxxing. The forums these kids peruse echo the deepest pits of hell; insisting on suicide and all the forms of psychological bullying one cannot even imagine.
Whether it's the best solution I don't know, it's probably not. But from my point of view, taking away the anonymity from the authorities would significantly lower the amount of depravity on the Web. The crux in this whole matter is of course that the authorities are virtuous, fair, just. If they are not, which all too often is the case, then removing anonymity can be an equally dangerous thing as well.
Obviously everything boils down to education, which needs a complete overhaul. But that's something that will take decades if not a century to turn humanity into a predominantly virtuous species.
⚜︎ https://www.arscyni.cc/:modernity ∝ nature.
this would be the ideal, but the problem is that we dont have governments that can be trusted to not abuse the system. It will turn into tool of control and surveillance even if it starts well.
Before this can even be considered, we need ways to depose shitty politicans and governments without having to destroy everything in the process. Just "voting the good guys in" does not work and has never worked.
I'm fine with that.
Who exactly do you mean by "I"? Preferably with an exact address, just so we know you're serious about it.
Not being anonymous is not equivalent to broadcasting your personal information to everyone. Maybe that's why people are so confused here. They think that they will have to post their addresses and phone numbers online?
That's the best part, companies do that for you
Those are two different things. Being identifiable online is not the same as giving some company your personal information. People give companies their info all the time without online age verification. Age verification done the right way does not require providing any personal info. I 100% oppose forcing people to share personal data with private companies. This is not what we're talking about here.
Age verification done the right way does not require providing any personal info. I 100% oppose forcing people to share personal data with private companies. This is not what we’re talking about here.
Handing your government ID and other personal data to private companies is exactly how current proposals for online age verification work. It could be done without this, but that's not what governments and corporations are pushing for, because the goal is easier surveillance. Take a look at some of the problems with Persona, for example:
Not in my country. Spain and EU are proposing different system. I'm not talking about your country and your laws. I'm talking about mine.
Those are two different things. Being identifiable online is not the same as giving some company your personal information.
I 100% oppose forcing people to share personal data with private companies. This is not what we're talking about here.
This is, in fact, exactly what we're talking about here. The assumption that de-anonymization has some foolproof implementation that only does a single identifying thing (like a limited signal that only says someone is "old enough") is missing a lot of context. Even Von der Leyen's "privacy respecting" age verification app has been shown to have major flaws in that regard. The assumption that it will simply end there also contradicts the evidence.
Privacy is a right of fundamental importance to virtually all notions of liberty. Like it or not, data rights are human rights. A society without privacy becomes a society without freedom. The discussions around abolishing privacy are actually always discussions about other problems which are better served by addressing them directly and honestly rather than promoting the idea that the answer is sacrificing essential rights. Our best approach is to address these ills with an honest assessment of their actual, specific causes (like social media algorithms, lack of accountability, and the many reckless, harmful and exploitative practices which have become industry standards, etc) and act from there.
This is, in fact, exactly what we’re talking about here.
No, we're not. We're talking about publishing content online. That's the exact opposite of keeping things private. EU laws are clear here. Your data is protected and age verification does not overwrite those rights. We're not talking about removing e2e encryption, https, VPNs and making selfhosting illegal. We're talking about proving that things that are published (i.e. made public) on the internet are actually published by a citizen.
It's baffling that people confuse anonymity with privacy. My Signal account is tied to my phone number yet my conversation are private. You somehow think that protecting this privacy means we have to protect russian bots creating Twitter accounts and spamming the platform with anti-EU propaganda pretending to be 25 year old single mother from Warsaw.
The assumption that it will simply end there also contradicts the evidence.
And we have the slippery slope argument. Because that's the only argument people have here. "We need anonymity on social media because they will install cameras in our bedrooms next". I'm not buying that. So far EU has a very good track record when it comes to protecting its citizens from corporations. The fastest way to lose this protection is to let russia backed fascists from AfD, Vox, Kofederacja and Fidesz destabilize and take over EU. Online anonymity is not protecting us from them, it's the main tool they are using. And this is not some fantasy, we've already seen this in UK. Russia backed politicians did brexit and now UK is the most anty-privacy country in Europe. Seeing how toxic the topic of anonymity is I wonder how my russian assets are taking part in this discussion...
We're not talking about removing e2e encryption, https, VPNs and making selfhosting illegal.
While it might not be happening in your neck of the woods, there are efforts to crack down on encryption as well, in France for instance. The EU is not immune to encroachment and abuse of the individual's rights, no place is.
It's baffling that people confuse anonymity with privacy. My Signal account is tied to my phone number yet my conversation are private.
While you're correct that anonymity is not the same as privacy, encryption alone is not a viable answer. As "Signalgate" in the US demonstrated, encryption is merely an attempt to secure a channel of communication. It isn't sufficient on its own to protect anything, it isn't even guaranteed to be secure a surprising amount of the time.
Overall, you seem to have a strong sense of faith that your country and the EU as a whole will be this unshakable pillar in the face of all of everything happening all around. Even if you trust your government or the EU, you would also have to trust the numerous platforms, service providers, data brokers, and digital security apparatus to all work honestly and in conjunction toward your (and everyone else's) best interests. That's quite a lot of trust and faith to spread around.
As far as all the various fascists and other bad actors you're (rightly) concerned about, that is a good point to talk about. One thing to emphasize is that the major platforms hosting them have historically had a legal obligation to moderate their content, which they have been grossly negligent at. There is a whole discussion there, but the point is that there is a reasonable expectation that platforms do their utmost to handle these situations responsibly. Due to things like engagement metrics, this obligation often contradicts with the bottom line of the business (as brought out in the "Facebook Papers" leak) since controversial content typically elicits high engagement.
I (and others) don't believe the answer lies in individuals forfeiting rights simply because the platforms won't do what they are rightly obligated to do. Shifting the responsibility away from the platforms themselves not only makes it less likely they will improve their practices, but it makes any measures any individual or government may take to sanitize that caustic digital environment that much harder and less effective.
100% disagree.
Overall, you seem to have a strong sense of faith that your country and the EU as a whole will be this unshakable pillar in the face of all of everything happening all around. Even if you trust your government or the EU, you would also have to trust the numerous platforms, service providers, data brokers, and digital security apparatus to all work honestly and in conjunction toward your (and everyone else’s) best interests.
No, I don't have to trust the data brokers because of encryption. You're still mixing anonymity with privacy. Signal doesn't have my conversations. Even if I'm forced to verify my age on Signal they will not get any more data from me than they already have. They already have my phone number. Age verification doesn't mean I now have to trust Signal more. Same with all the other platforms. I don't use gmail, I don't use stock Android and I don't log in when browsing youtube. They will not get more data from me because of age verification. YT already required age checks for some videos. I just don't watch those. The only difference is publishing content online. You can post content on facebook, instagram and twitter anonymously now. You won't be able to. I'm not anonymous on lemmy already, I'm fine with that. I think about what I post and I think everyone should do the same.
As far as all the various fascists and other bad actors you’re (rightly) concerned about, that is a good point to talk about. One thing to emphasize is that the major platforms hosting them have historically had a legal obligation to moderate their content, which they have been grossly negligent at.
I don't want the platforms to moderate content. Censorship is bad. We constantly see stories about platform removing or demonetizing content that's completely legal but uncomfortable for the corporations. I would rather see independent justice system take care of that like they do with press. In a fair system courts can punish someone for publishing illegal content but they can't stop them from publishing it. I know it's not really possible right now (it would overload the courts) but we should start with some mix and limit content moderation over time. Anything that's legal should be permitted. People that publish illegal content should be responsible for it. Removing anonymity will make that possible. Even lemmy had issue with child pornography published here by some assholes. Removing anonymity would make hosting server easier and safer. All we would lose is toxic assholes and calls to assassinate people.
No, I don't have to trust the data brokers because of encryption.
Encryption alone actually isn't preventing as much data collection as you indicate. I would suggest looking that up.
You're also pretty confident in the specifics of your own situation, like not using gmail, etc. While I would caution you that you may not be as secure as you appear to believe, I'd say that you do demonstrate that you have some awareness that there is a problem with the nature of how data can be handled in such contexts. That's definitely a good start. But I also think it would be good to consider that even if what you're personally doing is as effective as you believe, not everyone is going to take the measures you're taking. Even if it makes you more secure, what about everyone else? How do they fit in?
100% disagree.
You seem to be shutting out a lot of the info you're being given. That's understandable, strong opinions are often difficult to see past. But I'm noticing that we're not meeting on some central facts, we're kind of having two different conversations.
There is a lot to talk about here, a lot to address in what you've said. Productive discussion often requires being able to meet on facts, however.
You seem to be shutting out a lot of the info you’re being given. That’s understandable, strong opinions are often difficult to see past. But I’m noticing that we’re not meeting on some central facts, we’re kind of having two different conversations.
I actually think we're talking about the same thing and you're trying to make good points. And I think I'm addressing what you're saying on factual level. I just disagree with you.
Even if it makes you more secure, what about everyone else? How do they fit in?
Majority of people don't care about their anonymity. They link credit cards to their google, apple and facebook accounts. They post personally identifiable data and pictures all the time. Google requires phone numbers to create account now so using Gmail and being anonymous are mutually exclusive. A lot of people arguing for anonymity only care about one single aspect of it: being able to comment online without consequences.
And I don't think what I'm doing is 100% effective. Vast majority of people on the internet are not 100% anonymous. For example you have AI powered tools now that are very good at de-anonymizing users based just on their writing style. I'm sure AI can take my comments from lemmy and link them to my old post on Reddit. You know what's my solution for this? I never called for the assassination of anyone on Reddit. That's the most effective thing you can do: don't act like you're anonymous even when you think you are. At the same time I'm keeping my data as private as possible by avoiding corporate platforms as much as I can, using VPN and blocking ads and trackers. Anonymity != privacy.
I don’t see you using your real name here.
A bit hypocritical if you ask me.
What's your first and last name?
Why?
Misinformation is a great threat to democracy. I live in country with independent courts, free press and freedom of speech. Everyone can criticize the government all they want without repercussions. The threats posed by huge bot farms working to promote fascist far outweigh the fantasy benefits of using anonymous communities to organize some resistance to nonexistent tyrants. Where I live the anonymity online is used exclusively to bully, threaten and defame people. It can be different in different countries but where I live I don't see any benefits of being able to post things online anonymously.
. I live in country with independent courts, free press and freedom of speech
Which magical country is that? Like, I get some eurohaugtiness vibes from your comment, so as a fellow eurofucker I can tell you, with quite some confidence, that you're wrong. You're probably just too privileged for this to matter to you, personally.
Spain.
Spain literally has a law commonly known as “ley mordaza”, which enabled law enforcement to impose massive fines to protesters, some of whom ended up spending months in prison.
Were they protesting anonymously online? If not I don't see how's that relevant. Anti government protests are happening all the time in Spain. There are laws that govern those, like in every other country. Did you just google that quickly and paste the first result without understanding it?
I’m a born and raised Spaniard who lived there for over 35 years, and was beaten up by cops at least once. I think I know a thing or two about the system.
You said that in Spain people have the right to protest freely against the government, yet the ley mordaza proves that’s not all true, e.g. https://www.es.amnesty.org/en-que-estamos/blog/historia/articulo/ley-mordaza/
But regardless of all that, there’s an even more solid proof that removing anonymity on the internet is a bad idea in the current Spanish climate: La Liga has been threatening individuals and companies for well over a year now, with the help of the courts and the inaction of the government. Somehow, they had access to internet users’ personal data, and have been sending out letters requesting payment for alleged “pirated content distribution and consumption”. They have pressured ISPs to throttle and even block entire blocks of IP addresses. They have sued people for libel because of insults towards their current president.
My point here is that, if a sports corporation could do that when people are still able to be “anonymous” online, how can you guarantee that Spain wouldn’t devolve into a full fledged corporate fascist state, where those with money have the effective power to target dissidents for the pettiest reason, if anonymity were to go away?
Oh yes, we need anonymity online so people can pirate football and libel others online. Great argument. You totally convinced me.
And yes, la ley mordaza made protests illegal... Why do we have protests all the time then? Parties from far left to far rights have public meetings and marches all the time. Worker's unions strike and protests all the time. Who is being oppressed by the socialist government now when Vox is participating without issues in all elections and people express support for them freely? Podemos emerged when PP was in power and lost support because of internal scandals exposed by free press when they were part of the government. In Andalucia, where I live PP is in power, the country is governed centrally by PSEO. Free elections happen all the time, opposition parties win elections all the time. But yes, if they can only get age verification in place it will all devolve into a corporate fascist state... I really don't know how someone can seriously believe that.
I’ve never said that protests are illegal, but the law certainly made them way riskier for protesters.
But yes, if they can only get age verification in place it will all devolve into a corporate fascist state...
The new normal seems to be that one could be fined 600 euro for insulting the police, or be sentenced to 2 years for disrupting a political event.
It’s called a slippery slope. You may want to look that up.
Regardless, we’ll never agree on this because you are one of the “I don’t have anything to hide” kind of people, a PADEFO, naive to a fault.
you are one of the “I don’t have anything to hide” kind of people
The way you confuse basic concepts is amazing. I use encryption, I use e2e encrypted communicators and I don´t use social media but for you, just because I don´t support anonymity on said social media (which people are free to use or not) I "don't have anything to hide". And you're argument to show that my ideas are bad for democracy is... slippery slope. Well, I followed closely what happened in Poland and Hungary over the last decade and I know that it was not anonymous comments online that saved democracy in those countries. But for people like you fantasy solutions solve fantasy problems. So you're right, we won't agree.
Ja! Tócate los cojones, Mariloli!
Free press: when you can't even record the police, it's illegal (kind of, in theory. Absolutely forbidden in practice). Freedom of speech: unless it's against the Crown, or the Church, or national unity, or... Independent courts: independent from fairness, and the truth? Sure. Independent from the establishment's power? Not at all. So, yes, you're too privileged to care for any of this, but worry not, amigo, those privileges are being transferred upwards so (unless you're part of the top elite) you'll care soon enough. We don't have anything to envy the USA or China (on these matters). I've been there, not as a tourist, so it's not hearsay.
Free press: when you can’t even record the police
WTF are you talking about? I see recording of police in media all the time. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OLwILBtbs0M- OMG! The public TV recorded the police and it's absolutely forbidden in practice. I'm sure they are all in jail now.
The rest of your arguments are equally silly. I'm not even going to waste my time on them.
Lol
Yawn. You sound like the lobbyists. They want ID to control us, to selectively spread more misinformation.
Nobody will be able to criticize the government, you will be targeted. The bots promoting fascism are the same ones spreading bullshit like this to push for the fascist non-anonymous internet.
It sounds like you shouldnt be using the internet at all.
You sound like a conspiracy theorist. Where I live people are criticizing the government every day. We have opposition parties, activist and unions. We have reporters uncovering corrupt politicians all the time, on all levels of government. The politicians are prosecuted and reporters keep reporting. They all act in the open, not by posting anonymous comments on twitter. As I said, if you live in a country where the government will target you for posting wrong comment then you should totally oppose those law (but your opposition will be meaningless because you already don't live in a free country). Those laws are not global, each country will introduce them on their own. Where I live, ending online anonymity will have positive effect on democracy.
Get outta here fascist.
And that's a great example of what people use online anonymity for and why I'm not a fan.
Do you really think no one in this thread would call you a dumb fascist to your face?
No, I know there are a lot of kids here. I'm not surprised, I'm just saying that it shows why age verification is a good thing.
Oh do you keep willfully hanging out with a bunch of kids? Nonce fascist.
We know, fascist.
“You sound like a conspiracy theorist” such low effort way to wave away another point.
You sound like a fucking fascist then.
You missed the rest of my comment where I explained why I think that. This or you don't know what 'wave away' means.
From what I see in your post history you seem to be spanish, you had a fascist dictature just 50 years ago. Do you really think that your current system will never change? That there will never be a point in time where parties like VOX take power and radicalize themselves even more? That they will never control the media with the support of fascist billionaires?
You don't have to look at my post history to see that I think "ending online anonymity will have positive effect on democracy". The fastest way for VOX to take power is by spewing disinformation. All the anti-EU parties are founded by russia and online anonymity is one of the most important tools they are using. End it and their job will get more difficult, not easier.
Not just that. We've seen how parties like that take over and radicalize themselves in Poland and Hungary. I'm from Poland so I know very well how people fought back there. I wasn't by hiding their identity online. It was by using free press to expose government's corruption and by organizing legal, massive protests in the public. The idea that online anonymity helps preserve democracy is not just fantasy, it's the exact opposite of what we're seeing in real life.
This won’t stop misinformation. This will only allow it to run more rampant.
No, it will not.
Explain.
I’m fine with that.
When done correctly, and someone's ID remains anonymous from the general public if they wish so, then I'd also be fine with that. Way too many trolls and other forms of bad actors on the Web who intentionally or unintentionally use ad hominems or other toxic communication, it's so hopelessly divisive and draining.
I recently saw a documentary about looksmaxxing. The forums these kids peruse echo the deepest pits of hell; insisting on suicide and all the forms of psychological bullying one cannot even imagine.
Whether it's the best solution I don't know, it's probably not. But from my point of view, taking away the anonymity from the authorities would significantly lower the amount of depravity on the Web. The crux in this whole matter is of course that the authorities are virtuous, fair, just. If they are not, which all too often is the case, then removing anonymity can be an equally dangerous thing as well.
Obviously everything boils down to education, which needs a complete overhaul. But that's something that will take decades if not a century to turn humanity into a predominantly virtuous species.
Way too many trolls and other forms of bad actors on the Web who intentionally or unintentionally use ad hominems or other toxic communication, it's so hopelessly divisive and draining.
How exactly would id verification help against that. Do you want "toxic speech" to become a crime and punished by a court of law?
“Do you want “toxic speech” to become a crime and punished by a court of law?”
Bullying and disinformation, absolutely.
“How exactly would id verification help against that.”
From the paper What Deters Crime? Comparing the Effectiveness of Legal, Social, and Internal Sanctions Across Countries, citing a meta-analysis:
“On the whole, this meta-analysis favored rejecting the null hypothesis that legal sanctions have no deterrent effect on crime.” ―Meta Analysis of Crime and Deterrence: A Comprehensive Review of the Literature, by Thomas Rupp (2008)
The paper concludes as follows:
Our findings suggest that across societies and cultures, internalized moral standards exert the most powerful restraints on dishonest behavior (see also Campbell, 1964). Policy efforts aimed at promoting moral internalization may be more effective than efforts aimed at increasing the frequency or probability of legal sentences. However, the process by which internalization occurs remains poorly understood, and marks an important direction for future research aimed at reducing crime and enhancing social welfare.
As I said, is it the best solution? Science hasn't a clear answer either. What does seem to be agreed upon is that:
- “The perceived likelihood that one will be caught is far more effective as a deterrent than the severity of the punishment.” ―Wikipedia - Deterrence: Likelihood vs. severity [Also stated in the aforementioned meta-analysis.]
- That having the moral compass to realize something is wrong, will decrease someone succumbing to such wrongdoings.
My hypothesis is that complete anonymity, so a low probability of getting caught, increases toxic behavior because people suffer no bad consequences whatsoever and therefore never learn. Ever hung around a spoiled kid? They're the worst. The same happens online. Naturally, proper journalists and whistleblowers are a different thing, absolute anonymity is crucial for them. But how to square both these realities remains to be discovered.
This argument is one degree of separation away from a "nothing to hide" fallacy. And as you accurately pointed out, it's founded on a very unrealistic assurance of an entirely virtuous power.
Free speech is important. This fact can not be overstated. Surveillance backed by the threat of persecution chills not just "bad speech", but any speech deemed undesirable by groups or individuals in power. This is a fundamental concept to understand when forming theories and opinions that also directly relate to subjects like democracy and authoritarianism. To miss this crucial fact is to formulate a skewed premise that favors the primary mechanism by which free speech, and by extension the many rights and liberties which require free speech, are historically suppressed.
The notion that democratic systems and values are compatible with a surveillance state is flawed. The two systems operate in directly contradictory ways. Surveillance states historically always tend toward forms of authoritarianism. 1984 was a work of fiction, but it was a warning driven and informed by very real demonstrated dangers inherent in the enabling and acceptance of a surveillance state. The validity of its message is shown clearly and repeatedly in real world examples of population surveillance in practice.
Trading liberties, including and especially privacy, for some concept of order, is a dangerous approach which ignores and contradicts historical evidence. To ignore this is to embark on the path to Oceania.
“This argument is one degree of separation away from a "nothing to hide" fallacy. And as you accurately pointed out, it’s founded on a very unrealistic assurance of an entirely virtuous power.”
I know, and I am vehemently in opposition to the nothing to hide argument. In fact, the reason I recently distrohopped to Artix was because some Arch package maintainer casually uttered the following on the developer adding the birth date field: “I appreciate the work ahead of time, and the law is the law.” Which is either remarkably naive, ignorant of history, or malicious. Homosexuality is still a crime by some law somewhere. So, yeah, utter nonsense.
That being said, if the majority of the Web just becomes a place for advertising, gambling, and predominantly fruitless discord due to rampant disinformation, misinformation, trolling, bullying, et cetera, then I think removing anonymity in some way, e.g., for some websites or specific services, could be a solution. Because if the Web goes where it's going now, a cesspool of humanity's worst impulses, I wouldn't see a reason to keep using it and therefore wouldn't care whether there's badly implemented ID verification anyway. Obviously I'd prefer none of this is necessary, that people behave virtuously. But, they don't, so… I also think there's too many laws, and that laws mainly apply to the poor and the working class, and the rich—the perpetuators of most of the world's problems—mostly get off scot-free.
Ugh, it's all so complex. I don't have the answer. Do you? Is what I'm saying as utterly nonsensical as what that Arch maintainer said? If so, I'd be glad to adjust my position provided civilized and proper reasoning—not that you didn't before, Disillusionist@piefed.world, but many do not.
I don't profess to have "the answer", and you're right that it's complicated. You're also right that the state of things is bad and getting worse.
I hear anti-privacy arguments as pivoting the call for transparency away from the companies providing the harmful, toxic, and exploitative services onto end-users. This effectively bypasses the discussion about corporate accountability, in effect enabling corporate abusers to largely reframe the problems they enable or facilitate as problems of the public at large. This means discussion and efforts become focused on how to apply regulation to the public rather than corporate providers.
It's a win-win for Big Tech, since they avoid serious talks about culpability for the harms they create, while simultaneously benefitting from the greater degree of data extraction made possible by the increased surveillance directed at consumers.
One recent article at It's Foss is about age verification and similar measures, and touched on a lot of this. Here are a couple quotes I found relevant:
Safety becomes the moral language through which a more identity‑locked, surveilled, and centralized internet is made to feel inevitable.
The saddest thing about this moment is how narrow the mainstream imagination of alternatives remains. The policy menu is filled with bans, curfews, and ID checks for the same extractive platforms. There is little serious talk of changing the infrastructure.
This is pretty much exactly my sentiment. If we're honestly looking for "answers" to these problems, we need to be willing to see them for what they are and where they actually lie. I'd say that goes for basically all kinds of problem solving, and I think that kind of common sense troubleshooting mindset is as necessary in this situation as any other. Just doing something to fix a problem rather than what's actually appropriate is often a recipe for more problems.
Hey, guess what you need to buy an internet connection in the first place! Wanting more ID verification is only fascism.
[Edit: meant to post this reply to your comment below]
Exactly this + all the trolls promoting fascism with great success.
Also, congrats on going against the groupthink on lemmy. The pro anonymity crowd here is especially toxic, which only further proves our point.
Toxic for freedom!
People are understandably heated over this subject. That often results in heated reactions. It doesn't invalidate their points, however, and to claim that it instead proves your point that surveillance is necessary could evidence a bias on your part when it comes to engaging with this very divisive topic.
I didn't claim it invalidates their points. I'm saying that the same points can be made in a civilized way and the very toxicity of online discussions is direct result of online anonymity. And yes, I understand why assholes and children react emotionally when we suggest that they should reveal their identity. That doesn't mean their behavior is justified.
I actually think it can be commendable to speak out in a situation you view as hostile. I also don't condone the personal attacks some people might throw at those who voice opinions they don't agree with.
I would also have to say that I would assume that you get that it's not guaranteed people are going to be entirely civil when you essentially tell them that you think that the rights they believe in should be done away with.
the very toxicity of online discussions is direct result of online anonymity
And you kind of just did exactly what you said you didn't, using these interactions as a validation of your claims against those of the people you disagree with.
Having said that, it's often better to take the high road when we can. It's possible that not everyone who disagrees with you (or me) is an asshole.
And you kind of just did exactly what you said you didn’t, using these interactions as a validation of your claims against those of the people you disagree with.
You mean I claimed it invalidates their points? I really don't see how. Again, the points about usefulness of anonymity (which few people actually made) are not invalidated by the toxicity. People say "we need anonymity because X" (I don't think any real argument was made here so I don't even know what X is) and I say "the toxicity and misinformation outweigh the benefits of X". The arguments for X are still valid and if someone can give examples of X that outweigh the negative results of anonymity I will change my mind. So far all I've seen is "it's a slippery slope" and "you're a fascist".
It's just remarkably disappointing that so many of said cohort is all for freedom or libertarian, but they simultaneously downvote comments into being hidden and offer no counter-arguments. The irony.
But I sigh at discourse online in general, on all sides, for it's riddled with fallacies. Or even downvotes and upvotes, they mean little to nothing. I know because as an admin I realize there's tons of people who use multiple accounts, not two or three, but tens of accounts, to skew the votes in their favor.
I have downvotes disables on my instance so I really don't care about them. I know groupthink is strong on lemmy. Usually I just ignore it but when I'm bored I like to poke people a little bit. Some people are actually interested in discussing things, most just follow the masses. It's disappointing but that's internet for you.