Mine's the exact opposite. Not a dick at all, good in most ways TBH. But doesn't hate google, and really should.

They're gonna have to have SOME alternative to comply with the ADA, right?

Coz believe it or not Google, you miserable fucks, there are ppl who don't even have hands. There are ppl who have 'em but are unable to move them b/c of paralysis. There are ppl with probs like cerebral palsy who can't make hand gestures on demand.

Stop pissing in everybody's cheerios, google. Stop making everybody's lives shittier.

Anyone know the % of web sites using google's captcha?

I found a site that might have the info, but ... wait for it... ... ... it blocked me for being a bot! Seriously!

At this point, selecting random people off the street would result in a healthier democracy.

Sortition.

Well, I agree that is true a LOT of the time. I'm just skeptical of reductive explanations for complex issues. There are too many pols, in too many countries, over too many decades, in too many wildly diff pol parties, and even a lot of NON-pols like parent groups, for a single explanation to feel likely.

So I agree with you... to a point. I just don't wanna be too black and white. We can fight it better if we try to understand what drives different groups toward the same goal.

I heard Facebook was funding this in the US.

Whether true or not IDK, but it would not surprise me. At all! Big tech LOVES expensive and difficult regulations. That's b/c they have deep pockets. Small competitors don't. Big Tech can spin up huge compliance teams. And legions of engineers. That cements their monopoly. It squeezes out alternatives. It can squeeze out OSS done by volunteers! Who ofc cannot afford big dollar lawyers and compliance teams.

Meta makes more money eeach year than the GDP of Morocco! And it's only 1/3 lap behind like New Zealand or Hungary. Smaller competitors do not have bloody sovereign nation levels of revenue.

TBH I think there is not one reason that explains everything.

A lot of it is normal 5-eyes shit. A LOT of it, really. Power for powers sake.

But some is also well meant, from clueless politicians. They think... kids are being harmed online. Something must be done! This is something! Therefore this must be done!

They do not understand how tech works. They do not understand the negative impacts.

Some is also terror. Maybe it is little less toxic in Canada (maybe? I hope??) but here in the US many pols are afraid of attack ads. If they don't vote for the most strict measures to shelter kids, it'll be all "My opponent voted to give axe murders access to your child on the internet!" Pure emotional appeal and reductionism.

I'm the first to admit that we have bad social problems with kids and tech. I'm the first to admit there are real harms. But these measures are NOT gonna make them better. Worse, maybe. Not better. Also opens the door to authoritarian abuse. Again, I feel Canada is doing better than we are down here. But don't count your chickens! It's a never ending fight. We can never rest on our laurels.

Cash withdrawal / Prepaid cards can be traced back to me

IDK... I get cash from my bank. I watch teller grab bills, hand them to me. She doesn't scan serials. I suppose it might happen for very large transactions. Or if they have a criminial investigation going and are using bait bills. But I've never seen it when I get cash.

Plus, say serials WERE logged. Take bills, buy lunch at local food truck for cash, get change from the nice Mexican lady who makes the badass green chili sauce. Thank lady, enjoy burrito. Bada bing, untracked serials! Burrito truck is not scanning shit.

Seems like in theory it can trace your purcahses, sort of, if both sides of the transaction record the serials. But in practice, it's astronomically unlikely. It feels like robust and easy anonymity for buying things. Even more than most cryptocurrency, with how easy opsec failures are, and every transaction being on a permanent blockchain.

Plus, I'm wondering how you do it without data leaving the device. All I can think of is an AI model that willl process every picture. You can't compare to known hashes, b/c it's a novel picture out of the camera. The device has to judge it somehow.

If there's an AI model, you'll have false positives and false negatives. And gray areas, where even reasonable humans would disagree. Since false negatives are way more legally risky, co's will err waaaaaaaay on the side of false positives. Which will block totally innocent pics. And gender diffs in what's socially accepted, and the AI will get that wrong a lot.

Gonna be a mess.

Hah yeah, "impossible". I bet it will take 60 seconds after w/e Google and Apple do rolls out, for some kid to bypass it. From which, 60 more seconds for every other kid to learn how, from that kid.

And it won't even solve the big harms that kids experience from tech. It won't solve cyber bullying! It won't solve the disinformation firehose. It won't solve sextortion schemes. It won't solve doxing. It won't solve social media destroying their feeling of self worth. It won't solve swatting. It won't solve ANY of that shit.