[HN Gopher] Facebook, Google other tech firms must verify identi...
___________________________________________________________________
Facebook, Google other tech firms must verify identities under
proposed UK law
Author : LordAtlas
Score : 90 points
Date : 2022-02-25 17:07 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.engadget.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.engadget.com)
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| This is probably a very unpopular opinion, but the lack of
| anonymity could dramatically improve people's behaviour on
| Facebook. If we can't touch the algorithm, which we know at
| various points has been adjusted to promote anger and manipulate
| emotions, what else can be done?
|
| If the lack of anonymity on Facebook means people start deleting
| their Facebook accounts... this is also a good thing.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| It's a very unpopular opinion because the precedent set
| (compulsory ID verification for online stuff) is very much not
| worth the thing that you _think_ you 're getting (improved
| behavior in an online social network).
|
| Assume that tomorrow you started requiring compulsory ID
| verification for, say, entering public parks. It's possible
| that this would lead to some improvement in the general
| conditions of public parks. But you would still think of it as
| dystopian bullshit. This is the same.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Yeah but assume that public park with ID verification was
| previously filled with sewage. A sewage filled park is also
| quite dystopian.
|
| (if it's unclear, Facebook is the sewage filled park)
| anfogoat wrote:
| > _This is probably a very unpopular opinion, but the lack of
| anonymity could dramatically improve people 's behaviour on
| Facebook._
|
| I don't think many people would disagree with that. What I
| disagree with is valuing privacy and internet freedoms so
| little that you'd be willing to sacrifice on those even the
| tiniest bit just so people behaved better on social media. And
| really, _disagree_ is an overly tame word for it, and I couldn
| 't overstate just how much so.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Right, but do you have privacy on Facebook anyway? Already
| seems like a lost cause in that realm.
| hyper_reality wrote:
| I still remember the days when almost everyone on Internet forums
| used pseudonyms and closely guarded their identities. It was even
| taught in schools not to reveal who you are online.
|
| Google, FB and other tech giants changed the norms around this
| completely for most Internet users. Once these platforms realised
| it was easier to monetise their users, and control abuse when
| dealing with real identities, they pushed hard for verified
| accounts (e.g. Google Plus) even though this is antithetical to
| the founding ideas of cyberspace.
|
| Today we have two Internets, one where anonymity is still
| possible but you can reveal your true name if you want (e.g. HN),
| and another of walled gardens with verified identities. The UK
| government is proposing to enshrine the fully identified concept
| of the Internet into law. While this will prevent some abuse it's
| a sad reflection on how some of the early values of cyberspace
| have been lost, where people could be who they wanted to be, and
| freely discuss topics they might not wish to have associated with
| their real names forever. Politicians whose main interaction with
| the Internet is through their Twitter accounts just don't get
| that.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| It's a matter of scale i think. In small communities, you're
| not really anonymous in the same way as on facebook. You might
| only be known as DataDog213 on some forum with a hundred
| members, but the people there know you and who you are as a
| person.
|
| In facebook groups with thousands of members with no real bar
| or entry, you're really anonymous and no more distinctive than
| anyone else if you don't make yourself stand out. (By bar of
| entry, I mean things like even finding the site in the first
| place)
| smorgusofborg wrote:
| I'm not really seeing that difference in requirements. Most
| of the forums were trivial to find in all sorts of Google
| searches, allowing thousands of people to create a new unique
| account, and then get banned for violating the pinned rules
| about asking a question by one of the <100 users that could
| be recognized as being a repeated chat mate on the one forum.
| Many of those obsessives on one forum would never be findable
| somewhere else where they might not have been an expert.
|
| I find it a bit sad that thousands of people are on FB using
| their real names and turning person who says stupid things
| about several different hobbies into a permanent part of
| their own fairly permanent identity and I don't actually see
| how it helps anything. But maybe people who don't find it
| creepy see something I don't.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| I don't know about you, but Facebook is trying to feed me
| groups I should join every visit. Huge difference.
|
| Also... google hasn't existed the entire life of the web.
| kbos87 wrote:
| Honest question in good faith - Why should we hold true to some
| past ideals of technologists 20 or 30 years ago?
|
| I think it's pretty clear at this point that the notion of the
| web as a self protecting organism that naturally rejects
| misinformation and stops bad actors is completely wrong.
|
| I don't know that I'm 100% in favor of what is being proposed
| here (partly because I expect there are likely nefarious
| reasons why governments are pushing it so hard.)
|
| But I also think you can't ignore that misinformation from
| anonymous actors has pushed democracy to the brink of collapse,
| and "that wasn't the original idea of the web" isn't the best
| rebuttal.
| er4hn wrote:
| I think that this is a situation where "when guns are
| outlawed only the outlaws will have guns."
|
| Requiring real world identities to post online had a number
| of chilling effects on speech online.
|
| - LGBTQ people were outed after having their online persona
| linked to their real world identity.
|
| - People who need to maintain strong personal/professional
| life separations have been outed (ex: Slate Star Codex)
|
| - People have had their lives upended by being part of an
| angry community (ex: Blizzards RealID caused revealing
| peoples identity to the gamer community. Love my games but
| wow does that community love doxxing and sometimes SWATing)
|
| - It has not prevented spam / trolls / people being hateful
| online (ex: Nextdoor)
|
| This has been a long standing conflict
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars). The UKs opinion has
| always been one of providing as much information as possible
| to the government for questionable purposes. This is the same
| government which constantly wants to backdoor encryption so
| that they can spy on citizens at any time.
| slavik81 wrote:
| One of my Facebook friends was banned for 'not using their
| real name' when they came out as trans. The real name
| policy is awful.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> misinformation from anonymous actors has pushed democracy
| to the brink of collapse_
|
| If voters in a democracy are basing their votes on random
| stuff they read on Facebook or Twitter, the problem isn't
| misinformation. There is no way to have any platform for
| distributing information that is guaranteed to only
| distribute the truth. Any responsible adult should be aware
| of that and should apply critical thinking to whatever
| information they see, no matter where it comes from.
| spansoa wrote:
| > I think it's pretty clear at this point that the notion of
| the web as a self protecting organism that naturally rejects
| misinformation and stops bad actors is completely wrong
|
| Well HN does this thing called shadowbanning, where the user
| sees their post when logged in, but in a brand new isolated
| session (when not logged in), their posts are not visible.
| The only caveat to this is the user spent a considerable
| amount of energy writing a comment, only to have it ghosted
| and non-visible to other HN'ers meaning their time was wasted
| and their ideas essentially censored. Shadowbanning works
| however, and stops HN getting flooded with spam, but has the
| sneaky caveat of essentially censoring some content.
| hyper_reality wrote:
| > I think it's pretty clear at this point that the notion of
| the web as a self protecting organism that naturally rejects
| misinformation and stops bad actors is completely wrong.
|
| It's an interesting question, but the point isn't as clear to
| me. First of all I believe most people are able to see
| through misinformation. The biggest blame should be laid on
| algorithmic feeds that optimise for engagement, and are
| therefore designed to lead people into self-reinforcing loops
| where their ideas never get challenged. That's the main bad
| "innovation" that social media platforms brought; the
| arguments about dangerous ideas, censorship, and bad actors
| echo all the way back to the dawn of the printing press.
|
| > But I also think you can't ignore that misinformation from
| anonymous actors has pushed democracy to the brink of
| collapse, and "that wasn't the original idea of the web"
| isn't the best rebuttal.
|
| I think this is overstating the role of "anonymous actors" -
| plenty of misinformation comes from well-known politicians
| and simply normal people. Are you referring to FB's concept
| of "coordinated inauthentic behaviour" and troll-farms in
| authoritarian countries? This is definitely a problem which
| platforms have to tackle, but again I don't think it's as
| huge a factor as people make it out to be and certainly has
| not pushed democracy to collapse on its own.
| [deleted]
| tpxl wrote:
| You also can't ignore that this will not help stop
| misinformation in any way.
| kbos87 wrote:
| Facebook, TikTok, Instagram are a literal cesspool of
| misinformation that often gets its starting energy by being
| shared, upvoted and commented on by fake accounts. I don't
| think "in any way" is fair.
| StockHuman wrote:
| Verified, authentic, checkmarked and vetted people still
| post false, misleading, or otherwise deliberate
| propaganda all the time. Truth claims from popular users
| fuel the fire of public opinion, whichever way the wind
| may blow.
|
| Dare I say I don't think insistence on authentic identity
| will improve things.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I don't know, to me it always seems to start with an account
| with a long name and man or woman in suits, carried on by
| people in similar online attire with extreme rage and
| confusion, until it hits someone with an ultrashort name and
| an anime icon who speaks shibboleth, at which point either
| the original misinformation is explained, or platform
| aristocracy kick in.
|
| As far as my experience goes, those with full long names and
| professionally taken portraits as icons are easiest to
| trigger and corner because they only ever believe, refuse or
| double down. They never back down in embarrassment, or verify
| claims or make refutes with requisite care, and they are
| extremely angry by default as well. Complete anonymous
| posters(like in certain gray website) are very problematic in
| whole different ways but even those are not as easy to
| manipulate.
| cudgy wrote:
| Interesting that democracy is "to the brink of collapse" due
| to individual people expressing their thoughts on
| technological platforms. Either this is an exaggeration or
| maybe there are other reasons for the "collapse" like bad
| actors in government (not regular citizens) providing false
| information and trying to manipulate the citizens.
| ghaff wrote:
| >I still remember the days when almost everyone on Internet
| forums used pseudonyms and closely guarded their identities.
|
| It really depended. For Usenet, many people were posting from
| their work or university accounts and their names and
| affiliations were often on display. And real names were also
| often common on local BBSs where people would even get together
| in real life. Random forums (and certainly anything to do with
| warez/cracking/etc.) that's doubtless true.
| Calvin02 wrote:
| I'm curious, why do you think that these requirements won't
| spread to the rest of the internet? I doubt the proponents of
| this law would create a "loop hole" by allowing other sites to
| maintain "anonymity" (in quotes because there's no real
| anonymity on the internet for almost nearly everyone).
|
| Also, you seem to be making two contradictory points: 1)
| Facebook and Google pushed hard for verified accounts 2) Some
| parts of the internet make it optional to reveal your true name
|
| Verified accounts, as I understand them, on the social
| platforms are only for people who publicly want to build a
| brand around their identity. While people have to use a "real
| name" on Facebook and Google, there's nothing requiring to get
| verified.
| hyper_reality wrote:
| > I'm curious, why do you think that these requirements won't
| spread to the rest of the internet
|
| I didn't say that, I only said that we _currently_ have two
| Internets, but that there has been a shift towards the walled
| gardens of identified accounts over time. The proponents of
| the law probably would end up creating loop holes just
| because their main beef is with the big tech firms, and it
| would be challenging for a single country to enforce
| legislation on the rest of Internet.
|
| > Verified accounts, as I understand them, on the social
| platforms are only for people who publicly want to build a
| brand around their identity. While people have to use a "real
| name" on Facebook and Google, there's nothing requiring to
| get verified.
|
| We may be getting mixed up with the meaning of "verified",
| I'm talking about accounts where the platform has associated
| you with your RL identity through some method, not just the
| process to get a public blue tick.
|
| And, while there may be nothing formal requiring
| verification, there are many reports of people suddenly
| getting locked out of their accounts and being required to
| provide ID or at least a phone number shortly after
| registration. In fact a phone number is a pretty widespread
| requirement and it's getting harder to obtain a phone number
| that's not linked to your identity in some way. I don't see
| the contradiction in what I wrote, I have simply pointed out
| trends, not absolutes.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I still remember the days when almost everyone on Internet
| forums used pseudonyms and closely guarded their identities_
|
| I still remember when everyone on the internet was fully open
| about their identities.
|
| When you posted something online, you'd always use your real
| name. Often you'd also include your work and/or home address,
| work and/or home phone number, and where you worked with job
| title.
|
| I'm not saying that's better than what we have now. Just
| pointing out how the 'net has whiplashed from one extreme to
| another in a very short time.
| LightG wrote:
| This will usher in the end of Big Tech. At least for me
| personally. VPN at the ready.
|
| The UK government is the pinnacle of "If you haven't got anything
| to hide, you have nothing to worry about".
|
| Potential police state. The only reason it's not a total
| nightmare here is I'm sure the police are so underfunded that
| they couldn't take advantage of all this bullsh!t, even if they
| wanted to.
|
| This is effective "police state virtue signalling" to its
| hardcore supporters. Red meat to the dogs. It won't actually mean
| anything in practice.
|
| Obligatory: But that doesn't mean you give up your identity, for
| fear of a more resourced and/or different police/state apparatus
| in future.
| cute_boi wrote:
| I think I like this rule in a sense that it will stop intolerant
| people from creating mess. This is also one reason I left Reddit.
| However, this also means people wont be vocal and you can't say
| anything against fascist government.
|
| https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
| simion314 wrote:
| >I think I like this rule in a sense that it will stop
| intolerant people from creating mess. T
|
| There could be better solutions then sending your ID to
| Facebook. Like limit posting or sharing for accounts that you
| suspect are bots, apply the terms of service if the post is
| against that, put limits on new accounts so their posts don't
| spread.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Wondering which is more important - not being called a
| douchebag online or the gradual death of free speech.
| Impossible to say.
| decremental wrote:
| I can't stand places filled with people preoccupied with things
| like tolerance and inclusion. Not because I think those things
| are bad, but because those people always turn out to be
| insufferable and often insane. Worrying about fascism in this
| context is extremely ironic given how things are playing out in
| the west in the name of tolerance and inclusion. The future is
| not looking very bright. By the way, I realize that just by
| expressing this opinion I am now a nazi.
| jlcoff wrote:
| aww_dang wrote:
| There's nothing more alienating than the allegedly
| "inclusive" environments.
|
| These are the places where I'm accused of racism (against
| myself?) or being a Russian. It isn't xenophobic when _they_
| do it. In the next breath they 'll celebrate the noblesse
| oblige of their guilt.
|
| These are the places where individual agency is dismissed. My
| own experience of pulling myself up by my bootstraps is
| debunked as a fiction. Is there anything more alienating than
| being told you do not exist?
|
| Yes, I cannot wait to use my real name in these places. What
| a great opportunity for further harassment from these
| "inclusive" and "tolerant" people who cannot tolerate dissent
| or experiences which run counter to their "compassionate"
| ideologies.
|
| Up is down. Liberal is restrictive. Inclusive is alienating.
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-
| valley/th...
| dpratt wrote:
| Just because you judge other people's opinions as 'intolerant'
| does not excuse support for forcibly revealing anonymity. At
| the very least, consider the possibility that opinions that you
| express that are considered widely popular and 'acceptable'
| today are likely to be viewed as 'hateful' or 'harmful' in the
| future.
|
| Any weapon you wish to use can easily be turned against you,
| and if we've learned anything from history, it's nearly certain
| that it will be.
| tehbeard wrote:
| Doxing 2.0, now government approved!
| spansoa wrote:
| Doxing needs to be /difficult/ though. It can't be super easy
| to unmask identities online. Law enforcement with probable
| cause need to subpoena services like Facebook, Reddit, etc to
| get dirt on people. Otherwise social media will be a
| sanitized, boring hellscape.
| mattlondon wrote:
| It is kinda sad that this sort of stuff keeps coming up again and
| again. Yet it is Twitter and Facebook again and again that are
| the breeding grounds for the abuse it seems.
|
| I guess the argument from Twitter et al is "oh if we ban a racist
| troll they just re-register a new account. Sorry nothing we can
| do!". Well thanks Twitter for trying to ignore the problem, now
| we end up with legislation like this proposal which will be a
| _fuck-ton_ more hassle and more importantly chilling-effect than
| something simpler that probably could have been done earlier but
| no one could be fagged to do, like e.g. defaulting to allowlist-
| only messages, sentiment analysis leading to human moderation,
| IP-based blocks /cooldowns, rate-limiting, client fingerprinting,
| nipple/genital-detecting ML, reputation-before-posting type
| systems etc.
|
| Nah mate - nothing we can do! These damn trolls just totally
| outwit us here at <XX-billion dollar company> with
| hundreds/thousands of super-smart engineers every time they
| register a new account! It is unsolvable!
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Besides, while twitter pretend not requiring a phone number to
| register, they effectively do.
|
| So they can do something, because trolls and bots are not that
| subtle, and can be detected, and ban is effective, because
| creating an account with a phone number is cheap, but not free.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| "but no one could be fagged to do", could be really
| misinterpreted across the Atlantic, and possibly be a black
| mark against you in 'the future'..thank goodness for
| anonymity(!)
| Bancakes wrote:
| It's always the UK. When will they get a clue and make their own
| nannyware? China does it. Russia does it.
| CommanderData wrote:
| We don't want it but we'll continue to elect those who push
| these laws.
|
| The British vote against their interests and we laugh about it
| satiricaly on late night shows.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| I see a lot of people discussing this as a negative for big tech,
| but to me it seems like the biggest gift governments could give
| them.
|
| Right now they either don't demand real identity or they have to
| justify in ways that try to hide their real intent - your real
| identity makes you a much cleaner and more valuable data point
| for monetisation and other user-hostile aims. If this passes they
| can just point the finger at government and blame them. Instead
| of people being outraged at Facebook for demanding a picture of
| their driver's license, Facebook will just be saying "Legal
| requirements in your country demand that we do this" and all the
| outrage will be directed at government.
|
| Unless politicians are smart enough to also propose a technical
| framework that prevents it happening, this seems like a boon for
| big tech.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| > ..Minister Nadine Dorries in a statement. "People will now have
| more control over who can contact them and be able to stop the
| tidal wave of hate served up to them by rogue algorithms."
|
| Did you catch it?
|
| The issue is the algorithm, not the anonymity.
|
| This is just an excuse to stretch the authoritarian muscle.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Fuck that.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| I think we will look back on this early era of technology with
| great nostalgia, as sort of a modern wild west. Where people 50
| years from now will think "My god, could you _really_ just get
| online and do whatever the hell you wanted with no consequences?
| How insane is that? ", in the same way that we now think "My god,
| could you really just go out west and stake a claim of free land
| in Kansas for yourself? How insane is that?". As the boundary
| between the digital and physical world increasingly ceases to
| exist, I fully expect that we will eventually be required to
| provide full identification at the ISP level to access the web.
| ukraineally wrote:
| This will be a fix coming to virtually every major country very
| soon. "Disinformation" and "Misinformation" and "hate" stuff is
| going to hit every country and it's not surprising how quick
| everyone has moved on this.
|
| Let me describe what just went down in Canada. A national
| catastrophe. If you disagree with my take, I'm happy to provide
| sources.
|
| We have a vaccine mandate disproportionately harming racial
| minorities, it's still in place. Why do Black Canadians not get
| vaccinated? Tuskegee? I don't know. Why do the indigenous? Maybe
| because the Canadian government has a history of experimenting on
| them? Ultimately doesn't matter as part of the discussion. We
| look to our 2 greatest allies, USA and UK. They had no mandates
| or at least had a roadmap to the end. We didn't have a roadmap
| and we just unemployed those people? There's legitimate cause for
| protest.
|
| This article can be my proof that the protest in Ottawa was
| diverse: https://thepostmillennial.com/jagmeet-singh-faces-
| backlash-a...
|
| The problem was that the Canadian media labelled the convoy as a
| bunch of nazis. there was literally only 1 nazi flag and there
| also just happened to have professional photographers following
| him? Was he even party of the convoy/protest? That was enough
| though, the hate convoy was fabricated. There's virtually no
| nazis and certainly no confederates in Canada. That's not our
| thing. Hell, the total protest size is estimated well above
| 100,000 people. Even if Canada has nazis, we don't have that
| many.
|
| Not once did Trudeau go talk to the protest. He refused because
| they were all a bunch of nazis with unacceptable views. The
| ottawa police couldn't do anything against their right to protest
| and it was big enough that Trudeau couldn't keep ignoring. People
| demanded action against these nazis before they overthrow the
| government. Trudeau deployed martial law and arrested the lawful
| protest. Those illegal nazis looking to overthrow the government!
|
| Trudeau in parliament even got to calling a Jewish MP a nazi for
| standing with swastikas. He even refused to apologize and doubled
| down later(a jewish liberal MP called her a nazi as well)
| Crushing dissent in Canada got denunciation by tons of good left-
| wing celebrities. Worse yet, the judge who is presiding over the
| court cases of these protesters is a liberal party candidate back
| in 2011. Clear conflict of interest.
|
| Right before the Ukraine invasion, Trudeau absolutely abruptly
| stopped all the name calling over night. He then spoke that
| there's a great need to start talking to your friends and family
| who have differing political views. Typical anti echo chamber
| stuff. This is the day he got briefed about Putin's invasion I am
| sure. He went from declaring martial law to revoking it in an
| instant. Baffling everyone.
|
| There's literally a Liberal senator who asserted "Honk Honk"
| actually stands for Heil Hitler. Absolute crazy person. Meanwhile
| Jordan peterson was having a heart attack online because he
| justly saw the tyranny of the government for what it was. The
| government did crush dissent. We do have political prisoners.
| This is a current catastrophe that hasn't been fixed at all.
| Attention went to Ukraine for good reason, but we have a
| nightmare still in Canada.
|
| This abrupt 180 on the national emergency, Trudeau baffled
| everyone. People said 'oh the polls are in', Nope. Polls are in,
| they havent budged. senate was going to vote against(they
| werent). the various global celebrities calling Trudeau out on
| his actions. Nope.
|
| Our PM just quietly admitted to it during the Ukraine sanctions
| speech, in his speech he said, and I paraphrase and taken out of
| context and ruined in every way, "for the past few weeks putin
| has been controlling the media"
|
| Putin has controlled the media for decades in Russia. This was an
| admission of Canadian media. The past few weeks have been the
| convoy. In fact, international media were fantastic. NYTimes put
| their political ideology aside and called Trudeau out. Round of
| applause for the NYtimes. In fact, the international media were
| generally pretty fair, many didnt agree with the point of the
| protest, but agreed the protest should continue. They went to the
| protest because the Canadian media labelled this protest as
| 100,000 strong nazis looking to overthrow the government.
| International media saw a fantastic story because Canadians are
| generally good people, but when they got boots on the ground...
| that's obviously not what they found.
|
| Putin made it clear: He was invading to denazify Ukraine.
| Ironically the amazing president of ukraine is jewish. But we
| heard this just recently didn't we... Who else just called a
| Jewish person a Nazi? No, Trudeau simply got disinformed to an
| extreme degree by Russian propaganda. His echo chamber told him
| everyone was a nazi.
|
| All this BS about nazis, systemic racism and all that crap is
| Putin. The journalists who have been pushing all this nazi crap
| are russian agents. In fact, this entire protest was covered by
| rt.com about 100x more than the CBC covered it. Fox news was like
| 50x more than the CBC. Other entities covered it about the same.
| I would bet good money that the RCMP and CSIS are investigating
| those journalists today.
|
| The world is about to pass laws to ban disinformation because it
| was clearly weaponized by Russia. However, we have an ongoing
| injustice here in Canada. I expect monday when parliament resumes
| Trudeau will offer that apology to Melissa Lantsman. I hope he
| elaborates on this more.
| mjevans wrote:
| Far too many points in one post to reply properly.
|
| I'll pick JUST vaccine mandates.
|
| This is what I want to see: everyone that the vaccine is
| authorized for use in, should be required, under penalty of
| detention in quarantine bubbles, to be vaccinated.
|
| Exceptions: 1) Medically infirm to the point of specialized,
| dedicated care which states on a record to the health
| departments that this individual is medically compromised and
| ineligible for a wide range of medical treatments, not just
| this latest vaccine. 2) Individuals too young for current
| vaccine approval ranges (E.G. emergency use authorized, but not
| wide approval). 3) Hard core anti-medical religious exemption,
| full DNR, Do-not-medicate, natural care people. This also
| includes end of life hospice care (which is a bit more sane
| IMO) as well as anyone that wants to live like it's 1600.
|
| A reader might note I've made a distinction between people that
| only refuse the pandemic vaccines and still want all other
| 'normal' medical care VERSUS those who either already have
| abnormal medical care or want only non-life-extending (E.G.
| pain management) care.
|
| The intention here is to promote herd immunity via as prolific
| application of vaccination as possible while retaining fairness
| towards edge cases not caused by insanity but merely
| unfortunate circumstances, and fairness towards legitimate
| religious exceptions rather than some 'want to feel special'
| misuse of that tag. Anyone else can be arrested, detained in a
| drunk / quarantine tank, and while under supervised authority
| standard medical care applied (I.E. having been found guilty of
| endangering the public through lack of civil responsibility,
| incarcerated for... say a month and during that month they'd be
| given both shots.)
| MrYellowP wrote:
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I value anonymity for several reasons, not the least of which is
| the fact that what is acceptable today might possibly become
| intolerable in the future.
| bil7 wrote:
| presented with this position, many tech users would claim this
| doesn't apply to them
| pixl97 wrote:
| It turns out that many tech users are idiots. It also turns
| out they get very mad when you tell them that and will go on
| a 10 minute autoriatrian rant on why you are wrong.
| spansoa wrote:
| I got scared reading this headline, and then realized this is the
| UK only. I really hope other countries don't copy the UK's
| draconian and Orwellian technology practices. Anonymity is a
| cyberspace birthright. I really don't want my dearest thoughts
| attached to my legal name forever. With enough digging you could
| probably unearth my real name, but policy like this just makes it
| trivial to do. The cyberspace ideal is to make it hard for people
| to know the person behind a piece of text online. The friction of
| unearthing a real identity needs to be enshrined in Internet Law.
| Make law enforcement do the extra work of unmasking identities.
| We can't make it easy for them.
| dazc wrote:
| Your amazon account is likely already attached to your identity
| and I'm sure your google account and ip data could very easilly
| be used to pin point who you are.
|
| I'm not really disagreeing with you, in principal, just
| pointing out that this ship has already sailed for must of us.
| logifail wrote:
| > Your amazon account is likely already attached to your
| identity [..]
|
| _One_ Amazon account?
|
| I'm sure I must have had at least a couple of dozen. One free
| Prime trial on each one... <cough>
|
| I hope we're not assuming that each real-life identity only
| has access to _one_ email address...
| Mindwipe wrote:
| The (insane) UK trade industry body for Age Verification
| providers believes every site on the internet should be forced
| to only carry content suitable for under 13s, or should block
| all access from VPNs in case anyone from the UK is using them.
|
| They also came out with the absolutely golden statement this
| week that it's not too bad that this would put vulnerable
| people in authoritarian countries at risk, because all we had
| to do was collapse the governments of Russia, China, much of
| Africa, Poland, Iran, sizable chunks of the Middle East etc
| etc. Problem solved!
| mjevans wrote:
| Why can't sites suitable FOR children opt in to saying they
| are, and then really prosecuting any website that makes this
| claim but is false? Then use already built in platform
| controls to restrict accounts to these 'safe' sites.
|
| Just assume everything is unsafe by default, and also free
| and unrated by default.
| wordsarelies wrote:
| So... Weibo, but the UK version.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| I guess it needs to be repeated often, but it is the weakest
| members of society who need anonymity the most. Banning anonymity
| won't stop online bullying or other misbehavior by itself.
| Meanwhile it outs people to the bullies and saves the bullies a
| lot of time wrt needing to dox their targets first.
|
| Granted, possibly forcing real names will make it easier to catch
| some bullies; but you won't catch all of them. Conversely you'll
| have removed an important safe harbor for their victims.
| nileshtrivedi wrote:
| The followup question is: how do we prevent the powerful
| members of the society from abusing the anonymity (fake news,
| fake support, corruption, other kinds of sybil attacks) that is
| intended for the weakest ones?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| We teach people how to use the "block" button and think
| critically.
|
| That is the only solution that is compatible with human
| rights.
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| Teach critical thinking? Not everything needs to be spoonfed
| to everyone all the time.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| You're not wrong. Everyone benefits from anonymity, including
| the bad guys.
|
| The problem is that the strong side still has many ways to
| bully people even without anonymity. On the other hand the
| weak side ends up with Nowhere To Hide.
|
| Something to take into account is that culture changes and
| people change, and some things are situational. Even if
| you're on the majority side here and now; doesn't mean you
| might not be on the 'undesirable' side sometime/someplace
| else.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Not true at all. The weakest members of society benefit from
| acting collectively, anonymity is a great thing if you're
| trying to hide your fortune. Peter Thiel has more to gain from
| anonymity than a MeToo member. There's a reason why your
| address and taxes paid are public information in Sweden.
|
| Moving things into the public sphere, transparency, and
| protection by the law is what helps weak people. Anonymity is a
| tool of power, always has been.
| qiskit wrote:
| > Peter Thiel has more to gain from anonymity than a MeToo
| member.
|
| Is that why peter thiel not anonymous? Is there a reason why
| he goes on TV and gives interviews?
|
| > There's a reason why your address and taxes paid are public
| information in Sweden.
|
| What is the reason?
|
| > Anonymity is a tool of power, always has been.
|
| Is that why the witness protection provides anonymity? Is
| that why many rape victims are provided with anonymity?
|
| How come you are anonymous then? Because you have so much
| wealth and power?
| graphpercolator wrote:
| "The government has also proposed measures that would force
| companies to filter out "legal but harmful" material"
|
| This isn't government censorship though. It is just a private
| company that can choose to comply with the law or not. Something
| something not censorship. Something something children!!
| MrYellowP wrote:
| mindslight wrote:
| Why bother working on seizing Russian owned assets to pay
| reparations for an illegal war, when it's easier to push
| totalitarianism onto your own population instead? After the
| initial rush of solidarity, crises always bring out the
| opportunistic scumbags.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Facebook, Twitter and the rest of this basket of deplorables will
| meet their reconing in every nation.
|
| The problem is not that they've created a spyware empire that has
| swindled the common man - the problem is that they've swindled
| politicians and whole countries.
|
| In their greed, they cultivated bot armies that deploy propaganda
| for corporations and political parties on their platforms.
| They've swinged laws and elections. And they raked in the
| profits. If they had kept it just to business and domestic
| politics, maybe they could get away with this.
|
| But in their arrogance they crossed the line - when Taliban got a
| twitter account that regulatrly gets into spats with the CIA one,
| and when Russian state got millions of bots pushing propaganda
| (and many others)
|
| You have to be breathtakingly arrogant or insanely stupid to
| think that Putin and the CIA will be playthings of your newsfeed.
|
| The 'free-market of the brain' finally pissed off the only force
| in the West that's valued above Capitalism, and that's
| Nationalism / National security. Their business will survive, but
| they will get cut down to size and never be the players they once
| were. It won't happen overnight, but I would not hodl their
| stock.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I'll run counter to the crowd here. I think that real identity
| verification could be a very good thing for the internet if
| implemented correctly.
|
| It would raise the barrier to entry for misinformation campaigns
| conducted online and it would presumably make it harder to spam.
|
| I also think that there's a way you could have verification while
| still maintaining relatively anonymity on these sites (i.e.; I
| have to verify my identity with Google but I can post under a
| pseudonym with only Google being able to make the connection back
| to who I am as a person).
|
| Obviously there would still be situations where you'd want true
| anonymity but plenty of online forums like Reddit's askScience do
| their own verification of user credentials. It would be nice if
| there was a verification process in place with someone like
| Google where I could sign up for a forum I trust less like Reddit
| and verify I have a degree without revealing (to random Reddit
| mods) who I am.
|
| And this already plays out on age restricted sites on the
| internet. I buy tobacco products online sometimes and I have to
| verify with my real driver's license who I am. I'd actually
| prefer some government service that could do that verification on
| my behalf so I don't have to give my PII to every store I want to
| make a purchase from.
| bostik wrote:
| > _real identity verification could be a very good thing for
| the internet if implemented correctly._
|
| Considering all the edge cases and ill-informed/malicious
| second-order effects, I don't think it _can_ be implemented
| correctly. You can never know when a particular group becomes
| an ostracised target of hate, with every public posting in
| their history used to smear and attack them, or used as
| justification to doxx them and have their entire families
| subjected to a torrent of torment.
|
| > _I 'd actually prefer some government service that could do
| that verification on my behalf so I don't have to give my PII
| to every store I want to make a purchase from._
|
| So something like BankID? Swedes and Danes on HN can probably
| air their gripes about that system.
| pixl97 wrote:
| All fun and games till the sites leak who is behind your
| pseudonym. And you 100% know that your real ID linked
| information will be sold to advertisers... I mean 'business
| partners'.
|
| People will still steal ID's and link them to accounts. And
| requiring a telephone number for verification is even worse. I
| signed up for twitter, they asked for a #. I didn't and my
| account got locked. Two weeks later they had a data breach and
| leaked those number to the world.
|
| Many services have my information. I don't post my opinions to
| a single one of those.
|
| Please stop fulfilling the authoritarians wet dreams.
| swader999 wrote:
| Social credit well on it's way world wide.
| MrYellowP wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait
| comments to Hacker News? You've been doing a ton of both
| lately and we ban that sort of account, regardless of
| whatever your views on the topics are, because it destroys
| what HN is supposed to be for. We want _curious_ conversation
| here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| spansoa wrote:
| `Let us scan your retina before you upload this meme`
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