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Comment by _red | Hacker News Reader

I look forward to the day where getting on the internet is like opening a bank account, complete with KYC verification.

I will love standing in line at my local DMV and waiting for my WebID profile to be approved.

LOL, no. I want to be able to have internet access anytime anywhere without identity checks, verification, or even anyone knowing exactly who I am. What is legal speech today is heretical "call the death squad" speech tomorrow.

Exactly. Anonymity is a feature, not a bug. Certain unpopular opinions can’t be said if the one posting now has to worry about the repercussions in the real world. A despotic government or just some malicious people are now able to punish you for simply having a different view point, which is NOT my version of an ideal internet.

It'll be nice when browsing without a license is punishable the same way driving without a license is. People will finally be held accountable for the things they say and do online.

I feel the exact same way about writing. How much human suffering has been caused by people's ability to just read and write down anything whenever they want? There is zero accountability! Heck, nowadays, I can even make graphics on a computer and then walk into Staples and print them out on official-looking, high quality paper. And they even have the gall let me pay anonymously in cash!

In the good old days, only the Church could publish books, so everything that was written down was thoughtful and true.

I just had flash backs of Reddit...

It's refreshing to see people refer to reddit in the past tense, maybe its finally dying.

I smell some sarcasm in this thread.

But we are on the net so nobody knows for sure.

Those were the days. People were good and true when they feared being burned at the stake.

If God didn't want heathens to burn, He wouldn't have made them so flammable. It's just common sense.

Why would people be punished for things they say (people can't do things online, unless you re talking about remotely controlling a robotic arm).

Har har har har, right?

Voting machines and nuclear reactors get hacked with code - which is just something people say on computers.

neither of these are people "saying" stuff.

Seems like language to me

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