Comment by triceratops | Hacker News Reader

Comment by triceratops | Hacker News Reader

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> You need to process that other people disagree with that claim

I think I already said that in my original post.

> We should not accept the Overton window shifting here

Great! Let's say you and I refuse to accept it. How do we keep Discord from demanding passports or selfies? How can we get France[1] or Finland[2] to roll back age restrictions on social media?

You'll never convince a majority of voters in democracies that nothing online should be age-restricted. These are the people that the enemies of anonymity and free speech are counting on to advance their agenda.

At the same time a majority of voters is currently quite content with the state of age verification for access to tobacco and alcohol. Both its strictness (or lack thereof) and privacy preservation (almost perfect).

I'm not saying my proposal is the one that should be adopted. I honestly don't care which idea gets picked and I don't want anything from it. But it's a virtual guarantee that in the absence of a competing good-enough, privacy-preserving implementation, only the most privacy-invasive idea will be implemented.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46776272

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46838417

> How do we keep Discord from demanding passports or selfies?

Build and promote alternatives that don't. Fight the political efforts trying to require it, and identify them as the attempts at control they are.

> How can we get France[1] or Finland[2] to roll back age restrictions on social media?

Host services elsewhere, and ignore claims that a country's laws extend beyond its borders. Support folks trying to fight such efforts politically, where possible.

> Build and promote alternatives that don't.

How well has that worked? Social media and messaging apps have network effects.

> Host services elsewhere, ignore claims that a country's laws extend beyond its borders.

That doesn't help the French or the Finns. Unless they use a VPN. And access the fragmented, lightly-used alternative services from the IPs of the fewer and fewer countries that don't pass such laws.

Your vision leads to a world where the privacy-conscious 1% congregate in echo chambers on Mastodon instances hosted in international waters. Everyone else uploads their passport to FaceSnapTok.

That's not a real solution. It's a cope. That's my opinion and I have no illusions I've changed your mind about anything. I already alluded to that in my original post. Privacy activists think age verification is not a problem that needs to be solved. By maintaining that belief they're ceding ground to bad actors who will "solve" it in a maximally privacy-invading fashion. This will leave the vast majority of internet users worse off.

> Privacy activists think age verification is not a problem that needs to be solved.

Correct. But more importantly, privacy activists understand that the "problem" governments are trying to solve with "age" verification is people having privacy.

This isn't something we can solve with purely technological solutions. It requires political action to defeat the attempted control, and pushing back on every instance of people trying to paint that attempted control as mere "age verification" and other "think of the children" takes.

> privacy activists understand that the "problem" governments are trying to solve with "age" verification is people having privacy

That is correct. But they refuse to go a level deeper and understand why governments are succeeding at this. Why people are seemingly ok giving up their privacy.

> This isn't something we can solve with purely technological solutions

The solution I proposed wasn't purely technological. It had a substantial legal component and public education component. It satisfies the "save the children" crowd while giving the spooks nothing.

> It requires political action to defeat the attempted control

I see no sign of this "political action", do you? I only see country after country banning minors from social media. This is like the encryption backdoor debate - they only have to win once, we have to win every time. Only in this case, it's possible to keep most kids off social media without screwing everyone else. This issue can go away.

> mere "age verification" and other "think of the children" takes.

Privacy activists have to accept that "think of the children" is a real issue for voters. Your views are valid, but it's equally valid to believe that children should not have unfettered access to the Internet. That social media is as addictive and harmful as tobacco. You may not like it but lots of people believe these things and they tell their lawmakers and vote.

> Host services elsewhere, and ignore claims that a country's laws extend beyond its borders

The moment you want to collect money from people in a country, their laws extend to you. You do not get to export electronics to France and ignore their RF spectrum allocations, for example.

> How do we keep Discord from demanding passports or selfies?

_we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!_

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