And what would those values and priorities be? Because it doesn't seem to me that they align with what they actually do.

For example, it seems to me there is a whole lot of worry around megacorporations, often related to capitalism and the inequalities it brings.

In that context, if you don't place privacy as a priority, how are you not either stupid or ignorant? Is my premise just wrong?

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ndriscoll 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can be in favor of privacy while simultaneously thinking porn, gambling, and advertisers shouldn't be targeting children. The age verification bills I've read have steep penalties for retaining information, so that seems fine since that's literally more protection than you get in person.

It's really more just concluding that those corporations should be liable for their behavior. It also has nothing to do with "the Internet" which is largely unaffected. Except of course ideas for forcing OS behavior coming out of California which are obviously bad.

I actually think things could be a lot simpler if we just made the laws like alcohol: it's illegal (with criminal liability) for a non-parent adult to provide <restricted thing> to a child. Simple enough. Seems to work fine as-is for Internet alcohol purchases. Businesses dealing in restricted industries can figure out how to avoid that liability. That's entirely compatible with making it illegal for businesses to stalk everyone, which we should also do!

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choo-t 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The age verification bills I've read have steep penalties for retaining information, so that seems fine since that's literally more protection than you get in person.

The best way (and only way) to prevent retaining information is to not share them in the first place.

> You can be in favor of privacy while simultaneously thinking porn, gambling, and advertisers shouldn't be targeting children.

There are other method to achieve this without mandatory identification. You can force these content to be served with an HTTP header providing their legal minimum age of consultation or type of content, and blocking them browser side. Governments could maintain filter lists for different age bracket and release them to everyone, allowing easy compliance on the device parental control settings.

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fc417fc802 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you implemented that simple solution the expected outcome is businesses collecting ID at the door. But unlike the age verification bills there'd be no prohibition of or penalty for misuse of the collected information. It's a strictly worse outcome.

You can make intentional targeting illegal without criminalizing the accidental. And mandating self categorization of content by service providers would enable standardized filtering that was broadly effective.

The above won't get kids off of social media and it won't serve the purposes of the surveillance state but it will meet the stated goals of those pushing these measures.

Keeping children off of social media is a much trickier problem. I think we'd be better served by banning certain sorts of algorithmic feeds.

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ndriscoll 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Okay, so make it illegal for them to record any information which is what the actual laws do (or better, explicitly criminalize all the other current stalking). The point is you don't need to be prescriptive about how to prevent children from accessing the sites. Just make it so you can face massive fines and be arrested if you don't. They can figure out how to comply with the law, and they can be effective or be shut down.

They're not actually owed a solution for how to make their business model work. They can just be told that what they're doing is unacceptable, and they can figure out what they'd like to do next. If you're worried they might react with some other unacceptable thing, we can clarify that that's not okay either.

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fc417fc802 9 hours ago | parent [-]

I agree that open ended requirements are better than the imposition of prescriptive solutions. But I don't want online ID verification and that's where your proposal logically leads so I am equally opposed to it.

> They're not actually owed a solution for how to make their business model work. They can just be told that what they're doing is unacceptable,

You listed a few different things previously. Which one are we talking about here?

I think the rest of us are owed a solution where we can still do what we want without having our privacy violated. Regulations need to take the end user into account.

I already proposed what I think would be a workable solution to achieve the stated goals without unduly eroding the status quo. Do you have any response to it?

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ndriscoll 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Self categorization has been the status quo since the 90s and has proven to be insufficient. More generally, assuming people agree that something is a social problem/should be restricted, I don't think "have a third party come up with a solution that people can buy to filter us" makes sense. The liability belongs on the people dealing in the restricted item.

We don't give kids special debit cards that detect and block purchases of cigarettes and alcohol and say "make sure your kids don't get cash". We make it a crime to sell those things to a child.

Why is online ID verification a problem for e.g. porn and gambling but it's fine for alcohol? Why should it be fully anonymous? Should we also allow anonymous porn and cigarette vending machines in person? Why is online special?

This whole idea of anonymous access can't even work in a world where you actually pay for things online, which makes the whole proposition even more dubious. If you're an adult and spending money online, you already told them who you are (modulo darknet markets with crypto). Or you could buy a porn gift card in person with an ID flash like other restricted physical items if you're uncomfortable with online payments. And treat the gift card as restricted as well: giving it to a minor is a crime. So then what's the problem exactly? Ad supported porn specifically somehow is important enough to be special?

More to the point: as far as I know, if you perform a sex act in plain view inside of a private establishment that's open to the general public with no restrictions, then that's public indecency/lewd conduct, a criminal act, even if the owner consents. If children are present it can become a felony and you're going on the sex offender list along with jail time. Why is an unrestricted public website different?

Why are you "owed" this privacy online when someone running an open to all, fully anonymous, unchecked porn theatre in person would be arrested? How about the privacy you are owed is that your business stays between you and whomever you interact with, and even they can be asked/required not to keep or share notes about you? But they can still be expected to know you are an adult before they sell you adult services.

	▲	fc417fc802 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		TBH I think this is all either fundamentally flawed or incredibly weak except for your final paragraph. That one actually poses a somewhat interesting question - why the seeming disparity between online and offline porn regulations in the US? Still, it fails to address (or even acknowledge) the differences in the impact of requiring ID between those scenarios. Also I think you have this entire thing exactly backwards. It's not on the rest of us to convince the other camp that ID shouldn't be required. Rather it's on the other camp to put forward a convincing case that ID should be required - that there is no realistic alternative and that the tradeoffs are worth the cost. Otherwise the current status quo wins out. > Self categorization has been the status quo since the 90s and has been proven to be insufficient. What are you on about? Legally mandated self categorization has never been tried and would presumably work if there were penalties for violations. You don't even need 100% compliance, you just need high enough compliance that the default becomes to filter out any site that fails to do so. Voluntary self categorization isn't particularly useful because almost no operators bother to do it. So you're left with no (workable) option other than whitelist filtering. > have a third party come up with a solution that people can buy to filter us I never suggested anything of the sort. > The liability belongs on the people dealing in the restricted item. The items are not currently restricted and I don't agree with you that they should be. However I would agree to changing things to make all providers liable for accurately self categorizing the content they serve up by means of a standardized header format or some other protocol. > Why is online ID verification a problem for e.g. porn and gambling but it's fine for alcohol? Presumably because you have to take receipt of the shipment so the vendor is already going to collect your PII. Why is legally requiring that a gambling website send a header categorizing itself as such unworkable yet somehow it's all going to work out just fine if we require them to do the much more complicated thing of securely handling and accurately verifying identification documents? That seems like an obvious contradiction to me. > Why should it be fully anonymous? Should we also allow anonymous porn and cigarette vending machines in person? Don't we effectively do exactly that? There's no requirement for ID retention on sale of alcohol or cigarettes and until recently the norm was for the clerk to briefly eyeball your license. They also didn't used to bother checking ID if you looked old enough. (That's changed at the major retailers around here lately but that's a different matter.) Anyway I never claimed the brick and mortar way of doing things was ideal so arguing as though I've agreed to that seems rather disingenuous. > If you're an adult and spending money online, you already told them who you are But I did not give them a copy of my ID or any otherwise unnecessary PII and do not want to be required to do so. Also there are plenty of ways to pay for things online without readily revealing your identity to the couterparty. I expect you are well aware of that fact. > Why is an unrestricted public website different? For practical reasons I'd imagine. Analogies are great and all but at the end of the day a global electronic communication network has rather different properties than a physical brick and mortar location that you walk into. Regardless, the reputable services all seem to agree with you (as do I) and thus go out of their way to send headers marking them as adult only. It's roughly equivalent to a shop hanging a "no under 18 allowed" on the door but then not bothering to ID anyone. If parents can't be bothered to configure even the most basic of controls on their children's devices why should the rest of society be made to suffer for that?

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jart an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't know why I'm the only person online willing to steelman this, but...

The early Internet users weren't people who subscribed to AOL to look at porn in the 90's. They were the people who were granted access to the ARPANET to work in the 80's. The Internet was an exclusive community back then. You had government employees, knowledge workers, and elite university students who had all passed institutional screening processes. You were only allowed to use the ARPANET if you were using it to do something useful and aligned. Therefore you could feel reasonably assured that anyone you talked to online was going to be better than the average person you'd find going outside and walking down the street. If you wanted to know who they were, you could just finger their username. If you wanted to know who owned a domain, you could whois it, get their name and then even write them mail or call them.

People have wanted that old Internet back for a long time. i.e. the one that existed before Eternal September. Those are the people who run your tech companies. The ones who remember what it was like. These people understand what people actually want isn't always the same thing as what they say they want. They understand why the only truly successful Internet spaces on the modern Internet are the ones like Facebook that got people to be non-anonymous. Another example is the best places to work that folks desperately want to get into are the companies like Google whose intranets are much more like the old Internet. These are really the only Internet spaces that normal people want to use. Because people want to interact with other people who are similar to them. Because people want to know who other people are. Otherwise we can't operate as the social creatures that evolution designed us to be. I don't think any civilization in history has operated its public square as a gigantic red light district where everyone is required to wear a mask. So why should we?

Overcoming the anonymous religion problem that somehow glommed onto the hacker and cyberpunk movements is more important and urgent now than it's ever been, because the Internet has been filling up with billions of AI agents. It's gonna be Eternal September in overdrive. Humanity is really facing a tradeoff where you'll have to have gatekeeping again and won't be allowed to conceal who you are, or you can be gaslit by machines forever in your own robot fantasy.