If they doing this might as well ban books also for harmful content to children:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_governments
Well, they don’t care, because this is a good reason to start total control. Or they just want to raise a submissive generation of obedient dogs who don’t know what it means to fight back or bite or think critically. China by the way is a great example of the alpha version of the shit that can await us.
A bureaucratic regulation doesn’t actually do what it purports to do, and which is the entire point of it’s existence?
No way.
Who could’ve forseen that?!
Surely nobody who is not doing anything online which is or will ever be until the day they die deemed morally objectionable by those with access to those databases or those with power over anything on their lives who can be provided directly or indirectly with data from those databases, have nothing to fear from this.
failure to comply could result in fines of up to 10% of global revenue or courts blocking services
So most federated platforms should be fine, as they don’t have any revenue(usually) and blocking is hard because DNS is easy to bypass and there just are so many instances already.
Oh! So they can fine by revenue percentage but not against megacorps.
This might actually make people move to Lemmy nice.
Big not a lawyer caveat but if it is revenue then likely not. That would be all money collected before expenses which I could see including donations collected for server expenses.
Obviously not, but it’s not like they’re gonna be honest and call it the UK Online Spying Act.
deleted by creator
It seems like they have replied and said they won’t repel the act.
Yep, turns out they only voted against it because they wouldn’t be the ones spying.
Thanks, Kier Star.
deleted by creator
Every time one of these petitions comes up it’s always badly worded. I still think that the stop killing games petition was badly worded and gave them an easy out.
deleted by creator
At the very least I wish these people would announce the wording of the petition in advance of filing the petition, so that it could be worked on. There are lawyers out there who are interested in this course I’m sure they could help, but unfortunately once the petition is filed that’s the wording you have to go with even if it’s inaccurate and loose in its definition.
deleted by creator
I saw an interesting video suggesting that the real motivation is to give megacorps like Google a new business acting as “banks” for identity, i.e. the Internet would get so inconvenient that people would just save their identity with Google (or Meta, etc) and then use them to log in to other websites.
I probably explained it badly, but the video I saw is here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAd-OOrdyMw
People in the comments pointed out that those companies would also have the ability to delete or suspend your identity verification if you did something they didn’t like (or refused to do something they wanted). Reminds me of the SIN from Shadowrun .
Yeah, but the governments obviously want to know exactly what you’re doing as well.
I think their only objection to Google et al having so much data is that they need to jump through hoops to get hold of it.
I suspect this will be in browser before too long. Mostly so they can automatically provide your full unique ID code to anyone who asks, so your government can keep track of you if you say “I support Palestine Action” anywhere, or so Google can look it up when you dare suggest AI is not our glorious future.
But also because there’s only so many “let us check your ID” services you can use before you end up giving your details to somebody who is going to sell them directly. How long before a dodgy porn site does a “show us your face” check, before generating deepfakes starring yourself and demanding payment not to send them to a social media profile it’s already detected based on your face?
I don’t really want to be on an internet where instead of [email protected], somebody can just click that and go “Oh, that’s Jeff Timmons of 48 Badminton Way, Stoke-on-Trent. Ring Staffordshire police so they can go and grab him”
This is by far the most plausible theory.
The other part is that christofascists really want to ban “porn” (read: anything they don’t like), and they know age verification will make their operation almost impossible. The fact that corporations like Google might get to validate people they advertise to is a positive side effect.
Indeed. Anybody but the biggies will have an impossible task trying to convince people to verify their ID, so all the smaller sites will switch to only allowing registration/sign-in through Google/Apple/MS’s Oauth, and depreciate the username/password option. When “signing in with Google/whatever”, Google will simply pass a flag “adult” along with authorizing. In the end, they become the gatekeepers for the whole web, collecting tremendous valuable data in the process and gaining even more power over your identity.
Always keep in mind that the small players will always take the easiest option, and the big players want more control.
Bingo. they’ll just tack it on to what they currently have with most sites that have you sign in with your google/apple/meta account. mask it as the easier option instead of using another email/registering an account on your own.
And they won’t just stop on websites. Google will also incorporate this with your phone. FRP will now require you have a valid ID with Google, same with account recovery OR simply signing into a new device with your existing Google Account.
Hell wouldn’t surprise me if Microsoft roles out that you must have a valid ID simply to install windows. Already requires users to have a Microsoft account and be online to install it, what’s to stop them from now requiring you provide a photo ID?
your existing Google Account.
I don’t have one. Obtanium, Fdroid and Aurora ftw.
Facebook are the same, been the same for years.
This isn’t the motivation in Europe where there’s a deep skepticism about those - all foreign - companies.
There is no need for conspiracy-type thinking. “Think of the children” has always been a powerful and real motivating force, not just a cover for nefarious other stuff. You need to recognise that, even if it’s wrong-headed.
It being a real and powerful motivational force means it’s one of the more useful covers.
Just because it motivates the voters/customers doesn’t mean it’s the genuine reason behind a decision.
I cannot think of a single recent “think of the children” based action that was intended to and actually helped the children in a meaningful way.
Can you?
I cannot think of a single recent “think of the children” based action that was intended to and actually helped the children in a meaningful way.
Are you judging the motivation purely based on the effects? Otherwise, how are you working out what goes on inside people’s heads?
I think given that we all agree that there are voters who think this will protect children makes it crazy to think that politicians must somehow know better. It is well-accepted online that politicians are out-of-touch when it comes to technology, so it’s not like they understand the subject of this article.
Are you judging the motivation purely based on the effects? Otherwise, how are you working out what goes on inside people’s heads?
A combination of the effects, the prior actions, reactions and consequences of the subject and others in similar categories/contexts (to the extent i actually know/pay attention).
I don’t know of another way of performing predictive analysis.
Also that didn’t answer the question.
I think given that we all agree that there are voters who think this will protect children makes it crazy to think that politicians must somehow know better. It is well-accepted online that politicians are out-of-touch when it comes to technology, so it’s not like they understand the subject of this article.
I’m genuinely not sure what you are saying here, but i’ll go line by line, tell me if I’m reading it incorrectly.
I think given that we all agree that there are voters who think this will protect children makes it crazy to think that politicians must somehow know better.
I don’t know what this means, there are voters who genuinely believe this, yes, i think i follow that bit.
I’m not sure what you think is crazy here (i’m not disagreeing, i just don’t understand) , do you mean to say the politicians do or don’t know better ?
It is well-accepted online that politicians are out-of-touch when it comes to technology, so it’s not like they understand the subject of this article.
This i agree with, i can also anecdotally add first hand experience of the consequences of such lack of understanding.
Not sure how it ties in to the other sentence though.
I’ll try to rephrase:
It makes more sense that politicians are simply like ordinary voters and are wrong and misguided when it comes to the internet (in this regard and others), and genuinely believe that the Online Safety Act is helpful for its stated purpose, than that they are using it as some nefarious way of helping out Google. The simple reason is that politicians are people too and just as susceptible to being wrong as voters are; we don’t actually need to hunt for any greater reason than that.
Besides that, we constantly talk about how politicians catastrophically fail to understand technology (I believe the Online Safety Act makes mention of hypothetical encryption-backdooring technology that is simply impossible). For politicians to have a different true motive - i.e. their stated motive is false - we are essentially saying that they couldn’t possibly have made got this wrong, there must be some corrupt reason for it - but we don’t actually believe they couldn’t have got it wrong because we’re constantly complaining about how they very obviously do get it wrong.
I also mentioned (but you didn’t mention being confused by it) that the UK government isn’t really friendly to American big-tech firms, who are universally opposed to the Act as a whole because of its threat to end-to-end encryption.
politicians must somehow know better.
No, no, the accusation is that politicians are lying.
Let’s phrase this another way. Asking every single website in existence to implement and maintain an ID database and monitoring system is expensive, yes? So, why wouldn’t private companies shift some of this responsibility off to a 3rd party who specializes specifically in this service?
If I were google, I would:
- One, be very excited about tying a user’s account analytics to their government personhood; can’t multiple-credit-cards your way out of that one.
- And two, already be looking at my own 3rd-party user login service as a means of beating out all competition in this space.
The only thing left to do is lobby. Politicians might not have this vision, but they do understand really expensive dinners.
No, no, the accusation is that politicians are lying.
In order to be lying, they must know better - that’s my point. You can’t have a nefarious plan without understanding the plan.
The only thing left to do is lobby. Politicians might not have this vision, but they do understand really expensive dinners.
That is more of an uphill battle in an environment like Europe or the UK where politicians are deeply skeptical of American big tech companies.
The plan is that they like money, and they’ll say whatever they have to to get more money. Or power, maybe.
I don’t really need to know what their motives are, though, anyway. If they were saying that spilling gasoline over a fire would put out the fire, I know that they’re either lying for some reason, or they’re really fucking stupid. Kind of a distinction without a difference.
where politicians are deeply skeptical of American big tech companies.
I could believe that people are. Especially after recent events. But… you really think your right wing isn’t in bed with capital? Google was just an example, you know.
If the right wing were in bed with big tech, they would never have passed this Act, which all big tech companies hate because it imposes serious duties and costs on them.
I don’t really need to know what their motives are, though, anyway.
Then you shouldn’t pretend that you do.
It’s perfectly reasonable to argue about how shit the law is, but it’s not reasonable to advance without evidence the view that politicians made the law for some underhanded purpose. Have you trawled the MPs’ Register of Interests to find whether its supporters were wined and dined by those companies? Do you have an explanation for why their request was supposedly “let us become age-verifiers” rather than “don’t force us to moderate our products more”?
No; you and others don’t have any of this because you haven’t done that journalistic work (and because it probably doesn’t exist). You’re just pissing conspiracy theories into the pot.
You mean sharing their real identity with online companies who will sell and/or lose it to hackers doesn’t make children sAfE oNLinE??!!?!11?!
If the recent Tea App crap is anything to go by doesn’t even require a hacker for someone to gain access to your info. Just takes more companies using AI to build shit without security and someone will just happen to find their open to the public firebase bucket.
Hopefully this will happen sooner than later and change people’s minds about the whole thing.
Yeah, it won’t be good, but it’s going to happen eventually. Sooner is better.
It will make kids really good at bypassing the restrictions that get put in place, which will probably require them to go to some of the shadier places on the web, which could put them in more danger.
The people who made these rules don’t understand the fundamental rule of the internet: any online restriction put in place, can be overcome with tools and knowledge that are also readily available on the Internet
deleted by creator
Internet monitoring should fall to the parents. When the government parents, they parent everyone and abuse their power.
There are tons of products to prevent access to apps and websites. If all else pass a law so users opt-in to restricted internet access.
“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it” John Gilmore
deleted by creator
Obviously emotive reason for an outright erosion of personal liberty and freedom, shocked Pikachu is shocked
Makes identity theft much more likely though
And identity theft is not a joke, Jim! Millions of families suffer every year!
Well, who’d have thought.
Prob should double down the efforts rather than scrap it then right?
Has anyone got any half decent ideas for how to improve age verification? Obvs without this draconian shit.
I had a thought once about doing it with NFTs, where a company could independently verify you with certain metadata, like ‘is human’ or ‘is over 18’ etc. Then you get issued your token, and these sites can verify you without de-anoninising you.
Not sure if that’s a naff idea, but would be interested to know if anyone’s got anything better
The EU has something in the works with zero knowledge proofs. Which would be a good way to do this.
I still don’t agree on the fact that this needs doing at all… But at least it’s not as bad as the UK’s half-baked nonsense
Unfortunately, even EU’s solution doesn’t support non-google-backed android.
