Did they think, as they worked to transfer final say from users to corporations, by technical means, that politicians couldn't transfer that control to themselves by political means?
Did they think they could lock things down to extract their 30% app store fee while enforcing rules through app review (and demonstrating censorship of sites like Tumblr) that politicians wouldn't want that same rule-setting, censoring power?
Did they think their employers were going to prevent that transfer, that the trillion-dollar companies would become some sort of Che Guevara style insurgents, running a guerrilla campaign to overthrow the very system that made them trillion-dollar companies?
This is akin to how two kinds of people respond to law. The first kind think "This is the law, we must follow it" and the other kind think "This law doesn't make sense, we must change it".
People who look at pedestrian traffic lights and cross when it's green vs. people who look at cars and cross when there are no cars coming. The first say you must follow traffic rules and the second kind say they wouldn't be alive if they looked at the green/red light of law instead of whether there are oncoming cars: a green doesn't mean it's safe to cross and a red doesn't mean you can't cross if only there are no cars.
I like to call those people "ventablackpilled". Being blackpilled is all about gloom and doom, but being ventablackpilled is beyond being blackpilled. It is when you actively want the world to be a worse place because you believe that that is how the world works.
What? I don't understand how this is a "two kinds of people" generalization, when the two categories aren't even mutually-exclusive?
One can think a law is bad and should change, while simultaneously recognizing the rule of law and following it.
It's pretty weird to try to pit those two perspectives against each other
I think you can learn about it most by reading clever, capable people from big tech corporations. Their framing often involves tradeoffs against a slow but inevitable societal pressure that is helped by compromising on freedom.
So I don't believe they are ignorant of all your points; it's rather that they don't see a realistic way how tech, corporations, and perhaps even ordinary people can go forward (being better, or richer, or more sophisticated or whatever) without making that compromise. It's as if they saw the forking paths of the future, and none will end up without technical restraints, regardless of whether they do it or whether things just get worse and someone else then does them.
It's a kind of blindness. The kind that is, in my opinion, is one of the major reasons why we ended up building a world that's more than a bit dystopian.
Makes me think of the most sobering line I ever saw in a museum (Berlin): The biggest atrocities were committed by people with a spreadsheet and a performance goal.
...and it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast could even speak and cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be killed.
Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead,
so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.Communism and fascism were both fueled by atheism (either explicit or functional), not a Judeo-Christian worldview.
"Ohne Gott und Sonnenschein bringen wir die Ernte ein." (Without God and without sun, we will get the harvest done.) - the slogan of East Germany in 1975 when people were hungry and it kept raining during harvest.
Or even surveillance, for that matter.
Plenty of hubris, mind.
Arguably this plan is mostly working for Apple.
Silicon Valley has its own ideas of what "privacy" and "surveillance" mean
To those folks, it does not mean privacy from Silicon Valley companies
The Signal app will keep on trying to connect to the mothership
Because to the people who work on Silicon Valley software, that is not a privacy violation
The battle is over _control_ over software not privacy or surveillance. The later is not possible without the former
Silicon Valley does not want the user to have control any more than they want the government to have control
The game of GO delivers an idea where a very large construct can be built then in one move the entire thing flips to a different purpose... seems relevant somehow..
Corporations are already hostile enough that it doesn't really matter:
The report says that between 30 and 40 Rockstar employees working in multiple offices in the UK and Canada were fired on October 30, all of them part of a private trade union chat group on Discord. - https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/rockstar-accused-of-...
Leaked Amazon Whole Foods Docs: Workforce Diversity Helps Prevent Unions - https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=61403 (summarizing https://www.businessinsider.com/whole-foods-tracks-unionizat...)
Microsoft Are Fixated on “Hate Speech” With Lopsided XBOX Live Enforcement Strike System - https://www.techopse.com/microsoft-are-fixated-on-hate-speec...
It'll be best for society if things are a little more regulated, a little safer. And I'm happy to help where I can. Listening to the terminally online about it would be counterproductive.
1. You need a camera on your computer to allow a third party to verify your age before viewing adult content
2. It applies to social media too
3. It applies to your operating system too
4. Unless you age verify, the law demands your computer must be powerful enough to run an AI, or be internet-equipped and send your private photos to a third party, to detect and prohibit nudity. It must be capable of running in real-time, presumably, to work on Facetime calls and such.
Next step, certainly to outlaw most operating systems and older devices. Excellent news for Google, Apple, and Microsoft, bad for Linux and alternative operating systems. Remember when schools handed out Raspberry Pis?
Edit: And they are asking for this to be implemented for free in three months, because nobody knows how software engineering works. Great job
They won't have to.
Instead, they'll just make some new essentially mandatory tech which older devices cannot run – update or stop existing, societally.
----
Phones and email already seem this way (i.e. "required") – from my perspective as an internet user whom doesn't use phone/email, personally. Nobody believes me when answering "no phone, no email" – free-est man alive - their loss is disbelief.
The Government is going to put a snitch on every phone, tape every bedroom, and listen in every evening on every home. Every doctor's visit. Every therapy session. Every pub. Every street. Every store.
When the snitches phone home, what you type to your lover may get the cops sent to your home.
Artificial stasi in every desktop, laptop, tablet, camera, and phone. Around every corner. In every living room. No one will be exempt from their gaze.
Are you ready for your vacuum cleaner to phone home?
What a dreadful legacy to leave - a sad attempt to get the biggest possible bang for the smallest possible buck. Also, 3 months? Perhaps that is as long as he expects to be pm.
Education is hard but effective whilst surveillance is easy and ineffective. Guess which option politicians take?
This step forward is instead of building understanding of, and solutions for, the erosion of communities, trust and empathy for others. I feel these things might (MIGHT!) be overlooked symptoms of poor investment, policies and governance for healthy society. Crikey, perhaps I shouldn't try and call that into account, it sounds like I might be cynical about politics. Oh dear...
There's no reasonable reason why a 501(c)(3) won't put this out there to make sure there's redundancy so we could built an alternate network if they're compromised by some gag order.
The trade is we get (hopefully) people very dedicated to keeping the org developing the stuff alive and well-funded, and gaining mainstream acceptance/attention.
Maybe not, but as long as the average person thinks it is, it may as well be.
The counter must be as visceral is the claim. They make an emotional pitch:your children are in danger, surveillance is the solution. The counter must show the dangers in visceral, emotionally relevant way. This surveillance is actually a risk to parents and children as well - that by the accusation of an opaque, unaccountable system, you will be labelled a pedophile, and your kids taken away. That when sharing a picture of your own child with your own mother, you will have to worry about what the electronic bureaucracy will label your picture as.
Abstractions like privacy,and categorical claims, aren't going to reverse this. A properly pitched campaign could do. Sure, complain that politicians and the public are dumb. That may make you feel better but it won't change this an iota. Talking to people in the terms they care about might.
I 100% agree on the need to counter emotional fire with emotional fire. And this is the right way to combat this sort of overreach
However, I do think that “the choir” need to rethink what is and is not privacy - a huge amount of the benefits of having our every waking moment monitored by the virtual world (which is going to happen) can be lost if we don’t allow epidemiology to follow our digital selves.
Detecting one’s word use is slipping might signal a trip to the doctors or a thousand other digital tells that will help us improve our lives. If we have to fight against ads and digital searches for terrorism, at least let’s get the benefits too.
Also looking to get involved with the meshtastic project.
Palpable irony present when a chat provider whom requires personally identifiable information to use their service complains about privacy...
"Yet you participate in society. Curious!"
> It's obvious why we might prefer to substitute voting or shopping for politics: they're activities you do alone. You don't have to find anyone else to do them with you. [...] Individual consumption choices don't change the world, but if you've been convinced that the only way to change the world is by voting with your wallet then when the world stays terrible, you can only conclude that your friends and neighbors have ruined by things by voting (shopping) wrong. [... and] every political disappointment in your life is down to your friends' personal defects.
There are already phones with an anti-nudity feature as a parental control option, but the key there is that it's optional. The major pivot with age verification is that all devices treat all users as a child until they identify themselves with a third party. This allows a rhetorical paradox that the controls are only for children, when they apply to adults too by default.
I find they way that Peter Kyle and Jess Philips have dismissed privacy concerns about online surveillance particularly condescending.
Come the next general election they are going to be paid back for this.
(Oh, and I appreciate Signal speaking up and have just donated to them again for doing so).
Notice the same people will also talk during the daytime about morals and equality, while then conducting genocide in the evening.
First of all, age verification is not mass surveillance, it is possible to verify your age without disclosing who you are to the site you're visiting, and without disclosing what site you visited to the government. There are even age verification services (and I do despise them fully, this should be a government provided service!) that use only facial features to determine your age (you can call it surveillance, but not "mass").
See, the thing is, no matter how good your intent is, no matter how noble your cause, if you use lies and half-truths to further your argument or resist change, it only serves to undermine it all. For example "They do not deserve surveillance," is so disingenuous, if a site is required to verify age, the only children whose age might be verified are those who might have been exposed to that harmful content otherwise anyways, they're not being selected for surveillance, no one is trying to spy on children (or could possibly benefit from doing so using this method, since it is so unreliable), but they're framing it as it is so.
This isn't like "DRM" or "the nsa is spying on everyone", and there is a big difference between Signal (how are they involved in all this? is this just opportunistic politicking?) being required to verify peer-to-peer messaging from a porn site or or a live-cam site for sex workers requiring both parties to be age verified (where children do get trafficked!!).
Don't get me wrong, I don't like the idea, i really hate it but the prevailing positions in areas of the internet like here is so irrational and unreasonable.
You can't flash your private parts at children, you can't take children to a strip club, they're required by law to check IDs (even night clubs are!!). if that same interaction happens on the internet, suddenly no age verification is needed?
Is it because this problem has been left unaddressed for so long that so many are just too used to "the old way of doing things" despite the ever increasing human suffering caused by lack of regulations and laws like this?
I hope legislators grow a pair and stand up to these tech-crusaders who will burn down the world so long as they feel their corner is safe and secure.
Shame on everyone who refuses to have a nuanced discussion on this and instead takes an all-or-nothing position against any sort of legislature that would reduce (not eliminate) the harm being done. To mean, such people are no different than catholics, teachers, administrators, and anyone else in a position to do something about harm against children but turned the other way because their little world would be too shaken otherwise. Hiding behind "mah privacy!!" doesn't absolve you of the responsibility to at least attempt to be nuanced about it, at least propose an actual solution instead of just "I don't what the solution is, but not this" or "parents are at fault, I don't care" or something lazy like that. I wish I didn't know that when it comes to their own interests, wannabe technocrats like these are ingenious in developing tech like homomorphic encryption, differential privacy and zero-knowledge-proofs; this isn't about anyone's privacy or mass surveillance, it's about preservation of the status quo, apathy and faulty slippery-slope fallacy thinking.
Security cameras in public areas, I don't have a problem. Government mandated scanning software running on my PC, yeah, I have a problem. It amounts to a warrantless search.
In terms of everyday threats to my life, billionaires are a bigger one than criminals.
The cost is manageable as long as it's used for the right reasons and that the data is kept secure. The benefits of deterring violence outweigh those risks.
Billionaires may be a bigger threat but criminals are a threat nonetheless.
The average person hold all kinds of conflicting views.
The average middle class parent will surveil the shit out of their children, for example.
Hence the title of the article is not completely correct. The outcome of surveillance is the intent of the entity surveilling. In the case of the parent, this is likely the safety of their offspring. In the case of a state entity, it's likely the safety of the people in power of the state. This second type of safety is very dangerous and does not include your safety.
Check out any comment section on transportation policy, environmental policy, professional licensing for trades other than software. Look at how HN, people who should know how this sausage is made, schemes about how policy and technology can be used by government to enforce it's will and preferences upon other people in ways they cannot avoid or resist. It's not a case of divide and conquer, it's a case of completely lacking principals. Nobody believes in privacy, civil rights or that the application of government (violence) should be expensive and difficult and politically fraught when it's an application that they like. Nobody is thinking far enough ahead to wonder how those systems will be used when the whims and dispositions of government and society shift.
Just this morning I was reading a comment where some jerk was scheming about how the government should (the implication being that now that AI makes it easy to automate) scrape property listings and fine people for not pulling permits when there's a diff from the prior listings and that the whole thing can be automated and anyone innocent can just have the government tour their home to prove it.
This certainly isn't a result of democratic overreach by a concerned group of citizens. No demographic is demanding this.
It's one of those "create the infrastructure for stasi 2.0" the epstein elite tries to periodically ram down our throats ironically using "think of the children" to manufacture consent.
The last time they did this they contracted saatchi and saatchi to run an a disturbing campaign: https://londondaily.com/revealed-uk-gov-t-plans-publicity-bl...
It's not like it's the average person pushing it.
I can't believe people are really okay with a system where you have to show your real face to access websites. Cameras on phones went from a novelty to a government mandate so you can be observed.
There are various other potential methods to verify one's age, all of which are forbidden by OFCOM. Account age, zero-knowledge proofs, key signing, some kind of OAuth thing, physical tokens that require proof of age to buy, etc. The only permitted ones require your to link your real-life identity. This is a huge boon to the intelligence services and law enforcement.
Even among the few permitted verification methods, there are obstacles. Each site usually provides only one verification method at one verification provider. You may have to trust a company you never heard of before. Sometimes the photo fails (maybe their system thinks you don't look old enough) and they ask for ID too, or the photo fails and you are locked out of verification. Some services only allow credit card verification (e.g. Steam), so if you have poor credit you aren't able to even view the store page despite being of age.
What I say is, we don't need any of this. For thirty or so years we had client-side optional Parental Controls, and it worked fine. Many adult sites voluntarily use a <meta name="rating"> tag to ensure sites are correctly identified. The ability of adults to access adult content was not impeded. Parental Controls work better than verification because 1) many sites will not deploy age verification, and 2) it's trivial to overcome photo-based ID by holding your device up to a picture of an adult on a television set.
Let’s say we define personal data about, generated by or inferred from the actions of a natural person as owned by the society as a whole. And misuse is liable to 5% of annual turnover. It’s more or less GDPR. That seems viable - and I am sure an army of class action lawyers will be happy to help out
(Ok I need to work on a better proposal but I think this is more doable than you are allowing for)
That's why you can't block youtube ads with DNS, only with a browser-level adblocker because the browser adblocker is able to block the specific paths.
You can view the full encrypted traffic with something like mitmproxy, but there's ways apps can detect or prevent it.
MI5, MI6, and NCA are immune to Freedom of Information, and you cannot sue in open court; you can take it to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, who will not even let your lawyer see the relevant information to the case.
Two things that we have yet to be able to even reasonably ensure.
I sometimes work with people who worked on or at least worked with DRM-like stuff (Trustzone etc.). The people who make those systems and the structures that allow it falls squarely on banality of evil. It is not a big evil org or people with their own evil agendas (unlike Palantir, i think they are the true "ventablackpilled" ones). They are thousands of developers who push JIRA tickets like everyone. Many of them live in the developing world and they just pray to keep their jobs. The reason that big tech attracts developers despite their obvious and much bigger (IMO) evils is the same reason that attracts developers who make systems that can be completely closed down.
Many of the developers are not outright evil either. They sometimes voice their opinion. Their opinion doesn't matter in comparison to the business goals.
Sometimes it is understandable to write blocking software. Not all equipment is sold. Many industrial equipment is leased. So the actual owners want guarantees that their devices cannot be modified by renters.
The amount of info you can extract from an Apple phone or Graphene OS is limited due to same restrictions working in your favor too.
Similarly phones can be locked down due to radio restrictions. Nobody wants infinitely exploitable SDNs in peoples hands. It makes such SDNs a juicy target for enemies like Russia to exploit and turn into scalable attack vector as spoofing and jamming devices.
The reason those are attack vectors is also banal. We made our bed as engineers, voters, governments and business leaders one sloppy work at a time. We made shitty chips and shitty software with no care for security or safety. We sold millions of them and nobody wanted to pay to "do it right way". Worse is better. Silicon Valley style scaling up is the goal. Competition is for suckers. All those and every single one of us ate the fruits of shitty hardware and software that are protected by closed down systems. We engineers got the cushy jobs, our business leaders made 10x 100x gains from our work. We either had little voice (because making a big noise is guaranteeing that your cushy job no longer exists) or whatever we had is ignored in the hubris of shipping shit to billions of people.
I dunno. By that I mean, I am sure it happens, but I am not sure this is the reason for it. FWIW, I am not an engineer, but I have a window into that world.
In my little corner of the universe, we are going through belt tightening exercises already. So it is an interesting game of less meetings, shoving as much as you can onto others and the classic 'doing more with less'. In other words, even for internal customer's 'doing it the right way' is imply not a priority. On the other hand, getting more people, bigger budgets and somehow money saved is. 'Doing it the right way' is a distant ideal.
All that said, I don't think you are that wrong with the 'banality of evil' thought.
Tech.. it truly is a tool and something of a true reveal of character. It immediately shows what you do with power.