Technology

Is it no internet, or no Meta?

I really wish people would stop weaponizing children to encroach on everyone’s privacy.

We already have a means to protect children online. It's called having the adults who are responsible for them pay attention to what they're doing on the Internet and restricting their access via parental controls. No reason to drag the rest of us into that.

The argument against them is that, I dont want my kids to live in a world where surveillance is everywhere, the internet ain't libre, and safeguard is a replacement for morality and etiquette.

The people who can verify their identity will be less willing to share their opinion on certain topics once they know they aren't anonymous. I'm certain this is one of the goals. The reactions to political news, world events, law proposals and atrocities will be far more muted and it will be easier to control the population.

What our glorious ill informed leaders do not seem to have realised as yet is that it will apply to them too. So everything they look at online will be linked to their actual identity and is thereby more easily discerned, to be spewed all over the internet when the time is right. Or maybe that is the point, delivery of prosecution or blackmail in neater and more convenient packages.

IMO, because this all centers on access to social media platforms, it's also a restriction on freedom of speech. Kids can't talk to other people just because of the form of communication? Fucking bullshit and does absolutely fuck all to fix the true underlying problems. The lack of ID also just puts the restriction on many unhoused adults and is very likely to be an intentional side effect.

Am I the only one that saw Perry the Platypus?

Age verification laws reshape who can speak, who can access information, and who gets excluded from the digital public sphere. In other words, age verification is not a neutral safety measure: it presents a structural barrier to disproportionately exclude certain groups—particularly those in the global majority—and alters the architecture of global online expression. Some of these groups are already marginalized offline, and age verification extends that exclusion into digital spaces.

For instance, 850 million people globally do not have ID. Most of these individuals exist in primarily low and middle income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The World Bank points out that many are members of marginalized groups and more than half of those lacking access to identity documentation also have children whose births have not been registered. Women are particularly vulnerable and are 8% less likely than men to have an ID. Other vulnerable groups, such as adults in low income countries, are less likely to have an ID when they fall below 25 years, as are those with a primary school education or less or those in rural areas.

or if Im just not going to play along. im pretty willing to give it all up.

But how will AI agents access the internet without having ID?

Papers please, ja? Nein? Ins Lager!

Feeling represented yet?

I'm payin $25/mo to join an online community by a YouTuber I follow and everyone is using their real names and real photos (or simulacra thereof). It's pretty crazy.

But I think what will happen is communities will be based on trust, and that trust will eventually be enforced by siloed environments.

Like, right now, I'm guessing that the site's software is probably hoovering up information and it's all centralized somewhere... but maybe in the future, if small communities become the norm, providing real privacy will be a thing.