Item — HN Reader

When I read those seemingly outrageous claims, I didn't immediately dismiss the author. I allowed him to substantiate the claims and kept reading. I found myself agreeing with his argument and his train of thought of how, once digital IDs are accepted as a norm, they won't be unwound, and all online activity will likely require them and then, as he says,

"Your children will never know what it was like to think freely online. They will never explore ideas anonymously. They will never question authority without it being logged in their permanent profile. They will never speak freely without fear that every word will be used against them.

They will grow up in a digital cage. And you will have to tell them you saw it being built and did not stop it when you had the chance."

So I'm with the author on this one. Under the cover of child safety, digital IDs will cage us (or at least children entering the verification age), and it will probably never be rolled back.

3 comments

That's the role of rhetoric as a skill: all the true and sufficient syllogisms in the world will be ignored by most readers, if the argument leads with priors-triggering hyperbole and bombast.

The best way to not be in a digital cage is to opt out of the current digital products.

Would that be such a bad thing? Frankly I would welcome a world in which kids are not using Instagram or TikTok. They don’t have to live in a cage if we don’t let them in the cage.

Personally, my plan is that when age verification laws get passed, every service that requires ID is a service I stop using. And I expect my life to be better for it!

What if all services require ID?

Let’s take a basic example: Wikipedia, which hosts pornography, easily could be a target of such legislation. Now there is infrastructure in place to know when you read about “Criticisms of policy X” and maybe it’s handled safely or maybe it’s handed directly to the government.

What about news? It’s a hop skip and leap from “age verify pornography with ID” to “age verify content about sexual abuse or violence.” Now the infrastructure is in place to see the alt-news criticisms you read.

Twitch or YouTube wouldn’t even wait to comply, ID verification is something that these corporations are already perfectly fine with. Now, you watching a history of your government’s crimes is a potentially tracked red flag that you’re a dissident to be watched.

Do you think if this sort of legislation is enacted, it will stop at large websites? It will be an excuse used by the government and supported by big tech firms to shut down any small websites which don’t comply. After all, Google, MS, et al, they would rather that your entire concept of the internet start and end in a service they control.

> The best way to not be in a digital cage is to opt out of the current digital products.

But will your friends and family opt out? Their phones are always listening. They can just as easily listen to you, even if you go to great pains not to expose yourself to technology. They'll make a shadow profile of any avoidant user whether they want it or not.

> The best way to not be in a digital cage is to opt out of the current digital products.

Bullshit. These are all-encompassing monopolies and government services. More likely, they'll ban you and you'll end up having to go to court out of desperation to demand that they service you.

This is very limited thinking. If you lacked this sort of imagination 20 years ago, you wouldn't have been able to predict today.

> Frankly I would welcome a world in which kids are not using Instagram or TikTok.

This is the sort of passive reactionary nonsense that causes the danger that we're in. Everything isn't something to give up lightly, even if you think that it will force your neighbor to turn his music down, or get rid of bad reality television. I don't like kids on social media either. I don't like adults on it. I think kids are suffering more from surveillance than from TikTok.

Nah that’s silly, because Google has been doing all that already for the past quarter century. This “age verification” shit isn’t going to move the needle on the Google-created dystopia we already have.

The time to worry about not having a digital cage was quite awhile ago. Instead tech people pushed Chrome and Android and Gmail and ads onto us.

Chrome, Android, and Gmail are optional to use.

So is social media.

It's framed as being only for social media. But, really, it's about network access. Without network access, it's difficult to thrive in the modern world.

Are you not alarmed at the possibility that a person's network access could be cut arbitrarily and at-will?

I'm mostly alarmed by kids parroting Andrew Tate and a whole generation being raised propagandised by Tiktok brainwashing.

Why? Kids have had access to the internet for over 30 years. What is the tiktok brainwashing (I don't use it), and how do you qualify the danger of it from say google news brainwashing, or even (gasp) public school brainwashing? I mean, if we're going to group ban information, at least let people in the local communities make those decisions. Otherwise, we're going to get the Epstein class making these decisions.

If you've been paying attention, you know what GP is talking about and you don't make such silly equivocations.

Is Google tracking which teenagers make which posts on 4chan?

Curious about via Google Chrome versus not