@mhoye Unpopular opinion:
Identity verification isn't so unattractive in 2026 — social media is destroying democracies via anonymous armies of bot people steered by aggressive foreign actors like Putin and Musk.
The libertarian model that the Internet was built on is failing societies.
I don't agree with the premise that there is no possibility for a solution that takes various factors into consideration.
@DiogoConstantino So? What's wrong with trying harder? Is laziness an excuse?
I want more fellow tech people to step away from the libertarian ideals of the current Internet, and start coming up with ways to help save democracy from aggressive states and their disinformation campaigns.
@txtx @DiogoConstantino @dalias @mhoye
Stepping away from the libertarian ideals of the internet is just an indirect way of saying you want the internet to step towards authoritarian ideals.
And you can take that evil shit and shove it. Have you not noticed what authoritarians do with power yet??
Are you aware that all of our social security information and most of our medical records have already been compromised? You REALLY want to fork over more personal information to some cloud where hackers and data brokers and fascist regimes can just play around with it? Once that data is getting hacked and spoofed, they'll just keep demanding more invasive data to prove ID-- right down to our retinal scans and fucking DNA.
None of this shit is about protecting kids, no matter what pretty claims they put on the tin. NONE OF IT.
@violetmadder @txtx @DiogoConstantino @dalias
You might want to read this: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/C.R.C.,_c._1038/FullText.html
@violetmadder @txtx @DiogoConstantino @dalias
That's the list of regulations you need to adhere to, as motor vehicle manufacturer, to make sure that the thing you build is safe for people to drive, at what speeds and under what conditions.
By carefully restricting vehicle manufacture to prevent specific kinds of harm under specific sets of conditions, the people _in_ those vehicles are free _from_ all sorts of risks, and more free _to_ travel in them safely.
330 pages of oppression!
@mhoye @txtx @DiogoConstantino @dalias
Enacted by a hard-fought effort from folks like Ralph Nader, yes. In the 60s and 70s.
That's an example everybody loves citing, because it worked. And the stuff that fixed the hole in the ozone. Thing is, nothing anywhere near as comprehensive or effective has been acheived in other industries since, because the corporations vowed to never let it happen like that again.
So. In a world where the regulating mechanisms have already been CAPTURED by immense money, how exactly do you expect regulation to be achieved now?
Tons of awful things are already thoroughly against all kinds of laws, but continue happening anyway. The "international rules-based order" is proving to be a hollow fantasy. Genocides continue unabated, no justice in sight.
Laws are the pieces of paper that formalize power structures with official documentation-- but they're just paper. Labels. Where exactly is the power going to come from, to make billionaires pay taxes or make genocidal war profiteers stop killing people?
How do you regulate the internet without simply lining up to put your own leash into the hands of these technofascist monsters whose corporate feudalism is turning the whole idea of national sovereignty into an obsolete joke?
How does that actually work??
"How do you regulate the internet
[...] How does that actually work??
These are excellent questions, exactly the kind we should be asking IMO. Some ideas: ban oligarch social platforms completely. Ban foreign platforms when they go over a certain market share. Ban platforms that don't adhere to local law.
I thought this was a niche idea but it turns out that, according to recent polls, some of these are very popular positions here in Europe — including age restrictions.
@dalias If a police officer comes to my home and demands a search, and I respond with "papers please" — is my position fascist?
@dalias I agree! It is different, and that difference is the core of what we're talking about here IMO.
The Internet is infested with government agents propagandists bots and criminals posing as real people. I'm saying no, I don't want them.
@dalias There are hundreds of thousands of people in slave camps in SE Asia, kidnapped and abused by criminals who take advantage of Europe and other places which treat any Internet account as if it was a real person.
There are unknown numbers of state employees in Russia, steering disinformation campaigns against us.
No person will be safe once they finish their job.
Westerns don't understand how bad it's going to be if we continue to promote their behavior.
@dalias I'm for the total bam of X/Facebook/TikTok so I wouldn't call that doing the work of billionaires. They need to be treated the same way we treat television media ownership: only allow a minority of the market to be foreign owned as it has been in France, Germany and elsewhere for decades.
Factories in Cambodia/Myanmar/Russia are often either state run or state adjacent, so we're talking about invasion here and I don't believe that'd even work anyway.
@dalias With those bans in place, I'm left with smaller local social network alternatives and I don't want those to be overrun by disinformation agents and scammers either.
So, how can it be done? I don't want to take away anonymity, nor do I want the state to know which citizen is using which account. And this, in a functioning democracy (not Iran, not Russia) should be possible with an independent government institution to act as an in-between.
@dalias I'd even be satisfied with a compromise, say, if getting verified is opt-in. But it needs to be open to every citizen in compliant countries so it's not just for rich celebrities and selected authorities as it was on twitter pre-Musk.
But it'd only work if foreign corporate social media platforms are mostly banned.
@txtx Out-of-jurisdiction ("foreign") capitalist platforms are not a problem. By their capitalist nature, they want to be able to do business (usually, sell ads/influence, or sell data mined from users) in the places they have users, and that makes them vulnerable to regulation by those places' governments.
(See for example how they all submit to Chinese government demands for censorship when they want to offer products/services in China.)
The only platforms potentially not vulnerable to regulation are the ones that are not committing harm to begin with: truly noncapitalist, decentralized ones like the fediverse.
@txtx Total ban: awesome.
Letting them operate as they do now and have de facto monopolies on the public square, but with only people who can "prove they're adults" by submitting to biometric scans or handing over government ID being allowed to participate: absolutely not okay. This further entrenches a hegemony of voices aligned with the status quo and thereby with fascism, and exerts active harms upon vulnerable people - for example, LGBTQ and non-neurotypical youth no longer able to access community and support.
@dalias @txtx Honestly, for me, the age verification v identity v but bad actors is summed up for me in one statement: You do not make things better for everyone by making it worse for persecuted minorities.
Thats it. Full stop. If the method to make things “better” makes victims lives *worse* it is NOT a solution that even needs discussed, it should be instantly off the table. Shit like age verification is a mere extension of victim blaming. Lay off the victims, go after the actual baddies, then we can chat.
@sunguramy My three years living in a refugee camp is the very reason I have sympathy for the hundreds of thousands of slaves held and tortured today by criminals who abuse anonymity and lack of verification.
IMO it's a moral failing that the tech community brushes off the issue.
A proof of authenticity doesn't need to store an ID.
mhoye
txtx 🇪🇺
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