I think it's easier and safer to complain about everything than to actually have a nuanced and informed stance.
Look at age verification: it's very easy and very safe to say "nobody sane would think that it is a good idea to force people to show their ID to every website they want to access, it will obviously leak the IDs, that is very bad!". While it is not wrong, it is manipulative, though: that is not the only way to implement age verification. In fact, there is technology that exists that would allow age verification in a privacy-preserving manner: some service that already have access to your ID can give you a token that proves your age, and you can then use this token to access a website. The service cannot know where you use the token, the website cannot know your ID, and they cannot collude.
So the constructive debate around age verification is this: assuming we implement it properly (i.e. in a privacy-preserving manner), is that something that we want or not? Does it solve a problem, or at least does it help?
But we cannot ever reach that level of debate, because nobody can't be arsed to get informed about it.
> The sentiment that having to present our ID to use tiktok gives us the heebie-jeebies, and for good reason.
So push for privacy-preserving age verification, such that you don't need to leak your ID to anyone but TikTok can still prevent kids from accessing it?
That's my problem with the debate: people like you seem very proud to be uninformed. It exists as much as end-to-end encryption exists. It's cryptography, it's not up to debate.
But people who have no clue are very vocal about their belief that it does not exist.
Same as for the cigarette: it's a lot easier to regulate stuff for kids, because we as a society tend to agree that they need to be protected. Much harder to do with adults, because it is much less of a consensus.
Well, authoritarian governments don't like to be at the mercy of another country. So even for authoritarian governments it would make a lot of sense to allow open source alternatives like GrapheneOS instead of depending entirely on US monopolies.
The problem with "us" is that it's not enough to agree on one small question ("is hardware attestation good or bad") to happily live together in our own country. "We" have a wide variety of opinions about pretty much everything.
In other words, "we" exist only to fight against this one thing we disagree with. And even there, we probably don't all agree on how to fight it or what to do instead.
It's not completely fair. The US also bullies them into doing those things, it's not only "pure corruption to fill their pockets".
How many European countries buy American weapons because they are scared of what would happen if they pissed off the US? And then they still get tariffs and threats of military invasion.
> I think it is far more likely that it is a lack of knowledge and incompetence.
I agree with that. Reading HN comments, where people are supposed to be generally tech-savvy, I see a ton of "lack of knowledge and incompetence" (not in a negative way, just "uninformed"). Why should politicians know better than the average tech-savvy person?
But politicians get yelled at by everybody, saying everything and its contrary, while the tech-savvy people can comfortably take a condescending tone explain why "being so stupid is impossible so it has to be corruption".
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. After Snowden, there's absolutely no reason to believe that governments "accidentally" push for policies that strengthen surveillance and control over our digital lives. It's ridiculous to believe in the goodwill of those in power when these kinds of proposals are made over and over again despite strong pushback.
What I find ridiculous is to strongly believe that politicians are somehow all the same person, and therefore either all corrupt, or all fascists, or all...
In a functioning democracy, politicians represent the people. Meaning that some politicians will be on one end of the spectrum, and some will be on the other. If there are no politicians you disagree with, then probably you are not living in a functioning democracy.
> despite strong pushback
That is my point: look at the pushback! It's many people with very different opinions saying everything and its contrary, with a lot of technically incorrect takes.
Do you realise that when you say "they must be corrupt, because they don't share my opinion, and my opinion is absolutely the best", and you are not the only one saying that, then either everybody saying it should share your opinion or at least some of you are wrong, right?
Everybody wants to believe that they are right and everybody else is wrong, and therefore everybody else is either stupid or corrupt. I want to believe that sometimes, the world is actually nuanced, and people may have different opinions. I may have a strong opinion (and knowledge) about hardware attestation, but it doesn't mean that every politician does and hence has to be corrupt in order to not agree with me.
> What I find ridiculous is to strongly believe that politicians are somehow all the same person, and therefore either all corrupt, or all fascists, or all...
That's a distraction from the point that I actually made. One can try to paint politicians as saints all they want, and it still won't change the fact that the entire population is digitally surveilled 24/7 and what we do on our own computing devices are increasingly decided for us rather than by us. This flies in the face of liberal democratic values, and not okay. Some things simply aren't up for debate.
> Do you realise that when you say "they must be corrupt, because they don't share my opinion, and my opinion is absolutely the best", and you are not the only one saying that, then either everybody saying it should share your opinion or at least some of you are wrong, right?
In short, you're accusing of me of criticism. It's boilerplate fallacious logic that makes any criticism against anything sound illegitimate.
> it still won't change the fact that the entire population is digitally surveilled 24/7
I agree that we are, I disagree that we are because all politicians are corrupt. Surveillance capitalism is the result of the private companies that built it, who could because they became so big, because of the lack of antitrust and stuff like the DCMA (and the equivalent that the US forced every other country to adopt).
Did all politicians collude in order to get there? I don't think so. The fact is that many people thought it was great to have powerful US companies taking over the world.
> It's boilerplate fallacious logic that makes any criticism against anything sound illegitimate.
I don't think so. You are saying "they must be corrupt, otherwise they would agree with me". I say that it sometimes happens, in all good faith, that other people don't agree with you. They may have different opinions, or they may be uninformed, incompetent, or simply wrong. There are many, many reasons to disagree that are not corruption.
You gave Snowden as an example: most politicians were not aware of what the NSA was doing. I think only the President (and maybe someone else) did, outside of the NSA.
People who say "the politicians want X" don't understand how politics works. Especially in the EU, where they are elected by the people of 27 very different countries.
I brought up the Snowden disclosure because it's significant. What governments along with the tech sector did behind our backs is a major violation of human rights and undermines the very foundations of the rule of law. After Snowden, politicians have no plausible deniability. We were all made aware what the consequences of our policies are, and it's only getting worse. Yet, instead of dismantling these illegal programs all together, politicians continue to expand its scope with laws like we're discussing here.
According to the dictionary, corruption is "dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people (such as government officials or police officers)." If this isn't corruption, I don't know what is.
There are tons of politicians in many countries that oppose it.
It's too easy to blame "the politicians" for everything. In democracies, politicians are elected. People just have to vote. You wanted facts? The US people chose not to elect Bernie Sanders, and also chose to re-elect Trump.
Is the US people corrupt? I don't think so. They voted for what they thought would be best. Maybe they were wrong, maybe they were uninformed, maybe they were incompetent. But I wouldn't say all the voters had to be corrupt, there is no other explanation.
> politicians continue to expand its scope with laws like we're discussing here
And my point is that when we discuss such laws here, it is pretty obvious that many "tech-savvy people" have no idea about how it works and complain about the politicians not understanding either. All they know is that they are against it, and yell at it with many incorrect arguments. I find it a bit rich: politicians who are in favour of it do exactly the same thing: they don't understand how it works but they know that they are in favour, based on their limited understanding.
So those many people who are against could not inform the politicians, because they don't know themselves. What happens then? Politicians, who don't understand, are yelled at by people who disagree and mostly don't understand either. If a "good" politician tries to listen to some of those complaints, most likely they will see that the complaint is wrong, and then it would make sense for them to ignore it, wouldn't it?
Before thinking about corruption or malice, I like to try to assume good faith. And I see a couple things:
1. Most people don't write.
2. The people who write are not always competent.
3. The people who write often have an agenda, too.
What's the consequence of that? Imagine what the politicians receive: tons of messages of people complaining, most of which are factually wrong. What to do then? How to know who is right? It's genuinely hard.
I think you're right that they are incompetent. The point is not to make them understand it, but rather to make them see that enough people care. The problem is that most people don't write, so the politicians don't see that they care. Same thing for companies. How many GrapheneOS users say "well when it stops working, I just move to another service, and if there is none, then I live without the service entirely". That way the companies never see that there is a need.
> How many GrapheneOS users say "well when it stops working, I just move to another service, and if there is none, then I live without the service entirely".
Being prepared to be this voice is one of the reasons I'm a Graphene OS user. Another is that it helps me avoid accidentally writing code that depends on google play services. When you've got an agent doing most of the driving, it's easy to not realize that your app is broken without google, unless you're testing it on a degoogle'd device.
Look at age verification: it's very easy and very safe to say "nobody sane would think that it is a good idea to force people to show their ID to every website they want to access, it will obviously leak the IDs, that is very bad!". While it is not wrong, it is manipulative, though: that is not the only way to implement age verification. In fact, there is technology that exists that would allow age verification in a privacy-preserving manner: some service that already have access to your ID can give you a token that proves your age, and you can then use this token to access a website. The service cannot know where you use the token, the website cannot know your ID, and they cannot collude.
So the constructive debate around age verification is this: assuming we implement it properly (i.e. in a privacy-preserving manner), is that something that we want or not? Does it solve a problem, or at least does it help?
But we cannot ever reach that level of debate, because nobody can't be arsed to get informed about it.
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