alt Hacker NewsThe UK's war on anonymity has come to America
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Here's my idea how "safe mode" might be implemented without selfie, passport and without every app or website owner having to spend money on compliance.
The mobile and desktop OS should have a checkbox "child mode" in the onboarding stage. Switching device to "child mode" allows only installing white-listed apps from the government list and opening white-listed websites from the government list. Parents may edit the white lists but not required to do anything other than checking a box and setting a password, or registering a fingerprint, or a paired device.
The white-listed apps and websites (who volunteered to be included into the white list) must implement measures to ensure safety. Another option for a website to opt-in is to add a HTTP-header claiming safety. White-listed sites may be subject to additional regulations.
Non-white listed apps and websites are not required to implement anything, including checking age, asking for selfies etc. If the parents add a website to the white list, it becomes their responsibility to ensure that it does not contain any harmful content. For example, if parents allow their child to use Telegram, Telegram is not obliged to do any age checks and content restrictions.
My proposal achieves safe environment for all ages, but at the same time:
- based on liberal principles of voluntary participation rather than on totalitarian principles like most other proposals
- doesn't require any age checks, selfies or passports
- doesn't require adult websites to do anything and spend money for compliance, unlike most other proposals which assume that every business must spend money on moderation and compliance
- only those sites and apps that want to be in the white list, have to spend resources
- doesn't require banning VPNs as VPNs will not be approved for inclusion into a white list
> A joint statement by Buffy Wicks, the lead author of AB 2273, Jordan Cunningham, another AB 2273 author, and 5Rights Foundation states, “The Bill is practicable and realistic, drawing as it does on the UK’s Age Appropriate Design Code (AADC).”
How is Buffy Wicks so damn gullible with tech legislation? Her AB 1043 and AB 1856 (Digital Age Assurance Act), intended to protect children online and regulate Big Tech (but unintentionally criminalizing open source), was sponsored by a dark money influence operation from Meta.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_b...
She is actually well-respected with housing and transportation bills but I don't know what's going on with her tech bills.
The right people to protect children are those responsible for them - their parents and guardians.
If there is a problem with children not being sufficiently protected, that is the level at which to solve it. Give families tools and information to do so.
Here is a 2-minute tutorial video on how to turn on parental controls on an iPhone.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tv6vxRBEa2o
Instead of asking parents to do this, you get these laws where you need to show your id to unlock your own device.
Clearly.
If you're going to take an aspect of UK law it would be better to take some aspects of the police training: how long they are trained, how to do de escalation, the idea of policing by consent.
(I realise UK police are far from perfect).
The fact that the vast majority of comments here are engaging with these campaigns policies on the level of 'protecting the children', is proof enough that the propaganda effort has worked beautifully.
It was never about the children, but as long as people discuss as if it were, they have won.
I love such cases... because "almost" all of them have hidden political agendas... so, as usual, I let my investigative agent run over this and prepare me detailed connections graph between prominent personnel, orgs, funding, and political connections...
https://5rights.stupidlabs.lol/
Disclaimer: this project of mine is still in development, and not quote 100% accurate.. so, take it with a bit of salt.. do your own research...
Also, this is running on a cheap server... please don't hammer it..
> These NGOs have converged upon a unified strategy: use the rhetoric of ‘child safety’ to advocate for digital ID laws that would prevent adults from using the internet anonymously.
Of course.
Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you into giving up your freedom for security. Whatever argument they make should be simply ignored and dismissed.
Like it or not, there is a large constituency who wants to “protect the children”.
By demonizing them and failing to engage with the worries over social media and pornography We have brought it on ourselves.
Is it to be wondered at that many people are angry when tech companies have polluted the commons with their effluvium?
I simply do not understand the optaphobia of the tech literate.
Social media already tracks it's users with or without laws. The general populace simply will not wish to anonymize themselves on the internet. So ID Laws only serves as a benefit by restricting children.
Regarding pornography, the demand will always be there. Adding ID tracking will just shift the business model to be more covert, which is also a net benefit to children. And for the adults who seek it, they will find it, with or without ID laws.
So again, I do not understand the rejection of ID law. Either you are known on the internet, of which ID law is just a confirmation of your identity (less bots maybe?), or you are anonymous, and you will skirt any ID laws and not participate in the known identity space. What ends up is ID law straight up does not materially affect you, unless you are a literal child.
And on the day the government decides to ban social media for adults, I say good riddance to it too. Anonymous internet may even thrive because of it.
I'd dispute there is a UK war on anonymity just because they've tried to stop showing kids porn and the like. The UK has always been kind of pro anonymity - there was ID during WW2 but it was scrapped after. There have been revolts against ID cards, you don't have to carry a driving license to drive and things like that. We've always had child protection though - film certificates, over 18 to buy porn mags etc. The new internet stuff seems like a half hearted child protection effort.
I'm a Brit who wastes time web surfing and the total impact on me so far is reddit asked for a selfie. It's very different from areas where they did have a war on anonymity like bank accounts and investments where you have to scan passports and stuff. I've heard no one at all suggest that for general web surfing.
UK government (and the rest of Europe) has had a very easy time implementing strict administrative regulations due to public acceptance. And the children argument is like the easiest angle to attack, you can use it for almost any cause and win.
Is anyone that cares going to put on a suit and talk to the people passing laws?
For the first time in human history, the cost of surveillance has dropped below the cost of privacy.
It is more expensive today to maintain your privacy and anonymity than it is to surveil you. The collective surveillance grid makes it possible to track people's movements, whereabouts, their predilections, political views, personal images and more for a few cents every day. It's a bargain.
And in this new world, the eye watches everyone, all the time, forever. Most people, including people on HN, are still stuck in a human-first world. The new surveillance state isn't going to be thousands to hundreds of thousands of humans sitting in a shadow-y room going over pictures and videos. Today, a bunch of vectors and a large multi-modal model will do just fine. Servers are cheap (for a nation state) and never need to eat or sleep.
And they will be used to watch you. Especially if you're attractive. Or, valuable. Or, blackmail-able. After all, NSA employees routinely abuse multi-billion dollar surveillance assets to stalk women. It's so common that the NSA calls it LOVEINT.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT
In the world to come, people are going to wish they were being surveilled by the NSA. Because at least the NSA punishes these people. Occasionally.
When this kind of technology becomes this cheap and this pervasive, then the end of anonymity means unaccountable sheriff deputies stalking their former spouse and family. Or, prospective romantic interests.
https://www.firstalert4.com/2026/08/03/brentwood-officer-acc...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/cops-using-license-pl...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/rogue-officers-turned...
https://www.newsweek.com/flock-camera-police-arrests-1226378...
https://ij.org/police-have-reportedly-used-license-plate-rea...
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/26/us/flock-cameras-surveill...
With this new oracle, these people will be able to set up alerts for when their spouse is thinking of leaving them. To catch their child accessing support for abuse or something more ephemeral like being an atheist, having different political views or LGBT+.
Anyone who doesn't see the forest for the trees, or who embraces this because "parental controls are too hard to use" will doom themselves and future generations to a world that's materially worse than our hyper-surveilled present.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but at this rate I'm going to miss the days when it was just the NSA reading my emails (and they still do! Howdy!). I know the track record. But at least the NSA has some sense of institutional responsibility and control. Most institutions in your life, including your HOA don't.
https://ktvz.com/cnn-regional/2021/07/22/arnold-residents-ce...
We know what this is really about, its to give the UK intelligence services the ability to spy on US citizens and then pass the information on to US intelligence. We'll probably get similar laws in all the other five eyes as well.
This faced a huge backlash when first introduce in the UK, there's even a infamous meme with a children saying face the wall lol.
Several states have already had this for a while now.
It might just be me, but when the US decides to do something like requiring age verification on porn sites it feels half-hearted, sort of stupid and mostly annoying. When the EU does it, it feels naive, overreaching, bureaucratic, mostly harmless (but annoying and misguided). When it is the UK that attacks privacy it feels incredibly dystopian, at least to me. It's somehow darker, compared to the US or the EU and I don't understand why.
On this topic, have people noticed the sudden coordinated media push for Flock Is Your Friend? The Free Press, The Atlantic, and Axios have all churned out pro-Flock articles in the last week. Clearly someone (I assume A16Z, but it could be multiple groups) is panicking about the mounting bipartisan backlash to Flock cameras and is starting to write checks to try and head it off.
UK person here, and someone who has been lobbied and lobbied the government on tech regulations.
firstly the amount of money that the "UK lobby" are pushing is a drop of sand in the ocean.[1]
secondly, and most importantly, the USA has no (federally robust) legal protection for citizens to guard against data collection and aggregation. So whist this is being presented as a war on anonymity lead by the dirty British, this is basically "think of the children" play for protecting anonymity. There is nothing wrong with this, its a good argument, even though its obviously flawed.
If you want to dox someone, you just need to pay the right broker. That is, in the UK really difficult. (for example flock cameras are largely illegal in the UK, certainly no council or HOA can just install them. sure you can put in CCTV, but you cannot process that CCTV to track bystanders)
There are no useful controls for citizens to limit the collection and processing of personal information. so whilst in theory you can be anonymous in america, as soon as you use a phone, or any ISP you are effectively de anonymised. I can as a company, buy your location data, tie it to your IP, then cross check with various ad networks to get usernames. (the civil legal route here is file a john doe and ask for metadata in discovery. Higher legal bar, but I don't think thats something that can be done simply in the UK)
TLDR: Contrary to popular belief there are greater protections to anonymous behaviour in the UK. Yes they have been greatly eroded, but the difference here is that there are no legal ways for companies to unmask you for money[2]. In the USA there is no legal protection for someone to share your ID for money.
[1]musk is currently spending millions propping up convicted criminals.
[2] not without your permission, or without a robust legal proceeding.
There's a better network layer solution than trying to block visitors at every host or at the endpoint devices' OS/application layer. I know because a company in my country is already testing such a thing in private beta. A router firmware that provides two wifi endpoints per home, one for adults and one for minors. You only share the minors' password with your children. The firmware maintains a whitelist of sites (it periodically downloads from a central server, I think). There is nothing to be installed on endpoint device, and no gatekeeping is necessary at the host. Apparently this can be extended to mobile networks as well, but I haven't looked at it in detail.
Since 9/11, the war on anonymity was always strong in the US.
It seems to me the intrusiveness of age verification will continue to grow.
They want the OS to report the user's age. People will use this to claim whatever age they want. For instance, if companies cannot advertise to children, they might find that almost every computer is reporting that the user is a child--turns out adults want the protections kids receive as well--sometimes.
Eventually they will have to enforce a system intrusive enough that no lying or abuse of the system is possible. We might even approach "Verification Can" levels of verification.
It's cute people think the UK has this level of influence over the USA
Like, pick a side: are we the tiny backwater micro state on the verge of bankruptcy with no standing in the world, or are we a hugely influencial world power directing US law?
What can the average person do to try and dismantle these NGOs?
Having privacy necessarily means that it will also make conversation between any adult and child private.
This is simply a risk that I am willing to make. Just fuck off already.
Fight this shit off. We do not need this. Digital Privacy has tools coming up - we are all loosing on this because of a few monkeys I wish some people had to courage to deal with. I'm honestly exhausted by this shit. Let all of it rot.
The whole think of the children angle is so cursed. Used to push surveillance meanwhile actual harm against children goes ignored. See Epstein files and the grooming gangs in the UK
If it actually did anything to protect the children it wouldn’t be so objectionable
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin
Honestly I wouldn't be so cranky about this if it were proper government based ID instead of creepy Thiel companies doing it.
And if it was mostly about posting content anonymously instead of even reading these sites.
We should copy nothing from the UK on topics of technology, privacy or air conditioning.
> Talk shit about China and communism and dictators and shit > Proceed to do the same things
Today's America in a nutshell
I can't be the only one who will never comply with these draconian, anti-privacy laws, nor the only one with the technical prowess to bypass them. Never used social media (unless you count HN as social media, which is a stretch), so perhaps it won't be as great a loss as it will be to many. I have no doubt there are many like-minded people (in number if not in population %) that feel the same, and will undoubtedly repopulate newsgroups and message boards that are not subject to this authoritarian nonsense.
Didn't HN decide to not allow AI submissions? This is quite explicitly one in that the operator of the site declares to "automate investigative journalism" and launched the site with its five pieces of 'journalism' yesterday.
And to point out the obvious on the actual quality of the piece, The US has itself passed age verification laws in 20 states, such as Texas where it was driven not by the British but by domestic interest groups and decidedly state senators like Angela Paxton.
Also given the slant of the site it's pretty obvious was the political motivation here is, I guess yelling at the British always works
despicable
It is very unlikely that “NGOs” have the funding influence and power to do this. The more likely source is state backed intelligence agencies. The NGOs are just there to create a buffer.
Ask yourself logically - who would pay these NGOs to do things like attempt to extort meta into a $500M+ settlement over “harming child mental health.”
This is all connected and intelligence agency backed. It’s far from innocent, it’s non corporate - some had suggested meta was behind it - but as we have seen meta is the one getting targeted.
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The day cannot come soon enough where every online user is tied to a verified person in a government database.
I'm always surprised how defensive people get in here about privacy when so many corporations have vastly more information about you than the government does.
All this talk starts from the assumption that anonymity is something to which anyone in a society should have a right.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but the war on anonymity was first (just) passed in the US at a state level as porn laws before it passed in the UK.
Are we pretending that the porn id laws weren't a first attempt at getting forums like Reddit that might "accidentally" have naked pictures liable and therefore profile everyone?
Because this is leaning on blaming to UK for everything the US is doing to itself an awful lot.