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Discussion (99 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Soon enough (and already the case, if you're one of the unlucky ones) you won't even be able to browse it without explicitly allowing Google to track you on every single website you try to access through your Google-approved, constantly monitored handheld device, linked directly to your identity.
Commercial VPNs are not a solution, they're merely kicking the can down the road, and shrinking the number of people that will complain once they will, finally, come for them too, first by requiring strict accountability to providers and age verification, then outright banning any that do not comply.
So far I have UK, China, Singapore.
But maybe I should accept less rights when traveling.
You (and me) can bitch all you want, but reddit has well prepared for us whining and being sad will change nothing.
Mark my words: KYC will be required on HN in about two years. Not because dang will want it, but because that's the direction the world is going to.
Garry Tan, president & CEO of YC, on Flock support: "You're thinking Chinese surveillance US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims" [1]
The tech/VC people want it, because that's where the money will be.
[1] https://x.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955
Oh Persona is also used on Reddit [2].
Persona.
A YC backed company.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48628264
[2] https://help.withpersona.com/articles/7F6BaF9h8Fxf0XWkwQscXN...
[1] https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2026/02/age-verificat...
For me, ditching Reddit was what changed.
We are clearly the minority and reddit is happy to pay the price of us leaving the platform.
Use a VPN, perhaps Mullvad or IVPN to appear to sites as if you are from a freer country (or state) to bypass the KYC.
Yes I understand. They are better prepared to fight the surveillance state than I am. And yet they caved in instead of putting out some resistance.
Doesn't matter. They want your passport.
Very weird world we live in!
We moved here because it was the best place available: we'd move elsewhere in case this place will not be available.
It's just that a small minority will continue to protect child abuse^W^W^Wresist utopia.
https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/search?f=tweets&q=Backdoor&si...
the presenter now works at intel.
If you do business with totalitarian states, there's a good chance you become one.
I trust Mullvad 100x more than my ISP, so it's a good decision to use Mullvad and it benefits my privacy.
It's not like your ISP or Mullvad can see content of sites, either they can just see the DNS requests.
What ISP sees without a VPN: news.YCombinator.com, apple.com, Wikipedia.com
What ISP sees with a VPN: Mullvad server
What VPN sees when you use it: news.YCombinator.com, apple.com, Wikipedia.com
It’s very accurate to assume that ALL US based tech companies are part of mass surveillance, no matter what promises you hear, companies can be forced to cooperate without the public knowledge. Same with European ones, as the article stated, they are not that far, so don’t assume much even when you see the cliche “based in Switzerland!! Trust us give us your money”. The only safe way is to host your own, maintain your own, encrypt at rest and while transferring on your own, trust no one and nothing, and it’s a good start.
mullvad has one of the best, if not the best, track records when it comes to vpns over its nearly 2 decades of being in business. it feels wrong to lump them under the same "a VPN Company" label with the likes of Hola VPN or whatever, despite it being technically true.
In Canada, they straight up tell you that the AI will be used to profile you, from every transaction you do all the way to analyzing your sentiment
> AI could analyze public sentiment on social media and other platforms to gauge public opinion.
https://www.canada.ca/en/government/system/digital-governmen...
Brace yourself!
I keep seeing this claim, but where is it coming from?
"parents" are not do-I-look-like-I-know-what-a-jay-peg-is boomers you and others who make this claim believe them to be. the people who are having children now grew up with iPhones. to them, the Internet is not that newfangled thang they heard about on CNN/Fox.
so, show me the data. not a poll with vague ass questions like "are you concerned about your children's safety on the Internet?". I want to see the percentage of people who answer yes to an unambiguous question like "do you consent to submit your ID and/or scan your face to access any random website ~~to fight terrorisds~~ ~~to protect our democracy~~ to protect your children?"
>From everything you have seen and heard, do you support or oppose the recent rules requiring age verification to access websites that may contain pornographic material?*
>80% support
https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/52693-how-have-britons-rea...
>The Essential poll found majority support for a range reforms to improve online safety including: [...] enforcing age verifications for pornography and gambling sites (79%); enforcing age verification for social media (76%)
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/...
they don't hear about all of the potential downsides, knock-on effects, chilling effects, etc. unless they are part of niche groups like HN. and even if they do, in passing, they often lack the technical knowledge to really understand the implications.
i.e., they are consenting, but it isn't informed consent.
i imagine there would be an interesting picture if these numbers were presented in buckets by occupation, or by results in tech competency test, etc.
(similarly, as an example, my opinion in a poll about some complex medical procedure would not be very informed. i would be relying solely on what i hear on the news or read in a quick article, with no fundamentals to really assess and form an opinion of my own)
Only which age you wanted the ban to start
Dishonest polls do not demonstrate popular support.
https://consumerrights.wiki/w/User:Louis/Manufacturing_suppo...
- i keep seeing the same arguments everywhere "ThEy WaNt To CoNtRoL Us" etc
- how do you propose catching terrorists then?
cf UK manchester bombers.
In the end the only effective way to stop terrorism ( since it's so easy to just drive a car into a crowd of people ), is to create a society where people don't want to do it - which is what we mostly have - as terrorism, while terrible, is fortunately still quite rare.
It is not the job of the citizenry to prove that surveillance doesn't curb terrorism in order to preserve privacy. It is the job of the government to prove that surveillance DOES curb terrorism to such a degree that privacy MUST be degraded.
Only then we can have a conversation.
More people die in the US from cars every month than died from 9/11.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Yes, who cares what it originally meant:
https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
The cure you propose is worse than the disease. I don't want you to prevent me from stubbing my toe by cutting my foot off. You're just going to have to find another way and do the best you can under those constraints.
There have been over 3000 people arrested for showing support for this proscribed organisation, and over 700 charged, but none actually prosecuted yet. It was only just decided two weeks ago that the government's act of proscribing Palestine Action was lawful.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/15/arrested-pro...
Obviously, I think the Terrorism Act shouldn't silence speech like it does. Palestine Action are a pack of bumbling thugs, and the government's real reason for proscription is that those idiots successfully broke into an RAF base. Egg on face for military so government strikes back with proscription.
The law does allow for these sorts of penalties you describe. But I think you will find that if the CPS does prosecute these cases, especially against people who literally stood in front of police stations and displayed those four words and no more, i.e. they dared the government to prosecute them for speech, I don't think they will be "put in prison for a long stretch". They may not even be prosecuted at all. They would have to do more, i.e. actually break into places and physically damage them, like Palestine Action have repeatedly done, to get a long prison sentence. But the threat of prison for speech is there in the law, that's why I don't like that law.
how did police ever do anything over the past hundreds of years?
no one said "without using tech".