This consolidation of power is a dream come true for the Big Tech platforms, but it’s a nightmare for users. While the megacorporations get more traffic and a whole lot more user data (read: profit), users are left with far fewer community options and a bland, corporate surveillance machine instead of a vibrant public sphere. The internet we all fell in love with is a diverse and colorful place, full of innovation, connection, and unique opportunities for self-expression. That internet—our internet—is worth defending.
If I have to verify myself I simply won’t use it, I really don’t care, there’s nothing so important online that I need to prove my identity to see it. (Banking and shit like that aside of course). Social media? Give me a break I’m already over it before all this ID shit. I hope it all burns to the ground.
this. I refuse to make more accounts, and verify personal info. Ive been prepping for the big disconnect from the internet as a result. there will come a time when it just won’t be usable
Yup, the furthest I’d go is entering a birthdate. Depending on the service, I’m anywhere from 21 to 105 years old.
Facebook is kinda unavoidable here.
I have young kids, and marketplace has saved me thousands of dollars. Kids need a lot of different stuff at different ages and it’s nice to be able to flip the stuff you dont need anymore and get the stuff they do need second hand.
Also messenger, what’s app. My apartment building has a what’s app group thats invaluable. I talk to customers on messenger.
It is totally avoidable, you will find new ways to handle your business. You have to stop using their service, they are a cancer on our society and they are actively engaging in propaganda for genocide amongst many other shitty things.
The sooner you pull the trigger the better off you will be. It is past time to move on.
Not really. I engage in my business to make money, not to fly the privacy & freedom flag.
Then you dont ever get to complain. You have other options, but its too hard for you, so youd rather just contribute to pissing away freedoms and privacy. Its because of people like you, who wont put up with even a little discomfort, that we are where we are. They keep pushing, and people like just keep on saying “OK”.
If we are ever to stop this increasingly vile push to have us be endlessly profiled, its unfortunately going to have to be people like you that finally grow a fucking back bone. So yeah, we’re fucked…
Oh my sweet summer child. One day the light of idealism will fade from your eyes just as it does for everyone who is not 15.
I’m not contributing to pissing away freedoms and privacy, but I’m not going to inconvenience myself on ideological grounds.
Its got nothing to do with some frivolous ideology, and everything to do with not letting someone else manipulate me through convenience. People like you always have excuses, but the reality is that youre just lazy. You want your hand held by some tech daddy, you need your hand held by some tech daddy. Because other wise you might have to think for yourself. And that, well, thats just too much effort. No, better to bend over, spread cheeks, and present your arse to the gods of convenience. Well, that and all your data…
LOL. Settle down mate.
You can call me names if it makes you feel better.
I couldn’t care less if fb knows I’m selling toddler clothes.
I, and everyone else who is not 15, will continue selling my junk on facebook.
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The issues related to facebook marketplace are not unique. Plenty of people have second-hand items to sell without using fb marketplace.
That’s not really true.
I live in a fairly small city. There might be other platforms but they’re not in common use.
I can list a box of toddler clothes and they’ll sell in a week, while other platforms perhaps they won’t sell at all.
I’m in this weird middle ground where I hate FB with a passion and it depresses me every time I log in, but I need to create a personal brand for my business (and to get laid, who am I kidding) and honestly I’m thinking about getting one of my friends to run it for me, which seems weird but
I think everyone feels that way. All you can do is just try to stick to the bits you really need.
I would def think about paying someone to manage your business page.
Same. I know there are easy ways around it but I’m not going to use them, and I wish more people could take this attitude - if everyone cut down their Internet usage in response to this ID stuff things would quickly start to turn around
But what if they put porn behind a id wall.
I plain feel sorry for the service that attempts to get between people and their porn.
🤝
Gay-torrents is still around. Though they really need to set up an i2p instance too.
torrents
There’s no shortage of other ways to get it for an enterprising person, maybe a few extra clicks once you know where to go. That’s likely one of the goals though, whitewashing the internet. It’s such a massive business though, but maybe very fractured and independent.
i find it interesting that some of the most debased, vile, disgusting perverts to ever live are passing laws to force regular, everyday people to dox themselves just so they can see a tig ol gilf bitty.
Hopefully, in the EU at least, the verification will be provided by the government. Like a 2FA, meaning Big Tech would only get a verified token and nothing else.
The government already got passports with our face, and have had it for many years. They could use that information.
That would mean that any platform could implement this verification, and never get hold on any data.
Best case in a shitty scenario, I know.
No. There’s no “hopefully” anything when it comes to this bullshit. It’s bad for the individual, full stop. This is not a thing to compromise on, because any compromise at all will eventually harm the users (though leaks/hacks, or government overreach, etc.) without any actual benefit or offset to them.
Its bad, but a govt service is the best implementation.
I am disinclined to believe that this is a death-sentence for smaller platforms longterm.
Depends on the nature of the platform. It is not good for small commercial entities that will be required to enact a ID verification system because it will increase the cost of entry to the market.
Increasing the cost of entry will benefit large corporations that will easily absorb the cost. Platforms that don’t require it will likely be unaffected.
It is not good for small commercial entities that will be required to enact a ID verification system because it will increase the cost of entry to the market.
As someone who works in this space, I doubt it’s going to be an issue for smaller entities. We already have SSO for basic login identity from a variety of providers (Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple) — smaller sites already love to use these as it provides easy access to existing users, and saves a ton of coding for having to handle login information, password management, etc.
These same entities can handle the age verification. Now I can see arguments as to why centralizing logins and age verification like this could be a problem for users, but if I decided to start my own social media app tomorrow I’d likely rely on the big platforms to handle all of this (as we already see everywhere — heck, app for ordering pizza support Facebook, Google, and Apple logins), and save myself the cost and hassle of implementing this myself (never mind the potential embarrassment and liability should someone hack my site). Then it’s on those platforms to worry about age verification.
All of these services are currently free, and save you from a ton of coding around user accounts and authentication, so using them is usually cheaper then having to DIY it.
Yes, but I will never log in to any site with those. If those are my only options I am not using your website.
And that’s just fine. Considering how many people do login with those services, I doubt any that use the SSO services will particularly miss you and the small subset of users who don’t want to let a third-party service confirm your login.
That’s not meant as snark — every app and website out there has some subset of users who will decry “I won’t use that because it does X”. And that’s fine. It’s a personal decision. But it likely won’t significantly affect development decisions, as it’s going to happen with some group for some reason anyway.
currently free
And that’s always worked out in the past, hasn’t it?
Imagine putting your entire business in a position where one of Google’s half-assed AIs could decide tomorrow at zero notice to cut you off from your entire user base.
This is why most apps that do use such services use more than one. Lots of modern sites have buttons for “Login with Google”, “Login with Facebook”, “Login with Apple”. None of them want to lose access to the user data and analytics they get from these services — so I doubt one is going to jump into cutting you off or requiring payment while the others are still free.
It would take all of these services to (illegally) coordinate to suddenly start charging — and of all of them I don’t see that being in the interest at all for Apple. Apple’s login service uses Touch and Face ID on their devices, and is part of the selling point for those devices (extremely easy logins with no password). They’re not making their money off Single Sign-On (SSO) login services — they make their money off selling devices, and they make the case for selling these devices in large part by selling “simplicity”.
So if you’re worried today about a login service yanking the rug out from under you, you just implement many/all of them. It’s not significantly more work — all of them are based off OAuth — so long as your website or app can authenticate via OAuth you just need to use the APIs each company provides to implement the authentication, and you’re done.
Nothing them stops you as you get bigger form implementing your own login/authentication service — and if you ever get big enough, you too can offer it as a service for other websites.
“Don’t worry, it’ll only affect the 70% of your users that choose that one” isn’t the safeguard you seem to think it is.
I will take your word for it then. Thanks for letting me know.
What if devices would have a private chip to have the ID, so the website would just request if user is underage or not. Would this be private? Instead of sending the whole id to the online platform?
Yeah I could see something like that. It would be similar to log in with Google or Apple. They would be a trusted 3rd party that has the responsibility of validating age and they just pass on a pass or fail to the site.
Some kind of anonymous token that says “I’m adult” and smart card on credit cards are kind of that, but they have a unique identifier that identifies you. They’re not anonymous which is the only acceptable kind of adult verification. It makes more sense to cordon off all parts of the internet with identity/age verification and consider them destroyed. I’d like to have an IP banlist of all participants in his harebrained scheme, just rip off the bandair immediately rather than have them shit the bed down the line.
Will vpns still work? What would the legal ramifications be if you used one?
You can’t always simply VPN around it. I applied for a job via one of the popular job sites. Tried to log back in to the job site a week later only to to find my account had been blocked until I provide proof of ID to a US based third party company …I’m in Europe. Spoiler alert: I did not provide proof of ID & so have no idea whether or not I was a suitable applicant for the job.
Guess i won’t be job hunting through that site again. The whole thing is farcical.
Well done for not backing down, mate. Fuck the private info scrapers.
there need to be dedicated 3rd party age verification services separate from the site. the people with my identity info don’t need to see what i’m doing on the site, and the site doesn’t need to know my identity any more than a general age group.
users are left with far fewer community options
Where is the fediverse in this analysis?
Edit: The article references Bluesky fleeing Mississippi due to risk of fines. Do admins running fediverse instances run similar risks?
Bluesky was the first platform to make the announcement. In a public blogpost, Bluesky condemned H.B. 1126’s broad scope, barriers to innovation, and privacy implications, explaining that the law forces platforms to “make every Mississippi Bluesky user hand over sensitive personal information and undergo age checks to access the site—or risk massive fines.” As Bluesky noted, “This dynamic entrenches existing big tech platforms while stifling the innovation and competition that benefits users.” Instead, Bluesky made the decision to cut off Mississippians entirely until the courts consider whether to overturn the law.
