cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/59424100
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called for an end to widespread anonymity on the internet, saying users should post under their real names.
Boomer who doesn’t understand technology wants to go back to 1980s.
oh no he understands perfectly. he wants to jail anyone who speaks out for palestine.
Papers! Where are your papers!?
Which would be a nice idea, if it wasn’t for the fact that the second that this happens, nobody will be able to freely speak any truth at all, because governments will jump on it to restrict speech more and more and more and something tells me that fuckface McNazi knows this.
See what I did there? If I had to post under my real name, I would not have called him that.
Free speech depends on anonymity
Louis Rossman just did a video on this very topic. He had a hot take on it, but it’s about the double edged sword of Internet anonymity in his formative years.
Germany and Autoritarianism: name a more iconic duo.
the anglosphere and settler colonialism.
it’s so ubiquitous that most people don’t even notice it.
Good point!
In the age of AI, without verifying the identity of people there’s no way to really distinguish AI spam. A trusted user under a well-known pseudonym might work, but that requires they build up trust anonymously and as time goes on that’d be harder.
So basically, the internet is dead without this, and it’s dead with it.
That’s a problem as old as the Internet. If you go through ancient forum discussions from 25 years ago, you won’t be able to spot the bots. It doesn’t take modern AI to create posts online. That tech has been around forever.
Hmm. Perhaps requiring PGP public / private keys could be used to show provenance without leaking PII helter skelter?
As in - you don’t need to sign your name per se but it can be traced back to you.
I might be talking out of my ®ear, but that might be a middle ground (if at all technologically possible).
There is no middle ground to be found here because the reasons the government gives are ad hoc, they are to accomplish other goals they can’t be honest about.
They are the purveyors, and protectors, of many influence operations on the internet, and use their influence to help ban accounts those influence operations identify as hostile to their operations.
This is about crushing dissent, and controlling the population, and logging everything said or done or looked at and having ai threat detection parse it all and promulgate half baked conclusions to business and government to use against you secretly without you knowing, done for them by Palantir and their ilk at that.
Israel first always, but also climate and environmental protesters already, but there is no limit to it. They want to entrench powerful interests in power.
The goal is mass surveilance. Sensible solutions are unwelcome. The current politicians need to be voted out.
A grim analysis…but one I fear has merit, based on priors.
To pivot briefly though: what are people’s feeling towards pseudonymous PGP?
Sometimes I think Mike Tyson had a point: “Social media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it”
There has to be a privacy respecting, non-surveillance state, yet “own it or retract it” method to posting on line. What we have right now… has not work out so well for us. As I see it there are 3 options going forwards -
- 4chan model (completely anonymous posting). Result: Zero cost. Zero friction. Peak toxicity.
- Merz model (Full dox) . Result: Police state that silences dissidents, whistleblowers and minorities.
- PGP model: I’m not “SuspiciousCarrot78” today and “RandomGhost99” tomorrow. I own the name and it owns me back.
That’s like everybody having to wear a name tag in public. Also, chilling effect.
Fuck you Merz
I propose that all politicians must have cameras installed and streamed 24/7 in any spaces they regularly occupy. This includes offices, private homes, and even bathrooms. These spaces must have enough cameras that there are no blind spots within the rooms. Let’s make every politician live in a very literal manifestation of 1984. Don’t want to have the whole world watch you take a crap? Don’t run for office.
As soon as any politician critisises this idea, tell them there is nothing to worry about if you have nothing to hide.
Merz criticized defenders of online anonymity, saying they are “often people who, from the shadows of anonymity, demand the greatest possible transparency from others.”
Dude is non-comprehending and very offended to hear it
I wonder why such discussions are always framed as an all or nothing propositions. Zero knowledge systems are a decades old invention. Just very briefly: based on some ID a site issues cryptographycally signed tokens claiming some fact, e.g. the requester being an actual real person, adulthood, etc. Such a token could be presented by an otherwise anonymous user to a 2nd site with their own signature as proof of said property in order to consume their service. Tokens could even be single use.
A requirement to prove someone is, in fact, a human is not unreasonable. Banning bots or bad actors could be a solution to a lot of the problems on social media etc…
There is naturally a major shortcoming of this scheme, authoritarians could not track people…
Merz is in his 70s. He is not the most gifted politician. One nickname given to him by a journalist is “the unavoidable” in reference to him having no good competition for leadership in his party after a perceived century of Angela Merkel in charge who had successfully sidelined him. For a reason, it seems.
He is very good at dropping shit like this in the media and then having it walked back or watered down. I do not see this idea getting a majority in the country where Google street view is useless because people rebelled against having the public facing side of their buildings photographed for easier navigation. And I can see a few arguments that would occupy the supreme court for a decade, were this to become law.
where Google street view is useless because people rebelled against having the public facing side of their buildings photographed for easier navigation.
Do elaborate.
Has people’s view of Street View changed since then or has the German desire for privacy evolved? My money is on the latter,
Or it’s that fish statistics analogy, newer generations don’t really feel their ancestors’ pains… but it’s too soon for that.
NO.
Annonymity is what makes this all work. People forgetting that are the ones who screw it up.
I think it’s time to cancel the internet.
The internet is dead its hollow corpse is a shitty mall and propaganda brainwashing machine.
the 90s internet was so much better. I want the 90d internet back. even if it did take a week to download a movie
The 90s internet is still here the web is just gone. Tildeverse, Gemini, BBS, Muds and IRC are still around. Its smaller but so was 90s internet but its still a lot of fun in the hidden corners of the net.
A Gemini reference in the wild!
I looked a couple years ago. Briefly toyed with it, made a page or two. I like the ethos, and am about 99% on board. I only wish it had inline images. I feel like that omission alone would greatly hurt its adoption and relegate it to not just niche, but super-ultra-niche.
The issue is inline images become ads eventually.
UK: hey, could people who use VPNs please tell us who they are exactly so we know they’re not circumventing this other law? … No? Because excellent reasons? … Oh…
Merz: vee don’t like not knowing ze name of ze person who is calling us 1 Pimmel. it is vital vee know vat everybody is doing at all times on zis new sing, zis new land vee haff just discovered. because reasons.
Some governments (like Russia) have deployed behaviour (i.e. not just DPI) based VPN detection which reliably kills VPN sessions, however these are wrapped. I am currently not aware of a way to circumvent this. Presumably, this will require camouflaging as a user browser session.
Then don’t be 1 Pimmel, du Mikropimmel.
Ze German nation can no longer afford zis Lifestyle-Nichtpimmeling. Everybody vill need to pimmel 120 hours a week at least and until age 85 if vee vant to preserve our prosperity.
Yes but it’s just your first name.
