What is the final defense? I suppose we create underground relay networks of radio networks within cities that allow for computers to connect directly to eachother, and from there we seed all our pirated content and discuss whatever the hell we'd like.
Maybe we'd have to contend with low bandwidth when we connect outside our own city network, using larger wavelength radio to bounce off the ionosphere across the planet.
As for the FCC, I don't really care. I will set up nodes on top of abandoned buildings. I will set up nodes in front of the local FCC field office. I will set up nodes in the middle of the forest. I will set up nodes on buoys out at sea. They may capture me or worse, so be it. I will not be around forever anyhow.
I pray there are still actual hackers out there on hacker news who might consider this idea and help further the technical side. This is a little out of my wheelhouse. I just can't accept this inevitable incoming future where all our communications will be IDed and censored. That is the end game for them. We can't allow for that to happen. This might be the biggest battle yet, bigger than all the other wars where power used us like pawns against the pawns of some other power, because for once in the history of civilization, we'd be fighting for our own right and not some elite group's right. I hope I am not alone in this line of thinking.
100% with you, I don't understand that people feel they have privacy in their house but not on the internet. Those people just don't understand how humans work and how we get better as a species.
I will forever keep trying to communicate without anyone else being able to read it. You can't ban my ability to use math to encrypt things. Still, the thought police keeps popping up. They can drag me to jail. I am a good person, a father, but my thoughts are my own. (just kidding, I'll give up all my s* when they actually drag me away from my family, but maybe I'll let them drag me for some meters for the show, to make a point, and hope people are filming it.)
There are things like Ham radio and meshtastic (uses lora). It's all slow of course (atm).
True, I always wonder how that would actually play out.
The geeks would likely be the elite class force to tumble it if it ever became necassary I reckon.
>That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
By this you mean that the first line of defense should be to change the government, correct? If so, I'm pretty sure you're right. Technical solutions to social/governmental problems seem like they're making those problems worse due to actively rechanneling energy that could be used for awareness/activism into technical workarounds.
I expect the government will require ISPs to only allow connection from approved operating systems that only allow installation of approved apps so we can't do this. Not in the short term, but eventually.
I think everyone (especially young gen) should absolutely master the offensive hacking skills.
I will certainly teach my kids everything I know about exploiting and destroying enemy computer systems.
This is the equivalent of the 2nd Amendment, but for the Internet space. You should absolutely be able to inspect, disassemble, debug, everything you can in a computer system and have the knowledge to knock it down, if it (or its owner) starts misbehaving.
Literally every single problem with computer system can be solved if the entire population, armed with simple Kali Linux, decides to strike back against the tyranny of the government
Trusted IPSec tunnels to form your own trusted internet of peers/friends within the internet. It's all just 'a LAN' then.
I dunno how well that scales, but it's a lot easier than trying to sort out radio shenanigans (which in my experience are actually regularly enforced by FCC/your local equivalents).
That's been done a few times with Tinc (open source VPN) [1][2]. It's great until the group includes one bad apple. All it takes is one person with low impulse control, low opsec to bring the whole thing down. Some hacker groups did this some time ago.
You would be breaking numerous laws, your transmitters would be removed quickly, you would be out thousands of dollars in equipment, and no one would be on your network anyway. You would almost certainly go to jail if you tried this.
Self-destruct drones with mesh node transmitters? Radiowave reflectors placed at strategic spots blended with the surroundings? IR multicast transmitters?
> because for once in the history of civilization, we'd be fighting for our own right and not some elite group's right. I hope I am not alone in this line of thinking
They depoliticized people to this degree that they fantasize of joining the a-political resistance movement, its kind of sad. This isn't meant as an insult, you should be angry that you live in a society that left you politically oblivious. Like no dude, people fought against power all the time, the people who you listen to just told you that all that do are dangerous politicized radicals or terrorists. Find who is punching UP, then get a political education in that direction.
To add to the list: KYC/AML-like regulations and practices (not necessarily financial) that shift the responsibility down the chain, outside the accountability zone, and result in preventive overly broad risk avoidance, self-censorship, and manipulation of your Overton window. See for example DMCA vs YouTube practices vs what actual channels choose to do to dodge both. Or algospeak. Or the PayPal situation which is mentioned in the article.
But it's all talk. Political pressure is like gas pressure. Gas expands to fill the available volume. What do you actually do to push back, besides talking about it on the web? This defines the available volume, if you don't do anything it's infinite.
NB: Weber's definition of government (which your quote misstates, so to speak, as is often the case), is that the state is that entity which has the monopoly on the legitimate claim to violence. It's legitimacy, not violence, which is key.
That said, legitimacy is a political property, and one which cannot be attained through purely technical means. To that extent I agree with your critique.
To state the obvious: If anyone can code his way out of something it is someone who codes.
If enough people want something badly enough, when existing governing structures will bow is a question of how many people.
You should pretend your code isn't good enough. That way you can own the problem. You will get plenty of help from those making things worse. Empires crumble eventually.
That was the obvious issue with all the blockchain smart contract stuff that was getting pushed previously. Any time it interacts with the physical world the blockchain goes out the window the moment on someone on the ground decides they don’t agree with it. Your cryptographically signed deed means nothing and can’t evict someone off the land.
There is little room for a property or money transfer system that leaves no avenue for legal recourse. And the DAO fork made it crystal clear why it was always just window dressing on the same social consensus game.
Imagine we had a versioned database with all the laws from all countries where one could compare them side by side. We could begin to understand the mood or spirit of each effort.
Law makers wouldn't need to pretend they are doing something unique.
You might do the same with all infrastructure projects. They can't all be cheap. Half should more expensive than average. It should be fascinating to see where the extra money is going.
Some goes towards corruption, some into incompetence but there should also be plenty of praise worthy efforts.
It seems we have the tools to do such things now without breaking the bank.
Think of the law as a truly outdated code base. Why would you do a rewrite you ask? Because we've learned a thing or two along the way?
I wonder why the rating code is so complex. Pornhub.com has this code enabled, but it also uses a simpler <meta name="rating" content="adult">. 4chan also uses the latter.
I can't find any information on https://rtalabel.org/ to explain why that specific string, but I appreciate that the string being unique made it easy to find the official website, compared to something generic like "adult".
we are having similar issues here in Australia with the government very quickly trying to become the overall "Lord of our Lives". Digital Id, banning kids from whatever/whenever the government dreams up another idea "to keep them (and us) safe". Nope, that is the job of the parents. Digital currency is another "awesome" idea, as far as they are concerned. Because, you see, we should not travel too far or eat too much meat, etc. And the "good old" Agenda 2030, where it sounds so wonderful, where "you will own nothing and be happy". Of course that won't include the elites - they will be very happy and own everything
The entire point is to gain control over internet traffic. Your suggestion doesn't work because it requires people to implement it themselves and since you can't control all people, you can't control how they're going to implement it.
The title "for the children" is tongue-in-cheek. It's not serious.
It amazes me how compartmented the mind of the West is: the "protector of Democracy" is barely conscient of its own lies... There is no democracy, barely an illusion of one.
> The entire point is to gain control over internet traffic.
I see many arguments claiming it's about mass surveillance and an invasion of privacy and so on.
We already have mass surveillance, so I don't really buy into those arguments.
I think it's worth considering that it is actually about control. Or more precisely, that it's about dissuading citizens from using social media in the first place.
The damage done to our western democracies from misinformation spread via social media has not gone unnoticed...
Censoring the internet is about as anti-democratic a policy that can be implemented.
I remember reading someone argue that anytime you see a claim that we need to do something to protect democracy just replace the word democracy with bureaucracy and then the statement makes sense.
There were proposals to do this, using encrypted containers of data that would let users authorize apps to use just the data they needed, but the idea got tied to Web3, which got some intense public blowback between the Crypto and NFT hype cycles.
Are there? Because we have had the last 15 years to see it isn’t working. Theres also the issue of peer pressure, it’s incredibly hard for one parent to say no to social media when every other kid has it and all the parties are arranged on Facebook. Right now telling your child they can’t have social media is crippling their ability to have a normal social life.
Banning it outright means parents have a strong foundation of “no you can’t have it, it’s illegal” and all of their peers will instead organise on private messaging apps instead.
That's why I suggest starting with really small children, kids that will be 13 by 2032. Starting with teens is a non starter regardless of how it is attempted in my opinion. It was a very long time ago but I recall being a teen. I could not be locked out of anything. Starting with small children is much easier and when they prove that they are mature and responsible enough then the floodgates open.
You are advocating parenting kids. So many others seem to want "policy" to raise peoples kids for them. That is a fools errand. And personally, I could not care less what some bureaucrat thinks is alright for my children or any others. Simply not their decision to make.
The psychological impacts come from secondary network effects. The studies suggest that taking social media away from just your kid doesn't do anything, because the culture wherever they go will still be driven by it.
So the only way I can protect my kids from it is to pass laws to force other parents' hands.
It is not necessary to dump our kids into institutions to be raised by their peers. It is necessary that you don't make decisions for other peoples kids.
Whether you legalize social media or not (or smoking, or drinking, or riding in a car without a seatbelt), that's making a decision for other people's kids. Choosing parental liberty is still choosing.
I sympathize with the libertarian impulse but for me, protecting my kids from other parents' poor decisions comes first.
Confirmation someone is human is harder. Over some age could be accomplished with time should most of the devices and browsers children have access to were to check for RTA/adult headers and activate parental controls. It would not be solved over night thus not perfect but perfect is the enemy of good.
At the moment what we have is no good in my opinion. What we have at the moment will put the identification information of both children and adults at risk. Children can not even consent to sharing this data thus the only people that could protect them are their parents.
I suspect something like this is on the way, in the long term. Every site has some Cloudflare captcha or the like to guard against the AI scraper bots. Eventually, we may need some kind of token which is only issued to real humans.
> Pass laws requiring companies that use third party age or ID verification to take full legal culpability for that data. If any of the data is leaked they must pay each party $1 million dollars regardless of how or why the data was leaked. 300 identities leaked or sold? That will be 300 million dollars not counting criminal penalties. Should this lead to bankruptcy then it is working as intended as they are clearly not qualified to be guardians of this data much less the guardians of your children.
Too much? I suppose the solution would be to not collect the data in the first place and instead use RTA headers and client checks for said header assuming legislators come to their senses and start caring about kids.
Of course for this to work the client has to check it and know the device's user is underage. Any devices or software that either do not check or lie about the user's age will be illegal. Since you can write software that does so too, unsigned software that does network access will be made impossible.
That responsibility must move to the parent to ensure young children are using locked down devices that have parental controls and that detect the RTA/adult headers. At that point no third parties are involved and all web platforms must do is add a header to any URL that has the potential for either adult or user contributed content that could become adult and require moderation.
A perfect example of why Discord should only be sending RTA headers for any server that may contain adult material and the onus is then on the parent to ensure the small children are using devices that have parental controls enabled. If a channel claims to be child friendly and it turns out they are not they get server banned.
I think the only winning move is not to play. Instead just look for RTA/adult headers and if detected trigger parental controls prompting for the admin pw rather than collecting PII.
We lost this war when we got bamboozled into putting the V-Chip into televisions.
The obvious tradeoff was that we should have been able to have all forms of offensive and pornographic choices on the public airwaves, because we've given those who are concerned the tools to explicitly block it. (not that "unplugging the set when the parents weren't around" wasn't a viable tool already).
We never got that.
I do wonder how much of it is directly that the "won't someone think of the children" demographic is politically loud and courtable in and of itself, and how much of it has been fostered by firms that see it as a conduit for more nefarious aims (i. e. commercial social providers who want desperately for a legal CYA so they don't have to do the dance of COPPA compliance and have an incentive in the verified demographic details age attestation provides)
I feel genuinely conflicted: On the one hand I get the "authoritarian overreach heebie-jeebies", that I think a lot of people on HN probably share. On the other hand I'd also really like the West to harden its election processes from election interference by its adversaries (e.g. Russia) - and shoring up dysinfo on e.g. Facebook by requiring users to prove their identity with a government ID is one of the only ways to truly effectively combat this at its source (fact-checking just can't keep up with a firehose of dysinformation). Ideally I'd want "real id requirements" to be limited " partake in public discourse" (mainly Facebook and Twitter). But the slippery slop argument just feels pretty strong here too - once a mechanism like this is in place, its use will only ever expand, and it's much easier for a new government to commit overreach if it's already there and just needs expanding. And of course all this "think of the children" nonsense needs to stop.
Elections are easier to solve technically. No mail in ballots. Require state ID in person at the voting center. But that's a different topic that can get divisive, long and derailed very quickly.
Only if you're fine with disenfranchising voters. In which case, securing elections is the easiest thing in the world: I vote and nobody else does. It's securing elections while not disenfranchising voters that's the hard part.
That is exactly how elections are run in the largest democracy in the world. If India can do that why can’t the US? It’s just that a certain side is dependent on illegal voters.
And how exactly is that a bigger problem than fraudulent votes? And how could you possibly solve it outside of segmenting the country's internet to prevent foreign ISP routes?
Because fraudulent votes in most developed counties are a complete non issue while people getting psyopped by troll farms and AI is monumental.
And yes, I think we likely will see social media become segmented so hostile nations will be blocked from posting on local social media. Or at least having them flagged as foreign accounts.
In the world where people with authority lie casually and bots are cheaper and smarter than people, anonymity does not grant freedom or empower democracy anymore. West is hopelessly outgunned to modern polit&propaganda technologies of russia and China, still citing 1984 like this is 20th century.
There is no need for id. IMO granting children access to the internet is no different than handing a child a loaded gun with no safety. Both should be treated the same way. Make it illegal for parents or any adult to:
- purchase an internet capable device for anyone under the age of 18 (or whatever age is deemed appropriate to allow unfettered access without any ID)
- allow anyone under the age of 18 (or ##) to operate a device connected to the internet
That removes the government's attempted false flag operations to use "children's access to the internet" as the excuse to obtain the right to monitor every second of your online activity for the rest of your life.
And simultaneously likely saves our children's brains.
Edit: Hyperbole is an easy accusation. But the concept is straight forward:
If the internet is so dangerous as to require everyone to have government issued ID to get online, then change the law preventing smartphones and other internet mobile devices to be possessed by children. That's easy to do.
Put the burden on parents where it belongs to monitor their children in their own homes just as they do as gun owners (required to use gun lockers etc). If you are ok with your 10 year old being in his/her room online without you monitoring, then imo that's probably child abuser, but hey, go for it.
> IMO granting children access to the internet is no different than handing a child a loaded gun with no safety.
The hyperbole is getting a little out of control.
> - allow anyone under the age of 18 (or ##) to operate a device connected to the internet
I don't understand how anyone can think that keeping kids entirely away from internet-connected devices through age 17 is possible or a good idea. These aren't serious comments or suggestions.
Not only that but like, if your child touches the screen in your car have you committed a crime? Using a smart fridge is verboten- speaking to the house's Alexa? Straight to jail.
If one existed, it will probably be like: children under 18 using the internet without parent permission, but then that doesn't do much. They are not guns which you might not ever use. Many people use it daily.
If a web client (fridge, infotainment system, alexa, etc...) can access the internet then it must be updated to look for RTA/adult headers and prompt for an admin password for parental controls to approve access to the site.
Indeed. My focus is on protecting families, small children and small children are primarily using tablets and phones. It's not perfect but it is a valid starting point. Grabbing everyone's PII and leaking it is a non starter. We can knock down the other goal posts once we fix this piece.
Another option of course is to force all these companies and their age/ID vendors to be under something much stricter than PCI DSS and Fedramp for their entire data-centers as a starting point if we must allow storing PII data of children and their parents.
1. Eliminate all the false flag attempts by governments and their supporters to use "danger to children" to require government ID for every adult to get online.
2. If the internet is so dangerous as to require ID to get online, then change the law preventing smartphones and other internet mobile devices to be possessed by children. That's easy to do. Put the burden on parents where it belongs to monitor their children in their own homes just as they do as gun owners.
To be fair with the way politicians are treating the internet and social media, it is the equivalent of giving them a loaded gun. Because otherwise how can they justify these laws? Politicians are the ones claiming kids are being irrevocably harmed by the internet.
So apparently you believe that a 17-year-old should not be allowed to (a) order a pizza; (b) drive a car; (c) adjust the thermostat, unless they live in a sort of pre-internet Amish society which is probably based on the level of technology that was widely available when you were a child.
I do not believe we should even try to restrict teens. Rather kids that would be 13 or younger by 2032 thus current teens not affected and kids that grow into teens that are still under parental controls could prove to their parents they are responsible enough to access adult content thus keeping parenting in the family and away from politicians.
If the internet is so dangerous that it requires every adult to obtain a government ID to get online, then yes, a 10 year old (or 17 yo if that's the age you want to use) is going to have to wait just like he/she has to wait to drive a car or buy liquor or cigarettes or pot.
Don't blame me. Blame the people pushing for a government ID that YOU must have before you can order your pizza.
In an interesting way this is a good example. It is indeed up to parents on a ranch to decide when their children are ready to see animals mate. It's another matter all together to decide when the small children or teens are ready to see humans mate. Either way that needs to be up to the parent or legal guardian. That is already their job.
You think ranch owners are hiding their farm practices from their children? Nah I don't believe that for one second. Ive watched 10 year olds of the most prudish family I ever known holding piglets so their dad can castrate them. Hell 20 year old Amish people can't even hold hands but will have kids help artificially inseminate cows.
Most small children on ranches have seen everything that can happen with animals including but not limited to mating, shooting coyotes, death from diseases. And yeah it's up to the parents when the kids see and do these things. Three year olds have a hard time with a lever action 45-70. There is a time when it makes sense and it's up to the parents when the kids are ready to understand and correctly follow instructions and are mature enough.
This thread is about stopping the insanity of uploading and ultimately leaking PII of families before the kids can even consent to it. Kids will despise their parents if they could have stopped this and did not. They will absolutely appreciate their parents for protecting them from predatory companies.
If we must pursue these predatory practices of colluding companies and governments then both of them need to be under stricter technical and audit requirements than PCI DSS and Fedramp.
The billionaires don't want it though, that's why most of the big tech CEOs are against it. Perhaps we should listen to Elon Musk though, after all, he "brought free speech back to Twitter." That is, as long as we ignore the adjustments to the algorithm that boost his personal flavour of politics. At least he isn't banning anyone, bots included.
and parents should actually parent their kids. Their kids do not need phones at such a young age and their parents should be in control of their own kid's phone.
What is the final defense? I suppose we create underground relay networks of radio networks within cities that allow for computers to connect directly to eachother, and from there we seed all our pirated content and discuss whatever the hell we'd like.
Maybe we'd have to contend with low bandwidth when we connect outside our own city network, using larger wavelength radio to bounce off the ionosphere across the planet.
As for the FCC, I don't really care. I will set up nodes on top of abandoned buildings. I will set up nodes in front of the local FCC field office. I will set up nodes in the middle of the forest. I will set up nodes on buoys out at sea. They may capture me or worse, so be it. I will not be around forever anyhow.
I pray there are still actual hackers out there on hacker news who might consider this idea and help further the technical side. This is a little out of my wheelhouse. I just can't accept this inevitable incoming future where all our communications will be IDed and censored. That is the end game for them. We can't allow for that to happen. This might be the biggest battle yet, bigger than all the other wars where power used us like pawns against the pawns of some other power, because for once in the history of civilization, we'd be fighting for our own right and not some elite group's right. I hope I am not alone in this line of thinking.
100% with you, I don't understand that people feel they have privacy in their house but not on the internet. Those people just don't understand how humans work and how we get better as a species.
I will forever keep trying to communicate without anyone else being able to read it. You can't ban my ability to use math to encrypt things. Still, the thought police keeps popping up. They can drag me to jail. I am a good person, a father, but my thoughts are my own. (just kidding, I'll give up all my s* when they actually drag me away from my family, but maybe I'll let them drag me for some meters for the show, to make a point, and hope people are filming it.)
There are things like Ham radio and meshtastic (uses lora). It's all slow of course (atm).
I don't think there's some magical technical trick that lets you do an end run around politics.
Oh, there is.
It was invented by China in the 10th century.
The final defense is always to change the government (one way or another). When we need to resort to technical mean we have lost.
Would-be revolutionaries need secure, reliable comms even more than the average person.
Change the governance. Both red, blue and the corporate sides are supportive of this.
True, I always wonder how that would actually play out.
The geeks would likely be the elite class force to tumble it if it ever became necassary I reckon.
>That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The opposite is true.
By this you mean that the first line of defense should be to change the government, correct? If so, I'm pretty sure you're right. Technical solutions to social/governmental problems seem like they're making those problems worse due to actively rechanneling energy that could be used for awareness/activism into technical workarounds.
You can already do this, it’s called reticulum.
Essentially it’s encrypted internet/networking over any type of network including LoRa.
Issue is the size of the community and linking up to actually serve internet or surface public services there.
I expect the government will require ISPs to only allow connection from approved operating systems that only allow installation of approved apps so we can't do this. Not in the short term, but eventually.
I think everyone (especially young gen) should absolutely master the offensive hacking skills.
I will certainly teach my kids everything I know about exploiting and destroying enemy computer systems.
This is the equivalent of the 2nd Amendment, but for the Internet space. You should absolutely be able to inspect, disassemble, debug, everything you can in a computer system and have the knowledge to knock it down, if it (or its owner) starts misbehaving.
Literally every single problem with computer system can be solved if the entire population, armed with simple Kali Linux, decides to strike back against the tyranny of the government
Trusted IPSec tunnels to form your own trusted internet of peers/friends within the internet. It's all just 'a LAN' then. I dunno how well that scales, but it's a lot easier than trying to sort out radio shenanigans (which in my experience are actually regularly enforced by FCC/your local equivalents).
That's been done a few times with Tinc (open source VPN) [1][2]. It's great until the group includes one bad apple. All it takes is one person with low impulse control, low opsec to bring the whole thing down. Some hacker groups did this some time ago.
[1] - https://www.tinc-vpn.org/
[2] - https://www.linode.com/docs/guides/how-to-set-up-tinc-peer-t...
That's just the technical problem. It can be solved.
Or... use a protocol that hides packets in Minecraft traffic with out-of-band control through steganographic Discord audio.
It's really slow, but its private.
You would be breaking numerous laws, your transmitters would be removed quickly, you would be out thousands of dollars in equipment, and no one would be on your network anyway. You would almost certainly go to jail if you tried this.
Have you ever actually read all the laws? It's functionally impossible to survive without breaking laws.
Not that quickly. Tracking down a low-power transmitter in an urban core is technically feasible but a lot of work. Police don't like doing work.
The police? Wouldn't that be the FCC?
Yes the FCC. Here [1] were their recent enforcement actions in April 2026 and in May 2026 [2].
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeMjMlHpus8
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFutq5wyYcI
Self-destruct drones with mesh node transmitters? Radiowave reflectors placed at strategic spots blended with the surroundings? IR multicast transmitters?
The final defense is to stop having children. Then there's no one to think of.
> because for once in the history of civilization, we'd be fighting for our own right and not some elite group's right. I hope I am not alone in this line of thinking
They depoliticized people to this degree that they fantasize of joining the a-political resistance movement, its kind of sad. This isn't meant as an insult, you should be angry that you live in a society that left you politically oblivious. Like no dude, people fought against power all the time, the people who you listen to just told you that all that do are dangerous politicized radicals or terrorists. Find who is punching UP, then get a political education in that direction.
To add to the list: KYC/AML-like regulations and practices (not necessarily financial) that shift the responsibility down the chain, outside the accountability zone, and result in preventive overly broad risk avoidance, self-censorship, and manipulation of your Overton window. See for example DMCA vs YouTube practices vs what actual channels choose to do to dodge both. Or algospeak. Or the PayPal situation which is mentioned in the article.
But it's all talk. Political pressure is like gas pressure. Gas expands to fill the available volume. What do you actually do to push back, besides talking about it on the web? This defines the available volume, if you don't do anything it's infinite.
Create a government from scratch.
Version control the laws.
Compare the laws with all other countries.
Hoard data.
Write code to replace government employees and to make laws easy to implement. (If done well consider selling a product or service)
Make everything modular so that the establishment can steal it.
Get people involved. Doesn't matter if you need to write a sim and convince them it is a game.
Pretend the whole exercise is writing code so that you can imagine you are perfect for the job.
I learn that people from all political angles like the idea of voluntary taxes (but no one believes it can work)
If the whole thing can run on donations and volunteers with a few "state" owned companies a hot swap becomes inevitable.
I'm not sure you can code your way into having a monopoly on violence.
NB: Weber's definition of government (which your quote misstates, so to speak, as is often the case), is that the state is that entity which has the monopoly on the legitimate claim to violence. It's legitimacy, not violence, which is key.
For the longer explanation, see: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37366751>.
That said, legitimacy is a political property, and one which cannot be attained through purely technical means. To that extent I agree with your critique.
To state the obvious: If anyone can code his way out of something it is someone who codes.
If enough people want something badly enough, when existing governing structures will bow is a question of how many people.
You should pretend your code isn't good enough. That way you can own the problem. You will get plenty of help from those making things worse. Empires crumble eventually.
That was the obvious issue with all the blockchain smart contract stuff that was getting pushed previously. Any time it interacts with the physical world the blockchain goes out the window the moment on someone on the ground decides they don’t agree with it. Your cryptographically signed deed means nothing and can’t evict someone off the land.
There is little room for a property or money transfer system that leaves no avenue for legal recourse. And the DAO fork made it crystal clear why it was always just window dressing on the same social consensus game.
There are already N governments, why would making government N+1 improve anything.
Imagine we had a versioned database with all the laws from all countries where one could compare them side by side. We could begin to understand the mood or spirit of each effort.
Law makers wouldn't need to pretend they are doing something unique.
You might do the same with all infrastructure projects. They can't all be cheap. Half should more expensive than average. It should be fascinating to see where the extra money is going.
Some goes towards corruption, some into incompetence but there should also be plenty of praise worthy efforts.
It seems we have the tools to do such things now without breaking the bank.
Think of the law as a truly outdated code base. Why would you do a rewrite you ask? Because we've learned a thing or two along the way?
<meta name="RATING" content="RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA" />
I wonder why the rating code is so complex. Pornhub.com has this code enabled, but it also uses a simpler <meta name="rating" content="adult">. 4chan also uses the latter.
I can't find any information on https://rtalabel.org/ to explain why that specific string, but I appreciate that the string being unique made it easy to find the official website, compared to something generic like "adult".
Maybe because it leads people to cease providing non-rated contents, contrary to the intent of regulations.
This btw actually happen: "Sesame Scheme: Unintended Consequences of Allergen Food Labeling"( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44074487 )
I think it should be fairly simple client code to look for either of them.
we are having similar issues here in Australia with the government very quickly trying to become the overall "Lord of our Lives". Digital Id, banning kids from whatever/whenever the government dreams up another idea "to keep them (and us) safe". Nope, that is the job of the parents. Digital currency is another "awesome" idea, as far as they are concerned. Because, you see, we should not travel too far or eat too much meat, etc. And the "good old" Agenda 2030, where it sounds so wonderful, where "you will own nothing and be happy". Of course that won't include the elites - they will be very happy and own everything
20 years before that, there was “The Digital Imprimatur”: <https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/>
ahhh fourmilab. I still run John's earth screensaver.
Simple solution, Use your router to block whatever you need to, control your kids devices, the internet stays free and open.
What are we talking about?
There are no laws that will turn out well.
The entire point is to gain control over internet traffic. Your suggestion doesn't work because it requires people to implement it themselves and since you can't control all people, you can't control how they're going to implement it.
The title "for the children" is tongue-in-cheek. It's not serious.
It amazes me how compartmented the mind of the West is: the "protector of Democracy" is barely conscient of its own lies... There is no democracy, barely an illusion of one.
> The entire point is to gain control over internet traffic.
I see many arguments claiming it's about mass surveillance and an invasion of privacy and so on.
We already have mass surveillance, so I don't really buy into those arguments.
I think it's worth considering that it is actually about control. Or more precisely, that it's about dissuading citizens from using social media in the first place.
The damage done to our western democracies from misinformation spread via social media has not gone unnoticed...
Censoring the internet is about as anti-democratic a policy that can be implemented.
I remember reading someone argue that anytime you see a claim that we need to do something to protect democracy just replace the word democracy with bureaucracy and then the statement makes sense.
You know what we are talking about. It was written in the book.
There has got to be a way to assert that a user is human, and over some age, without having to identify which specific human that is.
There were proposals to do this, using encrypted containers of data that would let users authorize apps to use just the data they needed, but the idea got tied to Web3, which got some intense public blowback between the Crypto and NFT hype cycles.
https://www.w3.org/2023/Talks/0727-wearedevelopers-tbl/solid...
Now we’re onto AI, so we have suboptimal age verification, with implementations in law written by politicians
This is an impossible task. If a certain business wants to make human id required, let them. It should not be enforced by government.
You have full control over your router and kid's devices so start there. Not anyone else's responsibility.
Parents are the main ones begging for this change. They are losing the war against Zuckerberg
Turning the entire thing into a doomed panopticon to "own the Zuck" is not going to end the way they think it will.
Farewell to freedom on the Internet and the days of wild abandon.
They need to be informed there are options that do not involve giving their information and their children's information to shady vendors.
Are there? Because we have had the last 15 years to see it isn’t working. Theres also the issue of peer pressure, it’s incredibly hard for one parent to say no to social media when every other kid has it and all the parties are arranged on Facebook. Right now telling your child they can’t have social media is crippling their ability to have a normal social life.
Banning it outright means parents have a strong foundation of “no you can’t have it, it’s illegal” and all of their peers will instead organise on private messaging apps instead.
That's why I suggest starting with really small children, kids that will be 13 by 2032. Starting with teens is a non starter regardless of how it is attempted in my opinion. It was a very long time ago but I recall being a teen. I could not be locked out of anything. Starting with small children is much easier and when they prove that they are mature and responsible enough then the floodgates open.
You are advocating parenting kids. So many others seem to want "policy" to raise peoples kids for them. That is a fools errand. And personally, I could not care less what some bureaucrat thinks is alright for my children or any others. Simply not their decision to make.
> and all the parties are arranged on Facebook
Bro… it’s joever for you
It's a collective action problem.
The psychological impacts come from secondary network effects. The studies suggest that taking social media away from just your kid doesn't do anything, because the culture wherever they go will still be driven by it.
So the only way I can protect my kids from it is to pass laws to force other parents' hands.
It is not necessary to dump our kids into institutions to be raised by their peers. It is necessary that you don't make decisions for other peoples kids.
Whether you legalize social media or not (or smoking, or drinking, or riding in a car without a seatbelt), that's making a decision for other people's kids. Choosing parental liberty is still choosing.
I sympathize with the libertarian impulse but for me, protecting my kids from other parents' poor decisions comes first.
You mean TikTok? Kids aren't on FB
They are on Instagram which is a Meta product.
Confirmation someone is human is harder. Over some age could be accomplished with time should most of the devices and browsers children have access to were to check for RTA/adult headers and activate parental controls. It would not be solved over night thus not perfect but perfect is the enemy of good.
At the moment what we have is no good in my opinion. What we have at the moment will put the identification information of both children and adults at risk. Children can not even consent to sharing this data thus the only people that could protect them are their parents.
I suspect something like this is on the way, in the long term. Every site has some Cloudflare captcha or the like to guard against the AI scraper bots. Eventually, we may need some kind of token which is only issued to real humans.
that's what Apple gives behind the scenes to Cloudflare, and people learn about it from Hacker News for the first time over and over again.
https://zkpassport.id/
> Pass laws requiring companies that use third party age or ID verification to take full legal culpability for that data. If any of the data is leaked they must pay each party $1 million dollars regardless of how or why the data was leaked. 300 identities leaked or sold? That will be 300 million dollars not counting criminal penalties. Should this lead to bankruptcy then it is working as intended as they are clearly not qualified to be guardians of this data much less the guardians of your children.
Too much? I suppose the solution would be to not collect the data in the first place and instead use RTA headers and client checks for said header assuming legislators come to their senses and start caring about kids.
Of course for this to work the client has to check it and know the device's user is underage. Any devices or software that either do not check or lie about the user's age will be illegal. Since you can write software that does so too, unsigned software that does network access will be made impossible.
That responsibility must move to the parent to ensure young children are using locked down devices that have parental controls and that detect the RTA/adult headers. At that point no third parties are involved and all web platforms must do is add a header to any URL that has the potential for either adult or user contributed content that could become adult and require moderation.
Oh no not my LLC that keeps zero dollars on the books.
Discord used a 3rd party and they were supposed to delete IDs they were sent, but they didn't do that and it got leaked
A perfect example of why Discord should only be sending RTA headers for any server that may contain adult material and the onus is then on the parent to ensure the small children are using devices that have parental controls enabled. If a channel claims to be child friendly and it turns out they are not they get server banned.
I think the only winning move is not to play. Instead just look for RTA/adult headers and if detected trigger parental controls prompting for the admin pw rather than collecting PII.
I fully expect anonymity to disappear, but also certain causes will still be supported by massive amounts of bot accounts.
We lost this war when we got bamboozled into putting the V-Chip into televisions.
The obvious tradeoff was that we should have been able to have all forms of offensive and pornographic choices on the public airwaves, because we've given those who are concerned the tools to explicitly block it. (not that "unplugging the set when the parents weren't around" wasn't a viable tool already).
We never got that.
I do wonder how much of it is directly that the "won't someone think of the children" demographic is politically loud and courtable in and of itself, and how much of it has been fostered by firms that see it as a conduit for more nefarious aims (i. e. commercial social providers who want desperately for a legal CYA so they don't have to do the dance of COPPA compliance and have an incentive in the verified demographic details age attestation provides)
Taylor Lorenz has been sounding the alarm. Peter Thiel and all his pets have been pushing the same narrative https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0RRxR4LvK4&t=661s
I've never really liked Taylor Lorenz's writing, but after following her work in 2025/2026, I have to admit that she is our girl on this one.
I feel genuinely conflicted: On the one hand I get the "authoritarian overreach heebie-jeebies", that I think a lot of people on HN probably share. On the other hand I'd also really like the West to harden its election processes from election interference by its adversaries (e.g. Russia) - and shoring up dysinfo on e.g. Facebook by requiring users to prove their identity with a government ID is one of the only ways to truly effectively combat this at its source (fact-checking just can't keep up with a firehose of dysinformation). Ideally I'd want "real id requirements" to be limited " partake in public discourse" (mainly Facebook and Twitter). But the slippery slop argument just feels pretty strong here too - once a mechanism like this is in place, its use will only ever expand, and it's much easier for a new government to commit overreach if it's already there and just needs expanding. And of course all this "think of the children" nonsense needs to stop.
Elections are easier to solve technically. No mail in ballots. Require state ID in person at the voting center. But that's a different topic that can get divisive, long and derailed very quickly.
Only if you're fine with disenfranchising voters. In which case, securing elections is the easiest thing in the world: I vote and nobody else does. It's securing elections while not disenfranchising voters that's the hard part.
We should make a new thread for voting challenges.
> Only if you're fine with disenfranchising voters
I don't love disenfranchising voters but I think it's probably better than allowing elections to be vulnerable to foreign tampering, don't you think?
That’s a false dichotomy. Better practices for election security can be implemented without disenfranchising voters.
Disenfranchising the entire populace by nature of ID verification to use the internet naturally includes voters as well.
The foreign tampering wasn't at the ballot box.
That is exactly how elections are run in the largest democracy in the world. If India can do that why can’t the US? It’s just that a certain side is dependent on illegal voters.
>It’s just that a certain side is dependent on illegal voters.
This is so obviously the reason why, I can't believe anyone pretends its anything but.
"Why yes it makes total sense to have to present your ID to use the internet, dont wanna let kids use it freely!"
"You want in-person ID requirements for our domestic elections? What, do you hate black people or something?"
The problem is not fake votes, it’s boomers having their brains cooked by AI videos coming from Russia they can’t identify as fake.
And how exactly is that a bigger problem than fraudulent votes? And how could you possibly solve it outside of segmenting the country's internet to prevent foreign ISP routes?
Because fraudulent votes in most developed counties are a complete non issue while people getting psyopped by troll farms and AI is monumental.
And yes, I think we likely will see social media become segmented so hostile nations will be blocked from posting on local social media. Or at least having them flagged as foreign accounts.
In the world where people with authority lie casually and bots are cheaper and smarter than people, anonymity does not grant freedom or empower democracy anymore. West is hopelessly outgunned to modern polit&propaganda technologies of russia and China, still citing 1984 like this is 20th century.
There is no need for id. IMO granting children access to the internet is no different than handing a child a loaded gun with no safety. Both should be treated the same way. Make it illegal for parents or any adult to:
- purchase an internet capable device for anyone under the age of 18 (or whatever age is deemed appropriate to allow unfettered access without any ID)
- allow anyone under the age of 18 (or ##) to operate a device connected to the internet
That removes the government's attempted false flag operations to use "children's access to the internet" as the excuse to obtain the right to monitor every second of your online activity for the rest of your life.
And simultaneously likely saves our children's brains.
Edit: Hyperbole is an easy accusation. But the concept is straight forward:
If the internet is so dangerous as to require everyone to have government issued ID to get online, then change the law preventing smartphones and other internet mobile devices to be possessed by children. That's easy to do.
Put the burden on parents where it belongs to monitor their children in their own homes just as they do as gun owners (required to use gun lockers etc). If you are ok with your 10 year old being in his/her room online without you monitoring, then imo that's probably child abuser, but hey, go for it.
> IMO granting children access to the internet is no different than handing a child a loaded gun with no safety.
The hyperbole is getting a little out of control.
> - allow anyone under the age of 18 (or ##) to operate a device connected to the internet
I don't understand how anyone can think that keeping kids entirely away from internet-connected devices through age 17 is possible or a good idea. These aren't serious comments or suggestions.
Not only that but like, if your child touches the screen in your car have you committed a crime? Using a smart fridge is verboten- speaking to the house's Alexa? Straight to jail.
If one existed, it will probably be like: children under 18 using the internet without parent permission, but then that doesn't do much. They are not guns which you might not ever use. Many people use it daily.
If a web client (fridge, infotainment system, alexa, etc...) can access the internet then it must be updated to look for RTA/adult headers and prompt for an admin password for parental controls to approve access to the site.
The internet is more than the www
Indeed. My focus is on protecting families, small children and small children are primarily using tablets and phones. It's not perfect but it is a valid starting point. Grabbing everyone's PII and leaking it is a non starter. We can knock down the other goal posts once we fix this piece.
Another option of course is to force all these companies and their age/ID vendors to be under something much stricter than PCI DSS and Fedramp for their entire data-centers as a starting point if we must allow storing PII data of children and their parents.
The concept is straight forward:
1. Eliminate all the false flag attempts by governments and their supporters to use "danger to children" to require government ID for every adult to get online.
2. If the internet is so dangerous as to require ID to get online, then change the law preventing smartphones and other internet mobile devices to be possessed by children. That's easy to do. Put the burden on parents where it belongs to monitor their children in their own homes just as they do as gun owners.
To be fair with the way politicians are treating the internet and social media, it is the equivalent of giving them a loaded gun. Because otherwise how can they justify these laws? Politicians are the ones claiming kids are being irrevocably harmed by the internet.
The internet as a whole is not a loaded gun, just social media and adult content. Wikipedia, educational sites, school websites and such are fine.
Giving a kid Instagram and tiktok is like handing them over to a junkie on the street to try meth.
So apparently you believe that a 17-year-old should not be allowed to (a) order a pizza; (b) drive a car; (c) adjust the thermostat, unless they live in a sort of pre-internet Amish society which is probably based on the level of technology that was widely available when you were a child.
I do not believe we should even try to restrict teens. Rather kids that would be 13 or younger by 2032 thus current teens not affected and kids that grow into teens that are still under parental controls could prove to their parents they are responsible enough to access adult content thus keeping parenting in the family and away from politicians.
If the internet is so dangerous that it requires every adult to obtain a government ID to get online, then yes, a 10 year old (or 17 yo if that's the age you want to use) is going to have to wait just like he/she has to wait to drive a car or buy liquor or cigarettes or pot.
Don't blame me. Blame the people pushing for a government ID that YOU must have before you can order your pizza.
Porn companies should be held liable for distributing porn to minors. Its already illegal.
Denial about requiring basic KYC is causing all sorts of perverse solutions. Accept the requirement so we can have a sensible technical solution.
Oh no, children seeing naked people and sex! How horrible!
Now lets bring them all to the family friendly farm where they can watch a horse with a monster dong screw his way through a herd of mares.
In an interesting way this is a good example. It is indeed up to parents on a ranch to decide when their children are ready to see animals mate. It's another matter all together to decide when the small children or teens are ready to see humans mate. Either way that needs to be up to the parent or legal guardian. That is already their job.
You think ranch owners are hiding their farm practices from their children? Nah I don't believe that for one second. Ive watched 10 year olds of the most prudish family I ever known holding piglets so their dad can castrate them. Hell 20 year old Amish people can't even hold hands but will have kids help artificially inseminate cows.
Most small children on ranches have seen everything that can happen with animals including but not limited to mating, shooting coyotes, death from diseases. And yeah it's up to the parents when the kids see and do these things. Three year olds have a hard time with a lever action 45-70. There is a time when it makes sense and it's up to the parents when the kids are ready to understand and correctly follow instructions and are mature enough.
This thread is about stopping the insanity of uploading and ultimately leaking PII of families before the kids can even consent to it. Kids will despise their parents if they could have stopped this and did not. They will absolutely appreciate their parents for protecting them from predatory companies.
If we must pursue these predatory practices of colluding companies and governments then both of them need to be under stricter technical and audit requirements than PCI DSS and Fedramp.
This is a really weird thing to comment
Travel not even needed.
Lovebugs are visible and land on their arm.
Try explaining WHY the bugs are connected…
don't be so naive. if the billionaires want this, it can't be good for you. it really is that simple
Tech billionaires want you and your kids on their social media platforms so they can manipulate you and serve ads.
The billionaires don't want it though, that's why most of the big tech CEOs are against it. Perhaps we should listen to Elon Musk though, after all, he "brought free speech back to Twitter." That is, as long as we ignore the adjustments to the algorithm that boost his personal flavour of politics. At least he isn't banning anyone, bots included.
Billionaires also want vaccines, sometimes do they have our best interests in mind. They can’t extract wealth from the poor masses if we’re sick!
and parents should actually parent their kids. Their kids do not need phones at such a young age and their parents should be in control of their own kid's phone.