[fiblye]

Outside of China, we're pretty lucky that we can just register for random sites like HN with nothing more than a username and password and start talking.

Every Chinese site I've ever used requires phone number or ID verification. Most of them only allow Chinese-registered phones, meaning it's absolutely impossible to communicate with Chinese people from the outside world, aside from a very small number of carefully vetted services like WeChat.

But I fear the rest of the world looked at China and thought, "Wow, we should've done that a long time ago!" Accounts I registered about a decade ago now demand I confirm an email and sometimes a phone number. Email accounts I've had half my life lock me out unless I link it to my phone number and prove my identity. Some services ask for a fucking ID card scan, which prompts me to just drop the service. Some things I've used in the past only accept US phone area codes, which having left the US, means those services are now completely inaccessible to me.

China says it's for state security. They're at least kind of honest that their intention is to keep the population in check and watch their every movement. The rest of the world says it's for personal security. Then another day passes and another heap of phone numbers, names, SSNs, and addresses leak and another identity is stolen.

[devtul]

We will give our freedoms away in name of preventing toxicity and hate speech. Won't you feel good you are helping squash bigots by giving your PII away

[alasdair_]

>We will give our freedoms away in name of preventing toxicity and hate speech.

(I spent a good few minutes trying to come up with a politer response than the following. I failed.)

Bullshit.

I keep seeing this “free speech” slippery-slope claim. It’s simply not true. I don’t know of a single mainstream or even semi-mainstream us or eu-based site that demands PII to stock “hate speech”. They ask for two main reasons:

1. Money. A confirmed “real” user is worth more.

2. Anti-abuse/spam. The sites are tired of dealing with bots.

[viridian]

I can't speak to websites, but I can speak to community discords that have 10,000+ users where hate speech prevention is the reason that you have to provide proof of identity.

[alasdair_]

I have been on several such discord channels. In the ones I’ve been on, they got tired of people spamming nazi shit or the n-word over and over again, in addition to other forms of obnoxious spam. This isn’t so much an anti-hate speech protection as a general anti-abuse protection

[kibwen]

There's not a single social network that has begun to require phone verification because of the risk of "toxicity or hate speech". It's all to fight spam and to better track user activity (and, if we're being charitable to them, perhaps to stymie deliberate propaganda/fake news).

[DaiPlusPlus]

This.

A service I built+run started getting overrun with bot users. The signup CAPTCHA didn’t help because they’d sign-up for accounts using humans - then after that’s done they’d copy their access tokens to the bot users. We couldn’t use a CAPTCHA for every operation on the platform.

But by requiring a real phone number that we verify (by placing a TTS phone call - not an SMS - as processing received TTS calls is much harder for the bot makers to automate) - but also looking-up the phone number’s SS7 info to prevent people from using Skype, Google Voice, and Twilio users - all commonly used by bot operators.

(Legitimate users that want an account but can’t make it past our bot screen can still contact us directly to be set-up - and to-date no-one has done this or complained about the (admittantly user-hostile) verification process.

[AlchemistCamp]

I don't know what your service is but I simply wouldn't be able to use it as my only phone number is Google Voice.

It's highly likely that prospective users just leave when encountering your restrictions and having their phone numbers rejected.

[DaiPlusPlus]

It’s a B2B service (“B2SB”?) - not targeting people/consumers - so it’s reasonable to assume they have a real phone number.

[JumpCrisscross]

> it’s reasonable to assume they have a real phone number

Just an anecdote, but I rarely give out my non-Google Voice number on sign-up forms. I don’t want my mobile in a database to be spammed.

If a phone number is required on sign-up, and my Google Voice doesn’t work, I usually pass. Whether for personal or commercial use.

[AlchemistCamp]

I run a business. Why is it reasonable to assume the use of legacy phone numbers?

[driverdan]

It's not reasonable. Voice is the only phone number I use and I use B2B services. If you prevented me from signing up I'd go to a competitor.

[erik_seaberg]

Which mobile carriers do you support, if not Google Fi (which is mine)? Or only landlines (which barely exist at my day job)?

[sheepdestroyer]

I despise services that require to have a real phone number. Being locked out of something when you travel, have no reception, lost your phone or got it stollen is just a pain. Bonus hate points for banks that implement a sms code check for online payments with your visa/mastercard (common in France at least). I changed bank for one that provided me with a device generating one time codes from my CB

[DaiPlusPlus]

It’s only used for sign-up/registration in my case.

[NikolaeVarius]

Goddamn Paypal MFA

[bosswipe]

> but also looking-up the phone number’s SS7 info

Does that really work? I'd like a service like that for my personal phone.

[Atlas]

Truecaller is the easiest way to access this data for consumers. https://www.truecaller.com/. The two commercial data providers for this are Telesign and Neustar.

[Atlas]

Also https://www.opencnam.com/

[gitrog]

> There's not a single social network that has begun to require phone verification because of the risk of "toxicity or hate speech". It's all to fight spam and to better track user activity (and, if we're being charitable to them

I think that _is_ being very charitable. Way too much in fact.

The thing with Chinese censorship is that people living under it either don't care about it or are fully aware of it. It's very much in the open.

On the other hand, Facebook/Instagram, Microsoft, Google, etc all start requiring your phone number for verification or some other valid reason, reeling and locking you in, and before you know it not only one entity but any entity willing to pay for your data has access to it.

We should of course be outraged at both approaches.

Also, is removing fake news/propaganda not censorship solely because it's not the government doing it? Because if that's the case, Facebook and Google only really started removing fake news _because_ governments started to apply pressure on them.

[eitland]

Well: newspapers use Facebook for comments and used toxicity and hate speech as explanation for why they went away from their old systems.

[4bpp]

> It's all to fight spam and to better track user activity (and, if we're being charitable to them, perhaps to stymie deliberate propaganda/fake news).

Who is that being charitable to? The Chinese government also censors to stymie deliberate propaganda; it's just that in their case we typical HN posters happen to be on the side the propaganda that is being censored is for, whereas in our case we are on an opposing one.

I'm not convinced by the usual counterargument that "China blocks true information whereas we block fake news". There doesn't to seem to be anything qualitatively different between a cartoon of Liu Xiaobo ascending to heaven from a Chinese prison and most of the examples on https://www.cbsnews.com/media/russian-ads-on-facebook-a-gall... (which I assume is meant to be a sample of deliberate propaganda that we want FB to block); both tend to contain some kernel of factual statements that are probably not contentious (you can probably get official documentation that Liu was jailed and died in China, too), but the point is not in this content but in an exhortation that the reader should feel about them in a particular way and translate this feeling into support for a particular political movement.

[cmdshiftf4]

>Won't you feel good you are helping squash bigots by giving your PII away

That doesn't enter the equation for what I would imagine is 99.99% of users.

It's the erosion of privacy in the name of a) "Safety"

and

b) convenience

The average person of the world has shown that they will trade virtually anything for the perception of convenience, or "safety".

Look at the most recent gun ban in Canada for an obvious example; An act riddled with nonsense, already acknowledged to be completely ineffective at preventing gun crimes, pushed through by a minority government during a pandemic to the applause of a large part of the populace there in exchange for the false perception of "safety".

The most frightening thing is just how effective it is.

[arcticbull]

Yes, the ban may not be perfect, but as a Canadian, I can say unequivocally: I don't need perfect to be the enemy of good. There's no reason to possess these weapons any more than there's a reason to possess nuclear warheads.

The next bill can ban more, fix the bugs, etc, but the flag has been planted: there's no room for those weapons in Canada.

A huge number of people have wanted to ban weapons like these since Ecole Polytechnique [1] -- and probably much further back. We've been lucky to have few enough such mass murders to remember many by name, and it also makes them horrifying enough that we're not going to sit back and pray the crime away. The Liberal Party (currently in power) ran on banning these weapons. Then they banned the weapons. They did the job they were elected to do.

I don't think that's a good example tbh.

[edit] Let's be super clear when you say "pushed through by a minority government during a pandemic" -- you're seeming to imply that the minority is somehow strong-arming the majority. That's the exact opposite of how that works in the Canadian parliamentary democratic system. A minority government is in a very weak position and can be removed at any time. If this was at all controversial the next confidence motion would be swiftly defeated and the government would fall. A minority government wouldn't do something like this without absolute confidence.

Unlike a majority government a minority government must rule by consensus or face immediate removal. I think they normally don’t even make it past the 3 year mark.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/École_Polytechnique_massacre

[Reelin]

I'd suggest that you ought to be more concerned about rights and privileges that you don't necessarily value personally (or even see as causing a problem).

If you extrapolate what's been happening in China regarding the internet to electronics in general and the rest of the world, the logical extreme is total surveillance, internet censorship, and eventually loss of direct control over the devices that you own. (Only a terrorist or dissident would want to install their own OS!) (Sideloading? What's wrong with the app store?) (Who needs admin anyway?) (Tor? Isn't that the network run by all the sexual predators?)

Only a cultural norm of protecting all possible personal rights at nearly any cost, even those you don't personally value or agree with, is likely to successfully stand against such an outcome. The reason is that any particular person isn't likely to make use of (or even feel strongly about) most of the rights and privileges available to them. Put another way, it's your job to protect your neighbor's rights and your neighbor's job to protect yours.

[throwawayosiu1]

I’m a Canadian and I find that absolutely the opposite.

1. > I don't need perfect to be the enemy of good. There's no reason to possess these weapons any more than there's a reason to possess nuclear warheads

Slipper slope don’t you say? Quite a lot of guns on that list were not even available in Canada or would be available. Furthermore, we have some of the strictest gun laws around.

What you said above to me sounds like we also need to just ban McDonalds and others from Canada too - considering obesity kills more Canadians than gun deaths no?

2. > The next bill can ban more, fix the bugs, etc, but the flag has been planted: there's no room for those weapons in Canada.

Have you by chance gone throw the process of getting a PAL? Our issue is not responsible gun owners - it’s the access to illegal guns coming from south of the border and this bill did absolutely nothing to stop it. It was political theater at the end of which a minority of citizens were affected (and they probably didn’t even vote in for the Libs anyways)

> it also makes them horrifying enough that we're not going to sit back and pray the crime away

By not dealing with the influx of guns from the south - we are literally doing JUST that further more at the cost of law abiding gun owners too.

[arcticbull]

Re 1: If McDonalds were handing out firearms I'd agree with ya ;) The difference is of course that the burger only kills the person ingesting it where a gun kills someone other than the owner. This makes the former a personal responsibility issue and the latter a public safety issue.

And of course, you can eat McDonalds safely in moderation without developing obesity, but you can't really get shot safely or in moderation without developing death.

Re 2: I have not tried to get a PAL, though I do understand it to be quite an arduous process.

Re 3: Indeed more should be done to keep weapons on the US side, however I don't think there's any reason we can't do both things at the same time.

[throwawayosiu1]

Thanks for being willing to have a discussion about this. 1. > The difference is of course that the burger only kills the person ingesting it where a gun kills someone other than the owner.

Guns in general (both in the US and CA) have more self harm / accidental deaths to the owner than to others - If we wanted to reduce deaths by firearms, this is the number to watch out for. Which is why I brought it up. Far more people die due to drunk driving than firearm related deaths.

What I’m saying is that this issue has an significant amount of focus for an insignificant amount of return in Canada. (Again I’m referring to legal firearms).

2. I brought up PAL because just like we need a license to drive a car safely and the consequences of not having one and driving a car are serious, the same applies to guns as well.

3. > Indeed more should be done to keep weapons on the US side, however I don't think there's any reason we can't do both things at the same time.

I agree that we can do both at the same time - I don’t see anything being done about it though. I pointed (and feel) that this is why it makes this entire bill pointless.

I live in Toronto and have family in Scarborough - both places where firearm related deaths and crimes have kept going up YoY. (One of the people who died in the Nova Scotia’s shooting was a part of my interns family - a family that does have firearms btw - and yet they are against the bill). That said, I’ve yet to hear of crimes committed by PAL holders. This law has done nothing to keep us safe (or even relatively safer) while taking away a lot more.

Further, as a taxpayer - the buyback is going to cost quite a bit while our deficit is through the roof due to COVID. And I’d rather we not spend money for show when it is much needed elsewhere.

[Talanes]

I agree with you on almost all points, but regarding:

> but you can't really get shot safely or in moderation without developing death.

I think 50 Cent offers a counterpoint.

[cmdshiftf4]

PAL/RPAL holders, or weapons stolen from them, account for virtually no gun crimes in Canada. Essentially all are carried out with illegal weapons smuggled in from the US.

Therefore, the ban is ineffective in serving its mandate, punishes law abiding, statistically harmless individuals needlessly and saddles the taxpayer, of which only 60% of households in Canada are, with yet more debt for nothing.

It has also set a very dangerous precedent in Canada as to how "unpopular" rights, not explicitly in the Charter, can be stripped by the pen stroke of a populist.

But HN, and this topic in particular, is not the place for this discussion. Good luck to you when the political pendulum swings.

[arcticbull]

> It has also set a very dangerous precedent in Canada as to how "unpopular" rights, not explicitly in the Charter, can be stripped by the pen stroke of a populist.

To be fair, if it's not in the charter, it's not a right. You are of course correct re the pendulum and unpopular privileges.

[SkyBelow]

>There's no reason to possess these weapons any more than there's a reason to possess nuclear warheads.

I've yet to see any valid reasons to possess drugs or alcohol. With guns, there is at least the justification of self defense.

>and pray the crime away.

Is that not what is being done with all crimes (drunk driving, but also many assaults) associated with alcohol?

There are two ways government can work. You can either have it where you have to justify to the government why you should have something, or you can have it where the government can justify why you should not have something. The former is far worse. The latter only works if the logic used is consistent, else it is really the former in disguise.

People always seem to want the former when it comes to guns, but the latter when it comes to things they personally like which have been associated with government restrictions. Why is the double standard held so openly?

[goatlover]

> I've yet to see any valid reasons to possess drugs or alcohol.

For recreation, therapy, socialization, experimentation, mysticism, or just because it's my own damn body.

> With guns, there is at least the justification of self defense.

That would be fine if gun violence wasn't a thing.

[brandonmenc]

Alcohol use sends a person with impaired judgement and often times a short fuse into the public space to wreak havoc. By the millions.

How many fist fights, rapes, harassment, spouse and child beatings, car crashes, on the job accidents, chronic illness, and early deaths must society be forced to accept just so people with disposable income can enjoy a nice red wine with their meal?

Seems pretty selfish.

[SkyBelow]

>For recreation, therapy, socialization, experimentation, mysticism, or just because it's my own damn body.

Reasoning that equally applies to guns.

>That would be fine if gun violence wasn't a thing.

Drug violence is also a thing.

So in conclusion, it appears there is a double standard being applied here. I suggest getting to the root of that, as otherwise all arguments can easily be dismissed as coming from someone who is applying a double standard (which is a version of special pleasing, a logical fallacy, and thus invalidates any logical basis for their views).

[eanzenberg]

No we won’t, and you can thank the true patriots who continue to defend your rights.

[xemdetia]

Yes, it really is getting out of hand. If there was a reasonable equivalent that was an alternate (like an email address used to be), that would be one thing but even with a US phone all of a sudden your phone dies and you are completely stranded and even sites you used to be able to access are now no longer accessible because they are asking for phone numbers and confirmation of said numbers. It feels really awful.

[lazylizard]

Why not setup your own? Or use email? Stuff like deltachat works over smtp? Letschat is 1click deploy on heroku?

[rhizome]

>Every Chinese site I've ever used requires phone number or ID verification

Frankly, this happens a lot in the West these days, too. Take OKCupid, for instance. And the third-party doctrine.

[JamesG124]

Twitter too. Every Twitter account I registered locked me out and asked for phone number after an hour or so

[mrcodedude]

Probably a decent security idea to have minimal PIE requirements for a dating site.

[hzhou321]

> Most of them only allow Chinese-registered phones, meaning it's absolutely impossible to communicate with Chinese people from the outside world, aside from a very small number of carefully vetted services like WeChat.

Indeed. I am very appreciative to wechat that I can keep in touch with my family and friends and enjoy the technology. By valuing my freedom and the freedom of my Chinese contacts, I do not communicate sensitive materials on wechat. The freedom is only ensured within boundary so know thy boundaries. I have plenty of channels to enjoy my western freedom. Whether we should impose our western freedom upon "Chinese freedom"? That is a good question. Fortunately that is not a question I need to resolve.

It is illuminating that those who try to exercise their western freedom on the Chinese domain is helping China to the opposite of their goals. If you have that honorable goal, do your due diligence of educating yourself with the right technology.

[hank_z]

Only 9% of Chinese population have a bachelor degree. Only 10% of Chinese population have been abroad. 1 billion Chinese never take a flight.

Most of the profitable industries in China are state-owned where most of their staff are part of or have some connections with communist party. It is not easy for the unprivileged people to make a living in China. These unprivileged people have a high likelihood to become scammers. Therefore, ID verification is a way to prevent scammers.

Despite of the security reason, there is not way to find out how companies handle personal data. Chinese legal system has no respect to personal data.

Additionally, Chinese education system encourages obedience and penalises people who distrust/challenge the authority. Simply because the authority can easily find another to replace you given the fact that there are 1.3 billion Chinese people. Therefore, people live in China have no choice but to accept whatever is given by the authority.

[seppin]

> meaning it's absolutely impossible to communicate with Chinese people from the outside world, aside from a very small number of carefully vetted services like WeChat.

I've never heard it phrased this way before, dangerous indeed.