[integralid]

>To be honest, if I were German, I would probably just kill myself the day I was legally mandated by my government to register my identity with Google. That might sound hyperbolic, but I'm really not kidding.

This is honestly not a good argument - it makes you sound desperate and puts in doubt your mental stability. I don't think you actually have mental problems, I just mean this this kind of argument comes off bad.

Also nobody is forcing anyone to do anything. You don't have to own a digital ID. It just makes things easier, because you can sign things over the internet, or present your phone instead of your plastic ID. Both things already have alternatives (qualified signatures and regular physical ID), so no immediate harm is being done.

Don't get me wrong, I am personally anti bigtech, I try to degoogle as much as possible, and I find the thought of my government coercing me to use google/apple duopoly repulsive. I dislike that, but using phones (instead of for example dedicated hardware) IS pragmatic, and you are not forced to do anything.

Sent from my pixel phone.

[fsflover]

> I try to degoogle as much as possible

> Sent from my pixel phone

This contradiction is not even funny. Sent from my Librem 5.

[applfanboysbgon]

> You don't have to own a digital ID.

For now. In 5 years you will, there is not one doubt in my mind about that. We've been on a slippery slope for (at least) 40 years straight, every year is a loss of privacy rights compared to the last, there is not a single year that reversed the trend, not a single year where we paused and stayed where we were. Once digital ID is implemented everywhere, alternatives will be quickly phased out. It's straight downhill as governments and corporations take more and more advantage of technology to build a degree of surveillance that even dystopian science fiction writers couldn't imagine.

The government, the corporations, the data brokers each individual corp sells your data to to compile a unified profile, and anyone the data brokers are willing to sell to have an unbelievable amount of information on the average citizen. They know where you live, where you are at all times, where you work, every website you visit, every Google search you've ever made, everything you purchase, all of your acquaintances, when and for how long you call those acquaintances, the full contents of any conversations you have with those acquaintances, your interests, your hobbies, your political beliefs.

I have thus far managed, I believe, to avoid the worst of the surveillance, with a tremendous amount of effort and the sacrifice of an unbelievable amount of personal convenience. But every year I find myself losing access to more and more things that I am unable to do without compromising my privacy. If it gets as far as government-mandated Google ID in my country, I think it's completely rational to kill oneself rather than live like cattle. If there were a resistance movement, I would participate in that instead, but this is happening completely voluntarily. You people want this. There is no resistance. Fine, you can have your dystopia. But there is no reason I need to be part of it, and I don't think it's a sign of mental illness to opt out. I don't much believe in living for the sake of living, you should live if it brings you happiness/satisfaction/whatever and don't if it doesn't.