[mvdwoord]

I am completely baffled by this wave of new laws and proposals... they feel dystopic and can seemingly only lead to brutal restrictions on the internet. What will we end up with? Only attested modems / endpoints in the home? With DPI? And a government issued smartcard to use it? It comes across as if this is what some legislators are actually after... they must have some technical advisors who can explain to them that the solutions they propose will not work and I am a bit worried they will morph the public discussion into enforcing at a lower level otherwise "the bad guys still circumvent"??

[2ndorderthought]

Utah hosts I think the biggest nsa data center.

Honestly, I would like my ISP to block all traffic to and from Utah if this law passes. I can't think of anything I want or need that involves that state.

[Bender]

Unfortunately it does not work that way unless perhaps I am misunderstanding your comment. The traffic monitored by the NSA will pass through their collection points in each state and will be silently mirrored to them regardless of the routing of your ISP. Even if your specific ISP does not mirror data the traffic will very likely pass through ISP's that do.

[2ndorderthought]

I think you misread me. I just meant, if companies are liable for VPN users in Utah, don't even let me connect to anything in Utah. I'm good.

I realize all my traffic gets siphoned there regardless more than likely anyways.

[red-iron-pine]

yeah this be the answer.

the Utah DC is just storage. NSA copies whatever it wants to locally and backs it up in Utah.

Only way you gonna avoid that is to use a meshnet that avoid major ISPs

[mvdwoord]

Without it being good or bad (long term, second order effects), I do think all of these (proposed) laws and where we are heading will balkanize the internet. Alternative tech may sound appealing to the tinkerers, and they may keep certain important channels alive (think radio amateurs... they know this game) but for the masses? I already happily block entire countries or regions to my VPS as there is zero benefit for me to not drop them at the FW level.

[2ndorderthought]

I wish there was an easy way to geolocate ip addresses by us state. It's not too hard to block everything from say russia.

[wartywhoa23]

Let's all block whole countries just because our propagandists brainwashed us so, yay, what an Internet that'll be!

[2ndorderthought]

I haven't had a single person in my life or social media inform me of a single thing I have missed out on since blocking Russia and several other hostile nations with my firewall. I've been doing this for about 15 years. No regrets so far.

I understand your philosophy but it doesn't match my reality.

[2ndorderthought]

Warty. I doubt you personally are. But unfortunately your country has engaged in a lot of troublesome activities. We can connect through a 3rd party like we are now that's fine with me. I don't hate all Russians or anything like that.

I see no reason to directly connect to any Russian Internet infrastructure though.

[wartywhoa23]

Am I a hostile one for you, being a Russian who has to bypass both domestic blocks of the outbound traffic and (much more rare) "hostile nation" geoip blocks on the other side via VPNs just to read that damn article, mind you, not to hack anyone?

[michaelmrose]

Russia and the US are currently attacking and threatening their neighbors in their respective wars of aggression.

[ponector]

However, only russians are commiting war crimes almost daily to their neighbors.

[flemhans]

Which countries are you already blocking?

[2ndorderthought]

Had to check my settings. Russia, Belarus, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia. Have any further suggestions?

[paulddraper]

Skiing

[nine_k]

I hope e.g. Colorado has better Internet regulations, so I could do my skiing there instead.

[2ndorderthought]

I'm good, plenty of other things to do with my time and money.

[shaftoe]

I'm confused where all of this censorship is originating from. What wave of efforts is culminating? I can't really explain this from any movement I can see.

[OccamsMirror]

It's all coming from Meta: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/reddit-user-uncovers-beh...

Big tech wants regulatory capture.

[progval]

There is no evidence it is actually coming from Meta. The Reddit researcher the article cites generated their entire "analysis" in three days using Claude: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659552

Their website also added this page since I posted that comment: https://web.archive.org/web/20260411112604/https://tboteproj... where they claim their website is under "surveillance" because it got a few thousand requests from Google Cloud et al, most of them to a single page. This shows how low their standards are.

[Aurornis]

The way that Reddit "researcher" had Claude bang out a GitHub repo in a couple days and single-handedly established the narrative throughout the internet is scary.

When it was released I read a few of the reports in this repo and they didn't even support the claims made. Claude was admitting it couldn't find the evidence.

It's terrifying how easily this misinfo operation established itself as fact on websites where users view themselves as being more informed than average on these topics, like Hacker News.

[homtanks]

The users here are probably more misinformed than average on several topics, including this one, due to community flagging and downvoting behavior which has the effect of filtering out reasonable criticism, and restricting discussion to a narrow range of viewpoints.

[kmeisthax]

In the interest of removing TBOTE Project from the discussion, I found this press release from the office of Buffy Wicks, saying Google and Facebook[0] support AB 1043: https://wicks.asmdc.org/press-releases/20250909-google-meta-...

Ironically I had to go into Google's AI mode and ask it three times not to use any TBOTE Project sources before it would give me the actual original source on this. But the article has a bunch of quotes from big tech lobbyists in support of California's age surveillance bills. Whether or not it was originally their idea is still up in the air, but given that the California, Colorado, and New York bills were largely identical, it's not crazy to say "maybe these were all Big Tech's idea".

I also have this Bloomberg article from 2025 (a year ago) claiming Meta funds the Digital Childhood Alliance[1], which has been pushing for "App Store Accountability Acts" that would mandate app stores do all the age verification (conveniently for Facebook).

Or maybe it was ALEC. :P

[0] It is always ethical to deadname corporations.

[1] https://archive.is/7vqL6

[JumpCrisscross]

> There is no evidence it is actually coming from Meta

My personal view that social media should be age gated is caused by Meta. But broadly, polling shows a commanding majority (60+ percent) of Americans believe in restrictions for under 14s.

[davkan]

Is there broad support for digital ID, age verification, etc? Or is it a broad sentiment that kids shouldn’t be on social media. Everyone I know agrees with latter but almost no one supports the former.

[Avicebron]

The parent commenter is conflating two things. Your right, there can be broad general sentiment that "kids probably shouldn't on social media, or better framed, social media in it's current iteration isn't healthy for people especially kids" but that doesn't imply people are asking for intrusive surveillance or to be monitored at all times when they are online.

[JumpCrisscross]

Two thirds of Americans believe in "setting limits on how much time minors can spend on social media" [1]. Where we have limited polling, a similar fraction support "banning social media use for all kids under 14" [2].

These are policy polls. The sentiment has moved beyond vague notions that kids should be entrusted to Meta less.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/10/31/81-of-us-...

[2] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/poll-most-mass-voters-su...

[mc32]

There seems to be a growing movement worldwide to restrict social media to under (some teenage range). I understand some of frustration. It comes from the increase in mental health issues with minors… but they are using that as cover to overreach and impose censorship for many. An alternate method is stop social media etc from abusing their users with algorithms favoring “engament”.

[tardedmeme]

Everyone agrees kids shouldn't be on social media. Some people think this should be done by your phone asking if you're over 18 when you set it up, which is one way to go about it. Some other people hijacked this proposal to make your phone verify if you're over 18 because they want your identification.

[uncircle]

I keep reading this but I don't understand how a company might want to push censorship on users. What is the economic benefit of censorship? Does Meta's bottom line increase if there is no illegal content and every user is age verified on the site? Would Meta care if you use a VPN?

The ones that stand to benefit the most are the governments themselves and their surveillance network.

[soared]

Barriers to entry. If I want to make a small forum, these laws make that potentially much more difficult. Now users who may have used my forum may spend more time on facebook instead.

Multiply that times tens of thousands of new sites not being created, tens of thousands of existing sites no longer existing or being accessible due to new laws, this occurring over multiple surfaces (content moderation, age verification, etc) and the positive impact for meta is meaningful.

If there are less sites, meta wins.

[fauigerzigerk]

This is grasping at straws. Centralised social media platforms have won long ago for completely different reasons (mostly network effects and convenience). They haven't been threatened by independent sites for ages.

[nine_k]

Facebook in particular many times voiced its support for various regulations that would be onerous for smaller players.

[washadjeffmad]

Not that many years ago, Facebook tried to broker a deal to provide free internet to India if all of their web traffic and communications would happen within the Facebook ecosystem.

It's long been the dream of more than a few American companies to be the gatekeepers of the web.

[cj]

IIRC the model was closer to a freemium model where you would get free internet to approved websites (including Facebook) with the ability to access the entire internet for an extra fee.

Facebook and approved sites wouldn’t count towards your mobile bandwidth quota, but the rest of the internet does and requires a data plan.

Which raised net neutrality concerns.

[luisfmh]

I've read a take somewhere that seemed to make sense. They don't want to get stuck with the liabilities of the content that gets posted on their platforms. So by forcing the age verification onto the users, forcing users to identify and track themselves, they can have a "clean" route to someone who posts illicit content on their platforms.

It just sucks that that's all in sacrifice of our privacy.

[kmeisthax]

The thing that makes this plausible is that the California and Colorado bills are specifically written to either allow or outright require self-attestation. Children will just lie about their ages because if they don't, the computer is basically useless. So it would give Meta the ability to dodge lawsuits, but still actually have kids on their dangerous platforms, with the argument of "well, the law makes us trust this unreliable indicator".

[bryan_w]

> Children will just lie

Not if the parents are setting it up beforehand (like with small children) then their iaccount or Google account will be under parental controls from that point on.

It seems reasonable that if a parent enables their child to visit sites after that, then that's just their prerogative (like giving your kid beer)

[yojo]

Meta’s bottom line is driven entirely by their ability to uniquely and persistently identify users for the sake of advertising.

Anything that makes it harder for a user to escape their dragnet is a win.

[tylerchilds]

Rug pull Ladder pull

It’s just that

“Move fast, break things, regulate impossible to repair.”

[bryanlarsen]

The tigher, more believable theory is that Meta wants Operating Systems to be responsible for delivering an age or an "over 18 attestation" to apps/websites so it's not Meta's problem.

[teratron27]

The idea from the case in the link is that their competitors would be more regulated then them but in general, if regulation is a requirement and they’ve already implemented the regulation then it’s hard for a competitor to emerge.

[xkcd1963]

They realized all the data on user behaviour is useless after trying to leverage on it with LLMs and now they go after seemingly new riches

[fn-mote]

Useless data??

There is a massive revenue stream that says this is completely off base.

The data they have is already extremely valuable.

[xkcd1963]

It all feeds into the bubble. Facebook and Co dont provide real value to people

[bilbo0s]

I keep reading this but I don't understand how a company might want to push censorship on users.

We're being astroturf-ed guy.

The comment you're responding to. The comments responding to you. All shaped by influence campaigns from the beginning.

Meta, X, google, data based big tech, the billionaires, and the government were in on the plan from the start. We were always the ones kept in the dark as to the ultimate intent. Even the anti-censorship and anti-surveillance posts and content that we saw, were being paid for by the same puppet masters. Professional influence campaigns controlled by these same groups shaped the internet discussion of both sides.

And it seems a lot of us still haven't figured that out yet.

We got played. We'll continue to be played if we don't recognize that fact and act to prevent it in the future.

Because I can assure you, censorship and surveillance is not the endgame. And their endgame is very likely not to our benefit.

[kelseyfrog]

Can you describe in detail the end game and how you came to know it?

[wartywhoa23]

The endgame is perfectly described in Orwell's 1984 and certain Protocols.

[mannanj]

And Meta is captured by spy agencies. Don't be tricked at any point into thinking this is just a tech thing. And, spy agencies, who captured them?

[2ndorderthought]

I wouldn't say captured. Zuckerberg has been cutting deals with the new administration so often people were seeing him at the Pentagon. It's a partnership

[mannanj]

It goes way before that, it isn't recent.

[iamnothere]

In-Q-Tel

[2ndorderthought]

It looks like a coordinated effort from multiple defense companies like meta, and I believe openai, and I think palantir.

[tailscaler2026]

Yep. I brought this up yesterday on the Roblox thread but HN has been ingesting the propaganda for too long to understand their beliefs about Roblox are misled.

Time to adjust your priors y'all. This is a concentrated effort toward surveillance, controlling who we talk to, and what information we're fed.

[red-iron-pine]

palantir got all of the social security numbers in the US and now want to correlate all traffic against them.

yalls gonna have "social credit" scores real soon

[TiredOfLife]

Also Soros and the lizard people of Venus. Surprisingly lizard people of Mars are against it.

[mvdwoord]

Maybe the desire is always there, but somehow the momentum is just in an upswing now?

[2ndorderthought]

They finally have the tools to mass read everything aka LLMs. Does that make sense?

[bilbo0s]

It's the inevitable culmination of their plan.

Pretend to be anti-censorship. Get voted in. Fast track all of the censorship and surveillance through congress.

When I saw certain billionaires talking up anti-censorship and anti-surveillance a few years ago, I knew we would be screwed. (I knew the same billionaires had large positions in censorship and surveillance tech.) No one ever talks against their own book unless they're planning on screwing you.

[Aurornis]

> What wave of efforts is culminating? I can't really explain this from any movement I can see.

Look at any thread about social media, TikTok, smartphones, or porn sites on Hacker News: They are instantly filled with comments claiming that the internet is to blame for all of society's ills with younger generations. The HN threads fill with comments proposing that we ban children from having smartphones until they're 16 or 18 and similar ideas. Abstract ideas about banning kids from social media or porn sites are weirdly very popular even here, mostly from people who haven't thought about what that would mean for privacy for everyone.

These ideas have become pervasive, even inside tech communities. It was so easy to blame social media and the internet for everything for years, and now lawmakers are riding that wave for political points. It's "think of the children" built on top of the current moral panics.

[wartywhoa23]

> Abstract ideas about banning kids from social media or porn sites are weirdly very popular even here

It's absolutely not weird. HN is the propaganda outlet for the geeks.

[verdverm]

Heritage Foundation, Meta, and generally the Oligarchy

[Guestmodinfo]

My guess is bots. Govts and law makers are afraid of the barrage of bots DDOSing them so they are slowly and surely tightening the noose around the internet. I'm all for net neutrality and anonymity on the internet and I don't like the age laws one bit, but I too am afraid of the bots scorching the internet. I still hate these growing dystopian laws but I also want the bots to be driven away from the "human internet" .

[wartywhoa23]

Easy: from the fascist psychopaths at the whelm of the world.

People started to understand too much about who's the real enemy, and are not willing to kill and die in meatgrinders of the new world order for the interests of the unelect 0.001%.

[deknos]

> What will we end up with? Only attested modems / endpoints in the home?

you might laugh/cry, but there was a time in germany, when the telephone at home was owned by the state (the "Post") and you were NOT allowed to tinker with it.

personally, i guess, things like sneakernet, lorawan and hamradio will become a lot more popular over time.

[butvacuum]

Same for the US- until the feds broke up Bell between 1974 and 82. but, there were no technical hurdles. Anybody have a toy whistle?

[rationalist]

My understanding is that the phone company owned the phone, not the state.

[estebank]

In many countries the state owned the phone company.

[mvdwoord]

If there is only 1 telephone company, either owned by the state, directly or indirectly, or even just a monopoly... what is the difference?

[NewJazz]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

[somat]

And who gets to tell the phone company how to operate?

We try and segment it into governments and corporations. But really there is no real differences between the two. They are all governing policies for groups of people arranged in a sort of heirical pattern. The big top level group, the one that managed to gain control of physical territory is the nation-state or perhaps more accurately the Government(capital G) of which. allocating control to various lesser groups. Including physical sub territories and for profit enterprises (The incorporation).

The point being, even in the most rampant capitalist[1](an economic policy favoring freedom of operation in it's sub groups) nation the for profit enterprises are licensed and regulated and if needed(see world war 2) controlled by the state.

1. As opposed to communism, an economic policy favoring fairness of operation in it's sub groups. Or fascism, an economic policy where no one knows what it is but every one agrees is bad. fascism really is hard to pin down, used as the default bogey man by everybody, but original Italian theory suggests it favors having the most successful sub groups run the state, which would be in the capitalist corner. however the largest wielders of the theory(1930's Germany) used it as a social fairness issue, which is in the communism domain.

[redman25]

Doesn’t ham radio not allow transmissions to be encrypted by law? That rules out most of the internet.

[tardedmeme]

That is true. They can be authenticated, though. I don't think it should be read as ham radio specifically, but (illegal, pirate) amateur use of radio more generally.

[mvdwoord]

Same in NL... we used to rent our telephones from the "PTT".

[mr-wendel]

My pet theory is that network protocols will evolve to require some kind of certificate-based signing to uniquely identify individuals and groups. Hardware and operating systems will have legal mandates to enforce this. Penalties for carrying unsigned traffic will be stiff.

The “upsides” will be plentiful! User verification schemes will be streamlined like never before. If you think there are downsides… well, just think of the kids, damn it!

[pseudosavant]

When discussing Utah, you shouldn't ignore the role that Mormonism's theocratic authoritarian culture and embrace of the MAGA movement has had. Human rights, like right to privacy, will always be trampled by their desire to legislate their morality. The Utah territory was literally founded as a theocracy.

[Barrin92]

exactly, there's an entire commercial ecosystem for this too, so called 'shameware' (or in their own parlance 'accountability software') apps that exists to put you under religious surveillance (https://archive.ph/RkgYn)

I really hate this tinfoil hat nonsense you see here every day now, Utah is not censoring online content because of tech bros in California lol.

[toss1]

>>they must have some technical advisors who can explain to them that the solutions they propose will not work

You are assuming good faith on the part of those legislators.

That is an error.

There is no good faith to be had and they could not care less about physical restrictions, incompatibilities, or impossibilities.

Their goal is to maximize their power and minimize or eliminate people's power, regardless of whether it is legitimate or desired by the people they claim to represent.

You would be more productive summoning the ghost of Richard Feynman to explain quantum physics to a dung beetle than to have a network expert attempt to enlighten those pseudo-legislators.

[hilbert42]

Try 'teaching calculus to a dog', it's easier to visualize.

[rapnie]

> I am completely baffled by this wave of new laws and proposals... they feel dystopic

Baffled? The whole country's democracy is diving off this cliff, seems to me.

[martin-t]

It's not just the US though, EU too.

I don't like far fetched conspiracy theories but I really want to know where all this is coming from. Did politicians suddenly all get the same idea or are there groups lobbying for this who benefit in terms of money/power?

[tardedmeme]

The EU has different norms. Bafflingly to me, it feels like the EU had an existing expectation of linking everything you do to your full name and address and then trusting the police to stop you getting swatted. I don't understand this attitude myself but you can see it in impressum laws for example, business registrations, needing your personal info to give feedback to parliaments, it's clearly a pervasive social norm over there. I suppose the reason they don't get swatting is that the police will verify the ID of the person who calls in the report.

[maxerickson]

Imagine believing the police shouldn't murder you based on an anonymous report.

[wartywhoa23]

It's the whole world.

I'm sorry to tell this, but everyone will soon realize that the far-fetched conspiracy theories are in fact severly underestimated conspiracy practices.

If they still have any remaining gut to face the reality, that is.

[martin-t]

Extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence, please...

[wartywhoa23]

The best evidence is crawling from underneath the rock and checking the world news.

But that requires the ability to detect the movement of the Overton window over time, though.

[martin-t]

Look, I hate injustice more than most people and I have no issue saying that there are people who spend their entire lives getting richer and more connected at everyone else's expense and that they should be punished in full for what they gained unjustly.

But you're not gonna convince anyone by being snarky while at the same time making 0 verifiable claims.

[altairprime]

One could infer that they’re trying to make porn illegal in their legislature’s desire to build the United and Puritanical States of America, which itself stems from the hope that increasing the internal sexual pressures in men will reverse the growing trend of intolerance for misogyny among both men and women. That reversal most benefits today’s adherents of misogyny, a population that is strongly represented in Utah, and comes at a cost — viewed as a net transfer of control from women to men — that is societally acceptable for them to make subservient women pay. (If this were various other states like South Carolina or Oregon, I’d point out the usual labor-economics connection to replacing more-illegal race-based slavery with less-illegal gender-based slavery now that the former’s illegal, but Utah’s home to a large religious group that has and remains focused on the gendered form first, so it doesn’t seem applicable here.)

[Spooky23]

The people making these decisions are religious fanatics. They don’t care.

This is one of the reasons why the purge of the federal government and military has happened. Surveillance state stuff was pretty scary from day 1… doubly so now that the leadership is all toadies who will remain embedded for decades.

[CamperBob2]

Also notice that even on here, a site ostensibly for "hackers" and other traditionally civil liberty-minded users, we don't tend to hear about these proposed laws until they're already passed or otherwise too late to stop.

Some might find that a bit odd.

[Simulacra]

The end goal is a government license to access the internet. But I think it's less regulatory, and more poli-social. There are individuals within the political stratosphere that are adamantly against anonymity on the Internet because they want to be able to attach speech to specific individuals, and punish if necessary for wrong-think.

[bigbadfeline]

> I am completely baffled by this wave of new laws and proposals...

I'm not surprised in the slightest, the direction's been clear for more than 20 years now, so I've stopped looking for technical solutions, they will always be stop-gap measures if politics isn't fixed.

[pyaamb]

when can we hold lawmakers personally responsible for any consequences resulting from passing bad laws?

[red-iron-pine]

you can hold them responsible on election day.

you can hold them responsible by taking time out of your day to knock on doors, protest, hold up signs, or get involved.

you can hold them responsible by donating to parties, movements, and organizations that back consequences for passing bad laws.

[bluecheese452]

You can.

[JumpCrisscross]

> they must have some technical advisors

I dare you to get half a dozen people with a technical background to call their electeds and explain why these rules are stupid. (And, if they insist on implementing age gates, as seems to be popular, the least worst ways to do it.)

[morkalork]

We will end up with what China, Russia and Iran have. The American right has come to grips with the fact that their ideas and beliefs will not will not win on merit alone so they're moving to restrict and eliminate alternatives.

[gnerd00]

LOL - its just "the right" eh?

[xbar]

Who is supporting this law?

[AngryData]

The majority of politicians in general it seems.

[ozlikethewizard]

I mean if you're discussing strictly America, you lot haven't had any form of government that's been anything but right wing for at least a few decades (was not born before this lol).

[dgellow]

> they must have some technical advisors who can explain to them that the solutions they propose will not work

I would expect they mostly listen to special interests advocating for those laws. They don’t come from nowhere

[gilrain]

The country is descending into fascism. If you’ve previous endulged in the politics of “I don’t care about politics”, it’s time to stop and look around you.

[nine_k]

It's not the first time when people who despise liberty of others and want to force them jump through unreasonable hoops shoot themselves in their feet.

Saying "you're unwelcome here" to a large enough number of well-meaning people usually backfires. I hope this will be felt during the next elections in Utah.

[CamperBob2]

I am completely baffled by this wave of new laws and proposals

Follow the money. Ten to one, it all leads back to Zuckerberg.

[wartywhoa23]

Well, people who call a fascism a fascism are always wrong until they suddenly aren't.

[mannanj]

Remember the conspiracy theorists talking about this for decades? I do. This is the goal of a bourgeois class of people who want to save their livelihoods and status in the world though don't want any circumstances they can't control - legislators are out of touch with the majority of people as they are funded by any really serve those bourgeois.

[jmyeet]

The only baffling thing is taht it took this long.

In the physical world, we can limit the types of businesses. We can limit access to them. Casinos, adult entertainment, drinking establishments, etc require efort to go to and there's enforcement (not always effective, obviously) to keep, say, minors out.

The Internet has broken down that structure such that there are no limitations and, like it or not, that's really harmful. Widespread access to sports betting and crypto gambling is just a negative. There is nothing positive about this. Gambling preys on desperate people and gambling addiction quite often leads to suicide.

So I think it was inevitable that lawmakers would get involved. The only question now is what kinds of restrictions we get, how they work and what the enforcement mechanisms are. Some will say "this is a parenting issue". That's shown to be completely insufficient.

My point is that fighting this is (IMHO) a losing battle.

There are a lot of predictable outcomes here. For example, Meta thinks age verification should be enforced at the OS level. Shocker. The company that has no OS thinks OS should be responsible and, more importantly, liable.

IMHO private companies shouldn't be trusted with verifying IDs. The government should do that because, you know, they're the ones who issued the IDs.

I also think the minors simply shouldn't be able to create Apple or Google accounts. Child accounts should belong to an adult account and that adult is responsible for setting the age correctly. The child account should become an adult account when they turn 18.

Attacking VPNs, as Utah is doing here, is... a choice. I don't think that's a winning strategy but we will see.

I also think that location of a user is going to be increasingly enforced and verified. NVidia actually does something like this to try and block their cards being used in China. The cards will ping various locations to try and establish location. I think sites will start doing that too.

Take social media sites like Twitter, for example. There are obviously bots. But there are also people in developing nations who have figured out they can monetize being controversial. I think it would actually be value if we know that Debra the MAGA influencer is actually in Nigeria.

[lxgr]

> The Internet has broken down that structure such that there are no limitations and, like it or not, that's really harmful. Widespread access to sports betting and crypto gambling [...]

Your analysis disregards the evidence of several decades in which the Internet existed, but gambling was still broadly illegal and getting around those laws was anything but trivial (since blocking financial flows is, or at least used to be, pretty effective).

Now it's explicitly legal in many states, and I think this can explain for the recent boom much more than the availability of offshore on-chain betting.

> IMHO private companies shouldn't be trusted with verifying IDs. The government should do that because, you know, they're the ones who issued the IDs.

This requires trusting the government in the first place. Easy in some places; not so much in others.

[jmyeet]

> Your analysis disregards the evidence of several decades in which the Internet existed, but gambling was still broadly illegal and getting around those laws was anything but trivial (since blocking financial flows is, or at least used to be, pretty effective).

I'm not sure what the point of this comment is because it basically translates to "getting around gambling restrictions used to be difficult but it no longer is", which is my point. What does it matter how things used to be if crypto in particular makes financial flows trivial so it's not that way anymore?

> This requires trusting the government in the first place. Easy in some places; not so much in others.

Well, here are you options:

1. No ID verification. A lot of people might consider that ideal but I think it's DOA;

2. A private company, which includes the likes of the Peter Thiel-backed company, verifying IDs; or

3. The government, which, again, is the entity that issues the IDs so, by definition, you're not giving them anything they don't already know.

The government is a strictly better option than a private company because, apparently I need to repeat this, they already have the information because they issued the IDs.

[lxgr]

My point is that this recent popularity of gambling is largely a result of the explicit decision by legislators in many US states to legalize online gambling. I don’t think crypto factored in that much.

[throw848tjfj]

We will end with correct and desired behaviour. If you misbehave, you get internet ban, and lose your livelihood. Driving licences, passports, electricity, banking... etc already work this way.

Technical details are irrelevant.

You should not be able to criticise current or previous government!

[peddling-brink]

What previous government? We have always been at war with Eurasia.

[throw848tjfj]

Who today even declares wars? We can be best allies, while you blow up our pipelines!