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@Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchangeWhen you read about Bans of Social Media for Teens and Age Verification, you must remember what it truly means:
• Official identification of every adult using social media.
• Deanonymization of every account, endangering groups that often rely on pseudonymity for safety, such as victims of domestic violence, victims of stalkers, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people.
• Putting every adult at great danger of exploitation, fraud, and identity theft by forcing them to share their official ID with a for-profit third-party company with no incentive to protect it. Breaches have already happened.
• Constructing a system of mass surveillance to attach every comment on social media to a legal identity. Effectively allowing authoritarian governments to silence their critics and opposition.
• Potential for dystopian censorship and cutting off means of organization for groups of resistance to oppressive regime and organizations.
• Endangering children online by putting a clear identification beacon over every child or family with children online.
• Endangering the data of children who will inevitably try to pass as adults, and have their information collected by the third-party for-profit company.
• Diminishing the value of official identification due to the inevitable data breaches, eventually pushing the system to require even more intrusive identification techniques, such as iris scans and fingerprints.
• Installing a system of mass surveillance capable of attaching even more information to everyone's legal identity. With a potential to built list of people in certain groups, and scale-up state censorship and discrimination in unprecedented ways.
• The list goes on and on.
This isn't about protecting the children.
It never was.
Do not be duped by this excuse used to convince you to let go of your human rights. They are only trying to manipulate people lacking information.
Stay informed on the issues related to Age Verification, and push back for your rights to privacy and democracy.
The future depends on us.
@Em0nM4stodon It is not a bug, It is a feature.
@Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange this thread is a free bootlicker blocklist
Real Names Considered Harmful
@Em0nM4stodon THE INTERNET IS RAN BY THE GOVERNMENT, DUDE. No ones banning anyone and your legal identity being tied to a public display name that ISN'T a legal identity is absolutely NOT a danger to the public. You're being EXTREMELY counter productive and making it look like YOU use the internet to harbor fugitives who are banned from use of the internet for BEING dangerous to those groups you just mentioned ON THE INTERNET. People get banned from the public domain when they become offenders.
@BobLefridge@mastodon.nzMy my. You're an easy block.
@Mage_of_Chaos@mastodon.social @Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange The fuck are you talking about.
Whatever I want.
@Mage_of_Chaos@mastodon.social @Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange Consider saying things that are correct next time.
Consider some of us worked in networking career feilds and know what we're talking about next time. *pats*
@Mage_of_Chaos@mastodon.social @Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange Yeah, because being in "networking career fields" makes you a better judge of the risks of telling Elon Musk my legal name than fucking security specialists.
Being a person who survived human trafficking, and having worked in network security I can 100% tell you that Elon Musk isn't real and can't hurt you, lmfao.
You're more likely to be a person who supports human and animal trafficking when your are afraid of being identified with your personal information online. As a person who was literally human trafficked.
Thanks!
@flesh
Do not feed the troll. Block, move on. They fap to the follows.
@Em0nM4stodon If it was illegal for social media companies to use and sell personal details, then the lobby (funded secretly by Meta, Google, Apple) for removal of privacy would evaporate.
Children are not protected by revealing full ID info by everyone, that is a lie.
Making corporations pay rent on retained personal data would likely have a similar outcome.
@IncHulk@mastodon.green @Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange If it was illegal, the lobby would be trying to make it legal.
@Em0nM4stodon ah yes, i also anonymize myself throughout social media to protect my privacy 
@Em0nM4stodon they day I have to provide ID to use your service is the day I cancel, it's pretty simple.
@TheStoneDonkey @Em0nM4stodon start to self-host first, it’s not a service if there are no others serviced
@TheStoneDonkey
> the day I have to provide ID to use
The tech to immobilize you until you show your digital or paper identity is here. The implementation of it is rampant on the U.S. streets and homes. At least 20 humans got immobilized 'finally'.
Same here. I'm done with this shit.
systemd : because it is shoved down our throats by a mega-corp that by no means can be considered innocent in producing free code
ipv6: it is solving their problems none of our own .. so why bother?
zstd: just an algorithm, came from a NATO security officer and was purchased and furnished by FB as their first (and only?) open free code offering? Sounds too good not the be what I am afraid.
what linux avoids them all three? joborun linux - like Arch with runit and suspect "features" turned off
systemd : because it is shoved down our throats by a mega-corp that by no means can be considered innocent in producing free code
ipv6: it is solving their problems none of our own .. so why bother?
zstd: just an algorithm, came from a NATO security officer and was purchased and furnished by FB as their first (and only?) open free code offering? Sounds too good not the be what I am afraid.
opennic for DNS
what linux avoids them all? joborun linux - like Arch with runit and suspect "features" turned off
And it doesn't take much to antagonize the current government in the US:
"The ICE agent wanted more than a month’s worth of electronic data, but offered no information as to what, exactly, caught the agency’s attention. When John Doe’s attorneys later reviewed their Reddit posts, they found nothing to suggest criminal activity or intent.
"There was a thread from early January, after news outlets including The Intercept identified Jonathan Ross as the ICE officer who shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis. Commenting on a Minnesota Star Tribune article, another Reddit user posted that Ross might be welcomed as a hero in Florida or Texas. John Doe responded by sharing that Ross had lived in Chaska, Minnesota; grew up in Indiana; and served in the Indiana National Guard — biographical details that were circulating widely at the time. “Hopefully he moves up to Stillwater State Penitentiary,” they wrote.
"In another post, a Reddit user asked what they should write on an anti-ICE protest sign. John Doe suggested the lyrics to a song: “Urine speaks louder than words.” In a third instance, Doe wrote, “TSA sucks and we all know it.” According to the Reddit user’s attorneys, these were the most aggressive posts they could find."
https://theintercept.com/2026/04/10/reddit-ice-protest-grand-jury/
This is why I build https://mastodon.social.
It's pretty straight Mastodon but all authenticated traffic it through #Tor and no email addresses are collected.
So there's nothing beyond the public posts to identify users. What you put in a public post can be much more identifying that you may think but at least with this model full control is with the user the service doesn't need to know anything extra
@anarchademic @Em0nM4stodon i find this very ironic
yes
I just hit reader view
You'd want to make the internet less addictive and dangerous, by limiting ad-tracking and algorithmic systems the incentivize mass data harvesting. Force public-facing spaces to effectively moderate to keep from being dangerous to children.
You'd want to make the material environment more hospitable to doing anything other than sitting inside on a computer all day. Limiting cars so it's safe to be outside, promoting public parks, social programs and child-friendly public events.
@anton @Em0nM4stodon ok but what about our complicity here? Everyone wants “free” services that they don’t have to pay for. What is the actual price for that?
@codinghorror @anton @Em0nM4stodon
What about it? The moral injury of getting roped into being "complicit" in our own oppression is just one more way they damage us and try to convince us we somehow brought this bullshit on ourselves.
Imagine, for a moment, a world where people could easily get their basic needs met. If disposable income was an actual thing, people would not be in nearly such a hurry to jump for the dangerously predatory "free" shit on offer from the people who helped make sure we're poor in the first place.
@violetmadder @codinghorror @anton @Em0nM4stodon and frankly "people only want free stuff" was never true.
people were always willing to pay a reasonable price for media or software. its just always been priced as a luxury to maximize profits for middlemen. also the shift to free wasnt consumer or creator driven but seller driven as the growth over profits practice is how we got here.
@violetmadder @glassresistor @anton @Em0nM4stodon I don’t agree. People, statistically speaking, have an insane bloodlust for “free”. I have met the enemy and it is me.
@violetmadder @glassresistor @anton @Em0nM4stodon I don’t know how to change human nature but I do know it is folly to work against it rather than acknowledging our collective weaknesses and work alongside them, with them, redirecting and guiding. It is a very difficult path, and the easy way out is constantly, incessantly beckoning to us every damn step of the way.
@codinghorror @violetmadder @anton @Em0nM4stodon human nature is something race scientists made up at the turn of the last century. stop projecting your own shortcomings on to the world and actually study history
but that is not a reasonable statement to make in this context. having studied history does not make people automatically agree with you nor automatically have the correct opinions
@anton @codinghorror @glassresistor
Observing humans under capitalism and saying it is in their nature to be greedy, is like observing humans underwater and saying it's in our nature to drown.
Humans can be shockingly malleable, in terms of what we can be conditioned to accept as normal. Huge amounts of social engineering went into giving us the desperate impulse to grab for whatever we can reach. That's a compulsive behavior, very much like the food hoarding of a person who's experienced starvation. Or the junk-hoarding behavior of people who've had everything taken away from them multiple times-- sweeping the homeless compounds their trauma and makes them that much more likely to cling to anything and everything they can.
Artificial scarcity is DESIGNED to make us act like this. Torture programs research learned helplessness and addiction and more, for this purpose. Blame the victims, convince everybody this is just a dog eat dog world where everybody is a selfish bastard deep down and.. actually, what IS the point of that line of reasoning??
@violetmadder @anton @glassresistor there is no blame here, only the idea that we are all imperfect and maybe we can work together on that, because it is incredibly difficult, and every single one of us is fighting a hard battle that we cannot see
@codinghorror @violetmadder @anton i can agree we are imperfect. can you agree that "users demanded free" is ahistorical. users pirated because digital media was overpriced and inconvenient, users happily paid for records and books while pirating photoshop.
people love paying for spotify now.
the move to free with ads then paid without ads to finally pay for less ads was always the strategy and one planned pretty early on. the valley has been chasing leverage over profits for 3 generations now. people didnt choose this CEOs did and made us think we did.
That understanding of the demand for piracy in large part comes from Valve Software and Steam. With the Steam example Valve had the benefit of making Half-Life, one of the most popular games of all time. And the other thing with Steam is that a lot of the people who make games for Steam would not settle for a non-paid option.
because the content and the consumer aren't distinguishable for social networking. For the promises of federated systems to really work, exit costs need to be kept as low as possible. Most people do not, and should not be expected to, have loyalty to their particular instance strong enough to make most instances financially sustainable.
Ads should have their place in the federated ecosystem. especially when said ads are structured in a way that helps recruit powerful people in the fight against tech-oligarchy and the surveillance state
@anton @codinghorror @glassresistor
The powerful people ARE the tech-oligarchy and surveillance state.
We need the combined power of a lot of ordinary people, not "powerful" rescuers who are just going to keep pulling the same old crap. Ads pollute the ecosystem.
@violetmadder @anton @codinghorror anton sounds like a complete asshat whose white Knighting a rich asshole
I've thought about this shit before, I understand many of the problems with advertising as a model. If you have a specific structural concern with how advertising would corrupt the platform incentives I'm all ears.
If you have another way I can potentially make a living for myself and others fighting the colonization of our attention and social relations by tech ghouls. Which doesn't increase barriers to entry, and doesn't require being beholden to wealthy donors, and isn't advertising, I'd fucking LOVE to hear it
@anton @violetmadder it is extremely complicated and we have to work together because we outnumber the vastly wealthy especially in the second gilded age; the math is brutal, we may not have vast wealth but we have something far more powerful: each other. 💛
@anton @codinghorror @violetmadder its funny how little content this reply had. its almost like instead of a point or counter argument you went for the claasic dodge of "haha just because my opinion is unfounded, ahistorical, and lacks even shallow analysis doesnt mean people shouldnt value my opinion" and "your not always right"
please explain to me your historical context for why freemeium became the norm
@anton @codinghorror i mean to he for clear coding horror is a POS for many prior reasons so im not jumping into this contextless
But obviously I, as someone without said context has no reason to be compelled by it. You're undermining your position against the need for ads by making a bunch of vague and inflamitory non-sequiturs
@anton @glassresistor who exactly is a libertarian here? It ain’t me. Proof: https://infosec.exchange/@codinghorror/116178697799384635 or just search my timeline for that word. If I could wish every “libertarian” into the cornfield, I would do it instantly without the slightest hesitation, and the world would be a better place for it.
Calling yourself an "Effective Altruist" is kinda like calling yourself a "Libertarian".. it is possible to thread that needle and still be a decent person, but it's extremely difficult
I meant with that is that you were taking an overly assertive tone. but that such a tone from you does not justify abandoning rigorous argument
@anton the last time I met a stealth libertarian — my shields were down as this person seemed ok and was invited to my house — I nearly had a complete mental break. It was really dark. I scared the entire family. That is how much I despise libertarians. My advice to “libertarians” is to grow the fuck up, and stay as far as possible away from me, because they have been warned.
Also looking for software devs for robot tractors.
@codinghorror @anton @Em0nM4stodon what has that to do with making the internet safer?
@codinghorror @anton @Em0nM4stodon
Speak for yourself, I pay (eg) for mastodon.
I don't need Facebook, let it rot.
Long term the project of 99finches is to convince local businesses in Iowa to advertise here instead of on platforms that have been proven in open court to have screwed over their business clients on ad purchases. Then use that revenue to pay people in Iowa to do the long-term work needed to make the Fediverse a serious threat to big tech.
@anton @Em0nM4stodon I like this plan a lot.
@anton @Em0nM4stodon every word of this.