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Comment by wand3r | Hacker News Reader

This is a pretty wild story but also an illustration of just how dystopian the world has gotten. The UK has gone completely bonkers with this "real id to use the internet" law. In the US Google is using a crazy AI algorithm to prohibit people under 18 from viewing some content on YouTube. Obviously, the stated purpose of the policy is good IMO. However, I can't help but take a cynical view that Google is using this as an excuse to fully profile everyone EVEN MORE extensively with a behavioral AI algorithm coupled with all the user data which they use in conjunction with all the tracking data they have accumulated. They will say it is to protect the children, but in reality they have cranked their tracking and surveillance up to 11. I am open to being corrected, but this seems dystopian: both the UK verification laws and the AI trac king policy roll outs.

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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals." - CS Lewis

See also: Religion

That quote came from one of his essays on theology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_the_Dock

Everyone can see what is coming, but it appears we will give up everything to “protect the children.” One “reasonable” new rule at a time.

that's not true, consumerism is only growing, people are not giving up anything in that regard.

The planet is getting trashed and 'the children' are doomed.

Individually We try and help, driving less, recycling and so on, but it kinda gets diluted by a billion Chinese moving into the middle-class and burning coal like there's no tomorrow.

> Everyone can see what is coming, but it appears we will give up everything to “protect the children.” One “reasonable” new rule at a time.

Yeah:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...

The dystopia even extends to HN. This was near the top of the front page just half an hour ago, but now it's buried several pages away. Not for discussion, apparently.

I realize it was likely flagged, but burying anything controversial means that only vanilla topics will ever be discussed in any depth.

Yet the engineers who frequent HN and work at big tech companies are the ones who need to know about cases like this the most.

> burying anything controversial means that only vanilla topics will ever be discussed in any depth.

You place too much weight on reading the "front page" .. that's community and mod curated toward the core ethos of the site.

HN has a wealth of ongoing in depth discussion of all manner of things that often don't make "front page", you can see these if you (say) browse or follow new comments or active threads

* https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments

* https://news.ycombinator.com/active

I am a huge fan of your links. Here's another:

https://news.ycombinator.com/pool

More info about this feature from resident cool HN person minimaxir:

https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/#secon...

What honestly blew my mind was the whole Cookies debate.

- EU introduces law, making thirdparty tracking cookies illegal

- Every advertisement tracker switches to CNAME based first/secondparty cookies

- EU judges decide they are illegal by default, too, without explicit consent

- Google pushes out Federal Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) prototype, and essentially saying they track so much of the internet, they don't even need cookies to get beyond 98% accuracy.

- Nobody on the internet seems to care. Wtf?

I'm not sure that's right. I thought it was:

- Google pushed out FLOC.

- The Internet freaked out.

- Google withdrew FLOC.

Once in a while you should run a host firewall and look at the data that Google Safebrowsing receives.

Thinking Google backs off easily given their history is a pretty naive take on how the world works.

I do run a host firewall.

Not to mention the fact that someone would want to cover their entire body and face with tatoos... It points to an underlying social issue; people aren't happy with the body they were born in and/or not getting the attention/validation they need as individuals. Extreme body modification is a symptom of that. I think this struggle to accept one's self has systemic roots. People shouldn't have to go to such lengths to feel special. I suspect related to inequality dynamics and hyper-centralization of attention.

You shouldn't have to be an extreme world-class outlier in any area in order to feel valued. It's ridiculous how everything has become an all-or-nothing deal. This is not healthy.

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