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Comment by cptcobalt | Hacker News Reader

Is this not going too far? It's a pretty weak "let's save the kids argument" that only serves to improve mass-surveillance outside of the argument presented. Like, this is the advent of strong thought policing and thought monitoring over the wires—oh no, you can't use a VPN because it's bad for "the kids"!

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I don't think anybody thinks this has anything to do with child safety. It's not a coincidence that the UK, US and the EU, all working on implementing similar surveillance and censorship regimes. The platforms will develop the infrastructure, similar to the GFoC just privatized. The legacy media lost all influence with younger generations, just look at what the vast majority of young people think of Israel now. If the media can't fulfill its role anymore they need a big stick.

In the UK, most of our elected MPs are idiots. I cannot imagine they're anywhere near intelligent enough to be part of some sophisticated conspiracy while on the face of it saying "save the children". So it can't be coming from the MPs. If this is all a cover for full government control, where is it coming from? Who is doing the push and how are they keeping it secret?

Oppression doesn't necessarily have to be deliberately planned by brilliant villains in secret smoky rooms, twirling their mustaches and conspiring against the public. It can easily emerge organically out of hundreds of tiny, stupid decisions made by stupid people.

I don't think that would explain the assertions by the person I was responding to.

You can be malicious and incompetent. The only reason we know about project mkultra was because parts of the project were misfiled in the wrong place and were stumbled upon by accident.

You don't have to invoke some sort of conspiracy, the western liberal world is deeply interconnected and its all in the open, you just never hear about any of it. Nothing is secret, they don't have to hide anything there is nobody that would tell anyone. You also shouldn't make the mistake to separate or governments from private interests, they are identical that's the whole problem to begin with.

In 2021 the WEF launched the Global Coalition for Digital "Safety" [1] it includes Google, Meta, Interpol, and any neoliberal goul you can imagine. The push for universal digital identity cards is much older ofc. like (eIDAS 2.0) in the EU [2]

Meta and TikTok already developed AI based age estimation tools into their platforms, then lobby to have have laws passed accordingly. See this from 2023 [3]

There are also companies that offer these sorts of services pushing legislation, how else are they gonna justify their hundreds of millions in valuation? (Like yoti [4] or Clearview ai [5])

[1] https://initiatives.weforum.org/global-coalition-for-digital... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EIDAS [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-rules-children-using-ap... [4] https://www.yoti.com/blog/digital-identity-company-yoti-rece... [5] https://www.clearview.ai/press-room/clearview-ai-closes-30-m...

The ”sophisticated conspiracy” is not ran by your idiot MPs, they are the gullible marks ripe for exploitation.

Companies like Palantir are lobbying for this.

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