What’s the endgame here, with porn, chat control and age verification occurring globally, when will this end and where will we end up? What are the realistic outcomes?
And of course, it will all be under the guise of safety and harm reduction, but the veil will keep getting thinner and the amount of things covered more comprehensive
First Porn, Now Skin Cream? ‘Age Verification’ Bills Are Out of Control (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/03/first-porn-now-skin-cr...)
Actually the California bill seems absurdly weak, and it seems to be enough to just ask if they're 18.
The Washington bill is stupid for restricting creatine supplements, which the evidence indicates provides physical and cognitive benefits with no real drawbacks. It's the one muscle building supplement that's actually known to work, and should be excluded like protein powder. But otherwise restricting people from selling dubious dietary supplements to children doesn't seem terribly wrong on its face.
[1] https://www.iltalehti.fi/kotimaa/a/6c9a65fe-f706-449e-b0d9-1...
[1] - https://nypost.com/2025/08/19/world-news/uk-free-speech-stru...
[2] - https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for...
I personally also think this should mostly not be a matter for the police to take care of, but then again do (should) dick picks and harassment really constitute the free speech you want to protect? I cannot speak for the UK, but Germany for example has had laws against gross insults since decades that have not threatened democracy; I would expect police to enforce laws, whether in real or virtual life just the same.
On the other hand, it gets murky with unwanted political opinions. Due to historic reasons, there are some things very specific things you're forbidden from voicing publicly here, because they're incompatible with our constitution, and thus don't enjoy the protection of that constitution. But in recent years, things unrelated to our fascist past have also seen litigation, which I find problematic, regardless of my personal opinions.
But given that Germany is probably the most strict European country when it comes to freedom of speech restrictions, I'm really opposed to announcing any kind of "free speech crisis in Europe".
They always say stuff like "violence doesn't belong in politics", "violence is always wrong". But look at the French revolution, they had to cut the dictator's ("king's") head off to stop him from trying to get back into power. Look at the US for for independence, how many redcoats had to get shot before the UK decided it's not longer economical to keep oppressing the colony. Look at the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, a public execution of a mass murderer.
And for now we're allowed to celebrate those events. Some are even national holidays. But we can not publicly discuss current events in the same manner. Those supporting recent assassinations or attempts usually get banned and many don't even dare voice their support. But there is some line where the fourth box of liberty _should_ come out. And I don't think we have enough freedom of speech currently to discuss where exactly the line lies. (Note to mods, I don't have an opinion on the recent shooting and this message is not related to it. I would have posted the exact same thing even if it didn't happen and have posted similar messages in the past.)
BTW this is funny: Brandon Herrera posted a video reconstructing the headshot by Gary Plauché where it's obvious both him and the commenters support the killing. He also reconstructed the, well, earshot by Thomas Matthew Crooks and denounced it. I wonder if he would support an assassination if it turned out Trump got, say, a massage with a happy ending from an underage girl trafficked by his friend. That would imply being a pedophile is worse than being a fascist[0] in his mind.
[0]: https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-...
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Anyway, violence should be used carefully as a last resort but people in power are afraid of it because ultimately, no matter how much power they have, they still need a continuous supply of oxygen to their brain, which can be interrupted in a number of ways and the probability of such an event increases proportionally to the number of people they exploit.
So the endgame is that an anti-democratic government eventually wins an election and uses its new tools to crush dissent and make opposition parties impossible.
Boot stomping on a human face forever.
Westerners always pointed fingers at China, North Korea and Russia, but in this case we are seemingly attempting to lap them.
There's already a W3C browser standard in development - The Digital Credentials API. Apple is adding support for "Verify with Wallet on the Web" in iOS/macOS 26. Chrome is currently rolling out Origin Trials.
https://digitalcredentials.dev/
https://www.w3.org/TR/digital-credentials/
https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/232/
https://developer.chrome.com/blog/digital-credentials-api-or...
On the flip side, there's no anonymity. Welcome to the real Web 3.0 - an internet which has been finally put in a box, for better and worse. An internet which is finally forced to respect national laws, for better and worse. An internet where what you say online, will be treated with no difference than if you had said it in person.
It's 1984. Surveillance in your home so you only speak the government speak. If you criticize the government or the genocides commited by them you're "doing hate speech/wrong think" and you'll receive the cops at your door to be disappeared without recourse
The populace will be told you were evil and no one dares question too much or they will be next.
Or we can tell them to fuck off and stop buying into every little crisis and fake right v left fight they try to sell.
> The privacy considerations for digital credentials are not static. They will evolve over time as the ecosystem matures, and may be informed by the behavior of other actors in the ecosystem, improvements in other layers of the stack, new threats to user privacy, as well as changing societal norms and regulations.
Boil the frog slowly and carefully, and look out for opportune moments that could help to speed up the process.
That's why you need to diversify software ecosystems now.
It was trialed during covid and people absolutely cheered for this type of control.
Now it's only a matter of time unless people accept that it's never acceptable. Not even with "perceived threats". Covid passes and social scores to do activities where absolutely a wet dream for govs and corporations alike. The corporations that benefit from government mandated tools love getting free money and governments love control. They know the tools never spy on them, and that's why everytime they're the ones committing crimes or ignoring their rules it's "a mistake or nothing to see here".
But I wish you were right.
Proven?! It's been 30 years. That's an almost unfathomably small speck in evolutionary scales.
Why would you expect different in the future?
The Internet met human nature, and human nature won. We hoped for better, but we didn't get it.
China is every wannabe dictator's digital wet dream.
Maybe we should schedule a day in the future where everyone travels to Strasbourg/Brussels for a demonstration.
A historian called Sarah Paine explained this nicely with examples of how the occupation of Afghanistan failed to create democracy but the occupation of post-WW2 Germany succeeded because Germany used to have a democracy whereas Afghanistan never did.
That's kind of the worst case scenario, though, where bad politicians don't get removed from office. We can hope that most people will decide that enough is enough, or politicians will quietly back down when they realize they're dooming their own careers.
Note how Apple is already a bit like that, banning certain torrenting apps even from alternative app stores [0]. I’m just mentioning that as a demonstration of the feasibility of such closed and controlled ecosystems. Now restrict ISP network traffic to packets signed by approved hardware, and there aren’t that many practical loopholes left.
The days where you could run whatever OS you want on hardware you own will soon be over. And you know what? There's not a damn thing any of us can do, so may as well just buy Apple gear.