I have to give Fortnite my passport to use Bluesky | Hacker News Reader

I have to give Fortnite my passport to use Bluesky

spitfirenews.com

86 pointsmalshe69 comments

I ran across "Are We Decentralized Yet" recently, which shows how decentralized services are in practice: https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/

A lot of people try and deflect from Bluesky's governance issues by pointing at the fact that you _could_, in theory, self-host it or use another instance to bypass it. In practice though, that's something almost nobody does (unlike with the fediverse), which allows the company behind it to make decisions like this for effectively everyone with no checks whatsoever.

Amazing website, I have seen this earlier and I really enjoyed it

Honestly, I'd like to chime in the fact that I always used to think that web was so just aws,google,microsoft,cloudflare hosting it and there is some truth to it but if someone feels this way, I recommend people to look at some websites like https://serverdeals.cc https://https://vpspricetracker.com/ etc and going on places like lowendtalk and even talking to some people who are vps providers and talking to them etc, it was very fascinating

Another point I'd like to chime in, being more relevant perhaps is that as I have told in other comment, bluesky itself isnt centralizing/asking for id to just use it but they are asking it for the dm functionality which is still centralized/ even unencrypted. They are working on improving it/making it decentralized but although I feel like I dont enjoy bluesky that much because of its shannon index as you showed compared to say fediverse, this message today isnt the issue

Fediverse itself doesnt know how to handle direct messages / most likely they are unencrypted too (atleast of lemmy they are that I know of)

But I am interested how the shannon index of fediverse is so low when threads app has 10s of millions of people, how does that work/not centralized too?

Also I had heard that the creator of pixelfed is working on an encrypted fediverse messaging app but I have been interested in this for so long but I am interested if you know of any such applications right now

Threads is a one way view into the fediverse and opt in too boot. Only Threads users who turn it on are visible to the wider fediverse and many instances on Mastodon de-federate from Threads anyway.

I can follow Hank Green on Threads but the interoperability basically ends there.

> Fediverse itself doesnt know how to handle direct messages

What do you mean by this? Direct messages are not end-to-end encrypted, I don't know what you mean by "doesn't know how to handle". Almost every platform with direct messages doesn't have E2E today, that's the same as email, twitter, Discord... basically every other messaging platform on the web besides Signal and Matrix, for better or worse.

Well yeah to be honest, I kinda hope that one day we can get something like matrix on top of fediverse and so yeah you are right almost every platform doesnt have direct message e2ee but I was hoping that someday someone can build it for fediverse.

I remember its name (sup) but I don't really see any good updates I am not sure to be honest (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Pixelfed-Loops-and-Sup-Alterna...)

"(COLUMBUS, Ohio) — A review of 20 top pornography websites ordered by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost revealed that only one is complying with Ohio’s recently enacted age-verification law."

https://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Media/News-Releases/Octo...

If those websites aren’t operating out of Ohio I don’t see why they should have to follow Ohio’s laws.

These state required ID walls to use online services will eventually be required to access anything the internet.

Also I think this is the reason M$ and Apple offer (or forced in the case of M$) you to use an online account to log into your local machine. I believe this will be used in the future to allow people to legally use the internet or not at all. Would a world like this mean using Linux makes you an outlaw in certain areas?

Maybe this will kill IoT. Alternately, I will become a smart fridge.

No, corporations can always do whatever they want. And they won't allow a smart fridge to have a bank account or health care

Maybe not the worst idea if we're looking to claim back what's been lost to LLM bots

I’m not sure how a surveillance state is better? That wouldn’t regain what we are losing to LLM bots, it would be yet another thing we’re losing.

Nah, the only platforms left will sell the right to post ads into your feed and sell access to the data to the LLM companies

Is this just clickbait or is the passport verification really done by Fortnite? The article doesn't explain it and I am very skeptical of the claim.

Google asked for my passport to pay for some ridiculous <$1 payment (I refused). So I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is was legit.

Online companies have bent over and stuck their own heads up their own asses ... and they'll call it progress, good UX and security.

Fuck em (generally speaking).

By a verification service owned by epic games apparently. So not fortnite but its not a super stretch.

So it's not fortnite at all. It's something owned by the same company that happens to also own fortnite. That is actually a huge stretch.

Imagine if I said "I have to pilot a 747 just to change the temperature of my house" (because Honeywell makes both passenger jet avionics and thermostats).

It's as much of a stretch as describing using an Azure service as "I have to use Halo" or AWS as "I have to use Rings of Power."

No, Fortnite is/was directly made by Epic Games and is their most well known product/service.

Better analogies would be Azure as "I have to use Windows" or AWS as "I have to use the Amazon store", which sound a lot less ridiculous than your analogies.

The good faith interpretation is that if the fortnite division had any reason to benefit from that passport info, they would be able to get it. That's not a super stretch.

First paragraph- "a subsidiary of the video game company that makes Fortnite"

It says so in the first paragraph that it's a subsidiary of Epic Games that does verification.

'Kids Web Services' is a subsidiary of Epic, the makers of Fortnite.

https://www.kidswebservices.com/

It says it’s a subsidiary of Epic Games, and Epic owns Fortnite. Saying it’s Fortnite feels like a very clickbait way to frame it.

It's using "Fortnite" as a synecdoche for Epic Games, because "I have to give an age verification company owned by Epic Games my passport to use Bluesky" isn't quite as effective at revving the outrage engines, even if it has the benefit of being true. Personally, I don't think people who are willing to do that are showing themselves to be trustworthy but you might feel differently.

It is pretty funny how Epic Games is a platform empire now such that they provide an authentication system used beyond gaming.

These laws were never about protecting the children, and trying to argue it's not protecting children really is just a waste of time. These laws are about knowing who wants access to what, so the government can hold that over you when they eventually decide they don't like you and need an excuse to make your life hell.

> That information breach happened after the UK instituted sweeping new “child safety” laws to protect the kiddos. Because collecting and leaking your identity is surely going to keep them safe, right?

We don't even have to speculate with scare quotes anymore - the UK government has admitted that the purpose was not child safety, but controlling "public discourse": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46314642

> Well, even if your data is safeguarded properly

Not very reassuring if it's the government itself you fear.

Isn't Bluesky supposed to be decentralized?

How can some party lock you out of it?

Well Bluesky/the protocol behind it is decentralized

but the dm (direct message) functionality itself isn't decentralized and bluesky even mentions it/shows it that its unencrypted and centralized iirc

Hmm.. so the public channel is decentralized but the private channel is not.

There is actually a technical solution to that then. Use the public channel to send/receive private messages. Every could publish a public key. Then everyone could send private messages to everyone by encrypting them with the public key of the receiver and sending them over the public channel.

Shall we try it? My public key:

    -----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
    MFwwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADSwAwSAJBAKs9CbOAxSROEdm/+QGyDLdxITTq+YdbmIlOM0jemqKvLXinnBUDeDRSGXOoCnygXLFsm6R31szySqiVunasX/8CAwEAAQ==
    -----END PUBLIC KEY-----

You can send me a private message by encrypting it here:

https://anycript.com/crypto/rsa

And then pasting the encrypted version into a reply to this comment :)

Paste my private keys into a form control on the web? What could go wrong?

Who doesn't review all the several megabytes of minified JavaScript for every page they visit?

he's asking you to paste his public key, not your private one.

Although I enjoy the public key/private key ideas, If you wish to talk encrypted, one of the best ways to do such could be having signal if you don't mind centralization

But if you want decentralization some options i can recommend are matrix,simplex,session etc.

But to be honest, there is a good point that you raise about how to talk decentralized on bluesky

well, one of the ideas that I can think of right now, is that someone can use https://keyoxide.org/ and paste in their public key and also connect both bluesky and matrix and then have the keyoxide as part of something public like a comment

The problem in this is that it becomes tedious and does add more friction to the whole thing but definitely possible.

If you choose to use a centralized frontend to access Bluesky (everyone does this) and that frontend has to follow laws because it's run by a corporation... that's what you get.

There is no way to access your DMs except using Bluesky's centralized backend server.

This page is blocking VPN users - https://archive.is/6AykL

Okay, I skimmed the article and either I missed something or it's not answering the actual question in the title. I get the age verification thing, but why is "Fortnite" / Epic Games in the process for Bluesky?

> Bluesky will perform age verification through Kid Web Services (KWS), an Epic Games-owned tool

https://www.theverge.com/news/704468/bluesky-age-verificatio...

I'm in another state with similar idiotic "save the children" laws.

Thankfully, there are VPNs that come out from all sorts of 'better' countries with less bad online laws. I'll use them.

And I'll move VPNs as needed. Including the residential cloaked VPNs.

Honestly, I do not care about all of this anymore. We do not need social media. We just don't. If you want to use it for business then yes, you should need to present an ID.

"Age verification laws are as ineffective", yes. But this is even true for buying alcohol, but we still have the laws because they help. The more kids are off social media the better.

"as they are dangerous", this is laughable.

The example: "16-year-old in Texas, for example, could get pregnant and be denied abortion access—as well as information online about obtaining an abortion through other means, and even parenting the children they’re forced to have."

Hey, abortions for 16 years olds are illegal in Texas as are nearly all abortions. Yeah, it is a dumb law, but it is the law. So you are advocating for a child to break the law putting them at even more of a risk! You may disagree with the law, but if that is the case, work to change it.

I had many queer friends growing up in the 80's. They all talked to each other in real life. They had real solidarity in both the gay and straight community. I mean Stonewall happened in real life, not online. Maybe the whole online thing is meant to curtail real action. We do not need online.

I agree the implementation is faulty.

But you know how I know most people do not care about "the harm'? Because I am homeless with a serious mental illness and no one cares. Is there one person here who will rent me a room in their huge house for $600 a month so I do not have to stress living in my van anymore?

> So you are advocating for a child to break the law putting them at even more of a risk!

untrue in the general case?

> We do not need online.

agreed; doesn't really change the present issues

The original title is "Why I have to give Fortnite my passport to use Bluesky". HN automatically removed "Why" from the title.

this article is a good example of why "why" should be removed

Why?

Can you explain?

"Why" is redundant. If the article is stating premise "X" and it's on the front page (assuming it's not newsworthy enough that "X" is novel and worth discussion), it's obviously going to explain "Why X" and "X" is sufficient.

"Why" only adds clarity. What is the advantage of removing it?

People on HN hold very odd opinions near and dear to their hearts. Minor variances in a article title being one of them.

They internalize title heuristics because of who they perceive is the author of the heuristics.

I honestly have no idea what you're trying to say. HN users mimic other HN posters they find credible?

"You can tell the kind of person by how they write"

You can tell the kind of person by what they write.

"Why" and "how" is clickbait hooks. The point is always what is after

But why does HN feel it's necessary to editorialize titles like that? My browsing experience isn't any better because HN decided to strip out the "why", and I've seen multiple situations in the past where the auto editing of titles here actually resulted in a title that made zero sense.

Lots of posts on HN state the fact "X" is happening and are searching for help to find the reason or just conveying a story. "Why" in the title tells people the author knows the reason and is going to explain it in the post.

Is that actually the rationale, or are you guessing? It seems weak, if true, since:

- An article reporting X does not or can not necessarily always explain why X.

- Removing "Why" can (and does) destroy some titles, and submitters aren't always going to notice it was changed under their nose and fix it before submitting (or they will consciously trust the bad change, if they are not themselves an experienced reader of the language).

- Removing "why" doesn't seem to have any impact aside from saving a tiny bit of space and a tiny bit of annoyance for the small subset of people who are opinionated writers and dislike seeing the "why" trope in the cases when it is truly unnecessary.

It's not like we're talking about the "You won't believe why..." trope. Then I could understand.

it's the norm that article talks about why and how.

- If article "I have to give Fortnite my passport to use Bluesky" does not explain why and how then it's a bad article not worth sharing on HN anyway

- "Why", "how" is clickbait. It's the "You won't believe how" intensificator but for thinking geeks. The real topic is always what happens after. unless it's an actual question quoted in title, in that 1% of cases it can be edited in.

Don't use Bluesky (who uses Bluesky?)

Problem solved.

Don't use any sites the government doesn't want you to sounds like a bad strategy personally.

The enshittification of Bluesky is just around the corner.

I used to feel fortunate that I don't have to live in a red state, now I have to feel bad for people who have family to visit there. I shouldn't feel like basic rights and privacy are something I still have only because of luck.

As the article states, at this rate it's only a matter of time before a federal law will be passed that applies to you, too.

The UK, Australia and the EU also seem hell-bent on this. China already has aggressive user controls in place.

I am not a conspiracy nut at all but it feels off that so many states are all simultaneously pushing for stuff like this and message scanning.

Together with more and more services requiring hardware attestation (think banking, medical, streaming, games) it seems like we're gliding towards a future of tight digital control by states+corporations.

Honestly all it would really take is Meta deciding their messaging apps require your account to be verified by some state system and your device to be in a verified state. WhatsApp + Instagram + FB Messenger have over 5 billion active users. They're not gonna move to Signal and Telegram en masse. Plus who says their CEOs won't get arrested (again) on some phony charge to pressure them into requiring verification.

Blech.

I feel a divide w.r.t. this topic. I'm old now and grew up when the internet was full of small groups of nerds. People knew each other (rarely by name), often times you weren't identifiable at all. You made friends strictly on the content of your character and clout chasing wasn't really a big thing. Even in hacker circles "clout chasing" was mocked.

Around the time social media emerged all of this changed. People started voluntarily using their real names and photos. They share intimate details about their life to complete strangers. They demand attention, they want to be noticed, they want a "record". It's trivial to piece together enough across anyones social media accounts to pin point where they live, possibly where they travel (sometimes daily), etc.

Subsequently we have children who are being born and raised by this system. It makes sense to me to fence these kids away from the internet. I take the more extreme stance of fencing children away from the entire internet until at least they're teens but I have also watched it turn from a place where you can learn to a very dangerous place for anyone not smart enough to remain anonymous.

Should the federal or state government regulate this? I don't know. What I do know is every bit of data on education. child rearing, health, etc have shown that the average person in the west is completely and utterly incapable of rearing children. Someone has to step in. We are getting to be past the point "it's the parents responsibility" works when the second and third order effects dramatically shift society and it's culture. Either we begin severely punishing parents for failures to thrive (e.g. prison time) or we enact laws like this. I am not against the idea of putting parents in prison for child neglect for their iPad kid, and investigating and potentially removing children from a home when their grades in school have a pattern of being excruciatingly poor despite intervention.

Legislators have a far easier time legislating ID laws than child neglect laws, however, and these ID laws are easier to swallow given existing infrastructure.

From my experience it's the opposite. On the old internet, forums, newsgroups, people willingly used their real names to communicate with strangers. They treated the internet as an extension of real life where of course you use your real name, what else?

Nowadays, using your real name is dangerous, lest you get swatted or an angry mob decides to get you fired because you made an off-color joke. Doxxing someone is viewed as a potentially violent act. It's hard to imagine anyone using their real name on Discord for instance, whereas in the days of IRC it was common.

Huh. I may be younger than you are. By the time I got online in the early to mid-nineties the very strong zeitgeist was never to use your real name, nor to post identifying details into (the resultingly anonymized) fora. This was the "on the internet no one knows you're a dog" era, which cartoon (I just looked it up) was from 1993 - way earlier than I'd have guessed!

Social media - starting with the very early ones: Six Degrees, Friendster, maybe MySpace? - weakened that expectation, but (someone tell me if this is accurate) my recollection is that Facebook was the first platform to require realname accounts. I agree with you about the current danger, and though I've never posted anything anywhere that I wouldn't stand behind - trolling just isn't my style - I have, reflecting the pov of my "internet generation", always felt super weird publicly posting anything under my real name.

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