Decentralized social network Mastodon says it cannot comply with age verification laws, like in Mississippi and elsewhere, and says it's up to individual server owners to decide.
This is exactly the kind of government overreach people like me have been screaming about since, in my case, the 1990s.
“I told you so” just doesn’t feel so good when what’s happening is nothing less than the entirety of human freedom and liberty is being eroded before our very eyes, and those who disagree with it get labeled as kooks, and accused of hating whatever “oppressed group” of the day is in vogue.
Yes. I had always worried about the copyright industry. That was the big money pushing for censorship. Controlling access and exchange of information is part of their business model and even personal ideology. But I don’t know how much this has actually to do with them, and how much is simply the will to power.
What I did not see coming at all was how the left would completely 180 on these issues. That, at least, I blame on the copyright industry.
Right wing people have screeched about “the intolerant left” forever, but I always ignored the obvious hypocrisy. I took it as a debate on what is permissible in polite society. But now Europe is at a point where there is simply a consensus against free speech. Only the most illiberal forces will be able to use these legal weapons to full effect. That will be the extreme right.
The ideal of free speech is a naive fantasy especially with social media which can amplify the craziest of ideas which can go viral.
Yes the Left has gone overboard with their thought policing however the right wing in want their personal bigotry to be allowed and nobody else (no mention of DEI in USA government institutions allowed). The Left want free speech for everyone except the bigots but then their definition of bigots becomes a slippery slope.
It’s just a logical extension of what happens when government becomes the arbitrator of all.
The biggest issue is that so many people see it just as you do, left vs right, instead of liberty vs authoritarianism.
For decades, the libertarian movement, as seen by the left, has been largely associated with the right, simply because of their professed support of the free market, and dislike of gun control
But that same movement has been seen by the right as largely associated with the left, because of their views on things like the drug war, enforced morality, and anti-corporatism.
Has there been a large shift of alt-right into the libertarian movement over the past few years? Yes. Absolutely. And I despise it with a passion.
But there are still quite a lot of us truly anti-authoritarian libertarians out there who despise both left, and right leaning authoritarianism.
But when I bring up issues of authoritarianism, I get “BoTh SiDeS?!” bullshit responses. Because YES, as we can see, BOTH SIDES do their own fair share of this authoritarian bullshit.
They differ in methods, yes. But the bottom line is an encroachment on personal privacy. Plus, property rights are just a logical extension of personal privacy rights.
Well to be fair the left in the usa does have another reason to see the libertarian party as just another right wing party. They vote republican when it comes down to D vs R
The biggest issue is that so many people see it just as you do, left vs right, instead of liberty vs authoritarianism.
For the most part the divide between “Left” and “Right” politically speaking IS the divide between Liberty and Authoritarianism. If you look up the History of the terms its easy to see this. Those terms originated during pre-revolutionary war France. The “Left” supported freedom from Tyranny. The “Right” supported the Monarchy. This has remained largely true ever since then.
Where the waters get muddy is so called ‘Authoritarian Communism’. When Communism was first being discussed it, along with Anarchism in general, were correctly labeled as ‘Leftist’ ideologies. Under both the ‘State’ is abolished completely. You can literally go no further left than voluntary association and abolishment of the state. As far back as Karl Marx, elements of ‘Authoritarianism’ began creeping into ‘Communist’ thought. While Marx was a relatively enlightened thinker- neither he nor Engels were the originators of Communism- despite having written “The Manifesto”. They were the originators of Marxism- an important distinction.
The goal- indeed one of the very definitions of ‘Communism’, even under Marxism is “a classless, stateless, society.” As such Communism is a form of Anarchism. Anarchy technically only requires the abolishment state, but the vast majority of Anarchists also believe in “Mutual Aid”, and ‘private property’ is a nonsense concept in the absence of a state- which is why so many Anarchists identify as ‘Anarcho-Communists’.
Now clearly (in my mind at least), removing one of the fundamental ideas of communism- which is that ‘The State’ (and especially a ‘strong/authoritarian’ state) inherently upholds and enforces the class system in society and is a bad thing which needs to be abolished and you replace that with it’s complete opposite- a ‘Strong’ State upholds and enforces ‘classlessness’ in society and is a good thing which should be supported, moves that type of “Communism/Socialism” from being a leftist ideology all the way over to being a far right ideology, as per the original and most commonly used metrics for determining if a position is “Left” or “Right”.
The problem with ‘reclassifying’ ‘Authoritarian Communism’ to it’s correct spot is that A) the ruling class (Capitalists) who are firmly right-wing do not want to be associated with it as it removes power from them and places it solely in the hands of the state. Likewise ‘Authoritarian Communists’ do not want to be associated with Capitalists either for similar reasons. Leaving the only people who care about the correct placement of these ideologies as the actual Anarchists and Communists- which are considered ‘fringe’, ‘extremist’, and ‘radicals’ by society as a whole and no one really cares about our opinions.
A ‘True/Accurate’ Left Right Spectrum would look something like…
Putting them in that order reflects the ‘Liberty-Authoritarian’ spectrum that is the “Left-Right” spectrum. You could of course argue placement and some of them could be rearranged depending on circumstances. For example I put ‘Social Democracy’ as further right than Democracy because ‘Social Democracy’ is still by and large a Capitalist system, yet if the majority of people in a Democracy were right wingers- then the order would flip, however this is largely right imho.
For decades, the libertarian movement, as seen by the left, has been largely associated with the right, simply because of their professed support of the free market, and dislike of gun control…
You are confusing ‘The Left’ with “Liberals”. This is an extremely common and understandable mistake to make in the U.S. as there is a lot of intentional confusion. The ‘Democratic Party’, in particular since the ‘Regan Era’ is largely comprised of Neoliberals- a capitalist ideology. Capitalism relies on, and cannot exist without the exploitation of workers. As such you simply CANNOT separate ‘Social’ policies and ‘economic’ policies. Exploitation of workers IS a social issue- one of the most important ones- so if you support ‘Capitalism’ you are ‘right wing’ socially, even if you hold relatively enlightened positions in other areas.
Also “Gun Control” isn’t a clear ‘left/right’ divide either. Many leftists share the view of some right wingers that having access to firearms is an important strategy to resist tyranny. If anything access to guns is a Left wing position that was adopted by some on the right, as crazy as that may sound to modern American ears.
“Under no pretextshould arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary”
― Karl Marx
One of the key ways that “Libertarians” try to muddy the waters of what is a considered Leftwing or Rightwing stance is the mantra of ‘Free Markets’. But what is really meant is ‘Unrestricted Capitalism’. If there was ever a “Libertarian” who believed in “Free Markets” in the absence of ‘The State’ and ‘Private Property’- well they would likely correctly categorize themselves as a Leftist and not “Libertarian” (Please note the distinction between Private Property and Personal Property, and in particular how it relates to the ownership of the means of production.) Also to note: That definition of “Personal Property” is written from the POV of people born, raised, and indoctrinated by a Capitalist system and is not exactly how leftists would define it. “Personal Property” doesn’t have to be ‘movable’ per se- ones residence or even a village collectively could be considered ‘Personal Property’ by Leftists. What really matters is that it’s property that you can personally make use of. If you build yourself a small house for you and your family- that is personal property. If you lay claim to vast amounts of land that you couldn’t possibly work by yourself- that would be “Private Property” - which would require some form of ‘State’ to enforce.
Now some so-called “Libertarians” will try to argue for something called ‘Anarcho-Capitalism’. This is a mythical state of existence where there is no State, yet the people respect ‘Private Property’ rights. Ask most ‘Anarcho-Capitalists’ how they would propose to enforce private property in the absence of a state and they will tell you that they would hire Mercenaries/ “Private Police”/ a Small “private army”- Well at that point you are a Warlord. Which is the precursor to and one step removed from Feudalism. In other words by becoming a Warlord you have recreated ‘The State’, which is incompatible with Anarchism.
But that same movement has been seen by the right as largely associated with the left, because of their views on things like the drug war, enforced morality, and anti-corporatism.
It’s unironically great that you support those things- but even ‘anti-corporate’ Capitalists are still capitalists- and still right wing- despite being more enlightened in other areas. You are basically no different than a neolib, but with worse takes on the economy. Neolibs are right wingers themselves. We basically don’t have a “Left” in the U.S. The DNC is only “Left” of the GOP by relative positioning. The actual Left is growing day by day- thanks in part to the fascist takeover of the U.S., but we are still the minority for now.
But there are still quite a lot of us truly anti-authoritarian libertarians out there who despise both left, and right leaning authoritarianism.
But when I bring up issues of authoritarianism, I get “BoTh SiDeS?!” bullshit responses. Because YES, as we can see, BOTH SIDES do their own fair share of this authoritarian bullshit.
To reiterate my point, authoritarians can only ever be ‘Left Wing’ in name only. Calling it any other way makes no sense. It’s like saying a poor wealthy person or a sick healthy person- the two concepts are complete incompatible with each other.
Plus, property rights are just a logical extension of personal privacy rights.
PERSONAL property, not PRIVATE property.
Now I haven’t even gone into why the ‘authoritarian’ shift in “Communist” thought happened- and that is a whole other discussion. This rant was largely semantic but I feel it’s important to make the distinction.
The right is typically for gun control. Only one country comes to my mind where they aren’t. Which one were you thinking about? Or is it more common than I thought?
(Or did you just happen to forget that 95 % of Earth’s population exists?)
EDIT: Oh, and also: It is important to keep in mind that it’s the same within the left. There are also left-wingers who prefer authoritarianism and ones who despise it. I do agree with your sentiment: The left-right division does not work very well in our current world. Need to take best parts of everything, but most importantly, make sure we don’t end up under totalitarian rule!
I said “professed” dislike. Yes, I know Reagan is responsible for one of the largest expansions of gun control ever seen in the US…
And yes, I know Marx himself was tremendously in favor of armed workers.
Doesn’t change political narrative being pushed by both major political parties in the US, where in the left supposedly wants guns banned, and the right wants everyone armed.
Yes, I know things aren’t that cut and dry, but the media narrative pushed by both parties definitely seems to say that it is.
Doesn’t change political narrative being pushed by both major political parties in the US, where in the left supposedly wants guns banned, and the right wants everyone armed.
I wasn’t being eurocentric. I was being Asia-Africa-Australia-South America-Europe-Canada-Mexico-Central America-Caribbea centric.
The only country where most of the right want to reduce gun safety is USA. We are talking in an international forum, so here international concepts count, not nation-specific. Typically in the world right-wingers are for safety and typically in the world the politics of the Democrat party count as right-wing.
When in a conversation not specific to USA it is not okay to speak as if everything was about USA. It is not okay to speak as if there was a left-wing party in US Congress or Senate and it is not okay to claim that the right wants more dangerous gun policies.
And here we’re talking about something that takes place most prominently in UK and secondly in a bunch of other countries, but absolutely not in USA. USA has nothing to do with this, so don’t be as insolent as you were.
(Also, for example Australia is not in Europe. Learn some geography.)
Despite what they think, we are human beings too over here. That’s my point.
I don’t care about the politics of nation vs nation.
I care about humanity’s liberty as a whole.
Nations are shit. Because the only ones in power are typically the ones who want to be. And there’s no one worse to hand power to, than one who craves it.
I too have been screaming about private online since the 90s. I have an intuitive reaction that sort of mirrors yours.
But can I ask you a question?
And it’s one that I’m asking because I genuinely wish to learn from others.
Because I can’t quite see the difference and maybe there’s something I’m missing.
Why is it not government overreach to ensure pornography isn’t sold to minors in an adult video store, but government overreach to have the same expectation of online pornography providers?
I would love your enlightened view on this so I can learn from it. Because I can’t quite see the difference.
I understand that many adults go into an adult video store and need not prove their age, because they clearly look like adults.
And so the difference here is that everyone have to prove their age online, even people that are clearly adults by how they look.
But entering a pornography website is the equivalent of entering an adult video store where the clerk cannot see you, cannot hear your voice. In that world I would also expect the clerk to check every purchase as they would have no other means of assessing the buyer’s age.
Or maybe you think that adult videos should be sold to everyone and it’s the very concept that pornography is restricted to minors that you disagree with. I don’t personally hold that view but then I can least understand why you would also reject online age verification.
Or maybe you think it is ineffective and won’t make a difference. That argument I most definitely agree with, but how we choose to implement a law, and whether it’s effective, is two different discussions I would posit.
Edit: I love that I’m getting downvoted for expressing a POV respectfully.
Funny - I assume on one here was actually involved in creating the law that requires identification when buying pornography (or alcohol. Or tobacco) at stores, but we are all considered responsible for it to the point we are hypocrite if we object a similar law?
If someone says they are against that law now, years after it’s already established and spread, it won’t be taken as “I’m generally against the government limiting our freedom to consume what we want” but as “I want to push children to consume porn/alcohol/tobacco”. So no one argues against these laws. But it’s much more feasible to argue against the new laws - a ship that’s still in the port.
30 years from now, when they make the law that neural implants must detect illegal thoughts in the users’ biological brains and block them, you’d make the argument that it’s not fundamentally different than blocking the same topics on the internet - a practice that, by that time, will already be accepted by the general populace.
There is no possible way to actually stop teenagers accessing online porn that doesn’t require such a massive invasion of privacy that it leaves no safe way for adults to access it. To go with your adult video store analogy, it’s like if the store staff would have to accompany you home and watch you watching the porn to check there wasn’t anyone standing behind you also looking at the screen, and while they were there, they were supposed to take notes on everything they saw. Even if they had no interest in doing anything nefarious, a criminal could steal their notebook and blackmail all their customers with the details it contained, and there’d be enough proof that there wouldn’t be any way to plausibly claim the blackmailer had just made everything up.
If you want to prove someone on the Internet is a real adult and not a determined teenager, you need lots of layers. E.g. if you just ask for a photo of an ID card, that can be defeated by a photo of someone else’s ID card, and a video of a face can be defeated by a video game character (potentially even one made to resemble the person whose ID has been copied). You need to prove there’s an ID card that belongs to a real person and that it’s that person who is using it, and that’s both easier to fake than going to a store with a fake ID (if you look young, they’ll be suspicious of your ID) or Mission Impossible mask, and unlike in a store, the customer can’t see that you’re not making a copy of the ID card for later blackmail or targeted advertisements. No one would go back to a porn shop that asked for a home address and a bank statement to prove it.
Another big factor is that if there’s a physical shop supplying porn to children, the police will notice and stop it, but online, it’s really easy to make a website and fly under the radar. It’s pretty easy for sites that don’t care about the law to provide an indefinite supply of porn to children, and once that’s happening, there’s no reason to think that it’s only going to be legal porn just being supplied to the wrong people.
Overall, the risk of showing porn to children doesn’t go down very much, but the risk of showing blackmailable data to criminals and showing particularly extreme and illegal porn to children goes up by a lot. Protecting children from extreme material, e.g. videos of real necrophilia and rape, which are widely accepted to be seriously harmful, should be a higher priority than protecting a larger number from less extreme material that the evidence says is less harmful, if at all. Even if it’s taken as fact that any exposure to porn is always harmful to minors, the policies that are possible to implement in the real world can’t prevent it, just add either extra hassle or opportunities for even worse things to happen. There hasn’t been any proposal by any government with a chance of doing more good than harm.
In Finland you could handle this by having people authenticate using their online bank passwords. A LOT of government stuff already works that way, so it would require almost no extra coding at least over here. I wonder why it cannot be done the same way in England?
Sort of the same system they’re building in Denmark.
You will log into MitID (myID), authenticate with the MitID app, then be issued a bunch of ZKP tokens which you’ll burn off against age verification services. No trace, fully authenticated, fully trusted, damn near impossible to fool.
Teenagers can find out their parents’ passwords (or their friends’ parents’ passwords) if they really want to, and if things are anonymous enough not to leave a paper trail that would allow spouses to see each other’s porn usage, they’re anonymous enough to let teenagers hide that they’re using their parents’ credentials. 2FA helps, but it’s not like teenagers never see their parents’ phones.
There’s not anything that all adults in the UK have that could be used for everyone. There’s no unified national ID or online government identity. There’s no one-size-fits-all bank login system. You’d have to build and secure tens of independent systems to cover nearly all adults.
As I said in the post above, if it’s too much hassle for teenagers to access mainstream, legitimate porn sites, then there’s very little anyone can do to stop them accessing obscure ones that don’t care about obeying the law or can’t do so competently. If governments could stop websites from existing and providing content, there wouldn’t be any online piracy.
There’s not anything that all adults in the UK have that could be used for everyone. There’s no unified national ID or online government identity. There’s no one-size-fits-all bank login system. You’d have to build and secure tens of independent systems to cover nearly all adults.
i mean, that seems like a solveable problem. either build a national (internationl?) or have some reciprocity with the identification systems that allows the different regions to easily access each other’s systems.
Online banking passwords? “Find”? How the hell? Have you lived in a barrel?
There is a 8-number code that I’ve got in my head, then there is a 4-number password that I’ve also got in my head. And then a paper with single-use passwords which work so that when I have given the two correct passwords, it tells me which code to use. And no way am I giving full access to my bank account for my children!
Some banks also have a system where you log in with your fingerprint and then a four-number code using an app on your phone.
I think the money on the parents’ accounts is a much better motivation for the children than an ability to watch porn. And yet, I have not heard of anybody’s children actually having found out their parent’s bank passwords.
And also: Maybe there really is a child that installs a keylogger on their parents’ computer and steals the password paper from the parents’ wallet and also happens to really want to go out of their way to watch porn… Well, then there is. Such a child is already in so many ways in trouble that I don’t think seeing porn will traumatize them at all. Such children are few and it makes no sense trying to build a 100-percent foolproof system. In any case, using online banking passwords is a lot more reliable way than the weird hocus-pocus being done now.
My point is that you can’t build a completely teenager-proof system. Even if most parents uphold the most unimpeachable password discipline, someone’s going to put a password on a post-it note near their computer, and have their child see the piece of paper, or use their dog’s name despite their child having also met the family dog.
The original comment I was replying to was framing the issue as teenagers being allowed to watch porn versus no teenager ever seeing porn and maybe some freedom is sacrificed to do that, which doesn’t match the real-world debate. If freedoms are sacrificed just to make it a hassle for teenagers to see porn, that’s much less compelling whether or not you see it as a worthwhile goal.
As for what a teenager with access to their parents’ bank password would do, if they’re not a moron, they’ll realise that spending their parents’ money will leave lots of evidence (e.g. that they have extra stuff, their parents have less money than expected in their account, and there’s an unexpected purchase from The Lego Group on the bank statement), and so they’re guaranteed to end up in trouble for it. It’s not any different to a child taking banknotes from their parent’s wallet. On the other hand, using it to prove adulthood, if it was truly untraceable like adults would want, wouldn’t leave a paper trail.
Not OP, but I think the analogy to what is happening to online privacy would be if you were asked to identify yourself at every location: the grocery store, the farmers market, the corner park, the trail along the river; and all of those checkpoints were aggregated and sold, meaning that someone who might not have your best interests at heart could use your travel timeline against you, to advertise to you, to sue you, to charge you with a crime, to destroy your public reputation.
But entering a pornography website is the equivalent of entering an adult video store where the clerk cannot see you, cannot hear your voice.
There’s the problem. I was tempted to call this Boomer logic, but that would extremely unfair to Boomers. We are only seeing this now, that the Boomers are on the way out.
I think the Boomers understood better how this works. It’s not like entering a store. It’s like making a phone call to the store, and the store may be on the other side of the world. The Boomers understood borders, long distance calls, international mail.
Now the digital natives are taking over. And they understand nothing beyond tapping and swiping.
Spoilered is a post I wrote earlier. Just so you know what’s coming.
spoiler
The problem is that meat-space logic is applied to the cyberspace (as it might have been said in the 90ies).
You go into a store and the clerk sees you and knows your age. If it’s borderline, then they ask for ID. They are applying that thinking to internet services.
Where this falls down is that no ordinary Mastodon instance can comply with the regulations of the close to 200 hundred countries in the world. Of course, just like 4chan, many wouldn’t want to out of principle.
The only way to make this work is to introduce another meat-space thing: Border posts. You need a Great Firewall of the [Local Nation]. At physical border posts, guards check if goods comply with local regulations. We need virtual border posts to check if data is imported and exported in compliance with local regulations.
Such a thing, a virtual Schengen border, was briefly considered in the EU about 15 years ago. It went nowhere at the time. But if you look at EU regulations, you can see that the foundations are already laid, most obviously with the GDPR but also the DSM, DMA, DSA, CRA, …
Eventually, the border will be closed to protect our values; to enforce our laws. We will lock out those American and Chinese Big Tech companies that steal our data. We will only allow their European branches and strictly monitor their communications abroad. We will be taking back control, as the Brexiteers sloganized it. Freedom is just another word for having to ask the government for permission when you enter a country. And increasingly, it is another word for having to ask permission for how you use your own computer.
It won’t be some shady backroom deal. Look here. People in this community love these regulations. Europeans here are happy to tell US companies to “FO if they don’t want to follow our laws”. Well, the Great Firewall of Europe is how you do that.
Parents have the ultimate say-so of what their kids have access to.
I don’t believe there needs to be a law that says that, no.
If a parent decides their kid is responsible enough to have their own money, then it’s the parents who are to blame if that kid buys “bad” things with that money.
Same thing online. If a parent decides their kid is responsible enough to have unrestricted internet access, then it’s their fault if the kid then goes to a “bad” website.
It’s not the store’s fault. Nor is it the website’s fault.
We have given away far too much of our parental responsibility over to 3rd parties, and now we don’t know how to parent anymore.
Make illegal? Nope. Not my business to tell other parents how to raise their children.
And that’s exactly the problem here. People like YOU, who think that if I don’t want something illegal, than that of course means I like that thing, or that I personally want to do that thing.
Nope. It has to do with personal autonomy. I’m not your boss, I shouldn’t get to tell YOU what you can do to yourself. Period.
Parents can (and MUST) monitor what happens in their home. It was expected for the past thousand years, and now it’s the duty of everyone to take care of anyone’s children for some reason. To get to a porn store, you need money to take the bus or you need a car, then the owner of the store can kick your ass or call the cops if you’re underage. Remember that less than 50 years ago, the local priest could smash your face if you didn’t behave properly in the street, With the internet, parents are the sole responsible for what their kids do, but they don’t want to take any responsibility for it. The solution would be a mandatory parental control on every computer, but parents wouldn’t like that.
government overreach to have the same expectation of online pornography providers
Because that overreach happens to remove all my privacy thanks to a few idiot parents who don’t want to do their parenting jobs in another country, and I consider that unacceptable. We can do some whataboutism and say that since parents in Afghanistan don’t want to watch porn, all the porn of the internet has to disappear. Same for blasphemy and freedom of women to browse the internet.
Ok. I get the concept that pornography doesn’t harm children. We can debate that.
But by that reckoning should we also allow children to buy guns online and have them delivered at home? Is there nothing we want to restrict online, on account that whoever is buying it might be too young?
Parents should do some parenting. When did they stopped doing that, and how is it my problem and why am I supposed to renounce my whole privacy due to some idiots online?
This is exactly the kind of government overreach people like me have been screaming about since, in my case, the 1990s.
“I told you so” just doesn’t feel so good when what’s happening is nothing less than the entirety of human freedom and liberty is being eroded before our very eyes, and those who disagree with it get labeled as kooks, and accused of hating whatever “oppressed group” of the day is in vogue.
I’m so so very tired of being right.
have you tried being intentionally and absurdly wrong?
When Weird Al tries that, somehow he circles right back around to “right”.
i should pay more attention. we had a chance to see him live the other day but it was a very bad time for us at work to go so next tour we hope
Yes. I had always worried about the copyright industry. That was the big money pushing for censorship. Controlling access and exchange of information is part of their business model and even personal ideology. But I don’t know how much this has actually to do with them, and how much is simply the will to power.
What I did not see coming at all was how the left would completely 180 on these issues. That, at least, I blame on the copyright industry.
Right wing people have screeched about “the intolerant left” forever, but I always ignored the obvious hypocrisy. I took it as a debate on what is permissible in polite society. But now Europe is at a point where there is simply a consensus against free speech. Only the most illiberal forces will be able to use these legal weapons to full effect. That will be the extreme right.
The ideal of free speech is a naive fantasy especially with social media which can amplify the craziest of ideas which can go viral.
Yes the Left has gone overboard with their thought policing however the right wing in want their personal bigotry to be allowed and nobody else (no mention of DEI in USA government institutions allowed). The Left want free speech for everyone except the bigots but then their definition of bigots becomes a slippery slope.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
It’s just a logical extension of what happens when government becomes the arbitrator of all.
The biggest issue is that so many people see it just as you do, left vs right, instead of liberty vs authoritarianism.
For decades, the libertarian movement, as seen by the left, has been largely associated with the right, simply because of their professed support of the free market, and dislike of gun control
But that same movement has been seen by the right as largely associated with the left, because of their views on things like the drug war, enforced morality, and anti-corporatism.
Has there been a large shift of alt-right into the libertarian movement over the past few years? Yes. Absolutely. And I despise it with a passion.
But there are still quite a lot of us truly anti-authoritarian libertarians out there who despise both left, and right leaning authoritarianism.
But when I bring up issues of authoritarianism, I get “BoTh SiDeS?!” bullshit responses. Because YES, as we can see, BOTH SIDES do their own fair share of this authoritarian bullshit.
They differ in methods, yes. But the bottom line is an encroachment on personal privacy. Plus, property rights are just a logical extension of personal privacy rights.
Well to be fair the left in the usa does have another reason to see the libertarian party as just another right wing party. They vote republican when it comes down to D vs R
For the most part the divide between “Left” and “Right” politically speaking IS the divide between Liberty and Authoritarianism. If you look up the History of the terms its easy to see this. Those terms originated during pre-revolutionary war France. The “Left” supported freedom from Tyranny. The “Right” supported the Monarchy. This has remained largely true ever since then.
Where the waters get muddy is so called ‘Authoritarian Communism’. When Communism was first being discussed it, along with Anarchism in general, were correctly labeled as ‘Leftist’ ideologies. Under both the ‘State’ is abolished completely. You can literally go no further left than voluntary association and abolishment of the state. As far back as Karl Marx, elements of ‘Authoritarianism’ began creeping into ‘Communist’ thought. While Marx was a relatively enlightened thinker- neither he nor Engels were the originators of Communism- despite having written “The Manifesto”. They were the originators of Marxism- an important distinction.
The goal- indeed one of the very definitions of ‘Communism’, even under Marxism is “a classless, stateless, society.” As such Communism is a form of Anarchism. Anarchy technically only requires the abolishment state, but the vast majority of Anarchists also believe in “Mutual Aid”, and ‘private property’ is a nonsense concept in the absence of a state- which is why so many Anarchists identify as ‘Anarcho-Communists’.
Now clearly (in my mind at least), removing one of the fundamental ideas of communism- which is that ‘The State’ (and especially a ‘strong/authoritarian’ state) inherently upholds and enforces the class system in society and is a bad thing which needs to be abolished and you replace that with it’s complete opposite- a ‘Strong’ State upholds and enforces ‘classlessness’ in society and is a good thing which should be supported, moves that type of “Communism/Socialism” from being a leftist ideology all the way over to being a far right ideology, as per the original and most commonly used metrics for determining if a position is “Left” or “Right”.
The problem with ‘reclassifying’ ‘Authoritarian Communism’ to it’s correct spot is that A) the ruling class (Capitalists) who are firmly right-wing do not want to be associated with it as it removes power from them and places it solely in the hands of the state. Likewise ‘Authoritarian Communists’ do not want to be associated with Capitalists either for similar reasons. Leaving the only people who care about the correct placement of these ideologies as the actual Anarchists and Communists- which are considered ‘fringe’, ‘extremist’, and ‘radicals’ by society as a whole and no one really cares about our opinions.
A ‘True/Accurate’ Left Right Spectrum would look something like…
Anarchism> Communism> Democracy> Social Democracy> Neoliberalism/ “Libertarianism(U.S. definition)” > Conservatism> ‘Far Right’> “Authoritarian Socialism”> Fascism
Putting them in that order reflects the ‘Liberty-Authoritarian’ spectrum that is the “Left-Right” spectrum. You could of course argue placement and some of them could be rearranged depending on circumstances. For example I put ‘Social Democracy’ as further right than Democracy because ‘Social Democracy’ is still by and large a Capitalist system, yet if the majority of people in a Democracy were right wingers- then the order would flip, however this is largely right imho.
You are confusing ‘The Left’ with “Liberals”. This is an extremely common and understandable mistake to make in the U.S. as there is a lot of intentional confusion. The ‘Democratic Party’, in particular since the ‘Regan Era’ is largely comprised of Neoliberals- a capitalist ideology. Capitalism relies on, and cannot exist without the exploitation of workers. As such you simply CANNOT separate ‘Social’ policies and ‘economic’ policies. Exploitation of workers IS a social issue- one of the most important ones- so if you support ‘Capitalism’ you are ‘right wing’ socially, even if you hold relatively enlightened positions in other areas.
Also “Gun Control” isn’t a clear ‘left/right’ divide either. Many leftists share the view of some right wingers that having access to firearms is an important strategy to resist tyranny. If anything access to guns is a Left wing position that was adopted by some on the right, as crazy as that may sound to modern American ears.
“Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary”
― Karl Marx
One of the key ways that “Libertarians” try to muddy the waters of what is a considered Leftwing or Rightwing stance is the mantra of ‘Free Markets’. But what is really meant is ‘Unrestricted Capitalism’. If there was ever a “Libertarian” who believed in “Free Markets” in the absence of ‘The State’ and ‘Private Property’- well they would likely correctly categorize themselves as a Leftist and not “Libertarian” (Please note the distinction between Private Property and Personal Property, and in particular how it relates to the ownership of the means of production.) Also to note: That definition of “Personal Property” is written from the POV of people born, raised, and indoctrinated by a Capitalist system and is not exactly how leftists would define it. “Personal Property” doesn’t have to be ‘movable’ per se- ones residence or even a village collectively could be considered ‘Personal Property’ by Leftists. What really matters is that it’s property that you can personally make use of. If you build yourself a small house for you and your family- that is personal property. If you lay claim to vast amounts of land that you couldn’t possibly work by yourself- that would be “Private Property” - which would require some form of ‘State’ to enforce.
Now some so-called “Libertarians” will try to argue for something called ‘Anarcho-Capitalism’. This is a mythical state of existence where there is no State, yet the people respect ‘Private Property’ rights. Ask most ‘Anarcho-Capitalists’ how they would propose to enforce private property in the absence of a state and they will tell you that they would hire Mercenaries/ “Private Police”/ a Small “private army”- Well at that point you are a Warlord. Which is the precursor to and one step removed from Feudalism. In other words by becoming a Warlord you have recreated ‘The State’, which is incompatible with Anarchism.
It’s unironically great that you support those things- but even ‘anti-corporate’ Capitalists are still capitalists- and still right wing- despite being more enlightened in other areas. You are basically no different than a neolib, but with worse takes on the economy. Neolibs are right wingers themselves. We basically don’t have a “Left” in the U.S. The DNC is only “Left” of the GOP by relative positioning. The actual Left is growing day by day- thanks in part to the fascist takeover of the U.S., but we are still the minority for now.
To reiterate my point, authoritarians can only ever be ‘Left Wing’ in name only. Calling it any other way makes no sense. It’s like saying a poor wealthy person or a sick healthy person- the two concepts are complete incompatible with each other.
PERSONAL property, not PRIVATE property.
Now I haven’t even gone into why the ‘authoritarian’ shift in “Communist” thought happened- and that is a whole other discussion. This rant was largely semantic but I feel it’s important to make the distinction.
The right is typically for gun control. Only one country comes to my mind where they aren’t. Which one were you thinking about? Or is it more common than I thought?
(Or did you just happen to forget that 95 % of Earth’s population exists?)
EDIT: Oh, and also: It is important to keep in mind that it’s the same within the left. There are also left-wingers who prefer authoritarianism and ones who despise it. I do agree with your sentiment: The left-right division does not work very well in our current world. Need to take best parts of everything, but most importantly, make sure we don’t end up under totalitarian rule!
I said “professed” dislike. Yes, I know Reagan is responsible for one of the largest expansions of gun control ever seen in the US…
And yes, I know Marx himself was tremendously in favor of armed workers.
Doesn’t change political narrative being pushed by both major political parties in the US, where in the left supposedly wants guns banned, and the right wants everyone armed.
Yes, I know things aren’t that cut and dry, but the media narrative pushed by both parties definitely seems to say that it is.
How is US relevant in this discussion?
Because the US has humans inside it, despite what all the Eurocentric trash think.
I wasn’t being eurocentric. I was being Asia-Africa-Australia-South America-Europe-Canada-Mexico-Central America-Caribbea centric. The only country where most of the right want to reduce gun safety is USA. We are talking in an international forum, so here international concepts count, not nation-specific. Typically in the world right-wingers are for safety and typically in the world the politics of the Democrat party count as right-wing.
When in a conversation not specific to USA it is not okay to speak as if everything was about USA. It is not okay to speak as if there was a left-wing party in US Congress or Senate and it is not okay to claim that the right wants more dangerous gun policies.
And here we’re talking about something that takes place most prominently in UK and secondly in a bunch of other countries, but absolutely not in USA. USA has nothing to do with this, so don’t be as insolent as you were.
(Also, for example Australia is not in Europe. Learn some geography.)
Despite what they think, we are human beings too over here. That’s my point.
I don’t care about the politics of nation vs nation.
I care about humanity’s liberty as a whole.
Nations are shit. Because the only ones in power are typically the ones who want to be. And there’s no one worse to hand power to, than one who craves it.
You’ve been screaming about internet censorship since before the internet?
Fucking time traveller right here
… I was online in 1993, bro. I was dialing into BBSs with worldwide fidonet bulletin boards even earlier than that.
Don’t be such a dipshit.
Back in my day we had to dial in to get the internet.
GoddamnGl Gubberment ruining everything
Wtf are you doing
What are you talking about? The internet existed all through the 90s
It sure did. Well done!
Brother, delete this silly comment and be a nicer person. Please, there is still time!
Nah. OCs a whinging boomer.
“Screaming” “People like me” “liberties eroding before our very eyes”
It’s like he’s never read a history book. Or travelled outside his state.
I too have been screaming about private online since the 90s. I have an intuitive reaction that sort of mirrors yours.
But can I ask you a question?
And it’s one that I’m asking because I genuinely wish to learn from others.
Because I can’t quite see the difference and maybe there’s something I’m missing.
Why is it not government overreach to ensure pornography isn’t sold to minors in an adult video store, but government overreach to have the same expectation of online pornography providers?
I would love your enlightened view on this so I can learn from it. Because I can’t quite see the difference.
I understand that many adults go into an adult video store and need not prove their age, because they clearly look like adults.
And so the difference here is that everyone have to prove their age online, even people that are clearly adults by how they look.
But entering a pornography website is the equivalent of entering an adult video store where the clerk cannot see you, cannot hear your voice. In that world I would also expect the clerk to check every purchase as they would have no other means of assessing the buyer’s age.
Or maybe you think that adult videos should be sold to everyone and it’s the very concept that pornography is restricted to minors that you disagree with. I don’t personally hold that view but then I can least understand why you would also reject online age verification.
Or maybe you think it is ineffective and won’t make a difference. That argument I most definitely agree with, but how we choose to implement a law, and whether it’s effective, is two different discussions I would posit.
Edit: I love that I’m getting downvoted for expressing a POV respectfully.
Funny - I assume on one here was actually involved in creating the law that requires identification when buying pornography (or alcohol. Or tobacco) at stores, but we are all considered responsible for it to the point we are hypocrite if we object a similar law?
If someone says they are against that law now, years after it’s already established and spread, it won’t be taken as “I’m generally against the government limiting our freedom to consume what we want” but as “I want to push children to consume porn/alcohol/tobacco”. So no one argues against these laws. But it’s much more feasible to argue against the new laws - a ship that’s still in the port.
30 years from now, when they make the law that neural implants must detect illegal thoughts in the users’ biological brains and block them, you’d make the argument that it’s not fundamentally different than blocking the same topics on the internet - a practice that, by that time, will already be accepted by the general populace.
People complained about government overreach when seatbelts became a law
There is no possible way to actually stop teenagers accessing online porn that doesn’t require such a massive invasion of privacy that it leaves no safe way for adults to access it. To go with your adult video store analogy, it’s like if the store staff would have to accompany you home and watch you watching the porn to check there wasn’t anyone standing behind you also looking at the screen, and while they were there, they were supposed to take notes on everything they saw. Even if they had no interest in doing anything nefarious, a criminal could steal their notebook and blackmail all their customers with the details it contained, and there’d be enough proof that there wouldn’t be any way to plausibly claim the blackmailer had just made everything up.
If you want to prove someone on the Internet is a real adult and not a determined teenager, you need lots of layers. E.g. if you just ask for a photo of an ID card, that can be defeated by a photo of someone else’s ID card, and a video of a face can be defeated by a video game character (potentially even one made to resemble the person whose ID has been copied). You need to prove there’s an ID card that belongs to a real person and that it’s that person who is using it, and that’s both easier to fake than going to a store with a fake ID (if you look young, they’ll be suspicious of your ID) or Mission Impossible mask, and unlike in a store, the customer can’t see that you’re not making a copy of the ID card for later blackmail or targeted advertisements. No one would go back to a porn shop that asked for a home address and a bank statement to prove it.
Another big factor is that if there’s a physical shop supplying porn to children, the police will notice and stop it, but online, it’s really easy to make a website and fly under the radar. It’s pretty easy for sites that don’t care about the law to provide an indefinite supply of porn to children, and once that’s happening, there’s no reason to think that it’s only going to be legal porn just being supplied to the wrong people.
Overall, the risk of showing porn to children doesn’t go down very much, but the risk of showing blackmailable data to criminals and showing particularly extreme and illegal porn to children goes up by a lot. Protecting children from extreme material, e.g. videos of real necrophilia and rape, which are widely accepted to be seriously harmful, should be a higher priority than protecting a larger number from less extreme material that the evidence says is less harmful, if at all. Even if it’s taken as fact that any exposure to porn is always harmful to minors, the policies that are possible to implement in the real world can’t prevent it, just add either extra hassle or opportunities for even worse things to happen. There hasn’t been any proposal by any government with a chance of doing more good than harm.
In Finland you could handle this by having people authenticate using their online bank passwords. A LOT of government stuff already works that way, so it would require almost no extra coding at least over here. I wonder why it cannot be done the same way in England?
Sort of the same system they’re building in Denmark.
You will log into MitID (myID), authenticate with the MitID app, then be issued a bunch of ZKP tokens which you’ll burn off against age verification services. No trace, fully authenticated, fully trusted, damn near impossible to fool.
i mean, that seems like a solveable problem. either build a national (internationl?) or have some reciprocity with the identification systems that allows the different regions to easily access each other’s systems.
Online banking passwords? “Find”? How the hell? Have you lived in a barrel?
There is a 8-number code that I’ve got in my head, then there is a 4-number password that I’ve also got in my head. And then a paper with single-use passwords which work so that when I have given the two correct passwords, it tells me which code to use. And no way am I giving full access to my bank account for my children!
Some banks also have a system where you log in with your fingerprint and then a four-number code using an app on your phone.
I think the money on the parents’ accounts is a much better motivation for the children than an ability to watch porn. And yet, I have not heard of anybody’s children actually having found out their parent’s bank passwords.
And also: Maybe there really is a child that installs a keylogger on their parents’ computer and steals the password paper from the parents’ wallet and also happens to really want to go out of their way to watch porn… Well, then there is. Such a child is already in so many ways in trouble that I don’t think seeing porn will traumatize them at all. Such children are few and it makes no sense trying to build a 100-percent foolproof system. In any case, using online banking passwords is a lot more reliable way than the weird hocus-pocus being done now.
My point is that you can’t build a completely teenager-proof system. Even if most parents uphold the most unimpeachable password discipline, someone’s going to put a password on a post-it note near their computer, and have their child see the piece of paper, or use their dog’s name despite their child having also met the family dog.
The original comment I was replying to was framing the issue as teenagers being allowed to watch porn versus no teenager ever seeing porn and maybe some freedom is sacrificed to do that, which doesn’t match the real-world debate. If freedoms are sacrificed just to make it a hassle for teenagers to see porn, that’s much less compelling whether or not you see it as a worthwhile goal.
As for what a teenager with access to their parents’ bank password would do, if they’re not a moron, they’ll realise that spending their parents’ money will leave lots of evidence (e.g. that they have extra stuff, their parents have less money than expected in their account, and there’s an unexpected purchase from The Lego Group on the bank statement), and so they’re guaranteed to end up in trouble for it. It’s not any different to a child taking banknotes from their parent’s wallet. On the other hand, using it to prove adulthood, if it was truly untraceable like adults would want, wouldn’t leave a paper trail.
Not OP, but I think the analogy to what is happening to online privacy would be if you were asked to identify yourself at every location: the grocery store, the farmers market, the corner park, the trail along the river; and all of those checkpoints were aggregated and sold, meaning that someone who might not have your best interests at heart could use your travel timeline against you, to advertise to you, to sue you, to charge you with a crime, to destroy your public reputation.
I’m am 100% any form of checks that identify you.
But for what it is worth the European Union’s proposed framework for this legally mandates zero knowledge proofs.
The UK’s implantation sucks. Big hairy monkey balls.
If you buy alcohol at a farmer’s market, the seller has a responsibility to ensure they’re not supplying it to a child. At least in most countries.
There’s the problem. I was tempted to call this Boomer logic, but that would extremely unfair to Boomers. We are only seeing this now, that the Boomers are on the way out.
I think the Boomers understood better how this works. It’s not like entering a store. It’s like making a phone call to the store, and the store may be on the other side of the world. The Boomers understood borders, long distance calls, international mail.
Now the digital natives are taking over. And they understand nothing beyond tapping and swiping.
Spoilered is a post I wrote earlier. Just so you know what’s coming.
spoiler
The problem is that meat-space logic is applied to the cyberspace (as it might have been said in the 90ies).
You go into a store and the clerk sees you and knows your age. If it’s borderline, then they ask for ID. They are applying that thinking to internet services.
Where this falls down is that no ordinary Mastodon instance can comply with the regulations of the close to 200 hundred countries in the world. Of course, just like 4chan, many wouldn’t want to out of principle.
The only way to make this work is to introduce another meat-space thing: Border posts. You need a Great Firewall of the [Local Nation]. At physical border posts, guards check if goods comply with local regulations. We need virtual border posts to check if data is imported and exported in compliance with local regulations.
Such a thing, a virtual Schengen border, was briefly considered in the EU about 15 years ago. It went nowhere at the time. But if you look at EU regulations, you can see that the foundations are already laid, most obviously with the GDPR but also the DSM, DMA, DSA, CRA, …
Eventually, the border will be closed to protect our values; to enforce our laws. We will lock out those American and Chinese Big Tech companies that steal our data. We will only allow their European branches and strictly monitor their communications abroad. We will be taking back control, as the Brexiteers sloganized it. Freedom is just another word for having to ask the government for permission when you enter a country. And increasingly, it is another word for having to ask permission for how you use your own computer.
It won’t be some shady backroom deal. Look here. People in this community love these regulations. Europeans here are happy to tell US companies to “FO if they don’t want to follow our laws”. Well, the Great Firewall of Europe is how you do that.
https://lemmy.world/comment/19119670
Parents have the ultimate say-so of what their kids have access to.
I don’t believe there needs to be a law that says that, no.
If a parent decides their kid is responsible enough to have their own money, then it’s the parents who are to blame if that kid buys “bad” things with that money.
Same thing online. If a parent decides their kid is responsible enough to have unrestricted internet access, then it’s their fault if the kid then goes to a “bad” website.
It’s not the store’s fault. Nor is it the website’s fault.
We have given away far too much of our parental responsibility over to 3rd parties, and now we don’t know how to parent anymore.
So you would also support a child buying alcohol online on account of being given money and access to the internet?
Support? Absolutely not.
Allow? Not my child.
Make illegal? Nope. Not my business to tell other parents how to raise their children.
And that’s exactly the problem here. People like YOU, who think that if I don’t want something illegal, than that of course means I like that thing, or that I personally want to do that thing.
Nope. It has to do with personal autonomy. I’m not your boss, I shouldn’t get to tell YOU what you can do to yourself. Period.
Parents can (and MUST) monitor what happens in their home. It was expected for the past thousand years, and now it’s the duty of everyone to take care of anyone’s children for some reason. To get to a porn store, you need money to take the bus or you need a car, then the owner of the store can kick your ass or call the cops if you’re underage. Remember that less than 50 years ago, the local priest could smash your face if you didn’t behave properly in the street, With the internet, parents are the sole responsible for what their kids do, but they don’t want to take any responsibility for it. The solution would be a mandatory parental control on every computer, but parents wouldn’t like that.
Because that overreach happens to remove all my privacy thanks to a few idiot parents who don’t want to do their parenting jobs in another country, and I consider that unacceptable. We can do some whataboutism and say that since parents in Afghanistan don’t want to watch porn, all the porn of the internet has to disappear. Same for blasphemy and freedom of women to browse the internet.
Ok. I get the concept that pornography doesn’t harm children. We can debate that.
But by that reckoning should we also allow children to buy guns online and have them delivered at home? Is there nothing we want to restrict online, on account that whoever is buying it might be too young?
Parents should do some parenting. When did they stopped doing that, and how is it my problem and why am I supposed to renounce my whole privacy due to some idiots online?