In the laws references in the article, the need for #1 and #3 were caused by social media. Yet we target the individual rather than the social media company for the fix. Let's don't fix the source of the problem but we can make life more difficult for many millions of people. How dumb are we in this country?
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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Same issue as recycling. Shift responsibility to the individual for something completely out of their control.
I'm sure big tech is stoked on this idea. I mean, they were always able to figure out who most people were but now people have to straight up enter their identification and positively confirm.
I'm sure no one will use that information for nefarious reasons, right?
Frankly already a moot point - your browser fingerprints are already uniquely identifying (even before IP, cookies, and backend analytics). Realistically, tho, just more info for them to sell, leak and then eventually pay $0.25 per person in Google Play credit in the class action settlement.
short of a website provider having access to my provider ip over time vs. customer data, how is my browser fingerprint uniquely identifying me when I clear cookies every now and then and often resize the browser window? Genuinely curious - obviously between clearing cookies there's an issue, and also if I use logins to any websites that share data with some asshat like google analytics, they will recognize me across websites. And of course with the latest mozilla data grab, things will get worse :/
Privacy focused browsers can help (but don't fully resolve). Not to redo the work of others, copy/pasta:
What makes fingerprinting a threat to online privacy? It is pretty simple. First, there is no need to ask for permissions to collect all this information. Any script running in your browser can silently build a fingerprint of your device without you even knowing about it. Second, if one attribute of your browser fingerprint is unique or if the combination of several attributes is unique, your device can be identified and tracked online. In that case, no need for a cookie with an ID in it, the fingerprint is enough.
A couple of useful articles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_fingerprint
https://blog.torproject.org/browser-fingerprinting-introduction-and-challenges-ahead/ (Excerpt above)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1155/2022/3363335
There's also a number of interviews with white and red hat hackers who delve quite deeply into the subject and how they've used this telemetry to go after black hats (mainly to emphasize that even with some degree of sophistication this can be difficult to evade, especially when compounded with other methods and telemetry already modelled against your identity).
Yes. Teach a new generation how to operate around such lunacy.
Such laws are guaranteed to fail in their written objectives. The intended objective is to lead idiots to believe they help.
idiots
You include the people who voted for it?
That isn't me. You are looking in a mirror.
Again.
Oh uh.
I've edited my comment to make it clearer
One of the experiences I will never forget was "teaching" an ICT class about 2 decades ago (I was a TA who got left to cover a class - good times).
The older ones of you will remember the trick (many of us used it for playing flash games like adventure quest!) - have two browser windows open, minimise the one with the thing you were not supposed to be doing on it when the teacher comes around - no evidence right?
These kids were doing the same thing - I swear I've never seen so much porn in my entire life. Oh and yes, a lot of it involved Japanese animation. This was on a network with parental controls enabled by the way, because it didn't block those sites.
Here's the thing - and we all know it, no matter what measures you put in place kids will find away around it. More crudely put "If little Timmy wants titties, Timmy going to move heaven and earth to find them".
They'll sneak a parental passport at 3am when you're sleeping, or just VPN on in, or even invest in a fake ID. Nothing you do is going to stop that; you have to sleep some time, you have a lot of goals, they can stay up all night, and they only have one.
Catching your kids with porn and dealing with it is a game of whack-a-mole every parent has to play, and honestly it's one they need to play. It's about having those difficult talks and saying "it's ok to want to look as long as you realise it isn't real".
Mass surveillance isn't the way - if I were a government hostile to the USA (and soon the UK), I'd be working on making the best free porn site ever made. Think of all the free documents and credentials, think of all the blackmail material, think of all the harm that could be inflicted.
Admittedly, skin cream is likely to face less of a rabid drive from kids, and isn't something you'd blackmail over. Then again, maybe little Timmy needs some lotion, or maybe president Puta wants to use my girlfriend's skin lotion addiction to compel me to spy for Russia?
Like, I remember the pirate radio station making a big hubbub during that time when rock n roll was banned in the UK. I could see illegal porn sites operating on ships in international waters, outside the boundaries of US enforcement using satellite connections to get their content out there. Problem is, the US is a little more trigger happy and might just send Navy ships out to sink them. If it happens in international waters nobody has to know.
We have a lot of land in the US that is a pain in the ass to get to, would be harder to set up but I could see some spiteful folks setting up something in the remote asshole of the mountain ranges. Would also be a lot harder to follow them if they pissed off as well.
This is true, the US is awful big. There's work arounds, though. Balloons aren't hard to build and launch, but the fact that they would be sending and receiving data packets directly inside US airspace would make them ridiculously easy to track and take down.
Then again, maybe little Timmy needs some lotion
Maybe Timmy is building a skin suit.
Yeah. Keep public spaces (meaning, advertising) mostly free of porn. Aside from that, children who are interested in porn and sex are ready for it, let them explore it with the neccessary knowledge and care and avoid abuse from broken grown ups. Laws should be focused on that, a sensible approach, including the parents.
Generally saying "porn only for 18+" doesn't work, since it's a primary instinct.
Even worse, we know that sexual repression just pushes people into more extreme and unusual sexual practices in adulthood. Just give children comprehensive sexual education already. It prevents unwanted pregnancies, sexual abuse and mental illness.
You don't even need to visit adult sites to find porn nowadays. Its all on social media.