Internet and Laws

consonant

Traveler
Joined
Dec 24, 2021
Messages
140
Reaction score
317
Awards
55
At least they don't really go anywhere like the EARN IT Act but it still worries me.
Well I'm being proven wrong because California's AB 2273 (more in depth article here) seems like it has uhh
passed???
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article265870746.html
This law wants to make it so that companies collect less data on children but it wants to be absolutely sure whether or not users on a website are children, which probably means that websites will have to do something like ID verification.
I've been thinking that ID verification on the internet will probably become a thing sooner or later because now that there's so much more attention on it and it's integrated so much more into our lives, is anyone really going to deal with age verification being 1 button that says "Are you 18?". Probably not
People would probably accept this change too because 1. People take whatever tech companies do lying down and 2. Like I said the internet's more apart of our lives, so we have to protect the children!!!!

I'm expecting this bill to either make us move towards this path of verification like this or, a positive benefit of data mining getting crippled. Websites have to lessen the data they can collect if they aren't completely sure if all of their users are adults, so they'd probably either try to verify all users or give up and just treat everyone as children. I'm not sure how this would go, sites with large amounts of users like social media can probably afford to ask everyone to just cough up a pic of their IDs but smaller sites probably would just treat everyone as children. Or, California could just realize that it's too hard to try enforce something like this, I could see that happening too.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards

consonant

Traveler
Joined
Dec 24, 2021
Messages
140
Reaction score
317
Awards
55
Well I'm being proven wrong because California's AB 2273 (more in depth article here) seems like it has uhh
passed???
[...]
Reading about the reception around this bill and they're really going hard on how it protects children wow
The most it'd do for them is get them less retarded recommendations on websites
 
Virtual Cafe Awards
  • LOL
Reactions: Fig

Andrew Eldritch

Definitely Not Goth
Joined
Sep 22, 2022
Messages
35
Reaction score
69
Awards
16
Well I'm being proven wrong because California's AB 2273 (more in depth article here) seems like it has uhh
passed???
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article265870746.html
This law wants to make it so that companies collect less data on children but it wants to be absolutely sure whether or not users on a website are children, which probably means that websites will have to do something like ID verification.
I've been thinking that ID verification on the internet will probably become a thing sooner or later because now that there's so much more attention on it and it's integrated so much more into our lives, is anyone really going to deal with age verification being 1 button that says "Are you 18?". Probably not
People would probably accept this change too because 1. People take whatever tech companies do lying down and 2. Like I said the internet's more apart of our lives, so we have to protect the children!!!!

I'm expecting this bill to either make us move towards this path of verification like this or, a positive benefit of data mining getting crippled. Websites have to lessen the data they can collect if they aren't completely sure if all of their users are adults, so they'd probably either try to verify all users or give up and just treat everyone as children. I'm not sure how this would go, sites with large amounts of users like social media can probably afford to ask everyone to just cough up a pic of their IDs but smaller sites probably would just treat everyone as children. Or, California could just realize that it's too hard to try enforce something like this, I could see that happening too.
Google needed to verify my age or something a while ago, so I had to use my fucking bank to verify myself. I've had my gmail since it was invite only and I use it for everything so I had to, but I was ready to leave the fucking internet. Even scarier than the age verification is all the shit those social media apps track on your phone. I saw this video a while ago:

TL;DW TikTok is not beholden to US law and has an AI driven algorithm that is MKultra'ing the west into degeneracy and the Chinese into war robots.

I still remember my mom telling me to never use my real name on the internet, never tell where I live and never send anyone a picture of myself. Now there's a bunch of giant corporations trying to mine my thoughts :confusedMikasa:
 
Virtual Cafe Awards
It turns out the government doesn't need to regulate the internet if they simply let the whole thing be consolidated under a few risk-averse corporations who don't want to be seen providing service to people found guilty of heresy misinformation or blasphemy hate speech by terminally online neolibs and social justice inquisitors.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards

Deleted member 4436

As others have suggested, the outcome of each country having its own 'internet' does not seem too farfetched, at the moment. Multiple states have already shown their interest towards this outcome, as seen by Russia and China. At the moment, most of the big sites have users from all over the world, and it would be difficult for anyone who's primary motive is censorship to do it across linguistic, cultural, and legal barriers. The outcome then, in case governments do continue to become more Orwellian (which they likely will, IMO), is for each state to detach itself from outside contact. I'm not entirely sure about how such an ordeal would play out, with each country's primary network being "landlocked" per se. However, the way I see it, this separation between main nets sound doesn't sound entirely unfanciful.

Consider how the internet is structured at the moment, with the notable Big Tech sites having become the 'centers' of the internet, and yet we still have smaller sites as this one. To the greater collective consciousness of the web, we basically don't exist. And, to us, there are many even more, smaller sites which even we are unaware of; just as there is always a bigger fish, so, too, must there be a smaller fish. There exists things such as the 'deep web' which I'm not too familiar with, though I hear it's not as bad as the media likes to portray it as, and I suspect such things will exist in the hypothetical future I have proposed. The undernet will always exist, no matter how many laws and legislations are thrown at it.

Should the majority of governments shut down international contact for the main web, than I think the underground web would only flourish. It's not like the knowledge and technology necessary to communicate between networks doesn't already exist (we're using it right now), and I don't think that it's just going to disappear should the big sites continue to gain stricter policies (I hope...). A new 'thieves den' style of internet would arise, which would exist in parallel to the overnet, just as it does now. As nationalism would increase with isolation, so, too, would more tight-nit communities form from those who wish to go against the state. Techniques and clients would be developed to access other countries' networks. Small factions and community wars would occur. Trolling would be off the charts. It may very well be the second coming of the golden age which people online yearn for so much.

Then again, this is hypothetically 10-20 years from now, and it may very well not even be the case. Was just hoping to do some hope-posting since you people are so concerned about censorship. I've also just been thinking a lot about Lain again, so the topic of how the internet is, was, and will be, is on my mind at the moment.

:lainburger::lainburger::lainburger:


Who knows? Could be some fun times.
 

manpaint

̴̘̈́ ̵̲̾ ̸̯̎ ̴͓̀ ̸̳͝ ̸͈͑ ̴̡̋ ̸̞̂ ̴̰̚ ̵̨̔ ̸̭̎
Gold
Joined
Aug 11, 2022
Messages
807
Reaction score
1,435
Awards
182
Website
manpaint.neocities.org
Then again, this is hypothetically 10-20 years from now, and it may very well not even be the case. Was just hoping to do some hope-posting since you people are so concerned about censorship. I've also just been thinking a lot about Lain again, so the topic of how the internet is, was, and will be, is on my mind at the moment.
Yeah, unless a hard infrastructure reset, I doubt peole will let go of the "old" (as in prior described changes) internet easily. People are bound to find a way.

That being said, I wonder what would happens if governement would enforce some kind of white list of internet domains on the ISP level? From what I understand, they could theoretically have the final say and block any unauthorized communications. I am not sure if bypassing such a thing would be possible.
 

Jessica3cho雪血⊜青意

ばかばかしい外人
Gold
Joined
Aug 11, 2021
Messages
1,331
Reaction score
3,242
Awards
236
Website
recanimepodcast.com
I believe the internet is a house of cards being built higher and higher and will eventually collapse on itself and split into many, many micro-factions. In fact, we can already see that with some of the niche "alternative" sites cropping up.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards

handoferis

Executor of Dry IT Men
Bronze
Joined
May 28, 2022
Messages
737
Reaction score
1,909
Awards
195
Yeah, unless a hard infrastructure reset, I doubt peole will let go of the "old" (as in prior described changes) internet easily. People are bound to find a way.

That being said, I wonder what would happens if governement would enforce some kind of white list of internet domains on the ISP level? From what I understand, they could theoretically have the final say and block any unauthorized communications. I am not sure if bypassing such a thing would be possible.
The infrastructure won't go away, it's been evolving for decades now and is just too tightly bound to the world economy at this point.

As someone who lives in a country that totally does issue court orders blocking websites, there's always ways around it. Even ones as dumb as buying a vps in a datacentre and running an ssh tunnel through it.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards

Collision

Green Tea Ice Cream
Joined
Jun 5, 2022
Messages
381
Reaction score
1,420
Awards
126
I was thinking more along the lines of breaking/banning peering agreements between domestic and foreign networks or maybe even physically destroying infrastructure. I'm imagining something like the Kwangmyong in North Korea but at a regional level. I'm not a network engineer so maybe I'm just being paranoid.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards

handoferis

Executor of Dry IT Men
Bronze
Joined
May 28, 2022
Messages
737
Reaction score
1,909
Awards
195
I was thinking more along the lines of breaking/banning peering agreements between domestic and foreign networks or maybe even physically destroying infrastructure. I'm imagining something like the Kwangmyong in North Korea but at a regional level. I'm not a network engineer so maybe I'm just being paranoid.
DPRK can get away with it cause they're not even part of the world economy really. Even China not dumb enough to attempt this, they just heavily censor it because they still like making money. Even Russia, who've been giving it big lip service about "making their own internet" for years haven't cut themselves off with everything that's going on now. Simple filtering is enough to banish most people from the parts of the internet you don't want them to see cause they just don't attempt to circumvent it - I think governments like this typically have a pop at going after more technical users now and then but functionally they know there's no value proposition in playing cat and mouse against a knowledgeable adversary, whereas there is a value proposition in controlling the access to information of buttonmashing masses.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards

Collision

Green Tea Ice Cream
Joined
Jun 5, 2022
Messages
381
Reaction score
1,420
Awards
126
DPRK can get away with it cause they're not even part of the world economy really. Even China not dumb enough to attempt this, they just heavily censor it because they still like making money. Even Russia, who've been giving it big lip service about "making their own internet" for years haven't cut themselves off with everything that's going on now. Simple filtering is enough to banish most people from the parts of the internet you don't want them to see cause they just don't attempt to circumvent it - I think governments like this typically have a pop at going after more technical users now and then but functionally they know there's no value proposition in playing cat and mouse against a knowledgeable adversary, whereas there is a value proposition in controlling the access to information of buttonmashing masses.
You're probably right. Most of the politicians who would have to make a decision like that are probably more concerned about cookies or forcing everyone to use SMS two-factor authentication.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards

consonant

Traveler
Joined
Dec 24, 2021
Messages
140
Reaction score
317
Awards
55
I remember reading Where The Sidewalk Ends and I thought the idea of the internet splitting up was too farfetched but I can see it more now that other countries are trying to regulate huge sites.
It's still a little hard for me to see a path of it happening though because what would actually set it off?

Something I can see happening is someone like Google getting pissed off at EU laws and then they just decide to stop doing business there, other companies might copy them and everything on the internet becomes more regional that way. But this would probably end up in a lot of money lost for them so they probably wouldn't. Which is probably why places outside of America feel safe in regulating Google even though they'd be fucked without them (there are other search engines but people would probably shit themselves if they couldn't use Google), Google wants money internationally. Getting a more regional internet also impacts a lot of jobs because outsourcing is pretty important so I doubt companies would want to lose this either. Only way I can currently see it is if America just forces its tech companies to be regional which could have benefits in control and "safety" or whatever but America's want for control is usually because of money and trade between nations is America's bread and butter. So I can see it being forced in this way.

But also, you can see a kind of regional thing happening with America wanting to ban TikTok and maybe this is how things will progress. It's been looked at under the narrative that China is bad and is corrupting our youth, so let's just ban it. I don't disagree with what people say about TikTok but I think it's pretty interesting how we suddenly care when it's China datamining us and getting our children addicted to garbage and not our own. I've seen people saying America probably just doesn't want anyone to make an app as good as them and I'd believe it. I mean we have so much control over the internet already, you could probably get away with legally banning some of the competition. Which makes me think, if America owns so much why would anyone else try locking down their own internet? They're not going to want to recreate Google and whatever else, and why would America make it regional, they already have the control. Laws are pesky, but there's probably a lot of diplomacy that would be attempted before anything happens because locking down the internet is just a loss for everyone.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards

consonant

Traveler
Joined
Dec 24, 2021
Messages
140
Reaction score
317
Awards
55
I remember reading Where The Sidewalk Ends and I thought the idea of the internet splitting up was too farfetched but I can see it more now that other countries are trying to regulate huge sites.
It's still a little hard for me to see a path of it happening though because what would actually set it off?

[...]
Actually @handoferis already talked about what I did, it's easier to just censor than making a new internet and has better benefits for a country that wants that control.

Makes me sad that such a big internet event probably won't happen though it'd be interesting to see.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards