[ls612]

I’ve come to conclude, albeit not emotionally accept, that totalitarian parties and states will outcompete (what a euphemism) more liberty minded systems because of the sea change in the technological environment that cheap compute, storage, and asymmetric encryption have caused. The only question will be how aligned the interests of those winners are to or against mine.

To translate it into your terms, I don’t think the people pushing this will be satisfied with anything less than a Chinese government level apparatus against the people and that that is the only solution they will accept regardless of any others that are put forth in good faith or otherwise. They have no incentive to pursue any other goal.

Vae Victus.

[kelseyfrog]

> I don’t think the people pushing this will be satisfied with anything less than a Chinese government level apparatus against the people

What would it take for you to change your mind?

[ls612]

It would be very difficult.

Let me give you an example. This whole age verification thing has been going around for a while, at least since 2023 when the brits passsed the OSA. The EU actually had a political bloc that was worried that age verification would become ID verification de facto and so developed a ZKP system to cryptographically prove "User is over 16" without disclosing ID. This would be a solution that would likely be mostly acceptable to people on this site. In response to this technology being developed, Macron has come out and said that any free speech without government moderation (aka censorship) is "bullshit" and Merz said this week that every person online needed a real name attached to their profile and that there would be "consequences" for speech. They realized that a solution to the "think of the kids" pretext is close to being ready so they moved the goalposts so that they could continue to push for the Chinese system they really want.

I'm in the US so I don't have a direct stake in this and I expect the first amendment will at least significantly slow similar nonsense from coming to this side of the pond but I am perfectly capable of seeing where the equilibrium is going.