Crowstep
1d ago
Associating the constitution with the nation's identity seems a particularly American custom. For most people, the constitution has about as much emotional pull as the tax system. France changes their constitution every 20 years or so.
Crowstep
2d ago
My one new thought on the war is that I definitely did not have Donald Trump and Ayatollah Khamenei joining forces to strictly enforce the Kyoto Protocol emissions targets on my 2026 bingo card.
Donald Trump passes lots of laws that make it harder to build renewable energy, then does something chaotic that makes the incentive to build more renewable energy much stronger.
It's not far off what happened with the tariffs. He wants to reindustrialise America with tariffs, but instead the tariffs hit intermediate goods that hurt American manufacturers the worst.
He thinks Canada is too woke, so threatens to annex it. Thereby snatching victory from the jaws of the right wing candidate.
The defining characteristic of the regime seems to be chaos, rather than any particular ideology.
Crowstep
3d ago
Work. I can back this anecdotally
It's worth mentioning that Americans used move a lot more than they do now. In the late C19th, a third of Americans changed address every year. Even at the height of American civic engagement in the 1960s, people moved more than they do now. So I don't think we can really blame people moving for work for a recent decline in friendship.
The obvious elephant in the room here is the rise of social media. Where people mindlessly scroll instead of talking to people in real life. While i think this plays a role, sociologists have been recording these kind of declines since the invention of TV. I suspect something deeper going on. What do you think?
The common thread is that any technology that makes it easier to be alone (TV, the internet, smartphones, quick home delivery, work from home) decreases the incentive/necessity to go outside and interact with real people. Even in the 90s, I remember boredom as a kid, with only 4 TV channels and books, there was much more reason to go and hang out with my friends. Now, boredom has been basically eliminated. Of course, we still need to socialise in person, but the low friction option prevails too often and leaves us all lonely and depressed.
Crowstep
3d ago
The particulars of identification don't really matter
If my face is an identifying piece of information, then my privacy is already being violated every time I walk outside or go in a city and get captured by 3000 CCTV cameras. AgeGo doesn't know my name, my date of birth, my address, my employer or any of my login details for any of my accounts. Given that there are already photos of me on my Facebook profile with my actual name and date of birth, worrying about AgeGo 'violating my privacy' by attaching a token to my Pornhub account that says I'm 18+ seems misguided.
This reminds me of my grandparents telling me not to buy things online with a credit card because 'hackers could steal my information'. Like technically yes, there is always a risk doing anything, but baseless paranoia is counterproductive.
Crowstep
4d ago
Sure it will.
I will quote my earlier response here.
And why exactly does Pornhub or AgeGo want a grainy, 3 second video of my face at 2am? Leaving aside the fact that big companies do, in fact, obey the law as a rule, because breaking it is bad for business, you seem to imply that these companies are holding on to data that they have explicitly promised to (and are legally obliged to) delete for the sake of being evil and creepy, in spite of no actual benefit to them.
So what reason does AgeGo have to keep a grainy, 3 second video of my face at 2am?
Thoughts TheMotte?
Was it a beginners class? My experience with kizomba is that the classes (particularly the beginner ones) may be heavily male, but the socials are overwhelmingly female. Because kizomba is easy to follow, women learn super quickly and stop going to the classes, but still go to the socials because they like the dance.
I don't know enough about swing dancing to say whether or not that's the case, but if it's significantly easier to follow than lead, then that could be something. Although that wouldn't explain the change in the last couple of years.
Crowstep
4d ago
Oh please I visited the UK three months ago and stayed there for a few weeks, it was a trivial matter to find sites that didn't demand some form of proof.
I agree, but the system is new and there's obviously going to be a degree of cat and mouse. If we required perfection for every system we wouldn't have any systems at all.
I assume any teenager with decent motivation and a lack of retardation can also do it
I'm less concerned about teenagers and more concerned about very small children. 40% of six year olds own a tablet in the UK, and another 40% have access to one. Before the current rules were in place, most of them had access to the infinity of online porn. My eight year old neice doesn't have a smartphone, but kids at her school do and have shown her videos of ISIS beheadings. This concerns me (and approximately every parent). I suspect you don't have kids. I assure you, internet libertarianism becomes much less appealing once you do.
Then why did the discord leak happen?
Because Discord used a different third party verification company with a different process.
Crowstep
4d ago
Requires your face, thereby identifying you.
That isn't what I said. My exact words were '90% of them use third parties like AgeGo which don't require you to upload ID'. That obviously means uploading e.g. a driving licence, not age estimation through the camera.
Because yes, in order to use age estimation, AgeGo will need a short video clip of my face, which will then be deleted once the verification is complete. If this counts as 'identifying me' then fine, I don't care. It's worth it if it makes it harder for children to watch porn.
Crowstep
4d ago
from my understanding, users have to buy a card from a retailer that validates age, typically in person?
I haven't heard of that one. Ofcom lists a bunch of acceptable methods here, but none of them involve buying a card from a shop.
Crowstep
4d ago
The only meaningful way to have age verification is to have ID verification
As I mentioned, the UK manages porn sites perfectly well without mandatory ID verification. It may not be completely impenetrable, but that's fine. Surely you would be happy about this fact, rather than demanding something that you say is bad? You seem to be arguing that a) the current system is insufficiently robust and must be reformed and b) a more robust system would be bad. Why not be happy with our imperfect system?
Parents can do that already anyway!
That is a very naive position. It's technically correct, in the same way that I can technically go and live in the woods. In practice, peer pressure is immensely powerful, and parents find it extremely difficult to tell their kids 'every child in your class has a smartphone, but you can't have one'. Even if successful, it still causes parents a huge amount of stress having to constantly re-fight the battle every day. That is why we have rules around kids smoking and drinking. Technically, we could abolish age restrictions and just say to parents 'it's up to you'. In reality, humans are a social species that work around norms. The free for all status quo simply allows those norms to be set by tech companies, rather than by parents.
If you seriously believe that they're deleting everything, I got a bridge to sell you if you want.
And why exactly does Pornhub or AgeGo want a grainy, 3 second video of my face at 2am? Leaving aside the fact that big companies do, in fact, obey the law as a rule, because breaking it is bad for business, you seem to imply that these companies are holding on to data that they have explicitly promised to (and are legally obliged to) delete for the sake of being evil and creepy, in spite of no actual benefit to them.
Crowstep
4d ago
Is that still worth it? Haidt correctly diagnosed a problem in society and then decided the only solution is nuking everyone's freedom just to fail anyway.
The social media ban isn't really the main goal of organisations like Haidt's. The goal is to get kids off smartphones. That is much easier for parents to do when 'I need Snapchat to talk to all my friends' is no longer true. Even if a social media ban can be bypassed, there's no reason to do so if none of a child's peers are using the platforms. The same is true of school smartphone bans. It's much easier for parents to say 'no you can't have a smartphone' if smartphones are a prohibited item in school.
Worrying about kids' privacy when preventing them from accessing social media is kind of ironic. The kids are already sharing their deepest, darkest secrets with these platforms. We're trying to prevent them giving up their privacy.
It's also worth talking about the actual technology used for age verification. In the UK we have it for porn sites already. 90% of them use third parties like AgeGo which don't require you to upload ID (although you can), they just use age estimation from a face scan, which isn't even saved once the check has been done. It's fine.
Crowstep
4d ago
I don't like the paradigms of the discussion, but have trouble articulating why.
I just listened to the episode myself. He wasn't a great guest, nor did he go into the depth about 'screens' that the subject really merited. If you want that, Jonathan Haidt has done a million interviews.
But I think it's reasonable to use 'screens' as a substitute for 'increasingly addictive technology'. Even tiny, black and white TVs showing linear programming were powerful enough to begin the process of disengagement described in Bowling Alone. But massive, HD colour TVs with infinite TV and video games, plus smartphones with addictive apps and social media have supercharged it. I don't think it's too unreasonable to use 'screens' as shorthand for atomisation, digital addiction and social disengagement, even if something like podcasts and Spotify contributed.
Iran has been waging proxy war against Israel for 44 years via Hezbollah, Hamas and their other paramilitaries. it has a literal doomsday clock counting down the days until Israel's destruction. If the regime didn't want a war with Israel, they've been going about it a funny way.
And it's not as if Israel is a threat to Iran. They're seperated by two countries and hundreds of miles. If Iran wanted peaceful relations with Israel, all they would need to do is stop funding Hezbollah and Hamas and stop threatening to nuke Israel.
There is a lot to criticise Israel about regarding Gaza and the West Bank, but Iran's conflict with Israel is one of Iran's making.
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