alt Hacker Newshow about if i do nothing the internet assumes i'm a child and therefore does not track me, show me ads or permit doom scroll feeds. then if i want i can jump through some hoops and pay some money or something to get a digital id that lets me attach a zkp to all my http requests that then unlock the magic of ads, tracking and doom scroll feeds.
seems like a good plan to me.
That would be a solution if the people pushing this actually cared about "protecting kids."
But let's be honest, governments want a dragnet they can use to monitor/control all internet communication. The people running western democracies are equally as power hungry and zealously authoritarian (my ideas will bring utopia!) as the people running the CCP.
The only difference is, the CCP has permissionless authority, so they ended internet freedom in China decades ago. They didn't have to ask.
Western authoritarians on the other hand, have to fight a slow battle to cleverly grind you down over time, so that you get tricked into allowing them to gatekeep the internet. It hasn't worked so far. The next step (this one) is "okay, so you don't want to have to ask us permission before you visit a website...but won't anybody think of the poor beautiful innocent children???"
Emotions activated. Rational thought deactivated.
They'll get what they want because they always get what they want. And you'll be convinced it's good for you over time, because most people just follow whatever the mainstream "vibes" are, and the elite sets the vibes. It's amazing a free internet existed this long. Great while it lasted.