alt Hacker NewsWhen I read those seemingly outrageous claims, I didn't immediately dismiss the author. I allowed him to substantiate the claims and kept reading. I found myself agreeing with his argument and his train of thought of how, once digital IDs are accepted as a norm, they won't be unwound, and all online activity will likely require them and then, as he says,
"Your children will never know what it was like to think freely online. They will never explore ideas anonymously. They will never question authority without it being logged in their permanent profile. They will never speak freely without fear that every word will be used against them.
They will grow up in a digital cage. And you will have to tell them you saw it being built and did not stop it when you had the chance."
So I'm with the author on this one. Under the cover of child safety, digital IDs will cage us (or at least children entering the verification age), and it will probably never be rolled back.
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The best way to not be in a digital cage is to opt out of the current digital products.
Would that be such a bad thing? Frankly I would welcome a world in which kids are not using Instagram or TikTok. They don’t have to live in a cage if we don’t let them in the cage.
Personally, my plan is that when age verification laws get passed, every service that requires ID is a service I stop using. And I expect my life to be better for it!
Nah that’s silly, because Google has been doing all that already for the past quarter century. This “age verification” shit isn’t going to move the needle on the Google-created dystopia we already have.
The time to worry about not having a digital cage was quite awhile ago. Instead tech people pushed Chrome and Android and Gmail and ads onto us.
That's the role of rhetoric as a skill: all the true and sufficient syllogisms in the world will be ignored by most readers, if the argument leads with priors-triggering hyperbole and bombast.