alt Hacker NewsIt ends with "The platforms need you far more than you need them". And I think this is the misconception. No, they don't. The amount of people who will sign this, is a fraction of a fraction of a "platform"'s users. They will not care if they lose 50,000 users out of 2 Billion. A drop in the ocean. Not the target audience anyway.
And that is the real shame. Because I don't want to have to give my face or do age verification but I know when the time comes, and If I need to use a service now, I will give them whatever they want to get past the hurdle and use the service. It sucks, but I don't think a petition will help. Unless of course you get the 50 million to sign the petition AND stick to it.
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I think this kind of comment where you share the sentiment that you will ultimately admit defeat emboldens the factions that are hoping for people to be like you. I also think these kinds of comments may also bring doubt to people considering resisting these kinds of concessions.
In other words I think the people pushing these kinds of "identification" methods would love you for spreading their silent message of this being unavoidable knowingly or unknowingly.
Even if what you say is correct let's not make it easier for people wanting to enshittify the future, yeah?
Bitter truth :(
A better idea would be to regulate their corporate behavior and outlaw their current system of corporate governance. It's insane that we keep passing off these companies with a majority shareholder on the board and in the C-suite as capable of being rational actors in the market. They aren't, and can't be made to be. You have to pass laws and enforce them.
You don't need 50 million people to do that.
and If I need to use a service now, I will give them whatever they want to get past the hurdle and use the service.
Need or want? We need very few of the services looking for our government ID. Also, this should not be the only way of pushing back. We can support the EFF and politicians who are actively fighting against this or candidates who vow to. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/rep-finke-was-right-ag...
They arguably don't need any users as long as they can maintain the delusion of being important and especially present that delusion to politicians.
> I will give them whatever they want to get past the hurdle and use the service.
Why? Why not just hold firm to your principles and sacrifice convenience for your personal sovereignty. When you don't, you make the situation worse for everyone else as well by normalizing this bullshit.
It has never been about those platforms though. I could not care less if CIAbook or Instaspam or any of these other anti-social slop sites exist.
They want to force all operating systems to require age sniffing. That's the main angle right now. I am curiously watching how systemd will add more implementation details to this; probably as a first step only for commercial linux distributions.
You are correct that your data isn't particularly impactful for these platforms - but you're also overestimating the value that many of these services have. A fair few of them have competitors with better features and privacy offerings so the only reason you need them is purely for the network effect of everyone else using them.