I grew up when everyone was saying "don't post your face, name or address on the internet" - and that's what I've done. There are a total of maybe 3-6 pictures of me on the internet and my real name isn't attached to most of my brainfarts online.

It's not that I hide it like a secret agent, I just don't shove my face and name next to every opinion I have.

But the younger generations... They grew up with Snapchat which means Snap Streaks, which again means posting your face with every message. Next was Facebook, real names everywhere. Then came "personal branding", again face and name plastered everywhere.

And now governments want to lock in the real name + face + identity combo for everyone with laws. Fuck that.

If only you knew how bad things really were.

We can't even enforce basic protections of human rights in the United States, privacy does not matter when there are rampant black operations being conducted which violates human dignity in every sense of the term.

The illusion of digital privacy was always, propaganda. There's a pretty good chance your organism is literally compromised.

It was always to be, as sure as the exponential meets the linear. I worry though, about all the unborn ideas, innovations and technologies, which could stabilize the current unstable situation, getting aborted by the surveilance which is introducedto "stabilize" things.

"The global push to kill privacy makes me sad."

This "push to kill privacy" if it exists has been carried out by so-called "tech" companies

European governments are not killing privacy. They cannot legally conduct the sort of mass surveillance done by so-called "tech" companies

If, through "Chat Control" legislation that targets these companies, governments effectively kill the commercial viablity of so-called "tech" companies in Silicon Valley performing intermediation with no legal limits on surveiillance,^1 including offering "chat services", then, in fact, these governments may be restoring privacy that has been lost to Silicon Valley surveillance, whether that is the governments' intention or not

1. If there were legal limits, if users' privacy from so-called "tech" companies was protected by law, then governments could not ask for access to other peoples' "private chats" because there would be no one to ask. Government would have to ask the chat partcipants for their own chats.^2 The Silicon Valley "business model" of unregulated intermediation and surveillance could not exist. It would be illegal

2. In that case, the chat participants could defend themselves. For example reasonable suspicion of illegal activity might be required as grounds to make such requests

No one should believe that Silicon Valley is trying to protect anyone's privacy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those companies have systematically destroyed privacy for profit at unprecedented scale

Any legislation that targets these companies, such as "Chat Control", may actually improve privacy if it reduces the number of people using those company servers

"In almost every meeting, they would unleash a one-word imprecation to sum up any and all who stood in the way of their master plans.

"Bastards!" Larry would exclaim when a blogger raised concerns about user privacy."

From Douglas Edwards' book I'm Feeling Lucky: Confessions of Google Employee #59 (2011)

Similar books about what goes on inside Meta are actively being supressed

There was a time when the internet existed without these intermediaries

The internet existed before them and it will still exist after them

> The global push to kill privacy makes me sad.

Only sad? Like, we already lost and we might as well give up?

I’m not sad. I’m scared, and I’m angry. And I’m beginning to think maybe everyone should be too. I mean, in normal circumstances, you don’t want an angry and scared population, that’s generally a recipe for disaster. At this point though, given the various decisions at the top that so clearly disfavour the bottom 99%, angry and scared is probably exactly what we need. Well, angry, mostly. Furious. Mad.

The hard part is determining who the enemy actually is. Hint: the more wealth and power, the more likely this is one of them. Strip them of their ungodly wealth and influence, you may get a human being back.

It's not just killing privacy though. Democracy is undermined here by big money.

We are living in a strange mixture of 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World

Maybe a hot take, but I don't know that "privacy" and "anonymity" are the same thing, or that the latter is worth preserving. I would very much like to live in a world where everyone stood by everything they said online with their real identity, just as they already do in the real world.

This was already the case for all of human history until the information age. If you wanted to say something, you had to physically say/print/shout it. And your reputation would be affected as a consequence. This more aligned with how humans are wired - that social actions have social consequences.

If every potential mate and employer was able to review everything you've ever posted online, we'd all be much more careful with what we say, much better able to screen out bad actors, and the wold would be a better place for it.

alright, but the important query is: this isn't happening in a vacuum, there's a lot of various forces.

Lets say the primary force we need to prevent is russian influence campaigns that back and push far right nationalists who will destabilize democracy. Is that a sufficient reason for controls?

It's always curious what people think about the actual content that's typically pushing these things.