If ID verification is required but not practical for small independent websites, these laws effectively make it impossible to run an independent website. So only big corporations can serve content on the internet.

Fortified with vitamins and cancer.

Unless ISPs decide to block all inbound traffic to subscribers

I think some ISPs already do this, if they suspect you’re running any kind of server, to force you to subscribe to a more expensive “business” plan.

There’s evidently a concerted international effort to end anonymity and privacy on the internet, disguised as protecting children. It would be worrying at any time, but it’s particularly alarming when authoritarian fascism is also on the rise pretty much everywhere. ID verification (sold as age verification) is a major step towards making it impossible for political dissidents and victimized groups to organize resistance or read uncensored information without being put on a list, to find, support and defend each other, or to travel freely.

They will try to ban websites run by anonymous weirdos.

Capitalism is destroying the world. We need to rise up against that. The AI bullshit is just one manifestation of the whole world being geared to serve capital and the handful of people that control it.

This reasoning, “I’ll do the bad thing because if I didn’t someone else would,” could justify anything. If that’s your moral standard, it’s effectively no moral standard. Whether it’s an individual or a country, someone has to step up and act better than the worst.

It’s always referred to as age verification, but it’s ID verification. It’s the introduction of a regime where you can’t use the internet without everyone knowing exactly who you are, and without the government being able to track your activity via your ID. Governments around the world are making what must surely be a coordinated effort to end anonymity, and thus privacy, online. In other countries this has gone along with a push to end encryption for phone calls and chat, and a push to outlaw VPNs. Canada’s government is embarking on a program that’s very hostile to its own population.

Yes, of course. I’m making fun of a particularly crude religious take that’s unfortunately too influential in the USA.

Canada’s code of conduct is “We’ll fuck anything up for money.” See also our mining corporations, oil companies, etc.

Because of the modern-day $$.

Who needs science when all truth is in the Bible? Also, who needs some bits of the Bible when all truth is in the other bits of the Bible? It’s just a matter of knowing which is which. If in doubt about this, check the Bible.

It’s not like the White House to tell the truth. He has to be in even worse shape than we thought.

I’m Canadian and I disapprove of this message. It would also be nice if we stopped selling weapons to Israel.

No problem. I appreciate it when mods give warning and a chance to fix the issue instead of just deleting.

Isn’t that like inviting all your friends and family onto your LAN? That would seem to have its own security risks.

Sorry - updated the post.

Avi Lewis is the strongest candidate I have seen. I think he could actually rally the left around him.

The only surprise is that the reported estimates of deaths remain so implausibly low. But I guess once you genocide enough people, the survivors can no longer count how much genociding you’re doing.

Humanity tried that for a couple of hundred thousand years. It didn’t go so well. Then they discovered vaccines and it was a big improvement. But I guess the Republicans want to try the old way again just to make sure.