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We need "How to talk to your legislators about zero-knowledge proofs".

by watersb 3mo ago

dboreham 3mo ago
Not really any point since US legislators aren't motivated by the interests of regular people.
- consumer451 3mo ago
  Yes, they are not. > Today, we open sourced our Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) libraries, fulfilling a promise and building on our partnership with Sparkasse to support EU age assurance.
protocolture 3mo ago
"Dont do age assurance, ever" Done.
- Avicebron 3mo ago
  Ok, they have ignored that. I did my part and sent an email. Now what?
  - protocolture 3mo ago
    Violent revolution I guess. Genuinely what are the other options? I made a formal submission to the Australian Government in the very small consulting window they held for the Access and Assistance bill. Pleading with them to consider simply not introducing the law, as there was no justification for it at all. Google also made a submission against the bill, as did many large local and overseas corporations. The government went ahead anyway. What are the chances of me swinging any government when Google et al are on the other side, determined to provide privacy and anonymity destroying products to bolster their bottom line? Probably worth mentioning that the Access and Assistance bill permits the Australian government to secretly (even just verbally) compel anyone building age assurance technology to secretly backdoor it to collect metadata, or any other information they choose. There's no level of safety from the government one can achieve with any app. If they resist they go straight to the Australian version of a secret national security court. The bill doesn't even make it clear whether briefing their solicitor about the request is legal. It doesn't matter how good the crypto is if the app is recording details outside of that. Its all just theatre at this point. There's no safe app, so we should completely resist all attempts to do things the government could restrict, leak or misuse. I dont see how this is even slightly contentious in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty six, after decades of leaks affirming governments do this stuff, decades of governments and corporations dangerously failing their citizens privacy, when a particular government is hell bent on using all the personal data it can hoover up to persecute migrants and refugees. How are people blindly monofocusing on the crypto while trusting everything else?
    - Gigachad 3mo ago
      The vast majority of the population supports banning social media for kids so revolution isn't happening. Of course the social media companies object to their product being banned. It's like cigarette companies objecting to plain packaging.
      - protocolture 3mo ago
        >The vast majority of the population supports banning social media for kids so revolution isn't happening Age assurance is being used in more than a single scope. I dont disagree that the revolution isnt happening, but theres no need to be so reductive. >Of course the social media companies object to their product being banned. It's like cigarette companies objecting to plain packaging. They aren't objecting to age assurance tools. They are objecting to the current ham fisted model, but when they can organise something less nebulous than the current regime they will be fighting to implement it first.
        Gigachad 3mo ago
        Sure, the implementation details are blunt. But Facebook, Google, and Reddit have had decades to sort this out on their own and yet they have only poured fuel on the problem and watched the ad dollars rain in. So I have little sympathy that the resulting laws are not optimal for them.
        protocolture 3mo ago
        >But Facebook, Google, and Reddit have had decades to sort this out on their own It was solved. Dont collect information. The problem is making shitty psychotic apps, not determining who can use them. I would much rather they cut meta into pieces and sold them off as scraps, than just scarfing up the PID of the users to make arbitrary determinations about who can have what brainrot.
        intended 3mo ago
        It was solved for you. There are more people than just you (and other tech literate folk) online. I would also rather meta be cut an sold of as scraps. This is sadly not the question being framed. I’ve dedicated a portion of my life volunteering to moderate content in communities. It is an unmitigated shit show. The status quo is great for firms and corrosive for society. If theres a takeaway from this sub thread, is why “meta being broken up and sold for scraps” not being raised as a question in the first place. Is it another case of too big to fail?
- matheusmoreira 3mo ago
  "Do the opposite of what Meta is lobbying for" Done.
- miki123211 3mo ago
  It's much easier to convince somebody to achieve their goals your way than to not achieve their goals at all. Politicians don't want to be seen as going soft on child predators and harms to children. That is a career-ending move. Whether the bills they introduce even protect children at all has no bearing on it. PR is PR. If you're essentially telling somebody that children don't need to be protected, you might feel smug and superior, but you're achieving nothing. You'll be ignored as a conspiracy-theory-loving nutjob. If, on the other hand, you tell politicians that there are multiple approaches to protecting children, all as effective, with one of them having fewer side-effects to the rest of society, now that's a much easier sell. You sound like somebody who knows their stuff and has a nuanced take.
  - protocolture 3mo ago
    Nuance is the problem, we have been experiencing death by small degrees thanks to giving lots of small wins to politicians. Government is these days largely solved, and for politicians that's a horrendous untenable situation, so they have to keep inventing problems to solve. All they do is stack law on law on law for no discernible public good, with only negative outcomes. The problem is the framing of the problem. Its not "How to protect kids online". The problem is "how to protect everyones freedoms online". And the only way to do that is to say absolutely not, every single time this shit comes up. And its disingenuous to say the least, to assume that these tools are only coming for kids on social media. These tools are coming everywhere, to everyone. You just let them in because they played the old "wont someone please think about the children" song and dance. This exact nonsense was how we got the eSafety commissioner, who was brought in with a mandate to scrub the video footage of the christchurch massacre off of the internet. Of course, now they spend a large amount of time and money trying to get all sorts of posts scrubbed off the internet, often in jurisdictions that have free speech mandates.

We need "How to talk to your legislators about zero-knowledge proofs".

by watersb 3mo ago

We need "How to talk to your legislators about zero-knowledge proofs".

dboreham 3mo ago

Not really any point since US legislators aren't motivated by the interests of regular people.

consumer451 3mo ago
Yes, they are not. > Today, we open sourced our Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) libraries, fulfilling a promise and building on our partnership with Sparkasse to support EU age assurance.

protocolture 3mo ago

"Dont do age assurance, ever" Done.

Avicebron 3mo ago
Ok, they have ignored that. I did my part and sent an email. Now what?
- protocolture 3mo ago
  Violent revolution I guess. Genuinely what are the other options? I made a formal submission to the Australian Government in the very small consulting window they held for the Access and Assistance bill. Pleading with them to consider simply not introducing the law, as there was no justification for it at all. Google also made a submission against the bill, as did many large local and overseas corporations. The government went ahead anyway. What are the chances of me swinging any government when Google et al are on the other side, determined to provide privacy and anonymity destroying products to bolster their bottom line? Probably worth mentioning that the Access and Assistance bill permits the Australian government to secretly (even just verbally) compel anyone building age assurance technology to secretly backdoor it to collect metadata, or any other information they choose. There's no level of safety from the government one can achieve with any app. If they resist they go straight to the Australian version of a secret national security court. The bill doesn't even make it clear whether briefing their solicitor about the request is legal. It doesn't matter how good the crypto is if the app is recording details outside of that. Its all just theatre at this point. There's no safe app, so we should completely resist all attempts to do things the government could restrict, leak or misuse. I dont see how this is even slightly contentious in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty six, after decades of leaks affirming governments do this stuff, decades of governments and corporations dangerously failing their citizens privacy, when a particular government is hell bent on using all the personal data it can hoover up to persecute migrants and refugees. How are people blindly monofocusing on the crypto while trusting everything else?
  - Gigachad 3mo ago
    The vast majority of the population supports banning social media for kids so revolution isn't happening. Of course the social media companies object to their product being banned. It's like cigarette companies objecting to plain packaging.
    - protocolture 3mo ago
      >The vast majority of the population supports banning social media for kids so revolution isn't happening Age assurance is being used in more than a single scope. I dont disagree that the revolution isnt happening, but theres no need to be so reductive. >Of course the social media companies object to their product being banned. It's like cigarette companies objecting to plain packaging. They aren't objecting to age assurance tools. They are objecting to the current ham fisted model, but when they can organise something less nebulous than the current regime they will be fighting to implement it first.
      - Gigachad 3mo ago
        Sure, the implementation details are blunt. But Facebook, Google, and Reddit have had decades to sort this out on their own and yet they have only poured fuel on the problem and watched the ad dollars rain in. So I have little sympathy that the resulting laws are not optimal for them.
        protocolture 3mo ago
        >But Facebook, Google, and Reddit have had decades to sort this out on their own It was solved. Dont collect information. The problem is making shitty psychotic apps, not determining who can use them. I would much rather they cut meta into pieces and sold them off as scraps, than just scarfing up the PID of the users to make arbitrary determinations about who can have what brainrot.
        intended 3mo ago
        It was solved for you. There are more people than just you (and other tech literate folk) online. I would also rather meta be cut an sold of as scraps. This is sadly not the question being framed. I’ve dedicated a portion of my life volunteering to moderate content in communities. It is an unmitigated shit show. The status quo is great for firms and corrosive for society. If theres a takeaway from this sub thread, is why “meta being broken up and sold for scraps” not being raised as a question in the first place. Is it another case of too big to fail?
matheusmoreira 3mo ago
"Do the opposite of what Meta is lobbying for" Done.
miki123211 3mo ago
It's much easier to convince somebody to achieve their goals your way than to not achieve their goals at all. Politicians don't want to be seen as going soft on child predators and harms to children. That is a career-ending move. Whether the bills they introduce even protect children at all has no bearing on it. PR is PR. If you're essentially telling somebody that children don't need to be protected, you might feel smug and superior, but you're achieving nothing. You'll be ignored as a conspiracy-theory-loving nutjob. If, on the other hand, you tell politicians that there are multiple approaches to protecting children, all as effective, with one of them having fewer side-effects to the rest of society, now that's a much easier sell. You sound like somebody who knows their stuff and has a nuanced take.
- protocolture 3mo ago
  Nuance is the problem, we have been experiencing death by small degrees thanks to giving lots of small wins to politicians. Government is these days largely solved, and for politicians that's a horrendous untenable situation, so they have to keep inventing problems to solve. All they do is stack law on law on law for no discernible public good, with only negative outcomes. The problem is the framing of the problem. Its not "How to protect kids online". The problem is "how to protect everyones freedoms online". And the only way to do that is to say absolutely not, every single time this shit comes up. And its disingenuous to say the least, to assume that these tools are only coming for kids on social media. These tools are coming everywhere, to everyone. You just let them in because they played the old "wont someone please think about the children" song and dance. This exact nonsense was how we got the eSafety commissioner, who was brought in with a mandate to scrub the video footage of the christchurch massacre off of the internet. Of course, now they spend a large amount of time and money trying to get all sorts of posts scrubbed off the internet, often in jurisdictions that have free speech mandates.