Go ahead and point out where I said your liberty should be taken away. Using the internet is not an inherent right.

I’d argue that it is, but that’s beyond the scope of this topic.

No amount of personal accountability is going to fix the problem while multi-billion dollar corporations pump an addictive and harmful product into society 24/7.

Then tax them, fine them, ban them. What we shouldn’t do is let them collect any more data about us using this type of legislation.

Get over your individualism and sparkling ideals and realize that something has to be done

I’m not saying we shouldn’t do anything. Tax them, fine them, shut them down. I’m all for it. But don’t let them collect any more data by slapping this legislation.

If your privacy and personal freedom are tied to Facebook and Twitter, maybe that’s a you problem.

No, that’s an us problem. If you’re a Latino living in the US I don’t think you’d like Trump to know your face and your ID when you post a negative thing about him on an online platform.

Doing nothing at all and just letting kids access anything they want on the internet is not a solution, and hiding behind “freedom” as an excuse to abdicate social responsibility is lazy.

Encroaching on privacy and hiding behind the idea of “protecting kids” as an excuse to take away from your liberty and private life is lazy.

If you want to protect your child from what they might find on the internet, then spend time with them. Don’t pawn this off to the state.

The solution is to give those laws teeth. Harsh regulations on platforms that serve unmoderated content open to everyone. Enforce transparency on content serving algorithms. Massive penalties for security breaches. Ban platforms that don’t comply.

Alright. Then get every single country on Earth to pass the same stringent regulation and invest in measures to enforce it. If you can’t do that, then you can’t effectively protect kids against stuff like this. Taking away rights with the pretext of security for every little thing is how democracies fall.

Don’t make me choose between subjecting children to a stream of unregulated bullshit and the right to privacy. It’s a false dichotomy propped up by our need for digital convenience.

Don’t make me choose between my privacy and someone’s lack of responsibility. I shouldn’t have to give up my rights just because someone can’t supervise their child. Like you’ve said, technology is here to stay. I’m not going to limit my freedom like that over a non issue like this.

I’m just curious… How did you sign up for internet service? Can you walk me through the process?

Sighs. Signing up and giving personal informations to a few services is fine. Your ISP, your bank, your doctor. That’s fine. You know who they are, you remember them, you can keep an eye on them.

Doing this for every possible service on the internet is not. I guarantee you can’t remember all the sites you’ve made an account to and that you probably didn’t read the ToS for each one. If you add a requirement that each one of these sites to verify users through ID or face verification, it massively increases the risk that your data will leak to undesired parties. The state can’t keep track of all of them the same way you can’t do it. They’re just too many. It’s possible that at one point one of these companies will have a data breach or will break regulation. Then your online data (in this case your face and your ID) is up for grabs.

What if a police officer were to randomnly stop you on the street and check your pockets to ensure you’re not carrying child porn? What if they suspect you’re hiding child porn in your underwear? Should we make a law giving the right to police officers to strip you naked just so we can make sure you’re not doing anything illegal? We have to protect children right? Nothing is more valuable right?

You used to have to show your ID to rent a movie in person, why is doing it online any different?

Because that data is stored and passed on to third parties in most cases. Because data breeches are a common occurrence nowadays. Because gorvernments and companies can use that data against you later on.

“Oh, that person has a nasty burn on his face? Why don’t I save that and pass this information to a face cream company?”

“Oh, this person is a refugee from another country? Why don’t I just pass this information to the government so they can see what they’re watching?”

It’s most definetly not like buying liquor when you briefly show your ID to the cashier.

If you (rightfully) are concerned about data collection and surveillance, push for legeslative protections on that topic

The EU and California have already done that and the results are rather poor since it’s difficult to properly enforce. You can slap fines on said companies, but that’s only a setback. It doesn’t stop them especially when you have a weak government like the US has right now.

This is a completely separate issue with a very clear root cause.

No, it’s not. You’re sacrificing privacy and liberty for everyone just to fix mostly a parental issue.

He didn’t say that. Social media companies should be punished and regulated to a certain extent, but saying that they’re the only ones to blame here is frankly bollocks. It’s the same discussion we’ve had with violent video games.

Ignorant parents use this to excuse their lack of action for their kid’s use of social media. What they could and should do is to not allow kids access to it or to monitor their traffic. This however requires willpower, time and effort to understand and implement this into daily life. Which either they don’t have or don’t want to do. This brings us to one of the causes of the low fertility rate for younger generations: it takes more nowadays to raise a child and younger generations are more responsible about raising kids than older generations.

Excessive regulation of social media for kids will massively affect our privacy. Certain European apps now require facial or id verification to use in order to prove you’re old enough. I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell don’t want to give out my ID or let them photo my face just to watch a movie just because some parent isn’t responsible enough to educate their kid.

It’s from the Matrix, maybe you’ve seen it. For those who haven’t here it is without giving any major spoilers: at one point one of the main characters tells the protagonist that if he wants to learn the truth he could take a red pill that he offers to him, but if he wants to remain oblivious and continue to live normally he should take a blue pill. They’re using this analogy to describe how the media peddles as normal what they consider wrong values and ideas like lgbtq tolerance, feminism and so on.

Needless to say, Tate is a big fan of that movie. So much so that he named his “course” the Matrix Academy. One of my former classmates actually paid for that nonsense. It was just a discord server and the lectures were useless. All the information there could be found for free on the internet by just doing a Google search or watching a few videos on Youtube.

I will cut off my left testicle and eat it for breakfast if Judy can name one ingredient in the MMR vaccine.

Water.

My name is Judy.

My god, I just checked that site. The whole thing is a zoo. Millions of years of evolution went into this species only to go down the toilet there.

or be our enemy

That would be a geopolitical disaster for the US. No matter how much he yaps his mouth around, Trump doesn’t want the EU as an adversary. If that were to happen the US would have 2 flanks to defend against instead of one. And the EU is not Russia. Collectively the EU has the second biggest military budget and the third biggest economy in the world.

Trump is trying to get us to increase centralization at the EU level which is great as far as I’m concerned. But that chucklenut is doing it in a way that will also massively sour relations in the long term. As insane as it sounds, if Trump’s successor is going to be like him, China will probably be a more reliable partner than the US. The only caveat is that Taiwan is going to be extremely vulnerable in such a situation.

I’m hoping the US will come to its senses at the next election and relations will normalize. The Americans are pricks, but they are still more ideologically aligned with us than the Chinese.

For you why did fascism emerge in the first place

That’s a broad question that has different answers depending on the time and place. There’s no single answer to this.

why did it re-emerge nowadays.

Again, it’s a broad question with different answers. However, I can definetly say that social media and selection bias play a role in pushing the average person to extreme views such as yours. Which is why I’d like to remind people to take a break and cool down every once in a while.

I would like to add that we should also kick out capitalism and representative democracy out of the way because fascism is a byproduct of both of them.

Jesus, it seems that nowadays wherever I go I find either reactionaries or radicals pushing their insane takes no matter the relevance. I wish moderates would comment more.

Wait, you think Putin has credibility when speaking on climate change?

I never said that. I said that to the general public he may appear as more credible based on his behavior when adressing the issue compared to Greta which would undermine environmental efforts. This is what I’m concerned about.

I can’t imagine a world where you’re calling that “petulant”. At 16 years old she had more poise and gravitas than many of the world leaders she was speaking to. You say she hasn’t done anything. I beg to differ. Further, if what she has done is nothing, it raises the obvious question: what have you done to avert climate catastrophe?

Ok, usually I welcome debates, but I can see that you were very angry when you wrote this so I think it’s better that we stop here. Before finishing off, I would like to clarify one more time that I’m not a climate change denier. I just don’t like the way Greta and others like her operate since it’s my belief that their aggressiveness undermines the movement and increases the risk of turning people into reactionaries. That’s my opinion. I’m entitled to it just as much as you’re entitled to your own.

Here’s a useful chart comparing all the popular cloud and email providers - https://eylenburg.github.io/cloud_comparison.htm

I use Tuta and I’m very satisfied with it. It offers end-to-end encryption, the client is open source and it’s user friendly. The most common complaint you’ll hear from people about it is that it doesn’t offer IMAP. Personally I don’t mind it that much. It really depends on what you’re looking for.

Greta Thunberg is 22 years old right now, and was “screaming” and “blaming people” when she was 11 years old.

Expecting an 11 year old to provide answers that none of the established world has is silly.

Fully agreed.

She saw the world she was going to inherit and forced conversation to work toward solutions

I disagree. I saw her speak and the reactions to some of her speeches. Her inflamatory and derogatory speeches did nothing more than help opponents of the energy transition. To give you an example, when asked about it during an interview Putin jumped at the opportunity to discredit the energy transition. While the public saw Greta behaving like a petulant child during the speech, they then saw Putin speaking calmy, asking real questions like “How are poor nations going to transition when they need cheap fossils to sustain themselves?”. They then take this bit and plaster it on every social media site. People see it and are inclined to take Putin’s side since he appears more knowledgeable and in control of himself. And just like that he gets a boost in his reputation.

This is why I don’t like activists like her and the author of this article. They do more harm than good by expressing themselves in such a violent manner.

“listen to the experts who have been screaming at you for 50 years.”

That would be fine provided that it’s done correctly and civilized. Which is my point. Raising awarness is fine.Throwing insults loudly left and right to raise awareness is not. It only makes you seem delusional and sheds a bad light on your cause. This allows climate change deniers to take advantage of that to further their agenda.

We fully transition to clean energy like nuclear and build more power plants to allow us to store our online stuff.

The author of this article is not a serious person. He’s in the same bucket as Greta Thunberg. They just like to scream and blame people instead of providing practical solutions. It’s frankly tiring to hear them despite their honorable intentions.

It also includes the people that deleted their Twitter accounts following the acquisition. I’m one of those people and I’m especially annoyed because I only used that blasted app only to register to some giveaways when I was in middle school. I have since discontinued that email account, but still.

As someone who had a Samsung Flip3, I miss how easy it was to carry it around. It didn’t feel like a brick that I had to take out of my pocket every time I needed to check my notifications. It was also surprisingly durable. Price is the main downside of these phones.

There’s a fair chance I’ll buy another one in the future if I have enough money when switching phones.