surveillience data for palintir, to look for political dissidents and associated families, nothing more.
this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026
333 points (99.4% liked)
Technology
82414 readers
3415 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Can we please start our own mesh network completely decentralized from the main web?
This mesh would need to be completely anonymous where people can connect and disconnect from surrounding nodes and people could host their own websites.
I discovered this recently, looks like a fairly promising beginning: https://reticulum.network/
This looks very interesting thanks for sharing! I am definitely going to look into this deeper and see what I need to get something up and running as a start.
I'm already pissy about them constantly trying to have my cc data everytime I make on online purchase. Windows asks, Google asks, ebay ask, and then my browser asks.
The answer us always no.
To ID verification, My discord is a decade old. If you can't do math well enough to guess that I wasn't 8 when I made it then that's a you problem.
Who's dumb enough to believe it was ever for child safety?
The sort of morons who shouldn’t be using the internet anyway. I miss when the internet was for nerds.
What's a distribution of Linux that is not made in the US and is not subject to these insane laws?
Yeah, that headline is incorrect. The laws are there specifically to surveil adults, "for child safety" is a smokescreen justification. This isn't a "we tried to do a good thing, but there's this unfortunate side effect," the surveillance was the goal.
load more comments
(12 replies)
I can't wait until it's leaked that these child accounts are being used to target minors for whatever: ads, sexual exploitation, etc.
Terrifying once you realize what they really mean by “think of the children”
For real. What is stopping a program from querying if an account is an adult or child, and then seeing if there's an email or username or whatever tied to that account age?
So now we have a database of children with their names and emails? Addresses? Or if a system gets hacked and that information is sold to bad actors?
What is stopping a pedophile from making a "child" account and then being lumped in with a group of other children?
These are things you think about in the first 10 minutes of questioning whether something like this is viable and how it can be exploited.
I think that ICE will be sent information about children, and then they will ship the good looking kids to the highest bidder.
This has nothing at all to do with “child safety”. It’s all about data mining. And controlling what everyone can see or say online.
also to monitor any left leaning activisim/dissidents , or associated agaisnt conservative governments.
I'm going to copy and paste a comment I made elsewhere:
The problem with age verification is VERY much in the implementation. It IS possible to do age verification without having to identify yourself to Meta/PornHub/Whoever. It IS possible to maintain privacy, AND restrict things like porn and social media to those who are of age. Look at how the Estonian system works, it’s brilliant. The problem isn’t age verification, it’s the blatant data grab that is currently trying to destroy your online anonymity…
The problem is: you're assuming they're arguing in good faith when they say it's about pRoTeCtInG tHe ChIlDrEn. It's not. It's a pretext for the data grab and mass surveillance of everyone. They will gladly take your argument, claim age verification is compatible with privacy and anonymity, and then introduce age verification systems that do implement mass surveillance. Don't give them an inch.
No I'm not! I'm in 100% agreement with you that this has nothing to do with protecting children! Age verification, if done properly, is a good idea, that I'm completely for. But you're right, this isn't that. This is a smokescreen.
I just want to be sure that people understand that they ARE using a good idea as their cover here. It CAN be compatible with privacy and anonymity, and it is a good idea to stop young children engaging with the cess pit that is modern social media.
At some point, I sincerely hope that the current regime will end and be replaced by something more sane. At that point, I don't want people to immediately think "age verification = bad"
And because someone will probably ask, this is my understanding of how it would work for age verification (I am not an expert):
There are 3 parties in this scenario. The Estonian state, Meta, and a 3rd party (which is currently a real 3rd party, but work is being done to allow this to be a digital wallet on your device, that you control)
The state issues your 3rd party a magic cryptographic cert that has all your personal data like dob
Meta issue an age challenge: Not “what’s your dob” but rather “Are you old enough to use this service?”
3rd party show you exactly what Meta are requesting and give you the option to approve or deny the request
If you approve, the 3rd party generate a new cert that JUST says “Yes I’m of age” and nothing else.
Because it’s been generated from the states magic cert it can be verified with their public key.
Meta don’t get more info than they need, the state can’t see that you’ve logged into Meta, but you’ve successfully proved you’re old enough to use the service.
The current weak point is that the 3rd party can absolutely see all of it, but there’s no reason the 3rd party has to be an external service. It could absolutely be an app on your device.
You still need to prove yourself to the state, but you’d have to do that to get an id card in the first place. It’s WAAAAY better than trusting all the different porn sites and social media services individually to not leak or misuse your data
The problem isnt just that the third party can abuse their access to your information, it's that it is digitally stored and certifiable at all
The most secure data providers in the world have all basically had data breaches by now - including the IRS and US government. There is no party that can guarantee data security, even if they themselves are benevolent.
And for what purpose are we willing to gut privacy online? So it's marginally more difficult for minors to obtain porn?
GTFO. De-anonymization has always been the goal, not 'protecting the children'.
load more comments
(7 replies)
How about a system where I can go physically to a shop, show them my id, then the clerk allows me to buy a box of tokens that I picked up myself from the shelf.
I can pay with cash, the clerk just looks at my face and ID, nothing gets entered into the system.
Then I have a bag of tokens that could have various expire dates. Some could last years. They are not tied to any person in anyway but only adults could access them.
And yes, I can totally give it to some kids, but that’s no different than me buying kids alcohol.
load more comments
(3 replies)
In the uk, you have to have your face filmed at different angles with your webcam. Spooky...
Just to be able to access Reddit
The people who dont care kids are killed almost daily at school which they have no choice but attend. The people watch movies and buy products from businesses literally destroying the environment. The people who vote for people who rape and eat children to run the government. I totally believe you have the countries kids best interests in mind /s [x]
They people who wave away bombing a school and killing 175 because "it's war"(that we unilaterally started). These are definitely the people who you want to trust on child safety and well-being.
view more: next ›