The day pirate online servers go mainstream and capture a large share of the online market, I think things will become very difficult for them.

Buy low, sell high. Follow me for more financial tips!

I thought the last couple moves were the nail in the coffin, but this might be it 🤣

I got it for 20 bucks! Good times!

I don’t think it’s entirely a separate issue, because how a law is enforced is part of evaluating whether it makes sense in practice.

If a law can only be enforced by treating everyone as a minor until proven otherwise, that’s a strong signal that the law, or at least its scope, may be flawed.

I think the disagreement comes from treating “we have laws” as automatically meaning “we must enforce them everywhere at any cost.” The method matters. This approach flips the burden of proof by treating everyone as a minor unless they prove otherwise. That is a pretty extreme shift from how things normally work in the real world.

We also shouldn’t pretend this actually solves the problem. Kids got access to adult magazines before, and they will get access now through a parent’s phone, shared devices, or older friends. If that’s the target, this kind of system is mostly symbolic while adding friction and control for everyone else.

And more importantly, it normalizes something much bigger. Once you accept that accessing legal content requires proving attributes through some approved system, it becomes very easy to expand that logic. Today it’s age. Tomorrow it can be anything else.

So I don’t see this as a balanced compromise. It’s a disproportionate response to an enforcement gap, with long-term consequences that go way beyond the original problem.

What surprises me more is that someone feels the need to justify staying on Linux at all. That’s a conversation that shouldn’t even exist.

The question has almost always been the other way around: why use anything else?

I get why this sounds better than websites directly collecting IDs, but I think it still understates the problem. Even if the site only sees “18+”, the system still begins with strong identity proofing somewhere upstream. So this is not really anonymous access, it is identity-based access with a privacy layer on top.

The bigger issue is centralization. You still need trusted issuers, approved apps, approved standards, and authorities deciding who can participate. That means users are being asked to trust a centralized framework not to expand, not to abuse its power, and not to fail. History gives us no reason to be relaxed about that.

I am also skeptical of the privacy promises. These systems are always presented in their ideal form, but real-world implementations involve metadata, logging, renewal, compliance rules, vendors, and future policy changes. “The website does not know who you are” is only one small part of the privacy question.

So even in the best-case version, this is still dangerous because it normalizes the idea that access to lawful online content should depend on credentials issued inside a centrally governed identity ecosystem. Today it is age verification. Tomorrow it is broader permissioned access to the internet. That is why I do not see this as a decent compromise, but as infrastructure for future control.

Seriously, like, actually seriously, I want to believe that this time everyone will leave Discord, and not just a small group of weirdos like us who “care about privacy” and ended up on Lemmy.

Install another browser like Librewolf (ublock included) or Brave. That’s it, say good-bye to the ads, and not only in Youtube. In Android use Youtube Revanced. In Android TV (Nvidia shield, google TV, etc) use SmartTube.

And don’t use the “ads-company” browser in the future if you don’t like ads.

No AI? Are they allowed to do that? Are you sure?

If you like one spy over another, be my guest. I think companies that spy are not worth it at all.

ExpressVPN is a Chinese govt aproved company… do all audits you want. You need trust. Audits doesn’t matter. They can change everything after. I trust IVPN and Mullvad

VPS VPN hides you from ISP but VPS IP still shows to peers → worst case: abuse email/suspension. Use WireGuard, not OpenVPN: faster, leaner, modern crypto. No compression, full-tunnel + DNS leak protection, firewall to block non-VPN traffic, minimal logs. If host’s fine with P2P, you’re set.

Honesty is such an odd practice that some people hate it.

Honestly, I find it ridiculous that companies like Disney want to claim ownership over the data used to train AI models. Training data isn’t duplication, it’s learning. The same way humans study, reference, and reinterpret. Trying to monetize every aspect of “influence” is a slippery slope that stifles innovation just to protect legacy revenue streams.

This isn’t about fairness, it’s about control. And the more these companies try to dominate every avenue of cultural expression, the more irrelevant they risk becoming.

Even so. You can always make a screencapture.

We need to be autocritic here. Most of us don’t get it. That’s the problem.

When Trump says piracy, I understand he’s referring to classic piracy (with little boats and all), and when he says IP Theft, I assume he’s referring to the piracy that concerns us. Good luck adding a tax to my $0 rate.

Decentralized, yeah sure!

Sorry, I misunderstood then. I use Librewolf btw, great choice.