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Reddit users in the UK must now upload selfies to access NSFW subreddits

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  • Hm, I'm going to need some software engineers to critique an idea I have that could at least partially solve the fears people have about their personal details being tied to their porn habits.

    The system will be called the Adult Content Verification System (or Wank Card if you want to be funny). It's a physical card, printed by the government with a unique key printed on it. Those cards are then sold by any shop that has an alcohol license (premises or personal). You go in, show your ID to the clerk, buy the card. That card is proof that you're over 18, but it is not directly tied to you, you just have to be over 18 to buy it. The punishment for selling a Wank Card to someone under the age of 18 is the same as if you sold alcohol to someone under 18.

    When you go to the porn site, they check if you're from the UK, they check if you have a key associated with your account. If not, they ask for one, you provide the key to the site, the site does an API call to https://wankcard.gov.uk/api/verify with the site's API key (freely generated, but you could even make the api public if you want) and the key on the card, gets a response saying "Yep! This is a valid key!" and hey presto, free to wank and nobody knows it's you! If you don't have an account, the verification would have to be tied to a cookie or something that disappears after a while for all you anonymous people.

    As a result, you can both prove that you're over 18 (because you have the card) and some company over in San Francisco doesn't get your personal data, because you never actually record it anywhere. All you have is keys, and while yes, the government could record "Oh this key was used to verify on this site", they'd have to know which shop the key was bought from, who sold it, and who bought it, which is a lot more difficult to do unless the shopkeeper keeps records of everyone he's ever sold to.

    So... Good idea? Bad idea? Better than the current approach anyway, I think.

    I'm a security dev and this is a good idea!

  • So, the UK sucks.

    Something similar is coming to Australia as well.

  • Google uses reddit for its AI training. Just saying.

    God help us all.

  • Finally it seems the end of Reddit is near.

    Years later, you will find many then teen’s 80yo grandmas’ photos in the leaked database

  • Yeah I did consider that people are going to share keys, but people are going to share accounts too so that's always going to happen. The best thing you can do is stick some safeguards on the keys where if a key is found online, it can be deactivated and potentially investigated since you can tell which shop sold the key. If there's a shop out there just giving cards away to minors, well they're in for a world of trouble.

    Under the Licensing Act of 2003, it's illegal to sell alcohol to an adult if you reasonably suspect that they will be then giving that alcohol to a minor. You can assume the same will apply to people selling Wank Cards.

    people are going to share keys,

    get ahead of it and sell discounted bukkakeys

    you could probably even have a bundle called the "family plan" for the real sickos

    I should get into masturbation regulation marketing!

    Hungry for Adams Apples?
    Try our limp biscuits!

  • Hm, I'm going to need some software engineers to critique an idea I have that could at least partially solve the fears people have about their personal details being tied to their porn habits.

    The system will be called the Adult Content Verification System (or Wank Card if you want to be funny). It's a physical card, printed by the government with a unique key printed on it. Those cards are then sold by any shop that has an alcohol license (premises or personal). You go in, show your ID to the clerk, buy the card. That card is proof that you're over 18, but it is not directly tied to you, you just have to be over 18 to buy it. The punishment for selling a Wank Card to someone under the age of 18 is the same as if you sold alcohol to someone under 18.

    When you go to the porn site, they check if you're from the UK, they check if you have a key associated with your account. If not, they ask for one, you provide the key to the site, the site does an API call to https://wankcard.gov.uk/api/verify with the site's API key (freely generated, but you could even make the api public if you want) and the key on the card, gets a response saying "Yep! This is a valid key!" and hey presto, free to wank and nobody knows it's you! If you don't have an account, the verification would have to be tied to a cookie or something that disappears after a while for all you anonymous people.

    As a result, you can both prove that you're over 18 (because you have the card) and some company over in San Francisco doesn't get your personal data, because you never actually record it anywhere. All you have is keys, and while yes, the government could record "Oh this key was used to verify on this site", they'd have to know which shop the key was bought from, who sold it, and who bought it, which is a lot more difficult to do unless the shopkeeper keeps records of everyone he's ever sold to.

    So... Good idea? Bad idea? Better than the current approach anyway, I think.

    How would you solve replay attacks? Like a million people, of age or not, sharing the same key?

  • I keep thinking about some of RPs I've done in my life. Hot, vile, smutty text based RPs. I think about them and wonder if there will ever be a time when those words would be considered illegal and I would be arrested for posting them. This doesn't just protect minors. It tags deviance. Some of you may know the darker corners of Reddit. Imagine if an AI flagged your subs. The delete-rebuild cycle doesn't work anymore. Reddit will always know. If the law asks for suspects for newly illegal thought crime, Reddit will be able to point to all the users on those dark corners. We are moving into a future where privacy doesn't matter and I fear what that means for the kinky among us.

    That's a subject many never talk about: it assumes we (1) have morality all figured out and (2) it's the same for everyone, everywhere.

  • How would you solve replay attacks? Like a million people, of age or not, sharing the same key?

    Maybe you could limit the number of verifications a key can have in a day? Limit it to say 10 verifications per day. So if you're on Pornhub and have an account, you can have the key associated with the account, verified, and so you don't need to re-verify. But if you go on 10 completely different sites and verify for each one, you can't verify after that 10th one within the same 24hr period?

    You could maybe also include guidelines for integration where if a key is associated with an account, that key can't be used for any other account. You can include that under some requirement that says you have to make 'best efforts' to ensure that a key is only ever used by one account at a time. That way, if a million people are sharing the same key, you'd have to trust that all one million of them will never associate that key with their account because if they do, it invalidates that key for every use other than through that account on that site.

  • For those unaware, this isn't something like replacing a slur with removed, he edited users' comments, turning them into insults to other users.

    I don't care that those original commenters were (likely) pieces of shit, and the people who he made the comments insult were definitely pieces of shit, putting words into people's mouths to make them fight each other is unforgivable. Even if you put out a shitty apology.

    Not only was the apology horrible, but for any user on that platform for YEARS: obviously puts the thought in their head that spez could be changing their words by directly editing the db, and getting them put on a list for wrong-speak. Sure, that's possible with any DB, but he proved it was actually something being done on that site. Given his role, a major red flag, as this type of action would normally result in someone being fired.

    Reddit has since IPOd and is going to probably do well as a stock because of all the information it harvests from users.

  • A VPN future? Haha. Not if they don't want to. There are many ways to prevent VPN from operating when you're a government.

    You can just plain ban encryption, which sounds really crazy, but yeah, they're trying to.

    You can just say "it's illegal to use a VPN". It'll technically still work, but if there's a trace of trafic from your house to a known VPN endpoint, you're it! Great!

    They can force custom proprietary spying software on your devices. Sounds equally crazy as the thing above, right? But rest assured they're ALSO trying to do that. Multiple times, even. And in some places… they did. Of course, nothing forces you to have such software on your device. Especially if your devices are not supported; it also turns into a "you have to buy this or that big name device, everything else's de-facto illegal! Fuck you, we're the government!". And if you get caught for whatever, and your phone, PC, or anything isn't "compliant"? Bam. Guilty.

    Plenty of option. All of them completely stupid and would weaken both privacy, individuals, and governments at large. It never stopped legislation from being pushed forward.

    They can force custom proprietary spying software on your devices.

    • That would block Linux from their borders, which means goodbye Steam Deck in the UK among other things.
  • They can force custom proprietary spying software on your devices.

    • That would block Linux from their borders, which means goodbye Steam Deck in the UK among other things.

    Yeah, and? We're not talking logic and rational decisions here, unfortunately.

  • This is why many adult sites are banning access if your IP is from TN or any of the other american states that love jesus more than freedom.

    But americans don't love Jesus, they shit all over his teachings and would deport him if he came to their doorstep.

  • I’m not defending Spez, I think he’s a piece of shit and he did edit other users’ comments that were critical of him, which is fucked up, but I don’t think he was actually involved with that sub. It was possible to appoint mods without their knowledge or consent, and he’s a huge target, someone must have done it as a joke.

    I don't agree but I can understand that it is possible, however as someone that used to post adult content professionally on Reddit, I'm going to let you know that there is some WEIRD SHIT going on with their porn subs that seemingly Spez orchestrates at a site level. It is not like posting on Twitter (at the time, now I don't use Reddit or Twitter at all ofc), Lemmy, OnlyFans, TikTok, or any other site, adult or otherwise.

    Posting OC porn on Reddit is made to be deliberately difficult, you have to submit custom doxxing pictures to mods privately on any bigger sub, the little subs get very little traffic unless it's like a niche kink. They often but not always have rules like no professionals or SWers, OC only, but then allow Amaranth posts from a fan as if she isn't a sex worker like anyone else lol. Crossposting or even posting the same picture more than once across 2 forums can earn removal or bans, eg a see through top + wet panties in one pic qualifies for 2 diff subs, but I can only post that pic to 1 of them or risk permaban. And there's more actually in how difficult they make it to post but it's kinda boring in terms of details.

    Will say, I made my own subreddit - that got removed, no notice or warnings, even though it was active and no site violations and was doing well for at least 6 months.

    The girls who are popular on Reddit are not organically so. The posts that are popular are not organically so. They are being promoted by Reddit and the mods themselves. They act as their pimps and stop others from taking any attention or money away from their girls. I am not joking. He is part of the Maxwell stuff.

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    The video is 2 years old. Any new developments?
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    It's like pidgeon chess, isn't it? Things are clear and well-studied, but people like you think that ignorance is a virtue and that something that you don't know can't be known by anyone else.
  • Uganda cracks down on Google over data protection breach

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    Good, this bullshit has never made a compelling argument In its defence, Google argued that since it was not based in Uganda and had no physical presence in the country, it was not obliged to register with the PDPO, and the rules on cross-border transfers of personal data did not apply to it. However, the regulator rejected this argument, determining that Google is a local data controller since it collects data from users in Uganda and decides how that data is processed.
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    why do allow a romantic partner to set boundaries on the potential relationships I could form with others it also just hurt to imagine him being with someone else and preferring them over me My problem is exclusivity being the standard or default requirement for almost everyone, in many case just because that's what everyone else is doing. This deletes, say 95% of the population. It's already a very improbable thing to hook up with someone compatible and have that requirement, unless you have a very high "hook up attempt" rate than you can just forget the whole thing as unrealistic, which I did a long time ago. It's just not going to happen, no interested, the terms are unacceptable I'm not even going to waste any time trying.
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    Clearly the author doesn't understand how capitalism works. If Apple can pick you up by the neck, turn you upside down, and shake whatever extra money it can from you then it absolutely will do so. The problem is that one indie developer doesn't have any power over Apple... so they can go fuck themselves. The developer is granted the opportunity to grovel at the feet of their betters (richers) and pray that they are allowed to keep enough of their own crop to survive the winter. If they don't survive... then some other dev will probably jump at the chance to take part in the "free market" and demonstrate their worth.
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    As a Star Wars yellowtext: „In the final days of the senate, senator organa…“
  • OpenAI plans massive UAE data center project

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    TD Cowen (which is basically the US arm of one of the largest Canadian investment banks) did an extensive report on the state of AI investment. What they found was that despite all their big claims about the future of AI, Microsoft were quietly allowing letters of intent for billions of dollars worth of new compute capacity to expire. Basically, scrapping future plans for expansion, but in a way that's not showy and doesn't require any kind of big announcement. The equivalent of promising to be at the party and then just not showing up. Not long after this reporting came out, it got confirmed by Microsoft, and not long after it came out that Amazon was doing the same thing. Ed Zitron has a really good write up on it; https://www.wheresyoured.at/power-cut/ Amazon isn't the big surprise, they've always been the most cautious of the big players on the whole AI thing. Microsoft on the other hand are very much trying to play things both ways. They know AI is fucked, which is why they're scaling back, but they've also invested a lot of money into their OpenAI partnership so now they have to justify that expenditure which means convincing investors that consumers absolutely love their AI products and are desparate for more. As always, follow the money. Stuff like the three mile island thing is mostly just applying for permits and so on at this point. Relatively small investments. As soon as it comes to big money hitting the table, they're pulling back. That's how you know how they really feel.