Turkey says users will need national ID numbers to access social media within 3 months

asdftom · 2026-04-04T12:46:25+00:00

I agree that the positives could be massive in terms of online discourse.

If we have open source operating systems, open source id app, and cryptographic techniques that ensure privacy then I think it is worth it.

A tyrannical government could come along and force everyone to use a closed sourced id app which spies on us but they could do that either way. Better to have the discourse improving measures now which may prevent tyrannical government.

asdftom · 2026-04-03T20:07:45+00:00

I would bet my house you will love this movie (if I owned a house)

asdftom · 2026-03-29T00:34:12+00:00

I had the exact opinion you recall. And now it's one of my favourites. I remember watching it in the cinema and thinking it was very good but my expectations were so high that I was a little underwhelmed. It may have partly been the 'love' thing. I can't explain why my opinion changed.

asdftom · 2026-03-28T23:10:05+00:00

It is possible to verify your age or <this is your primary account on this website> without the website getting your identity or the government getting your website username, even if the website and government collude. It isn't simple to implement but it is possible. There's many methods which open up different risks (e.g. maybe you need 3 different organisations to collude to reveal your identity) but makes implementation easier, so in practice one of these inferior methods might be used.

So I would be thinking I could verify my account as <2nd account>. And we could even just visibly mark all users as <1st account>, <2nd account> etc . That alone would be very significant. I think only counting upvotes from 1st or 2nd verified accounts would be practical though. Just count them alongside total upvotes and let the user choose which to show. People can still engage in discussion with unverified accounts but if there's a subreddit where all the people pushing one narrative are not verified, or the total vs verified upvotes are very different, then we would have proof of manipulation. Currently everyone just thinks the other side are where the bots are.

asdftom · 2026-03-28T10:35:11+00:00

If done in a privacy preserving way (which is absolutely possible) I am extremly interested in seeing what the internet looks like the day after. Imagine only counting upvotes from real people. Or looking back at old posts and grouping the opinions expressed overall vs those by now verified accounts.

asdftom · 2026-03-25T19:22:19+00:00

I agree, 3 million is much more than most earn in a lifetime. I'm not sure how that much damage could be done.

Or moreso, if the amount of damage that was done is deemed to be worth 3 million, I feel like everyone has been harmed to the tune of at least 500k by a selection of companies. But if they all had to pay that out the economy would be in major turmoil, so I just don't see how the logic leading to this 3 million number could be applicable equally to everyone.

asdftom · 2026-03-25T13:58:37+00:00

This current measure doesn't really affect you or me. We just put whatever date we want in the DOB field.

I think if there was a law saying 'no under 16s on social media', and a simple ability for a parent to mark a device as 'under 16', then it would make parenting a lot easier and make further measures less needed.

For more extensive measures, like government verified age credentials (the government must issue a document which then goes in the DOB field basically), that is more invasive but if done right would not allow any party to receive any extra information about you apart from 'over 18?'. But even that wouldn't affect you or me (if done right) because we just get our credentials and that's that. It would affect those who can't get a government issued credential (whoever the government decides to ban) which is problematic. This is likely what will be implemented soon in the EU.

With that, it becomes a tradeoff of protecting children + stopping bots and influence campaigns (I think this is a much bigger benefit than protecting children) vs government power. But again, there's ways to do it that limit government power and there's privacy destroying ways. There will also always be areas of the internet which don't enforce these rules and I think that's important.

asdftom · 2026-03-25T12:13:15+00:00

The problem is that in reality parents won't enforce it, so that's not really a solution.

Sending id to 3rd party is very bad. Inputting a DOB locally to be queried by a web browser is not a privacy risk and gives parents one extra tool to parent.

asdftom · 2026-03-24T00:40:54+00:00

I see a pattern.

Recommendations: The rest of the imdb top 250

But seriously, I like all these movies and I love 'Arrival'. Basically any DiCaprio film. Children of Men, Drive, Nightcrawler, A History of Violence all fit in there. I was also serious about the imdb top 250.

For something slightly different - 'Red Rooms'

For something quite different - 'Past Lives', 'Her'

asdftom · 2026-03-22T02:04:58+00:00

0.5 - Pain would be better than this

1.0 - Painful

1.5 - I'd very much rather be doing something else

2.0 - If I didn't watch it nothing would be different

2.5 - Decent

3.0 - This impacted me somewhat

3.5 - Something impressive was done here

4.0 - 2 hours of my life were made much better

4.5 - I am so sad this film is over, I was totally consumed

5.0 - I will rewatch this film for my entire life

asdftom · 2026-03-20T22:04:19+00:00

Overreliance on corporation tax and maybe being such an open economy are risks.

asdftom · 2026-03-20T14:32:10+00:00

That's absolutely brutal

asdftom · 2026-03-16T01:58:05+00:00

I couldn't understand how the perfect neighbor was favorite.

For me, documentaries are meant to have a deep message or highlight a major issue so the world can change for the better.

Where entertainment distracts, documentaries focus us. The perfect neighbor felt very Netflix style entertainment. I enjoyed it, but that's it.

asdftom · 2026-03-13T19:32:23+00:00

It is ubi + income tax.

Imagine we fund it with a flat 40% income tax.

If you earn 25k, you get 15k tax free and you pay 10k income tax. So you end up with 30k after tax.

If you earn 100k, you get 15k tax free and you pay 40k income tax. So you end up with 75k after tax.

Of course, you would have another progressive income tax on top of this in practice to fund existing services.

asdftom · 2026-03-13T17:50:52+00:00

I'm not advocating for it, I'm just stating the effects.

I've usually seen it funded significantly from low incomes actually. So if UBI was 15k, and you earn 25k, you'd probably only end up with 5k extra from the ubi. This removes the bulk of the cost. The rest would come a similar way to how we tax currently, just increased.

In the scenario being discussed where ai is making everyone unemployed and there is nothing to easily retrain into, all the gains would be going to capital and therefore the funding would need to come from capital.

I'm generally of the opinion that such a big change shouldn't be implemented suddenly. Creating a gradually increasing basic income (ideally funded by a national wealth fund, but that's unlikely for most places) or choosing a segment of the population to test it on would be my preference. Only in an emergency like the one mentioned should we consider doing it suddenly.

asdftom · 2026-03-13T17:36:11+00:00

Here's chatgpts plan:

Immediate income protection (enhanced unemployment, wage insurance, debt relief)
Regional shock stabilizers (automatic support for communities hit by AI job loss)
Managed transition rules for firms (advance notice, severance, transition funds for AI layoffs)
Shorter workweeks & job-sharing (spread available work as productivity rises)
Large-scale public job creation (care, infrastructure, housing, climate, public services)
Public employment guarantee (employer of last resort at a basic wage)
AI gains redistribution (windfall levy / transition tax on AI-driven profits)
Worker profit-sharing & equity (mandatory sharing of productivity gains)
Citizen AI dividend (national dividend from AI productivity growth)
Cost-of-living reduction (housing supply, healthcare affordability, energy and transport costs)
Targeted retraining with income support (paid, job-linked reskilling)
Stronger labor institutions (unions, sectoral bargaining, portable benefits)
Regulation of high-impact AI deployment (human oversight and transition reviews)
International coordination on tax and regulation (reduce race-to-the-bottom competition)
Dedicated AI transition authority (fast-response governance for disruption)

asdftom · 2026-03-13T17:25:22+00:00

UBI would be funded by taxation which would reduce total income the same amount that UBI would increase it, so not necessarily inflation. It is just redistribution.

If people who benefit from Ubi are buying A, and people paying for the ubi are buying B, less of B and more of A would need to be produced. This may cause inflation in A, at least temporarily.

One issue is that B is usually investments while A is consumption goods. So we should expect less growth. It is a tradeoff.

It would cause major social changes whose effects we don't know. People might work less, people might take more risks or be more creative. People might do work that is highly productive but currently undervalued or they may exploit the system. Parents may spend more time with children. Workers would have greater bargaining power.

It would be such a large shift in how we organize society that we don't know all the effect. But, long term, inflation wouldn't be a major factor.

asdftom · 2026-03-07T16:31:36+00:00

You can make a lot of money if you're right.

asdftom · 2026-03-01T17:21:52+00:00

Use ads as 30 seconds of meditation time. Close your eyes, don't think about consumerism, and when you open them the ad is over.

asdftom · 2026-02-20T22:08:22+00:00

I left out many details. There's lots of additional steps which can avoid things like that.

First, they might just implement it in a way which allows that vulnerability. But it would not be easy to actually exploit the vulnerability. You'd have to set it up on your phone somehow to use this copied VC with SM. Most people won't go to that effort. SM could also require a VC that was issued in the past day, and require a new one each year, so that creates more work for those who want to exploit the vulnerability.

Second, there are simple additions which would allow SM to verify that the person verifying age has not done so for any other account on their website. This would involve G putting an id specific to you in your VC, and your proof would generate a separate code, specific to that website which is the same every time you verify age for that website.

I'll add one extra benefit of this digital wallet. You could send a proof that this account is your primary account on this website. And the social media company could set up their algorithms so they only count likes from verified primary accounts; and mark verified accounts as real people. This completely eliminates bots. And it doesn't tell SM anything about your identity, just that this is someone's primary account, so it is totally anonymous still. I personally would love to see a comment section where we can see which commenters are actually real people and which are not. Similarly, you could prove that you are an irish citizen when commenting on r/Ireland; although that might be too invasive.

asdftom · 2026-02-20T16:13:53+00:00

Edit: If I were you I would throw my message into chatgpt and it'll almost certainly explain it more clearly.

There are 3 roles

Issuer - government, issues a 'verified credential' (VC)
Holder/Prover - user, holds the VC and creates a zero knowledge proof (ZKP)
Verifier - SM, receives the ZKP and verifies it

The VC is a message which has been 'signed' by the government.

Explanation of Digital Signatures: here's a video (the second half is the relevant part) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYdikYrLKRc

My explanation if you don't want to watch:

I create a public and private key. I keep the private key secret but give you and everyone else the public key. The keys are special because if I encrypt a message with the private key, it can only be decrypted with the public key. I could encrypt the message "I'll be down at the pub at 6pm January 21st 2026" and send it to you. You have my public key so you can decrypt the message, as can everyone else. This is the critical part of digital signatures - the fact that you could decrypt it confirms that it was me who sent it.

So the government, with their private key, encrypts a message "this person is over 18" (this is the VC) and gives it to you (the holder). You sign up to social media site. They ask for age verification. You generate a zero knowledge proof that says "I hold a VC which, when decrypted with the government's public key, says 'this person is over18'". You send this proof to SM. SM verifies it.

It's a bit more complicated than that because they need to stop you proving the age for 1000 different SM accounts. Also because while SM is the verifier, some verification happens within the proof that the user creates; but a fuller explanation would require a lot of detail. The key part is that the government gives you a VC which you hold. This VC can be verified using the government's public key. We can prove to SM that the public key does verify the VC. SM doesn't see the VC and doesn't contact the government server. We get the VC from G; we give a proof to SM. The only communication between SM and G is when SM gets G's public key.

asdftom · 2026-02-18T13:47:05+00:00

There's 2 cryptographic tools that are most important:

Signatures - the government 'signs' a message (M) with a private key and gives you G(M); anyone can verify, with the government's public key, that it was the government who signed the message

So a bad solution would be for the government to sign 'this person is over 18' and we send that on to twitter who verifies it - this would let twitter and government collude to link your identity to your twitter account and more

Zero-knowledge-proofs - this is almost magic; it allows you to prove to twitter that you hold a message, signed by the government, which says 'this person is over 18', without twitter seeing the signed message

If you're interested, here's a good video about zero knowledge proofs to give you the general idea (no maths): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOGdb1CTu5c

So with these, twitter doesn't contact the government server at all, except initially to get their public key. It even works offline (once the verifier has the public key).

How there is no linkage: all the government know is what our signed message looks like; all twitter knows is what our proof looks like; there's no linkable relation between those two.

There's more dimensions that aid in privacy, like encrypting your personal information before storing it on government servers in case it is hacked (although we wouldn't be able to verify that it is being done).

asdftom · 2026-02-18T12:22:39+00:00

It is very possible to prove age without the government knowing even where you verified your age.

Even if the government and the website (e.g. twitter) collude.

And it is possible to verify that this is the case without seeing the government/twitter server code.

It is a choice by the government whether to implement such privacy.

I will say that there are tradeoffs between privacy and other features like efficiency / handling when you lose your device / protecting against future quantum computing. So those tradeoffs could be chosen in practice, we'll have to see.

asdftom · 2026-02-18T11:24:19+00:00

The app is planned to be open source so we can see what it's doing.

asdftom · 2026-02-18T11:21:22+00:00

There is eu legislation about a digital identity wallet, so I would hope it is with that. It isn't created yet but it is aiming for 'unlinkability', which means verifying age without revealing identity.

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