Once you realize it’s not “age verification”, but actually “identity verification”, then it’s easy to understand that the real goal is “papers, please” for the entire internet.
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Once you realize it’s not “age verification”, but actually “identity verification”, then it’s easy to understand that the real goal is “papers, please” for the entire internet.
@mhoye the "goal" of a system is what it does. no matter what the actual intent was.
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@mhoye Unpopular opinion:
Identity verification isn't so unattractive in 2026 — social media is destroying democracies via anonymous armies of bot people steered by aggressive foreign actors like Putin and Musk.
The libertarian model that the Internet was built on is failing societies.
Honestly most of the worst people on the internet are unashamed to go by their actual names and faces.
This is obviously true on Facebook and LinkedIn, but if you ever go to fascist Telegram groups, a lot of them are full of people with real names, and profile pics of them with sunglasses and baseball caps sitting in their cars. They aren't ashamed of who they are or what they do, and they aren't afraid of consequences.
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@txtx @mhoye Rightfully unpopular. This is not a libertarian position but an anarchist and antifascist one. It's not Ayn Rand bros who are harmed by needing to show ID to participate in public life. It's queer youth, undocumented folks, unhoused folks, dissidents, ppl living under regimes that don't want them having international contacts, etc. who this shit harms.
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Honestly most of the worst people on the internet are unashamed to go by their actual names and faces.
This is obviously true on Facebook and LinkedIn, but if you ever go to fascist Telegram groups, a lot of them are full of people with real names, and profile pics of them with sunglasses and baseball caps sitting in their cars. They aren't ashamed of who they are or what they do, and they aren't afraid of consequences.
@passenger @mhoye Those worst people are mostly bots or fake. Rarely are they using their real names. ICE wear masks.
The ones who go public: they should be in court facing anti hate laws. But instead they're protected because they don't even live in my country. X and Facebook need to be banned where I am to fix this.
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@mhoye No it isn't.
They already have all of your info. We know this because the FBI just inadvertently revealed it by producing video evidence publicly that wasn't supposed to exist.
They have your info and they are feeding it to your government freely and without a warrant.
ID verification is just a simple means of proving you confirmed someone isn't a child.
@FlashMobOfOne @mhoye According to your logic, why they would need to check it isn't a child if they already know?
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Once you realize it’s not “age verification”, but actually “identity verification”, then it’s easy to understand that the real goal is “papers, please” for the entire internet.
@mhoye
Your papers are not in order. -
Once you realize it’s not “age verification”, but actually “identity verification”, then it’s easy to understand that the real goal is “papers, please” for the entire internet.
@mhoye Yup, they are tired of not being able to tell whose a dog and whose a human on the Internet
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Once you realize it’s not “age verification”, but actually “identity verification”, then it’s easy to understand that the real goal is “papers, please” for the entire internet.
@mhoye not defending the age verification at all or any of that shit...
But at least they designed in Europe the upcoming EUDI Wallet (digital wallet) they now want to use for that in a way that you can for example just disclose "yup, I'm over 18" not more of your personal information -
@passenger @mhoye Those worst people are mostly bots or fake. Rarely are they using their real names. ICE wear masks.
The ones who go public: they should be in court facing anti hate laws. But instead they're protected because they don't even live in my country. X and Facebook need to be banned where I am to fix this.
I speak as a somewhat experienced antifascist who started doing infiltrations around 2013-2014, in the start of what was later called the alt-Right; and who has done more than his share of street actions.
There's a myth that these sorts of accounts are mostly bots, and I really don't think that's true. Like yes, some of them are impostors, that is certainly the case. But if you look at the polls, Reform is at 28.6% in the UK and RN is at 35% in France. That means a quarter of Brits and a third of French hold fascist views, and so if you see a quarter to a third of social media accounts being openly fascist, that's about what you'd expect. That's just who Europeans are.
In my infiltration work, one thing I notice is that the hyperonline gommos tend to have anime avatars and stuff like that, but the more scary people, those with jobs and houses and families and blood-and-soil politics, those tend to be the same person online as they are in real life. In antifascist communities we are deeply security-conscious, but these people really tend not to be. If you wear a mask around them they'll get suspicious and, in my experience, will lecture you about how covid is fake. Their security doesn't come from anonymity but from tight social conformity and from knowing that the cops agree with them.
They are the people who try to propel Jordan Bardella and Nigel Farage into office, will queue up to work at Frontex, and who have scary domestic violence records. They are not bots, they are worse than that.
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@passenger @mhoye Those worst people are mostly bots or fake. Rarely are they using their real names. ICE wear masks.
The ones who go public: they should be in court facing anti hate laws. But instead they're protected because they don't even live in my country. X and Facebook need to be banned where I am to fix this.
@txtx @passenger @mhoye
People need to understand the harm done to people and society by gafam.The only account I had was on linkedin, to have professional visibility.
But this too is populated by [boosted] "influencers" and "followers".My way to connect with ppl makes all this boring to use.
I find mastodon here more convenient to link with ppl having the same interests.
Not following and not leading.
No ads. Perfect for me.Facebook : fuck off, I have enough friends.
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I speak as a somewhat experienced antifascist who started doing infiltrations around 2013-2014, in the start of what was later called the alt-Right; and who has done more than his share of street actions.
There's a myth that these sorts of accounts are mostly bots, and I really don't think that's true. Like yes, some of them are impostors, that is certainly the case. But if you look at the polls, Reform is at 28.6% in the UK and RN is at 35% in France. That means a quarter of Brits and a third of French hold fascist views, and so if you see a quarter to a third of social media accounts being openly fascist, that's about what you'd expect. That's just who Europeans are.
In my infiltration work, one thing I notice is that the hyperonline gommos tend to have anime avatars and stuff like that, but the more scary people, those with jobs and houses and families and blood-and-soil politics, those tend to be the same person online as they are in real life. In antifascist communities we are deeply security-conscious, but these people really tend not to be. If you wear a mask around them they'll get suspicious and, in my experience, will lecture you about how covid is fake. Their security doesn't come from anonymity but from tight social conformity and from knowing that the cops agree with them.
They are the people who try to propel Jordan Bardella and Nigel Farage into office, will queue up to work at Frontex, and who have scary domestic violence records. They are not bots, they are worse than that.
@passenger @mhoye The UK/Brexit are perfect examples of foreign dictators influencing citizens via social media disinformation campaigns, anonymous & bot accounts etc.
This is not something I want to see further replicated anywhere in the EU.
Being an 'anti-facist' on X is a contradiction. It's like hating on Mickey Mouse at Disneyland.
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@passenger @mhoye The UK/Brexit are perfect examples of foreign dictators influencing citizens via social media disinformation campaigns, anonymous & bot accounts etc.
This is not something I want to see further replicated anywhere in the EU.
Being an 'anti-facist' on X is a contradiction. It's like hating on Mickey Mouse at Disneyland.
Where they go, we go. If you want to know what Mickey Mouse is up to, rather than just hate him and want to avoid him, Disneyland is the place to be.
(I don't monitor twitter though, it's just a garbage hellsite, and most of the real fash are elsewhere. British hard fash mostly use Telegram, soft fash mostly use Whatsapp, and it's worth monitoring both.)
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@mhoye
Your papers are not in order. -
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Once you realize it’s not “age verification”, but actually “identity verification”, then it’s easy to understand that the real goal is “papers, please” for the entire internet.
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@txtx some people will accounts there are, and so are people with accounts in other places, because social media it's not just those places, and because the requeriments for id verification are way broader than social media.
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@txtx @passenger @mhoye
People need to understand the harm done to people and society by gafam.The only account I had was on linkedin, to have professional visibility.
But this too is populated by [boosted] "influencers" and "followers".My way to connect with ppl makes all this boring to use.
I find mastodon here more convenient to link with ppl having the same interests.
Not following and not leading.
No ads. Perfect for me.Facebook : fuck off, I have enough friends.
@Jdb_env id verification can also cause harms, and they don't apply only to gafam (and legally couldn't).
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@mhoye Unpopular opinion:
Identity verification isn't so unattractive in 2026 — social media is destroying democracies via anonymous armies of bot people steered by aggressive foreign actors like Putin and Musk.
The libertarian model that the Internet was built on is failing societies.
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I don't agree with the premise that there is no possibility for a solution that takes various factors into consideration.
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