evilcultist

I think there could be reasons a government/people would want loot boxes to be not allowed that don’t relate to gambling and/or kids. I know there were some people that said “think of the kids!” when the discussion was going on, but my point is that there may not be direct overlap because the implementation and its effects are greater than simply disabling the ability to buy loot boxes in a particular region. The loot box issue is more like telling a vape company that they can sell oils as long as they don’t contain THC. This issue is more like saying, “You can sell the THC oils in any market or store, but every market and store in the country must check every item every user wants to buy for the presence of THC by to sending an image of that product to an AI that will tell you whether or not the user needs an age check to buy the item. If they do, the user cannot buy the item unless you take a photo of the user’s ID and send it to some random company that will use the photo to verify the user is allowed to use THC.” It’s an entirely higher level of complication and risk, so I’d excuse the “think of the kids” people that went after loot boxes in this particular case. But I’d also be curious about how much “think of the kids” overlap there is anyway. I didn’t mention any other cases because I didn’t know which specific issues you were referencing other than loot boxes. I wasn’t sure which social media content you were referring to, but you can imagine how I’d view it if it’s something like chat control or any other system relying on AI or age verification to control access. Also, the lower the taboo of the item being accessed, the more generous I am with these things. I still don’t like it, but no one is going to be ashamed if their love of loot boxes is leaked, for instance.

That’s when you take a break and let someone else deal with it until you’re ready again. Or focus on a different fight and let that one go. You’re irreplaceable, but your participation in that specific fight is not essential. I hope you can find a break. I get tired of it, too. Sometimes just not reading the news or social media for a while is enough to recharge. The news and online commentary makes it impossible to even get small breaks that would’ve been common two decades ago and the consumption of it all can be exhausting enough to prevent us from taking any other actions.

I wonder how much it has to do with the success and subsequent loss of this operation: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trojan_Shield Because it seems like a lot of countries in the west are pushing this kind of thing rover the last several years and there’s a heavy push right now. privacyguides.org/…/taylor-lorenz-on-kosa-the-scr…

I did not downvote but you’re asserting several things that you can’t possibly know. 1. War with China is coming. 2. It will inevitably be nuclear. 3. This is being done to prevent people from protesting when #1 & 2 occur.

None of those other things should require any sort of identity or age verification, though. In the case of loot boxes, government should be able to tell companies, “hey, you can’t sell that here”. In the case of age verification and nudity scanning there’s a whole host of issues from the fact that people don’t find loot boxes to be taboo or embarrassing to the fact that people do find nudity and porn embarrassing, to the fact that any scanning systems will false flag, to questions about who has access to the data that is submitted and how long it is stored, to how easy it could be to misuse the systems to go after disadvantaged groups (we all know LGBT content will intentionally be covered by this, whether they’re open about it or not, right?), to whether or not the system will be used for other purposes that either aren’t being said aloud or won’t be realized until after it’s implemented.

Every person against this sort of thing that checks out is just giving them less resistance. It sucks to have to deal with it, and it’s a constant fight, but you’re not just fighting for yourself.

Some just want money. I think this article: theverge.com/…/uk-porn-age-verification-law-mindg… Is about pornhub’s parent company trying to lobby in favor of this because it thought it could make money by selling age verification. I read an article saying something to that effect quite some time ago, and I think this is the article, but can’t be sure because it’s requiring a login and the archive site isn’t loading for me at the moment.