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Comment by ndriscoll

Fortunately, the Internet consists of more than antisocial media, gambling, and porn sites. Many (most? all?) of the "social" media laws also focus on specific user-hostile functionality too, which these companies could always not do. Or they could have a little toggle switch in the user settings to enable dark patterns, surveillance, and targeted propaganda, and only require ID to turn the switch on.

Meanwhile I expect that e.g. MIT OpenCourseWare will not be affected by ID laws. People can also self-publish. Windows used to come with a personal web server back when people saw computers as a means of empowering individuals instead of enslaving them. You could make your webpages in a WYSIWYG editor and just put it in your web folder. How about we bring that back instead of pretending that having ~3 companies in control of worldwide speech is somehow empowering and that their entrenchment makes them so important that we mustn't regulate them?

parent ndriscoll 14 days ago

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