Egregoros

It is no small coincidence that the government is pushing for digital ID at the same time they are pushing online age verification in increasingly more spaces. They want an end to online anonymity and a foolproof way to correlate your web traffic with your real identity.

The UK saw over 12,000 arrests related to online speech in 2025. That is a number that those in power only want to see go up. These systems WILL be used to completely undermine online privacy, crack down on free speech and suppress the spread of whatever harmful opinions the government doesn't like that particular year. You WILL eventually need to provide your government ID to use social media. And the police WILL show up to your door when you stray too far from the state-approved ideology.

Whether it be "hate speech", "disinformation" or "child safety", every argument in favour of digital ID or online age verification always comes down to: "I want the doxx of that vegeta avatar that just made fun of me"

@VD15 people whose first significant experiences with the internet were via apps and social media on smartphones see the internet as a product that exists. there's nothing wrong with regulating products, so if you dont want this product to be regulated, you must want to use the product nefariously. this mindset is antithetical to the very existence of "the internet" as a concept. but they are the majority now. i dont really know how we get out of this besides inventing time travel and killing steve jobs before the iphone comes out.

@haematophage Apple aren't solely to blame, there's been a coordinated effort to lower the knowledge floor to technology for decades now. All these companies and developers hide everything under eighteen layers of abstraction because they want a captive audience that's too fucking stupid to use anything else. Every single day I see people complain about some new fucking AI cope-pilot bullshit w*ndows is cramming down their throats, but they're priced out of a mac and knowledge gated from linux.

My mum can't remember the password to her g*ogle account because it's different to the password she uses for everything else.
She doesn't know how to copy photos from her phone to her computer.
She doesn't know how to connect to the home wifi.

My mum's colleagues know her as the person who's **good** with computers.

We are FUCKED.