Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
If we don't want to lose our freedoms, we need to offer constructive and realistic solutions that don't involve the government. Simply saying "not my problem" may feel good, but it's going to end up with a government-enforced tech dystopia.
ISPs come with adult content disabled by default and someone has to opt in to it. Every major OS (Windows, Mac, iOS, android) ships with device level parental controls. Games consoles enforce these based on birth date. ISPs here also provide free network level filtering on top of that. All of this only matters if the parents don’t bypass them when asked.
If a kid is determined enough to get past Apple family controls and the network level filtering on their home network, they’ll have a VPN from a dodgy source in 15 minutes. The solution is to use the tools that are there right now, or accept that age verification is coming for everything.
These are unfortunately rather half-baked and should be improved. Which is exactly what could be mandated instead of invading everyone's privacy.
It doesn't answer the question of "what do we do about parents that don't do their job properly."
In theory, one could implement age verification by negligent parent imprisonment, in practice, I don't think that would work, and definitely not in all cases.
If we accept the premise that children having unfettered access to the internet is a bad thing (which, again, I don't think we should), there have to be multiple layers to it. Punishment is one, increasing friction and "making honest people honest" is another.
The last thing we need is society deciding in detail how children should be raised. CPS horror stories are bad enough as it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s-1990s_Romanian_orphans_p...
Define “properly” and how often do the self-righteous themselves cause harm. I see a strong desire for people to want to “control” all outcomes on everything and have everyone in the world think and say and act as they want.
The government is vastly overreaching in this and quite frankly if one argues that this is a good thing, then where to draw the line? Will we want to see government legislation for every possible permutation of potentially harmful behaviours or consequences.
Sorry Johnny can't come out to play because I have not yet bought the latest government-legislated knee guard armour to prevent a graze, and BTW I notice that you have not renewed the foam coating on your sidewalk, if Johnny trips and falls there...
Nor can it, because it takes a village to raise a human being.
And in this (global) village, we have determined that we will monetise everything... and for the victims, there's thoughts and prayers. [1]
I’m somewhat in favour of these foolish attempts at control because they always drive innovation in technology to circumvent them and adoption of that technology creating a thriving underground scene. Content piracy and alternative platforms could use a resurgence and this is just the thing to get it jumpstarted.
Like with normal cases - have court go over this.
But decision if any form of age lock should be implemented or not is up to parents. You cannot just shift argument to "you HAVE to restrict children from internet or else!"
We turned out alright.
I think the authoritarian trend accelerated during corona. Our western political nobility got a real taste for power, and they have not been able to free themselves from that afrodisiac ever since. Therefore chat control, 1, 2, 3, and when that didn't go as planned... lo and behold... age verification, and that of course needs control over vpn, and encryption, and there we go... chat control slipped in through the back door.
Soon we can no longer criticize china if this keeps up.
Asking for less tech at school is not an authoritarian move, but rather a point of view about how schools should work.
If you asked me, I think that parents should throw away their TVs and minimize screen time at home, both for them and the kids. However I won't ask this to be enforced by the State - if anything, it will make my kids more competitive against the cartoons-infused ones of the other parents.
It's not like parents have much of a choice. When you gotta work 2 jobs to barely make rent and groceries, you need some sort of "safe space" to pawn your children off to.
I’m all for helping people in the situations that aren’t of their own creation, so using the excuse “what are they supposed to do” doesn’t really fit for me? The first option is to use a condom if they are in a bad financial situation. It’s been amazing how every time I’ve used one, I haven’t had a child.
When did we stop making people responsible for their choices? I’m not against assistance, I’m against the idea that it is my responsibility to give up rights and freedoms because <insert person> made poor personal choices and now society is once again a surrogate to yet another child of irresponsible parents. If you aren’t able to parent, don’t have children. Don’t care what your situation is that rule stays the same.
And of course, someone will jump in with “but maybe” and “what if the situation changed”. Again…I’m not against helping parents who fall on hard times to get back on their feet — society SHOULD be there to help with assistance and programs, even help with getting your kids watched. And all of that exists. I’m against expecting every individual of society to not only help bear the costs, fund and administrate these programs, provide countless charities, etc…
But now the suggestions is also somehow that we are required to be the surrogate parent to every one of their offspring by giving up our rights to create an entire society of a padded playground?
No, I think that’s the line for me.
Parents can give up all their own rights they want and live in their padded kingdoms, but that ends at your doorstep when you walk out to the space you share with every other person…including digitally. You can build the physical and virtual walls around your padded kingdom as high and thick as you want to keep your children shielded from the world.
...is there evidence that it's parents who are the constituency you describe?
... every aspect of parenting.
It is a collective problem with collective solutions.
Even if I had, your argument is we must surveil more to protect the kids from the surveillance state?
I don't argue for a surveillance state. Authoritarians push authoritarian policies with convinient excuses. I do understand that.
I think there need to be a cultural shift and that involves the collective of parents not indivual families.
Like, my TV installed adtech shovelware over night and my son woke up early and watched it. Sport teams organize on Facebook. The school headmaster wants CCTVs. Door bell cameras are getting more and more common.
We can't fight those things as individuals.
If the side effect is that you also end up controlling adults and making them behave “properly,” then that is considered a plus.
It's just selfishness. "I want some privacy utopia on the internet (which can no longer exist, the internet isn't the place of the 90s and early 00s), so your kids can be exploited by social media and porn".
I know several parents that limit screen time, require screen usage be restricted to public areas of the home, have parental controls and filtering operating etc.. some of the parents I know won’t even let their kids watch a movie unless they screen it first.
Parents have the responsibility to do what is necessary to protect their kids
In the case of parents v. so-called "tech" companies, who should win
What happens when the companies are protected from parents by Section 230
I've gotten exactly one response on what that looks like. The parent suggested writing custom moderation rules for his router. He was serious that this was feasible general solution.
If Facebook decided to start showing hardcore porn to people it identifies as being under 14, would you blame the parents for letting the kids use Facebook, and not blame Facebook? If you would blame Facebook, that means you believe Facebook has (at least some) responsibility.
A group of parents? I’m more hoepeful.
(In my country,) There are many levels of government between the individual and the nation. Sometimes that is a curse. But sometimes change needs to start locally. This is an excellent example.
This whole thing where parents are expected to do it all themselves is actually a new phenomenon. Historically, across basically every culture, it was up to the community to raise all the kids together. To sacrifice and make compromises together.
Your parents likely didn’t have to deal with YouTube. There were basic laws in place that guarantee the content on broadcast TV fell within certain limits. Was that unacceptable to you as well? It strikes me that you take for granted the fact that you could never have been exposed to Alex Jones as a child. Let’s not pretend your parents knew everything you watched and saw, they just knew it could only be so bad most of the time. Yet you now expect parents to know everything on every screen in front of their kids with no assistance ever as the “attention economy” machine attacks all of us. It’s not a fair fight at all and your response is “parents just solve it yourselves” without a second thought.
I do not agree with all these age verification and surveillance state initiatives we are seeing. I am categorically against them. But your philosophy is harmful and frankly selfish. You live in a community. You have to make compromises.
Sounds like you made a decision you regret and expect everyone else to bend their life around you. It is selfish to assume others will take care of your shitty kids.
FYI: your seeming inability to muster even a tiny bit of empathy is pretty strong evidence you're in no position to call anyone selfish.
I have a little boy. He does not use computers yet. One day he will. His friends will have YouTube or it’s spiritual successor and everyone in his school will be on TikTok where they’re hammered with whatever brainrot gets the most engagement.
What do you propose, exactly?
I shouldn't have to consider getting a parent an under 18 account to protect them better.
I guarantee you are not as dedicated as me trying to protect my kids, so there will be age gates, and that includes VPNs.
Everyone knows VPNs are only used for getting shit for free, so there is also a pretty powerful corporate interest to lock them down. In the case of the "corporate content provides" vs the "tech bros", the enemy of my enemy is my friend, I'll take a win however it comes.
Mozilla have picked a battle that will kill off Firefox, I am now not longer interested in recommending or using it. I'd bet their user base skews to older people, more likely to be parents.
Presumably your support is for a browser developed by Google instead, as they are clearly not interested in surveillance or being in your children’s life?
I don't use my vpn for 'shit for free'.
I don't think it's as successful as it sounds on paper, from the comfort of our western society homes.
It assumes that people will fight for their freedom and insane measures will be needed to keep them in check.
So foolishly optimistic… people can’t wait to give freedom away if only they get a stable job and housing in exchange. Or if it hits these other guys they don’t like at the moment.
It’s all much, much less dramatic than Orwell. It is an ordinary, everyday erosion of your rights until one day you will realize that you lost something very important but it will be no longer possible to say it out loud.
One such example is China where all dissent was eliminated because people there prefer comfortable cage. Or Singapore. Seemingly majority doesn’t give a flying dick as long as government buys them.
Maybe the Orwellian times were different but it is what it is. It’s easier than ever to just buy people.
Now 25 years later, they know who you are talking too, what you are talking about, where you are almost in real time, what websites you browse, books you read, music you like, podcasts you indulge in, what social media trends you follow, general political points of view, sexual orientation, what you look like and so on... It was all taken one little inch at a time and now we have mass apathy about it all.
And once they have taken that little bit, they will never let it go by choice.
Here in Australia, there are now ID proof of age requirements for Social media (still a little loosely enforced)and pornography. They have their foot in the door, you can see where it is going next.
Nothing about what he thinks about strikes me as odd or unique in the least. He has simple and obvious reasons for doubting the state ... and only for a little while.
The accusations are not the point. Well, occasionally there are actual criminals where it is the point but in the 99% case is isn't the point.
It actually asks hard questions and explores the tradeoff of an "utopian dystopia." In contrast to the society Orwell describes, where the government is cartoonishly evil, the one of "Brave New World" genuinely cares for the happiness of its subjects, and most of its subjects are genuinely happy, even if we disagree with the methods that it uses. This is by design; I read somewhere that Orwell wanted to position 1984 in explicit contract to Huxley, killing any debate on whether his described society was better or worse than the one the book was written in.
I think he heavily underestimated the human ability to ferret out the truth when the only thing the state gives them is lies. Even without access to reliable news sources, most people will at least realize that the news is lying to them. Even if they don't know what the truth is, they'll know that it's not what they're told it is.
I think the key to a working dystopia is to genuinely make people's lives pleasant. We care about the economics a lot more than we care about the politics. If you're a free democratic socialist republic and decrease people's monthly meat rations, citizens will riot and demand true democracy. If you are a democracy and the price of meat goes up due to the bird flu epidemic, people will riot and demand communism and wealth redistribution.
This is basically describing 1984s proles?
No it doesn't make that assumption? The crazy tricks are for the engaged, for the outer party members. The proles just get bread and circuses.
You're extremely naive about China. Do you think they wanted the Great Leap Forward and the Eliminate Sparrows campaign? One man's ill-informed policies caused a famine resulting in 15-55 million deaths. The One Child Policy? The state response to Tiananmen Square protests? The Great Firewall? The Social Credit system? Why does Foxconn have anti-suicide nets? You think industry tycoons being in bed with government is bad? It is! Now note that the theory of the Three Represents is part of the Chinese Constitution. Ask yourself why notionally independent Hong Kong imprisoned a large number of pro-democracy campaigners. These are not signs of a benevolent dictatorship. It's a totalitarian state maintaining its dominance over the masses and its elites revelling in the spoils. Why do you think there is such a push by rich Chinese to get their capital out of the country?
Perhaps you should read Brave New World instead?
Look, it’s extremely hard to remain some kind of objective nowadays on the internet. I no longer know what is true and what is false.
Truth has lost all meaning and was replaced by politics.
Even history books written by scientists are routinely under attack.
In my country of Poland a Nobel prize winner, someone that my teachers said was a hero, suddenly became the villain. I never got my head around it. It still puzzles me. Like a some thorn in my side. He was a national hero? Now he is the bad guy? Why? It’s strange and unsettling how fast narrative changed to serve some political goal and everyone just went with it.
I am not resistant to narratives but I seem to routinely miss them. Then I wake up and everyone is saying some strange extreme things and are angry at each other and it seems fabricated to me many times.
Such as in my city was recently some uptick of anti car sentiment. Yeah like discussion is normal and we want to live in best possible environment but this wasn’t discussion. It was just people throwing shit at each other and extreme tribalism. It’s unsettling to see this. Social media has been doing something terrible to people. And I think it all serves somebody’s interests. Someone benefits from these divisions and wars.
We need to collectively unplug and get a grip
Orwell has been quoted that Animal Farm was a also a critique of capitalism, in favor of democratic socialism.
You also say GP is naive about China. But China has been actually less oppressive as time goes along. In fact, historically, authoritarian states often become less oppressive without foreign interference (my home country, Czechoslovakia, was on path towards democratic socialism in the 1960s, unfortunately, it was reversed for geopolitical reasons; such has been experience of many American client states as well). (And you also have liberal states becoming more authoritarian on their own, we can see that in the western world, due to concentration of wealth.)
This indicates there is no "natural law" that makes things more (or less) authoritarian. It depends on people pursuing politics, and being informed.
One side of this is driven by a bunch of not too reputable think tanks behind the scenes who persuaded a couple of fringe academics to agree with them and push for it via the civil service. The government is taking bad, paid for advice. I don't know what the agenda is there but there is one and I reckon it's commercial. Probably a consortium of businesses wanting to create a market they can get into.
However the security services do not agree with the government or the think tanks and actually promote advice contrary to the regulators. They will ultimately win.
Attacking the regulators and revealing who is behind all this is what we should be doing.
Sorry, who will win?
However no matter what the government or security services want, they won't be able to stop people who want to use VPN or End to end encryption. Nothing would ever change in that regard.
If you make money by laying asphalt on British streets and get paid in British pounds, there's no way for you to pay an internet business in Malta if the British government doesn't want you to. Sure, there's crypto, but crypto needs businesses which let it interface with the British banking system, which the UK government can instruct banks to shut down.
The real problem is that the legislation would bring the power to prosecute people who use them or use it against them.
The security services aren't having any of that shit because it puts their position at risk both from the front-facing side and recommendations and guidance issued and from their own operations.
If they cared about privacy and security they wouldn’t be [redacted].
https://www.esafety.gov.au/newsroom/blogs/social-media-minim...
Of course, when you point this out they step into "Oh but we knew it wouldn't work immediately" which is so silly its staggering.
But of course, the technology has been applied immediately to moral panic stuff like porn also.
Apart from those things, the Australian government did an excellent job.
I'm all for shutting down Facebook entirely and jailing their executives, but i don't think age verification is an appropriate answer. It's already common at least here in France for Facebook to request user ID cards (wtf) and that has not at all stopped harassment, nazism, fake news, etc...
On the face of it living in a police state is safe, and secure, and actually increases your freedom to just live your life without pain. And if these systems were never abused that might be true. But sadly, the reality is that every time these things are implemented they end up being used against the citizens. So they're always a terrible idea.
This would probably block most of the internet, and allow access only to sites that are validated as being safe. This would put a lot of pressure on sites and service providers to ensure safety, such as children-only walled gardens within their broader services.
We already have piecemeal attempts at something like this through on device private age restriction software, but it’s not organised at the state level, and I think it’s not effective enough as a result.
If legally enforced it could be made into a pretty effective system that would give adults freedom and anonymity and provide safety for children, while pushing the costs of child safety onto the platforms, which is where it belongs. If you want to cater to children, prove that you can make it on to the whitelist. Otherwise that’s an audience you’re just not able to access.
Nor do these devices require the identity of non-parents who will never enable the childproofing mode
Nor does legislation invert the burden of proof and require the device's manufacturer obtain and store identity documents just to use the devices, otherwise it must restrict all access to a small handful of "kid safe" actions.
These aren't "child safety" laws, they're "adult anonymity eradication" laws
What’s wrong with making it the social media companies’ problem? If they sign up a child, they get fined. Everyone is then incentivized to come up with solutions. If some of those are shit, restrict them. If they’re not, great.
This already is the threat, and all the solutions social media comes up with are eerily “Age Verification” shaped. They are all going to be shitty.
But constrained to those using the platforms. My issue with these broader measures is even if I don't use social media, I'm still caught up in the dragnet.
They link to the full document which lists their VPN subscriber count near the top of the about Mozilla section.
(Edit: I don’t disagree with Mozilla’s position, but failure to declare an obvious conflict of interest undermines their credibility.)
That sounds silly.
What about just banning phones for children? Could we ever make that work? It would be like cigarette bans except we now have 5 year olds addicted to tobacco and addict parents who don't want to make them go cold turkey.
Public libraries and schools can be used for genuine research purposes, but not addictive shit. And implemented ad blockers at the network level.
Adtech companies are working tiresly in order to deceive us and drop us into their narrative, but I don't believe that everything is lost. After all, even fbpurity continues being developed. We need to write scrapers to extract our friends, relatives, and everyone else's data from walled gardens, not whine about gardens having walls.
Yes, Google enshittified, OkCupid enshuttified, many things enshittified, and many people who were the founders just passed away. But this only means that we need to be the militant generation, not that the battle is lost.
Sexualization of teens is a thing. I personally blame social media together with showbusiness. But kids had access to the internet at the same time.
And the internet was slightly different than it's now. It had much more sharp edges that we learned how to live with.
But it also was much less predatory. World's smartest psychologists and programmers didn't work 80 hour weeks for small fortunes to make it as much addictive as possible.. if it was only that. It's also as triggering and depressing as possible, because distressed and depressed people are engaging more and can't stop.
What I mean to say is that you can't really draw an equal sign between internet we grew up with and the one we give (or choose to limit) to our children.
I don't mean we should block them, just that it's not the same.
How much the problems today are due to, rather than coincidental with, the internet, is a much more difficult thing to discern.
Back then the internet was a wild west run by thousands of clever people. It was like living in a neighborhood full of people kind of like you. Nobody built it to be addictive or to cultivate attention. If you wanted something you searched for it. Nowadays everyone is on there and it's run by evil adtech companies. Kids these days are not having the experience we had back then.
It also didn't really do us much good. Already back then geeky types like me had somewhere to retreat to and we did. It took me years to learn real social skills and build a life off of the internet. When I see headlines like "Gen Z aren't having sex" I'm hardly surprised. They're not having sex because they're on the internet. What's more is nobody is learning to be an adult at all. People are in a adult bodies but still totally children at heart. They don't own anything, shun responsibility etc.
Honest question: if you tell Pornhub "now you will be fined heavily if you let 10-year old kids access porn", won't Pornhub implement some kind of age verification?
How else would the platform "address the root cause"?
Other than that, there is no "online harm". No root cause of anything that would need to be addressed, no problems whatsoever. It's just information passing through from one person to another.
Laws like age verification will just push kids to even weirder corners of the internet. When will 4chan or motherless implement age verification? On pornhub you see vanilla porn on the front page. On 4chan or motherless you see CP (AI, but still), (fake) rape or (fake) murders. And there are many more sites like those.
I don't think we can (and I don't think we should) completely block porn from the Internet. But I could imagine that privacy-preserving age verification on Pornhub could make it slightly less accessible to kids (even it if is by opening a link without knowing what it is). I wouldn't block VPNs though: if someone is able to access Pornhub with a VPN through a country that doesn't mandate age verification, then they will be able to access porn anyway.
And then there is not only porn. To me the value of age verification is really to block kids from accessing social media. And again, no need to block VPNs there: it just has to be less accessible to kids. I don't believe that most kids will get a VPN to access social media. Kids are on social media because kids are on social media, we just need to break the network effect.
For instance, the government could provide privacy-preserving age verification and mandate that those platforms use it to check the age, and at the same time not ban VPNs.
Maybe (I am asking) it would make it harder for kids to access social media and porn in general, but it would not make it impossible (they could use a VPN). But I don't think we need to make it impossible for social media and I don't think we can make it impossible for porn:
* For social media, we just need it annoying enough that most kids don't bother using them. I feel like social media are a problem for kids mostly when (almost) all kids have access, because it is difficult to explain to your kid why they should be left apart.
* For porn, there are many ways to access it, it's impossible to entirely block it. And I am not convinced that it is a good thing to make it super illegal. Making it slightly less accessible so that it's not one URL away from the kids, though, may not be so terrible?
We do that kind of compromise for many other things: it's impossible to prevent kids from smoking cigarettes. Still we try to prevent it. I feel like sometimes it's okay to compromise, instead of fighting for all or nothing.
For a start, you should consider this fact: Privacy for a bad actor goes directly against the security for citizens and good actors.
So when you talk about privacy you are making an assumption that it is contributing to safety. But for whom? Bad actors or good actors? Without such qualification, you are just talking lofy-sounding but meaningless ideals.
You can have 100% privacy and freedom if you are stateless. But when you wish for the benefits of being a citizen, it comes at the cost of privacy and freedom.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/reddit-user-uncovers-beh...
Basically Meta wants age verification done by devices, the device makers (apple, google) want it on the platform, two sides who don't want the responsibility. On the other side are hundreds of billions invested in companies that offer age verification to websites (persona, etc.). All of these monied interests generate billions into lobbying/corruption efforts that drive all the legislation across the western liberal "democracies" rn.
Historically they were fairly smart at doing it subtly but the mask slipped during Covid and they never really put it back on.
Also - outside the HN bubble this stuff isn’t even unpopular. Normies supported covid lockdowns and they don’t want their kids watching porn either.
The people yearn to be ruled and nannied
This stuff wasn't unpopular on HN until it actually happened. Almost every submission on HN about social media had people calling for similar regulations or even outright bans. It was not until they actually started asking for IDs when HNers realized what they really wanted to achieve with these laws.
Normies don't see the difference and politicians don't want there to be a difference. Normies want security and politicians will offer it wrapped in surveilance.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/growing-up-in-th...
Could you explain what is the theory behind that?
There is evidence of a growing consensus that this does have to be age limited. Both in the research and in voter polls. (I personally believe in it.)
> it will inevitably be worked around by motivated 13 year olds
The same goes for liquor and cigarette laws. They're still of net benefit.
The real answer to what's going on is one that HN doesn't like to consider. It's simply that a lot of people in a lot of countries are worried about what children are able to access on the internet and want the government to help restrict it.
I don't support these sorts of restrictions. However, HN seems completely unable to have a sensible discussion about them because most posters are convinced that this is all part of some kind of sinister authoritarian scheme. In reality, it's just some bad legislation pushed by various people who largely have good motives, and who are concerned about something that is a real problem.
The bad legislation should be opposed. In order to do so effectively, we have to address the actual concerns driving it, rather than railing ineffectually against a largely imaginary authoritarian conspiracy.
I am using a fork of Firefox and it works perfectly fine.
I know Cloudflare works fine on Firefox desktops and probably also on Android.
Does Mozilla not understand that this is the exact reason why the UK wants to forbid them?
Age verification is just mass surveillance under a fake name.
I always remember a video snippet of some meeting in US, some chinese looking woman says something like "Mao took our guns and killed us all, I'm never giving up my rifle". Some politician reminds her that they live in the democracy. She asks him something like "can you guarantee me that in 20 years it will still be a democracy", which he admits he can't
found the video https://www.reddit.com/r/GunMemes/comments/1c13kkz/survivor_...
That regulation would be orders of magnitude more difficult to implement. Just look at the malicious compliance the cookie regulations created, that was a single modal.
Better to just ban it for under 16s. That might happen before my kids are old enough to be fully exploited.
Practically speaking, when I look at the actual number of people affected by VPN I estimate that:
- Very low: Protecting political activists and dissidents
- Low: Circumvention of overzealous blocking and surveillance
- Low-to-Medium: Hiding abusive and malicious behavior
- Medium: Additional layers of trust and network security (mostly business related, which makes it tangental to the consumer VPN market)
- VERY High: Enabling piracy and avoiding geo-content restrictions (no judgment on good-vs-bad, just asserting magnitude)
So... conundrum! If I take the position that piracy-related stuff isn't a net drag and that business VPN use is fundamentally a separate beast, VPNs in this context are hard to justify.
As far as I can tell, there is no requirement to be a UK citizen to answer this – if you are, were, or could be resident in the UK I urge you to fill it out and help provide a voice of reason...
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/growing-up-in-th...
I guess since I complain about Mozilla a lot for their past 5-10 years (minimum) of poor management decisions, I should give them their due when they do come out with a statement of support on our rights.
If a government has the ability to fine content providers for providing content to its citizens, why accept IP verification is good enough to determine the user’s jurisdiction and not fine them anyway for providing the content?
That's what they keep reducing it to. They're also making it a false dichotomy of sorts, but in reality it's a gradient of possibilities. For example, VPNs aren't like Tor in that they can't really resist "NSA" level global wiretap monitoring in any meaningful way. Or even ISP-level data-analysis driven investigations.
It's also important to correlate any privacy protections VPNs provide, with a real-world pre-internet equivalent. paper mail for example has always been subject to Mitm by the authorities. It is possible to divulge who visited what site, and at what time, and only directly to the authorities, and make that disclosure public (after gag orders expire, if any are issued).
You can use VPNs for privacy against all sorts of creepy eyes, but your local government being considered one of those hostile actors is the threat model that's under attack here.
I would argue for example that the pre-internet equivalent would be two people chatting in the privacy of one of their homes. A bit of a stretch, but alright. But in that there must be the element that the two persons are able to identify each other positively. If one of them is harmed by the other, the victim can identify the attacker to the authorities and pursue justice. How can that be done with VPNs? If middle-actors can't snoop, then can logs on both ends positively identify the other party? Was there a common way pre-internet, where people anonymously gathered and discussed things, with capability to harm each other, but without the authorities being able to do anything about it after the fact?
If the authorities are able to gain access to a private key, or some other proof of possession of one end of the connection, can the VPN provider, the network, or the protocol disclose the identity of the source of traffic on the other end?
I'm only making these arguments to point out how nuanced the topic is. The false dichotomy of all-or-nothing for VPNs is silly. this is moving towards an outright ban of VPNs with criminal consequence, and with that all other similar tech (including Tor) and privacy measures go down the toilet. Would you rather have that or propose a nuanced compromise one jurisdiction at a time?
I get this is just PR for Mozilla though.
Could you, my wonderful Western friends, do that again?
I mean, all of it is even on video and largely on YouTube.