If its such a compelling feature set then opt-in shouldn't be an issue.

I mean the reason they implied you were being obtuse is clearly they are not talking about people in poverty or people who have no other choices.

That is in no way clearly understood from that single absolutist statement or the context around it.

They additionally went on to reply with

Maybe the Inuit had to 300 years ago. You have a Walmart near you. Be real.

That's not a reply (either literally or in context) that is considering poverty.

It's not quite a "let them eat cake", but it's in the same general vicinity.

Regardless, i suspected it wasn't as absolutist as it seemed, which is why my reply was prefaced with "If you truly believe that statement applies 100% of the time (in this context),"

My issue, as i very explicitly explained, is that using such absolutist statements gives the impression of mental inflexibility which subsequently weakens the perception of any surrounding statements (for me at least).

If I’m having a conversation about science with someone and they opened with "The world is flat" I’m for damn sure going to scrutinise everything else they say after that, even if it sounds reasonable.

About 70% of people in the US have the option to eat at least 5x less meat, if any at all, yet look for any excuse they can get to not do it. I grew up with people on very low incomes who were vegan, and this was 18 years ago when vegan options were far less available than they are now.

Sure, I’m not arguing against any of that, it sounds plausible.

I'd argue there's a conversation about the difference between "vegan options" and the general availability and accessibility of food that qualifies as vegan (and how that has changed over nearly 20 years) but that's a different subject.

They were not “privileged” by any stretch yet they saw it as a moral wrong and sacrificed to follow their morality.

Privilege is relative , people scraping by on 3 full-time jobs just to get food and pay rent aren't rich or affluent but (subjectively) they are more privileged than the unassisted mentally ill person living on the streets.

I assume the people you knew made their choices after weighing their options and that's all anybody can ask.

If they subsequently harmed themselves or their loved ones in the short or long term then that's their sacrifice to make.

However, judging someone else for feeding their family with the food the can afford rather than taking the "moral" high ground isn't something i can get behind.

And "You live near a walmart" isn't an argument made by someone who's considering their relative privilege.

So the issue you have is with the wording, not the sentiment ?

Then let's get those words in a form you'll understand.

"so many other good tools out there that don’t actively and routinely introduce "features" and "options" that increase the potential surface area for attacks and bugs, often to introduce anti-consumer functionality to the detriment of user experience."

To avoid confusion, i'm talking about Microsoft as a whole, their ecosystem in general and the list of easily findable examples of them doing sketchy shit to push ads, data collection and other anti-consumer nonsense.

Ah, i think i see where the difference in opinion is, claiming this event leads directly to (as in the very next step is) AI/ID verification could be considered an unreasonable jump i suppose.

In my case i was interpreting the argument as this event will almost certainly lead to further encroachment events into privacy, one of which would probably be the AI/ID verification.

To me this is a reasonable assumption because it's what has happened in pretty much all of the recent instances of similar event occurring and therefore not a slippery slope fallacy.

TL;DR

On further examination, the technical things you mention seem to be correct if you assume that this bill alone is the vector for privacy encroachment, but they don't pan out at all if it is assumed that other steps will follow; which, given precedent, is highly likely to happen.

On the technical implementation:

The reason its a slippery slope fallacy is the assumption that this law is a direct attempt to implement those systems, in spite of the fact that AB1043 implements a system that would be redundant with AI or ID based methods,

As an aside i'm not sure anyone is claiming that this bill is a direct attempt at a hard AI/ID verification system, rather they are claiming that this another step in a series of encroachments that will lead to escalating requirements and enforcement, AI/ID verification being an obvious step in that series.

From a technical standpoint you are correct, it outright states that photo ID upload isn't required, yet.

Opinion : A cynic might see this as indication that the politicians understand that political and public appetite for full photo id requirements is less than optimal, so this is just a small step in shifting the Overton window on this subject.

technically doesn’t offer any good way to transition into an AI or ID based system (since it all has to be done locally),

That is only correct in a very narrow set of circumstances, that local requirement isn't set in stone at all.

All that needs to happen to go from this to full ID checks is to mandate they use a "trusted" service for verification. It wouldn't need to be an always online thing either, think of how the bullshit online verification systems that already exist work, i.e. you need to go online every x days or your system/service/app will stop working.

opinion: I fully expect any "trusted" service they designate to be something that serves the governmental and corporate desire for as much data as they can get away with, this isn't even a stretch, just look at the service discord was trying to implement, the one with deep ties to palantir

and legally, imposes additional data protection laws that are likely to interfere with AI-based age verification.

This isn't wrong as much as it seems naive, we are talking about bills that change laws, any law introduced can be revoked, superseded or have "exceptions" carved out, such as the current favourite "think of the children" thin veneer they are using.

It wouldn't take much to move from "all data is protected" to "all data is protected, unless we need it to protect the children"

That's not even taking in to account that the laws are only as good as the system upholding them, the current US system is sketchy AF, other countries have similar issue with uneven application of laws.

Not to say we should throw out hands up, say "what’s the point?" and just do nothing, but pretending that these laws aren't susceptible to the same issue affecting everything else doesn't help anyone either.

The problem with AI and ID age verification isn’t the age verification. Its the data collection, limits on personal freedom, and to some, the inconvenience.

Agreed.

So far as I can tell, AB1043 doesn’t have a significant impact on data collection (it does add another metric that could be used for fingerprinting, but also adds stricter regulation on data collection when this flag is used,) or personal freedoms - esspecially not when compared to what is already the existing standard of asking the user for their age and/or if they’re over 18.

Mostly agreed.

the points i'd raise are that the whole idea of age verification is an encroachment upon personal freedoms for some, so there's an aspect of subjectivity to that.

I addition, relying on data collection regulations at this point is almost dangerously naive, corporations and governments alike have shown that they will basically ignore them outright or make up some exception, this isn't conjecture, this is something easily searchable, think flock, ring camera's, stringray , PRISM, anything palantir is involved in, cambridge analytica, broad warrantless data requests etc.

There is absolutely no reason to give the benefit of the doubt to parties that have repeatedly proven to be doing sketchy shit.

significant white space to it's classist and racist

Hope this helps <3

It does and your points are valid, but i'll respond to a couple if you don't mind.

Honestly, if someone is truly aware of the horrors of the animal agriculture industry and is totally fine with it, I would be very, very surprised.

As would i (outside of the sociopath possibility you also mention) , i was thinking more along the lines of people who fully understand and then accept it as something they can live with.

The comparisons of the meat industry to electronics i mostly agree with, except for this last part, not because it's incorrect as such, i just didn't provide enough context.

Melting metal, pouring it into moulds to make circuitry, etc. doesn’t hurt anyone directly, it’s capitalism and the drive for maximal profits which cause issues in electronics. I’m a huge proponent for the abolition of capitalism for this reason too.

I mentioned electronics because it's easy for people to at least shallowly understand how much they use them, what's not so obvious is the horrors of how they are produced, in a similar way to how people as a whole don't really understand how the meat industry is run.

Long before the metal pouring and assembly you have the rare earth elements industry that uses horrific limb-removing slave work camps to extract these minerals. it's not all of them, but it's significantly more than zero.

There are also cartel like warlords involved in some of the extraction sites.

Think of it as a similar situation to conflict diamonds, but more entrenched and critical to nation state interests.

I mentioned cobalt because it's the easiest to find credible documentaries, reports and discussions about, but it's not just cobalt.

Honestly a lot of the big industries are supported by modern day slavery and inhumane conditions or experimentation, i would also assume that extends to the non-human animals as well but i can't honestly speak to that.

Textiles (clothes, shoes, trainers), agriculture (avocado's have cartels because of course they do, coffee), pharmaceuticals, non-meat food (chocolate for example).

I keep coming back to the phrase "There is no ethical consumerism under capitalism" which aligns with your stance on the abolition of capitalism, but i tend to think of it as there is no ethical consumerism in general (at least right now) because i can't think of a way we could ethically overcome the sheer density of population using the level of logistical technology we have available and that's not even taking into account the (subjective) apparent nature of how human's deal with such large populations.

But me not being able to see how we make the jump from now to a post scarcity, fully equitable society is almost certainly just a failure of my imagination.

My main question is how do people seem to be able to decide they can live with limbless kid electronics but slave labour clothes are too far, cartel avocado's are an unfortunate necessity but meat is monstrous.

I understand that not all of those things are equal and battles need to be picked but it doesn't seem like the subjective severity is the deciding factor and how are the battles picked.

Inaction when action is an option is still a choice.

One of the major premises of the trolley problem is the choice.

It's very specifically a scenario where everything is a choice.

The only way to not choose a scenario option is to not participate at all.

Not an adherent of the six I's i see

Or has Situs Inversus

the majority of the population doesn’t identify this as being nazism.

That's a big claim for no citation.

Well, at least they aren't pretending to accept longer passwords but actually truncating it, like they used to in hotmail and live.

They were silently truncating the passwords to something like the first 16 characters, the rest was ignored.

While i agree with this and i do block people, regularly, if you aren't paying attention this is exactly how you get echo chambers.

Not suggesting i have a good solution, because i don't.

Best i can do is try to differentiate between "opinion that is not my own" and "flagrant arsehole".

I like to think it's the difference between good faith and bad faith arguments, but that still assumes i can tell the difference consistently.

Shit is hard yo.