this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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Showerthoughts
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Kinda with you on that. It's been a long time since I've been a kid (born in '85) but looking back, if the internet of the '90s were like it is today, I do not think it would have been OK for me to access it. Everything changed. It's a lot more dangerous than it ever used to be. There used to be a much more robust barrier between online and real life. Whatever happened on the internet never mattered until suddenly shit got as real as a heart attack. There was a time when the internet didn't have a body count. Isn't that fucking nuts? Once upon a time, death threats on the internet were nothing but empty words spat by impotent children who couldn't bring it about. NOW? You can get straight up fucking murdered by someone who gets mad enough on the internet because anger is a motivator and those with the motivation can doxx just about anyone, and it's a hair's breadth away from swatting them, or stalking them down and doing the deed with their bare hands.
I really don't want this to be like how the boomers climbed into prosperity and then pulled the ladder up behind them so hardly anyone else will ever have half a hope of ever affording a house ever again or something... but... the barriers to entry on cyberspace need to be reinforced. Badly. I'm no fan of all the rest of the fascistic shit in Ender's Game or the rest of its author's backward barbaric dogshit rhetoric, but one thing it might've gotten right was envisioning a version of a global communications network where only LICENSED ADULTS have access.
I don't think centralized control would go over well because that would be ripe for authoritarian abuse... but maybe some sort of pseudonymous situation where the identity you create online is supposed to be separate from your real self, albeit with a kind of reputation system for rules enforcement so if someone is engaging in socially deleterious behavior they can potentially be saddled with a ruined reputation as a deterrent. Maybe you can create a new identity, but you'd have to build your reputation from scratch, and if people can prove that you're associated with another extant account all its reputational baggage can get lumped onto your new one in an instant. The point being: to incentivize discretion and decorum.
I dunno. Just spitballing.