LOL ‘Spotify fans’ buch of losers
I showed it something else with cheeks and now I’m on 15 watchlists.
I don’t mind giving my date of birth to all the services I already pay for with credit card but face scanning? That’s just creepy. Fuck off.
Eh, I don’t like it, but its kinda the norm if you wanna ever leave your country. My dad who’s a PRC Citizen doesn’t even have to go to the embassy/consulate anymore for passport renewal, its now done via an app, which of course they’d have to scan your face. I expect other countries to also adopt the same practice, just as they did with mass surveillance. And then it will eventually move from the government services to the private sector.
I mean, I hate to think about it, but we might have mandatory brain chips in the future… 👀
fair point but given the direction US and UK are headed, something legal you do online can be illegal in a couple years with a face attached to that activity. What you mention is also bad (your face being in a face recognition database) but not as bad as that being attached to tons of behavioural data collected about you.
There’s a wide gap between “travelling to another country” and “listening to music.”
I’m not trying to go on holiday to Spotify
Date of birth (with some other details) is kind of a sensitive information in the right hands
You’re right and I’d go a bit further: It’s none of their business what your age even is, they need to know only one bit for their legal duties, over or under age of majority.
Basically what is really needed is a certificate of majority digitally signed by the government bound to some identifier, email address or full name. All this uploading faces or ID card scans is ridiculous.
The invasiveness is the point. Age gating explicit content is just the excuse.
This
given that governments are now starting to make certain protests illegal, definitely not as bad as having your face in a database.
It is 1970-01-01 like me, no?
April 20th, 1969? Anyone?
it’s 2000-01-01 for me
Even using a credit card for something like Spotify is already giving out more information than is needed.
How do you suggest people pay for Spotify?
A normal modern bank card (with 2FA) through a payment provider which obfuscates everything besides the name on your bank account and your bank account number (this will also share the country of your bank if you are in a SEPA region). And since people younger than 18 can use that system, they cannot use that for verification.
Plus, you won’t be at risk of spending money you don’t have, and it doesn’t negatively impact your credit score like even having a credit card does in some countries.
He’s saying if you have a credit card to pay there’s no need to verify (I think)
Edit: nah I’m wrong, cheers
I just hate credit cards since they are like the worst payment method unless you want to dig a financial hole for yourself
Only if you’re bad with money. Nothing wrong with credit cards themselves, and most of them these days are credit/debit cards.
Besides that, credit cards (and chipless debit cards) are unsecure? That receiving credit cards payments costs more in terms of administration costs?
That credit cards are a system designed for consumerism (you see this especially in the US) and that people who grew up with credit cards being the default/more common payment method are often worse with money?
There is a reason why you can only own credit cards if you are an adult, but you can own chipped debit cards earlier.
I am using Spotify Premium. I am using Premium because I want ad free listening.
I have a non-uk account but at the first sight of age verification I will delete my account.
A VPN is a must if you wanna go down this route
Soulseek (and I recommend the Nicotine+ client over the official one) is a fantastic source for all music in all formats, and particularly obscure off-label shit you won’t get anywhere else. You’ll even have some success finding audiobooks there, although this is very hit-and-miss. I wish audiobook pirates would use it more heavily. It’s P2P, like Napster used to be. You’ll have to share something or you’ll get auto-ignored by most users.
RuTracker is a great non-private/non-ratio-monitoring torrent site for music (does require a free account though). I’ve never had a single torrent from there that wasn’t seemingly seeded by a Godzilla’s dick. Obviously it’s in Russian, but there’s really no difficulty navigating around. The only thing you might struggle with is signing up for an account, but just have your favourite translation tool open in another tab 👍
If you don’t mind slow download speeds (from the likes of RapidGator), I enjoy Exystence. It’s a blog that shares link to the latest albums and offers both lossy and lossless versions. Nice RSS subscription to have.
If you do find yourself using RapidGator a lot, don’t waste money buying a sub directly from them, it’s insanely pricey. Instead, get a reseller like Real Debrid, which costs like 10% as much and also covers you for about two-dozen other file hosters. I highly recommend putting as much distance between your credit card and the company as possible, just for safety reasons. Using PaySafeCard is fine, as Real Debrid will never see your details in that case. I don’t have any specific reason to be weary of them, I just don’t trust random/small/hitherto unheard of companies as a rule.
Here’s a reliable, free VPN: https://riseup.net/en/vpn
Remember to donate to them tough - and btw. they are actually running their services for radical left activists, not filesharing… so I guess it would be cool to please not strain their servers too much.
All good advice. I used to find a lot of stuff by entering “site:rutracker.org” behind my query in my favorite search engine - don’t know if that still works but I never needed an account there…
It’s P2P, like Napster used to be. You’ll have to share something or you’ll get auto-ignored by most users.
Oh, reminds me, you should also sort your share. I once got march-horny, added some German marches to my download queue (no judging pls), and then got a PM from the guy sharing them that I should keep my collection in order. And yes, the jerk ignored me.
Also not really p2p, there is a central server. The downloads are p2p.
RuTracker is a great non-private/non-ratio-monitoring torrent site for music
It was ratio-monitoring, that’s how it became great. Just after being banned in Russia they decided that those who try hard enough to even reach there can be trusted to behave.
It’s not only for music, it’s for everything.
I’ve been using RuTracker for years and it usually has all the music I need. And it has more than music, great site.
ah from shady porn sites, like spotify and wikipedia. definitely protect kids from porn there. /s
So I feel like I’m now hearing more successful pushes for censorship through this stuff.
Just last week I learned how Texas has a bill that makes it so if anyone ever invested in green technology that they wouldn’t be allowed
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/24/texas-boycott-companies-fossil-fuels/
That makes no sense, surely everyone has invested in green energy through workplace retirement plans, no?
I saw a post saying /r/period required an age check.
They’re gonna censor as much as they can with this.
Ah, yes. As we all know, periods start at 18, when you’re a legal adult. It’s illegal to have periods before then
Is wikipedia on the list? I see reddit is, lol. We might see an influx soon.
not yet, but the wikimedia foundation has been fighting against it expecting that it would be a class 1 site and require it.
We have to protect wikipedia
Here’s one way to help: https://kiwix.org/en/about-us/#our-story
Download Wikipedia to your own device. If it’s ever blocked or taken down you still have access and can help share information with others.
You can download different versions (e.g. without images) and different languages based on your needs.
There’s other resources available via kiwix as well but I’ve not really explored them to be honest
Does it run a local web server or is it all static files? Is it searchable?
We turn various online educational contents (such as Wikipedia, for example) into ZIM files, and these can be opened by Kiwix even if you have no connectivity whatsoever.
https://flathub.org/apps/org.kiwix.desktop
The ZIM file format is an open file format that stores website content for offline usage.[1] The format is defined by the openZIM project, which also supports an open-source ZIM reader called Kiwix. The format is primarily used to store the contents of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, including articles, full-text search indices and auxiliary files.[2][3]
Age verification is a great success I see. I feel so much sa#er now with this shit in place so kids can’t watch porn…
…on major/regulated sites only.
The worst was watching porn on spotify…
Yeah, like wtf, there’s even more soft core porn in YouTube.
It has absolutely nothing to do with kids watching porn.
Of course.
*so that the government can say kids won’t watch porn.
Rule 1 of computers that everyone who has taught an ICT class learns - if little Timmy wants titties, he finds a way.
In Sweden pretty much anybody has Bank Id, an app which is connected to a bank account and which can function as a valid identification.
App belongs a private company, but it’s still trustworthy and everybody can sign government docs with that.
This is how you should do age verification, through a third party app, not like any site will get your id/picture to just end in their DBs ready to be stolen.
Every government should create an app for the online id, I don’t get why this seems so hard to achieve.
Credit cards should roughly do the same, but both of those aren’t “great” for privacy and really exists to make profiles of adults while pretending to negate the need for parents to parent (the only real way to reduce/prevent harms of kids witnessing age inappropriate media). Your ability to do financial transactions shouldn’t be tied to your speech or content you view.
It’s super trustworthy bro I swear
Do you prefer to give your personal id to any site in the world instead of using the same app which you pay your taxes with?
I’d prefer my internet free…
Like other medias before, internet probably has reached a need for some harder control. I’m not talking about porn, I’m talking about disinformation, bots and soon AI.
Not sure which is the best way but I’ll not give any id or credit card to any randim site in order to see their content.
The effect is still the same these companies are given access to my personal information because the government wants to monitor our activity online
Well, actually anybody is trying to monitor your activity online in this moment. But thinking to what Trumo is doing right now probably I wouldn’t like to do it as well.
The thing is, UK has had age restrictions for years on its mobile platforms. So if you want to look at porn on your phone, you have to unlock it on your subscription. And to do this, they use youre credit card. The thing that they already have. Its easy and swift. And more to the point, only one company has your data. As it stands now, you are supposed to give your personal details to every single company in the world.
Over the past 20 years, how many massive hacks have we seen that leak email addresses and passwords? Are how about all those woman that get their iclouds hacked and their nude photos uploaded? I can think of at least 10 instances in the past 10 years. And now its going to be all of our driving licences, passports, other photo IDs? And the law also requires that they scan ALL private messages. Thats end to end encryption fucked. And god forbid your girlfriend calls you “Daddy” in a sext, you get the cops knocking on your door treating you like Jimmy Saville.
The shit is insane, and people arent anywhere near outraged enough. Its coming to Europe next, if reports are to be believed. So you lot should ALL start kicking up fuck about it now.
My point is you shouldn’t present any id to a random site, it should exists a government app that does it for you.
Same as the passport you show at the border and it should not even show name or picture, is should just say if you are over 18 or not.
People shouldn’t be in the need to show a credit card to watch porn.
God forbid people teach their kids sex/getting off is a drug and can be abused.
Who taught you sex is a drug? As long as words mean their definitions, it’s categorically not. Plus it’s probably kinda harmful to pile on the stigma already surrounding sex by conflating it with drugs and all the stigma that comes with that.
Hopefully I’m wrong, but it’s kinda giving a nofap pseudoscience red flag to me.
Parents definitely should be teaching their kids about this stuff at the appropriate time, but they should stick to the facts.
I mean… it is a rush of dopamine and can become addictive. Same as a videogame or gambling though. Not a drug but can get unhealthy if it leads to maladaptive daily functioning.
First they came for the sex, then they came after the drugs. Now they’re trying to take my rock and roll
Did you know that rock and roll is actually a plate of spaghetti?
Spaghetti = Carbs = Sugar = Addictive Drug
yeah but I lost my poor meatball.
A fellow Bread Harrity super fan I see? I’d like to get all up in that beautiful man’s wet spaghetti 🍝
Lol I bet your comment confused them, that line is originally from that On Top of Spaghetti song and it was repurposed by Bread in his classic number The Meatballs the Meatballs the Meatballs the Meatballs the Meatballs the Meatballs of Liiiife. I love Bread. I’m a huge Breadhead and Bread can get all up in my guts any time.
I’ve heard music is a drug, too. It was all drugs, all along. We probably should’ve known, honestly.
Life is a drug if you hit it right
I thought life was a highway?
Life is the highway you boof
Sex on drugs is awesome…
Is being high without the approval of your partner okay?
I guess that depends very much on your partner and the relationship you have together…
Ha! Fuck. That.
Or you know you could punish parents for not parenting. Like if kids are watching porn and caught and if it’s actually against some law then go after the parents.
It’s not hard to teach parents how to implement a filtering DNS. But no, countries think they need to be the nanny.
“Protecting children” is just the pretext under which governments can sell increased surveillance. The fact that there are more effective ways they could act to protect children, yet governments everywhere continue to push for ID checks and monitoring online activity, shows that the aim isn’t what they say it is.
Don’t forget trying to kill e2e encryption like what the EU wants to do, both to “catch criminals” and “protect the children”
https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/news/article/the-end-of-encryption-as-we-know-it
Protect from what? I mean seriously. Most of us (guys at least) probably saw porn way before we were old enough and most of us probably didn’t end up as rapists or pedophiles. It’s not a good thing by any means, but it really feels like we’re trying harder to keep sexual material from entering their brains than we are trying to keep them fed, clothed, educated, housed, healthy, loved, and physically safe. Of all the things I mentioned the last seven have a monumentally greater affect on their success and well-being as an adult.
I’m convinced sex is used as a leveraging tool to control society.
🌏👨🚀🔫👨🚀
It’s not about kids and never has been, it’s about surveillance of the internet and the death of anonymity.
They could just offer a child protection browser where parents could set to child mode and require adult material offering sites to check if user has something like “attention not 18 year old user” in the headers.
Would be way cheaper, I think.
As a parent, that’s my take as well. If my kids break a law, I should be the one to fix it. Don’t do my parenting for me…
I feel like I’m standing between two really stupid positions here.
On the one hand, just let parents teach their kids is basically a state’s rights argument. A lot of parents won’t teach their kids, so… do we care? Does this matter? We should probably mount a stronger effort then.
On the other hand, we don’t need the government to get involved to stop 9 year olds from seeing titties—we just don’t! Websites the world over have implemented 2-factor-authentication more or less by themselves (
and probably because they want to spy on you). And, no one says the word r----- anymore because if you ever do, a bunch of anti-bullying PSAs will be really annoying about it in your replies.Not every social problem needs to be solved by swinging around Thor’s hammer. We do have other means.
is basically a state’s rights argument
No, it’s a privacy and individual rights argument. I don’t want local governments enforcing it any more than I want national arguments enforcing it.
Kids seeing stuff they shouldn’t isn’t itself a problem, but it can lead to problems. For example, kids learning to make bombs itself isn’t an issue, kids making bombs to hurt others is the issue. Hold parents legally accountable for the latter, not the former.
The furthest I’d be willing to go on this is requiring a payment method (which itself requires sufficient age) to be entered before accessing anything “adult oriented,” and even then I’m not completely sold. But this way the burden of verifying age is restricted to things consumers already need to trust, and parents would need to give or allow their kid access to a payment method.
I think you misunderstand. I’m not saying I’m in favor of this law.
By state’s rights, I’m referring to the way republicans pretend they want the freedom of choice where they are actually just looking for excuses to keep doing what they’re doing. In this way, letting parents choose is functionally identical: parents won’t choose, so it is equivalent to doing nothing.
There has to be a cultural shift for anything to change.
Kids seeing stuff they shouldn’t isn’t itself a problem,
If I’m being perfectly honest, I do not give a shit if 9-year-olds can see titties. Like, my other argument against this government overreach is that I don’t know what problem it’s supposedly solving that can’t just be solved with better sex-ed.
Going against the parents is impopular and would make the parents vote against you in the next elections.
That’s just the pretext they give to justify it. The real reason is surveillance. Now they have a way to confidently tie your accounts to your individual identity. And most of these solutions use third parties which will then sell that data as well, so now anyone can tie your account to you without you ever knowing.
Even if the government is barred from surveilling citizens in these ways, third parties aren’t, and the government can just buy that information, no warrant needed anymore.
And these laws never stop at porn, it’s drugs, LGBTQ information, etc. and they can always easily add additional things later with little fanfare.
This is it. Theyve been going after encrypted messaging apps for a long time, ig they realized theyre not getting anywhere and figured to just hit it head on.
The internet has always circumvented this kind of shit, just look at TPB. The ones who are getting really beaten up by this is the older generations and the ones lacking technical know-how.
Yep. “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
LOL, wrong on that last point! Gen X and Millennials are generally hot shit on tech. It’s the young folks who don’t have a clue if something doesn’t “just work”. Present company excluded of course. :)
Even if your not in the UK you should go back to piracy. Steal from corporations as frequently as possible
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“Normal” people would put in their child’s social security number if it meant $2.99 off their subscription.
While I want to agree. I feel like normal people are still not gonna give a shit.
They won’t give a shit, but they’re also lazy and won’t bother setting up an account that requires ID and photo verification. Too much work. Maybe we’ll even see somewhat of a recurrence of brick and mortar stores that sells music, movies, porn, etc.
Ah the laziness to not even set up an account that needs it. I didn’t consider that. Was more thinking of current users meeting the resistance.
I tend to agree with you in that most people are too addicted to the convenience. But yeah, Balaquina does make a good point. After all, a commonly cited reason as for why the Fediverse won’t rival mainstream sites is that making an account is more complex. Even then, it’s just choosing an instance, which isn’t that hard, it’s just more complicated in comparison to, say, Reddit or Twitter. So following the same logic, it very well could backfire if Spotify raises the barrier of entry (or barrier of continuous entry, for those who already have accounts that they will have to verify).
People underestimate that most “regular” people are a product and exist for something other than humanity.
Every company has learned that any friction to using your site is a bleed of customers. There are a lot of people who will just not use your site if it requires a lengthy validation process. If there was some kind of identity system that sites would integrate with like login.gov, then people would ignore this, but I don’t think the UK has such a thing that every site can use, so a lot of people will not use the site and over time fall to piracy or illegitimate sites.
Imagine if Spotify just opened the camera on your phone once a month when you first open the app that day. Just for like a split second. Theoretically it would be legal, for age verification. 🤮
It would have to get pretty bad before people would be willing to forgo convenience.
That stuff is a nasty drug, very addictive and people will sell everything they got to keep it. They’d rather pay and arm and a leg instead of learning a little technology so they could help themselves.
People will slave themselves to the company that lets them be the most ignorant person possible but still enjoy the fun of technology.
Could you imagine if all mobile devices stopped using face recognition to unlock phones? I’d be willing to bet that a big chunk of people wouldn’t be able to use them at all. I’m surprised that google and apple haven’t started charging extra for that.
I’m not convinced. Look at how Netflix made bank on killing off “sharing is caring.”
People are lazy, and if they want their easy Spotify fix, I fear they’ll hand over their information and move on with their day.
Way easier to arrr!
Im not even in the UK and im still going to cancel due to this. Thanks spotify, fuck you :)
Well I don’t think Spotify wants to do it, but it’s probably a better option than abandoning their UK users.
I assume the other streaming options will do the same in the UK market, so probably better to look at self-hosted alternatives, if you’re into that
What are they supposed to do? Pull away from the UK?
Spotify fans
“Fans”?
that’s like saying Amazon fans really lol
Well… …gestures to apple fans…
Apple fans. Spotify fans. Same shit.
