• @[email protected]
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      1911 months ago

      It seems there’s two big rabbit holes online.

      “Do COVID vaccines have side effects?” leading to thinking abortions should be illegal, atheists are the devil, Trump is your saviour, and that Russia is justified in invading Ukraine.

      “Is capitalism unfair?” leading to tankies, thinking communism would be good for the proles, and thinking Russia is justified in invading Ukraine.

      Almost like Russia is spreading both trails of bullshit.

    • mcgravier
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      911 months ago

      Remember: If you’re not doing anything bad, you have nothing to hide! Cryptocurrencies and VPNs are used only by criminals xD

    • @[email protected]
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      611 months ago

      I know I could Google it, but I’ll ask here, because others may be afraid to ask: what is a tankie? I’m seeing that phrase a lot, but I guess I’m getting old, because I missed the rising of that phrase.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 months ago

        I’d assume it’s someone who supports communism. It’s likely a reference to the infamous Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, when the Chinese government used tanks to suppress protestors in the square.

        The reason it’s prominent on Lemmy is because the main dev of the software used to run Lemmy apparently supports communism.

        It should be noted, though, that that last sentence ultimately doesn’t matter since the the software is open-source. Should the software become an issue, someone else can simply start developing the Lemmy software instead. Additionally, because it’s open-source, everyone can create or join a Lemmy instance instead of using the dev’s own lemmy.ml instance.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 months ago

          Not really, it’s more people who identify as Marxist-Leninists or leftist in general who deny, downplay, or outright praise the genocidal actions of totalitarian regimes like the USSR, the PRC, etc, and/or who today will support countries like Russia in the ukraine-russia conflict (explicitly or more overtly) simply because they hate the US and NATO.

          The origins actually predate Tiananmen square, but I can’t exactly remember if it was people who praised the actions of the USSR during the Prague spring or the Hungarian revolution.

          • @[email protected]
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            211 months ago

            Ah, thanks for the correction. I just knew that Marxist-Leninism was somehow related to Communism, and that Communist China used tanks to suppress the protests in Tiananmen Square.

    • @[email protected]
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      -1111 months ago

      Has already happened with laws requiring identification of users who want to visit porn sites (Utah)

  • Generic_Handel
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    15611 months ago

    The paranoia is starting to ramp up, now with drones and missiles hitting inside Russia.

    My guess is they will crack down hard on anyone trying to talk about the actual reality of what’s going on vs the party line.

  • Lettuce eat lettuce
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    11611 months ago

    A classic move by authoritarian tyrants, suppress the spread of information, outlaw the free exchange of ideas.

    This is why Tor and other privacy preserving technology is so important. People’s lives and wellbeing depend on them. We must not forget there are people in this world who are being harassed, tortured, and killed because they dare to question their government, dare to criticize their leaders, dare to think for themselves.

    “While the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power.” -V for Vendetta

    • mcgravier
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      511 months ago

      Actually this isn’t much different from extreme control over financial transactions in civilzed parts of the world. Rather it’s just natural extension of that control, which is scary

  • @[email protected]
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    11 months ago

    Afraid of a civilian uprising. Also RIP classic warez “.ru” pages like old-game.

    • Endorkend
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      2411 months ago

      Bwah, plenty of them have alternative domains and hosting not in Russia.

      • @[email protected]
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        511 months ago

        Old-game has a fuck ton of ancient abandonware and not so abandoned but still ancient warez.

  • @masterairmagic
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    3811 months ago

    I expect Western governments are looking at this and saying “gee, I wish we had that”.

  • Bappity
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    3411 months ago

    welp. they have to catch up with north korea eventually

    • tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺
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      2611 months ago

      But you see, it is only bad if it is done by authoritarian regimes, but we are states of law and democracy, so there is nothing bad about it. And we are states of law because trust me bro

      -European conservatives and “social democrats”

      • Echo Dot
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        1811 months ago

        The UK conservatives aren’t even trying to hide it anymore. They have now just gone full on dictatorship energy.

        Fortunately they are a bunch of incompetents who fight amongst themselves like a sack of cats. Otherwise they might actually represent threat.

        • @[email protected]
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          1211 months ago

          While I agree with your distaste, I hope you remain wary. Their incompetence seems to have the outcome of enriching them and their sponsors. Can you still attribute incompetence when they are benefitting?

          Regarding dictatorship, the conservatives right now are setting up a lot of things like anti-protest laws that seem toothless because they haven’t been used to the fullest extent, but the groundwork is there. It won’t take long (likely one election cycle) and I’m sure we’ll see them use it in the fullest extent.

        • @[email protected]
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          511 months ago

          Becareful that’s what everyone in the US thought, and then we got Trump and the Q brigade taking down our democracy.

    • @[email protected]
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      2411 months ago

      Why? If anything the EU tends towards pro-privacy/anti-authoritarianism and has mostly avoided this kind of security theater seen in other countries.

    • @[email protected]
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      1911 months ago

      It will happen first in the USA, UK and Australia before all the EU countries approve such bullshit.

      • Echo Dot
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        811 months ago

        I don’t understand why we’re constantly told that Russia and China are the biggest threats to democracy, because we keep stealing their ideas.

  • TwoGems
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    2611 months ago

    Republicans would love the freedumb of living in Russia

  • @[email protected]
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    11 months ago

    That’s gonna truly suck. VK has good videos unavailable elsewhere. I’ve had an account there for a long time. I wonder what that’ll mean for access to rutracker. edit: whois says rutracker is registered in the Bahamas :)

  • @[email protected]
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    2111 months ago

    Man, this makes me rethink my whole idea of online anonymity.

    There’s a lot of reasons why requiring identity verification could be a good thing, but holy shit now I realize how quickly something like that could slip into authoritarianism.

    I still think we need a identity verification service for things like online games and social media (to thwart ban evasion), but it has to be something decentralized.

    • mcgravier
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      611 months ago

      It doesn’t have to be decentralized, it has to be anonymous. You want to have an online identity in the number of one per citizen, but not tied to the real identities.

      There’s a way to do this by using regular digital ID and anonymizing it with zero-knowledge cryptography, but AFAIK noone tried this yet

      • @[email protected]
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        611 months ago

        It may need to be in some way decetralized though, even if some kind of certification authority needs to be in some coherent trust chain.

        It makes me think of inrupt solid, although it’s not quite the same.

        Also I seem to remember some dutch (or used in there) online idenity management infrastructure which allows to make some authorithative claims without getting entire identity revealed. Sadly I can not find it now.

      • @Potato
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        411 months ago

        Eh, then if your online ID is compromised you’re in trouble. Can’t just burn it and start over.

    • @[email protected]
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      -1611 months ago

      🤔 A blockchain with a private key tied to your palm print would work. It would guarantee proving uniqueness in a way that no human could differentiate who is what, only the blockchain itself could, and because palm prints are extremely difficult for other people to fake, it would guarantee the ability for websites to actually enforce rules in a meaningful way.

      • @[email protected]
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        1611 months ago

        While decentralized identity verification is a good idea, this approach is not.

        1. Your identity would be permanently compromised as soon as your palm print is stolen. It can also be stolen without you noticing, unlike well-kept passwords. Much less secure than, e.g., a memorable 30 character password.
        2. People lose parts of their palm print all the time. Touching a cast iron pan for a second shouldn’t lock you out of your accounts for a month.
        3. This requires quantizing the human palm print in a way that is not currently possible. Hashing algorithms require the “butterfly effect” to be effective at hiding the private key, meaning a small change in inputs should result in a large change in output. This is a problem for palm prints, where you’re unlikely to make the exact same measurements repeatedly.
        • @[email protected]
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          -311 months ago

          Palm prints and fingerprints are actually produced at the absolute lowest levels of the skin so you’d have to fry your hand all the way to the meat to permanently damage your prints. Otherwise it’ll regenerate fine with time. The biggest risks to your fingerprints is actually aging.

          Not that I think basing such stuff on prints are a good idea, but I just wanted to clarify the resilience of them.

          • @[email protected]
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            11 months ago

            People working in citrus orchards are known to temporarily lose their prints. Imagine having no digital access for over a month. It’s a huge contingent of people.

            Other people are known to lose limbs.🤷‍♂️

            Whatever we think of, it’s got to be some 3 or 4 possible systems to cover 99.9% of the cases. And then you’re still left with a lot of marginalized edge cases; and a system that can be exploited by creating multiple disconnected identities using the different systems in isolation.

            I hope I’m wrong and it’s just my own limitations in creativity, but I don’t see a light at the end of this tunnel.

            • @[email protected]
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              111 months ago

              Completely agree, I was just addressing the durability of prints as it was misrepresented in OPs comment. Burning yourself on a cast iron (or working with citrus and the like) would at most give you temporary problems with scanning the prints. But a severed finger is definitely impossible to read. For most people the problem though first occurs with aging which affects the elasticity of the skin, making prints hard to read.

          • @[email protected]
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            11 months ago

            By “for a month” I meant to imply that it will grow back. it’s not very common for people to permanently lose their prints, but we have to consider things like cuts and burns here as well. You won’t be able to verify your identity through a system like this until it regrows, which is an obvious problem.

  • @[email protected]
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    1911 months ago

    Piracy is allowed there anyway since the war the will not punish it, they even promote it with an emergent law

    • @[email protected]
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      2411 months ago

      This particular law is not meant to discourage piracy. But actually, for an authoritarian state, it’s better if everyone is both breaking the law and if they can easily track those people doing so. That means they can simply arrest anyone under the pretense of legitimate law enforcement.

      • @[email protected]
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        511 months ago

        piracy is not discouraged, because with games and such it helps easily to escape the war and have easy fun without paying.

  • Henry
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    1311 months ago

    Basically what China has done.

  • Max_Power
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    1011 months ago

    Are there identities of russian Babushkas for sale anywhere?

    /s but not really