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
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
Lmao Russia moment.
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.
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.
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
