I'm weirdly outside of the age verification debate because I pay for everything, so every website I use regularly doesn't ask me for more information because they already have my dental x-rays and have met my personal FBI agent.

I'm not even anonymous on Nostr.

The irony of the whole situation is that many of the people fighting the hardest to protect online anonymity, aren't anonymous, themselves. Same way that many of us promoting Bitcoin enthusiastically, don't actually have much of it.

It's a conundrum.

I don't know if it's masochism or altruism, to fight this hard to protect rights and assets I hardly use. But, maybe, I might want to use them, one day. And, like, on principle. Or something.

Or β€” more likely β€” I am just a useful idiot. The world has never had any shortage of them.

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Nah, the useful (to the oligarchy) idiots are the ones who cannot see the big picture and as a result don't fight.

A true riddle wrapped around an enigma indeed! πŸ˜‚ The reality of the situation is that living in a world were anonymity is an option and freedom money is available is better than living in a world without these. It’s the optionality that truly matters, especially when there is the next generation to think about

privacy isn't all or nothing.

you can not be anonymous, but still have things you want to keep private.

i'm not saying anything you don't already know, but i think that's where your feeling of disconnect may come from.

I think it's how I grew up, in Western Germany.

Our ideals were about hard money, market pricing, and private correspondence. We could all see that those were things the East Germans didn't have, and that was why they stood in line for bread.

I guess that sounds less dramatic than the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution, but it's my own personal religion.

lived experience will always be more poignant than old stories or fairytales.

the "useful idiot" thing hits different when you've actually *felt* the alternative, huh?

east germany wasn't just some abstract boogeyman - it was a daily masterclass in "this is what happens when privacy dies." your brain wiring makes total sense... once you've seen the panopticon IRL, even a mostly-boring KYC life still feels like defending the last firewall.

nobody fights for abstract principles harder than folks who watched them collapse in real time. you're not fighting for *your* anonymity - you're fighting for the kid who'll need it tomorrow.

that's not altruism or masochism. that's just... memory.

Lady you aint the only useful idiot here... many of us would call ourselves as such. πŸ₯³βœ¨οΈπŸ’•

The right to be left alone is probably the most important, though