i'll try to keep this brief so i don't end up parroting several different people, but yeah the ID shit sucks ass.

unfortunately, this goes beyond just a terrible government mandate. this is the effect of the political climate we're in now. some people have already noticed but there have been several puritanical groups taking advantage of the fact sex and nudity are seen as taboo to go on a crusade against nsfw content on the internet. i'm gonna reiterate what someone said on a journal of mine on my gamma persona: the world is going through a 'right resurgence' right now. yep, fascism is the hot new thing now apparently.

like i said, digital dark ages. this has a couple meanings:

• the ID bs is just the beginning. i for one do not trust stripe in the slightest nor do i trust any government for the matter. quite frankly, a lot of payment processors are part of this puritanical crusade as well.
• currently we're at possibly the lowest point of internet history and it keeps barreling downwards. if you have no faith whatsoever in things improving, i don't blame you
• 
• that being said, dark ages don't last forever. yes capitalism really is just an modified version of feudalism from the medieval times, no there aren't enough people protesting these changes unfortunately, no these changes aren't gonna go away anytime soon, but despite all that i still feel like there is a possibility in the far future that everything will be in our favor. it sounds insane and even i'm doubting it, but eventually empires do fall. we just don't know how it'll go out or when, but it's not perpetual. it's just gonna take an absurdly long time.
  • this is not the first time fascism was tried (obviously since we're able to more readily call out the signs) and the first time it eventually collapsed on itself.
  • semi-related but probation was a thing that happened. the u.s tried to ban alcohol and it ended up backfiring so hard that it was eventually undone and it wasn't tried again ever since. even though probation and the ID bs are technically two different situations and it's probably not gonna end the same way, the ID stuff is going to inevitably backfire so hard even the people that support it now aren't gonna feel the same way.

depression

this is the part where i go on a rant about puritanicals and how people just don't understand the internet one bit (including politicians aka the embodiment of both stupid and malicious), but someone did all that for me so i'll just link their journal instead of being a parrot.

you know, it's weird that we're both repeating history and making new history at the same time. in the future, there will be much more historical evidence on hand, especially relating to the internet, for the future generations to refer back to when they have to fight against internet censorship again (because trust me, the government will not give up. they have been doing this for decades). it's just hard to believe that because people are not good at learning history and it seems like the majority are just letting the internet and our rights be trampled like that. i'd be surprised if things even improve or go back to how it was before 2024 elections (or even 2020) when 2028 comes along.

despite me having created explicit stuff and posting it here, i'm in no rush to hand over my ID. like i said, stripe isn't getting anything from me and email in general just isn't secure enough for sensitive documents. (also nothing against ry and the rest of the staff but i'm pretty hesitant on the idea of giving my id to some random people on the internet on the basis that at least i'm not giving it to a megacorp). either i give my id to a company that is 100% going to hand it off to the government to hunt me down or leak it, or i send my id over email where it gets intercepted via man-in-the-middle attack and it gets sold on the dark web. yeah i rather not play that game in the first place :L

you know, i was considering making a th-like website but uhh... fat chance of that happening, political climate not good enough. i think i'll wait a couple decades or forever. maybe i can improve my dev skills in the meantime? i'll go in more detail about that elsewhere since this isn't the right space atm for that.

copium hope?

so anyways here are some optimistic takes for a fucking change:

• if you've been in the sheezy discord for a while, you probably saw ry yap about how he wants to build his own internet and honestly, he's got a point. first things first, internet and web are different things. this is the web. the internet is what the web runs on. other things run on the internet too. anyways we have a prototype of a second web, the tor network. not saying ry should move sheezy to the deep web but what i'm saying is that we do have a framework for the technical bits of a completely independent web to get away from the government.
  • that being said, it is a logistical and costly nightmare to set up and maintain. you will need to make a dedicated browser, a whole new method of connecting to the second web (prob inspired by tor relays and .onion sites), a slew of new tld's, and a community of dedicated hosts running on the F(L)OSS work ethic (unpaid volunteers doing something because they're passionate about it) or at least can't be corrupted to go against the spirit of the second web (and even then good luck figuring out how the hosts can also be above the law as well).
  • do not get me started on the moderation. making a completely independent second web is the digital equivalent of being a pirate sailing the seven seas back in the day. you escaped the monarchy, but you can no longer depend on the services it provided, and you have to be fully self-sufficient because again, the monarchy hates you even more now.
  • idk if we should do a "second web" to escape the government, or if we're better off putting in the effort to actively throw hands with both the government and capitalism as a whole (probably throw hands against capitalism) (either through stuff like peaceful protest/petitioning/voting or.. i think we all know what the second option is) so they never pull this shit again in the long term.
    • i played a hl2 mod called "swelter" that kinda explores a similar concept. it's an alright mod, a bit rough on some edges (esp the fucking driving section holy fuck) next point will be spoilers for the mod so i'll put a tl;dr;pihs (too long; didn't read; plus it has spoilers) afterwards. (also there's hl2 spoilers too)

    • so the entire plot of the mod is that you are a member of the lambda resistance arriving to central asia to meet up with the leader of an anarchist group that had ideological conflicts with the lambda resistance to "make amends". his name is roki btw. so anyways you jump off the train, crack your skull wide open, have brain damage for the rest of the mod, and make your merry way to the anarchist leader. you do some side quests to basically get on the anarchists' good side to make it easier to 'make amends' yada yada go play the mod itself if you care about the middle part so much it has a banger soundtrack too. important to note is that the anarchists are more focused on evading the combine and living in the alps away from their influence, because turns out the suppression field has a limit and you can actually procreate again outside the field. (small reminder: the lambda resistance want everyone to group up and fight the combine, and the anarchists want to hide away from the combine in the alps where their suppression field can't reach the humans) anyways near the end you end up getting sick and collapsing on the ground (gee i wonder why) and roki has to haul your ass to the hospital. your informant (you meet her at the beginning of the mod and she gave you the idea to jump off the train because the train will get intercepted by the rebels) is absolutely pissed and yells at you for forgetting the true mission, and you have a flashback to the briefing. this is the plot twist: the whole point of you going to central asia is to literally kill roki, and "make amends" is an alternate saying because you cannot outright say you're gonna kill him when you get there. anyways you get on the plane, do the most infuriating minigame possible, and later roki reveals that he got word of what your true intentions were. you both jump out of the plane and roki holds you at gunpoint demanding you to tell him your intentions as you whip out your .357 to finally put him in early retirement. then you have to make a choice: kill roki and complete the mission, or spare him and live out in the alps with him away from the combine. it was a challenging decision especially since he was counting down while holding me at gunpo— i shot him. he may have saved me but a mission is a mission, and if we're gonna defeat the combine, then we need all hands on deck, politics be damned. as it turns out from looking through the steam discussions, shooting roki and causing the anarchists to join the lambda resistance was the better option since a) freeman's gonna blow up the citadel a few years after the mod takes place anyways and b) this specific post makes a good point on why roki's idea of hiding in the alps isn't gonna work out in the long run. yes, i really did just yap about a fucking hl2 mod to make a point

    • tl;dr;pihs: hiding out elsewhere away from the government sounds like an attractive idea at first, but eventually they'll find you and you're back to square one, plus you're really just deferring the issue to a later date instead of directly addressing it. bet on unity.
• i mentioned it before but there's a chance the ID stuff will inevitably turn out to be a terrible idea and cause even more of a backlash than now, even if it won't be this year or even this decade.
• look, the political climate sucks now and people are very polarized (which imo was intentional, millionaires and billionaires (and trillionares) did this to scatter people so they can't organize themselves to resist oppression), but honestly, we're aware of this and that's the first step. the next step is to actively do something about it... somehow. the only idea i have atm is to recognize why people are putting themselves in these camps, and really just dig deep into the world of politics. i've been trying to jump at opportunities to have healthy political discussions with other people. when i say "healthy" political discussion, i do not mean whatever the fuck is going on with the u.s and twitter, nor do i mean listening to the same take on repeat for hours. idk how to explain this, but i find it easier to talk politics with people who have a more diverse* worldview (from experience, most of the people that fall under this are from the eu) and are willing to understand everyone's perspectives, including my own.
• unfortunately, i cannot provide an exact answer on what the magical one-click fix is to pretty much undo the online safety act, kick all the conservative puritans out of power forever, and replace capitalism with something that actually works and works far better. i'm still looking for that fix myself 😅 all i can do is just hope that way more people recognize the same things we have been recognizing for a while so it stops feeling so lonely around here.
  • no seriously, i genuinely feel like i have an obligation to fix all these problems myself, like there's a button somewhere out there to push that will magically make all the problems go away and we can finally be at peace. it doesn't matter how much is out of my control, i feel obligated to do something about it as if i had all the authority in the world to do so.
  • yes i know there's activist groups you can donate to (electronic frontier foundation is one, and the first link in this whole journal leads to a website from another one), volunteer organizations to participate in, and boots-on-the-ground activist work i can do myself... which i really should start looking into. i've actually been suggested elsewhere (wouldn't be surprised if it was multiple times) to consider the above so that's like a goal i'm setting for myself..
    • also tibit on the third one: being an activist isn't easy. you basically have the government, all the corporations, and everyone that hates you out to kill you (literally). all i'm saying is if you want to get into whistle-blowing, please be careful and stay safe.

* when i say this i mean like people who are able to offer insight on economics, society, whatever that make me feel a little better (e.g. "the united states seems to be going through the same dark ages period europe went through") or at least give me a new way to approach the world.

end of journal

honestly i have so much to say and like a quarter up to a half of what i have to say have already been said by other people. if it wasn't obvious, i am dissatisfied with these changes to the internet and the state of the world. despite there being outlets to get my voice heard, i unironically feel like no matter what i do i have no impact and this is just yelling in the void (which probably might not be true, anytime i tell myself that there's nothing i can do, it's immediately followed up with the urge to do something about it as if there's actually something i can do about it, even if i actually can't right now for whatever reason (not enough experience or resources))

i'm practically in the same boat with disliking the forced ID garbage the government is doing, and i agree with you all on stripe being untrustworthy (even if ry said he's been using it for a decade) and honestly this terrible political climate + the fact there's puritans from the government and corporations (esp the payment processors) trying to purge the internet from all sides is not helping matters. all i can do is just hold on to hope that eventually, in 5 years or a decade, things finally start improving and our rights aren't being trampled on as much anymore and maybe the garbage internet ID stuff goes away forever.. :T

anyways this journal put me on 5 extra watchlists so just saying if i ever "go missing" for longer than usual or something happens to me after the journal, there's a good chance the government got me lmfao