Imagine if Experian announced that you need to pay $11.99/mo to make your credit report secure and to stop your identity from being stolen and allow you to do something about it if it was. Sound familiar?
The only thing that’s going to stop every random company you have an account with from trying to extort a fee just to make sure an account is actually you is going to be regulation.
Or, you can just leave them. HN is currently my only social media account. And to be honest I don't miss any of the others even though they were at times useful they are also a huge distraction and time sink. My productivity has absolutely jumped up since ditching them. As soon as you start to be treated like a captive audience on account of the social graph and the networking effects it is high time to remind the petty billionaires that in the end they are rich by the grace of their users and that what goes up can very well be brought down again.
Was talking to a lawyer recently (making a will; I'm old), and he saw my email address was firstname@lastname.net (my lastname is almost globally unique), and he asked if I had bought up "the rest" i.e. lastname.com, .org, .com.au, .org.au, .net.au, .id. I told him my paranoia had met it's match in my laziness, and he looked at me like I was an idiot about to have his identity stolen.
PSA: Having a will is not just if you are old. Every one should have one and if your affairs are straight forward you may be able to it yourself with a kit.
Makes things easier for when you're gone. You'll probably have some next of kin, even if you're on bad terms with them.
If you die without a will, the state ends up determining what happens with your possessions. That usually means that they'll go down a list of relatives and ask them "hey, this person died, do you want to inherit their belongings". If they find absolutely nobody (this happens a lot with people that die with a lot of debt, since you also inherit the debt), the will instead falls to the state.
The order makes some sense (first is spouse, then kids, then siblings, then direct family and finally extended family), but it's of course something left up to the present state of the law and depending on how that might change, something could occur you're not happy with.
One specific example of this (albeit not for your case) is in the event you're gay; gay people often had to prepare their will specifically because the state wouldn't acknowledge them as the spouse (this was even with the "civil arrangements"), so the state would just skip over their spouse for inheritance and relinquish stuff to their family instead.
This doesn't apply of course if you're not married, but it's one simple example in how that default order might have some asterisks that are easily avoidable if you just have a will.
Basically it's useful to have one to avoid a lot of complications in the event of an untimely death (which can happen for all sorts of reasons).
You do not necessarily have to inherit the debt, even if you don't know about it beforehand. Where I live that is called 'accepting an inheritance beneficially', it may have a different legal term where you live. The essence is that you only accept the inheritance if, and only if it brings you a net benefit and otherwise you reject it. Usually this costs a few units of your local currency to arrange.
Note that all this stuff can get very complex in a hurry especially when taxes are involved (and they usually are) so you should definitely hire the help of a professional when dealing with this for anything exceeding a few thousand.
> Makes things easier for when you're gone. ... even if you're on bad terms with them.
Thanks for your detailed answer. You haven't convinced me it is important either way, but I at least know now that I havent missed something important.
It seems like you've only made the case for people who don't like the standard list of inheritors or for gay people, not everyone like you mentioned before.
Regardless, if you like the standard list of inheritors, it's still worth writing it down. That means that the executor of your will knows that that is the order you prefer. Laws can be changed at any point and it could say, be changed in order to prioritize your parents over your siblings; if you don't care at all about what happens with your belongings after your death, yeah fair, there's nothing I could do to convince you, but for anyone else that's worth taking into account. Having it explicitly spelled out in your will ensures that that doesn't change, even if the law does.
Gay people was just an example of what might seem sensible on paper could still have a strange asterisk attached to it.
If you went to the trouble to accumulate resources in life you might find it interesting to give some of it to your friends. If anything, I could see the argument that someone doesn't really need a will if one has kids or a spouse as they would get everything by default anyway, and the will us just a way of carving it apart, whether for tax reasons or to prevent infighting... but if you don't have family then without a will your belongings are essentially forfeit :(. I definitely have people in my life whom I want to receive my assets when I die (though I also haven't taken the time to make a will, despite it coming up weirdly often... I think the universe might be hinting at me).
If you're married then pretty much everything goes to the spouse by default. Kids, likewise, are usually a default inheritor as well. Can get messy if you have a bunch of kids, but the default is usually an even split.
But what happens if you don't have a spouse or kids? Do you want that cash to go to a charity? To your shitty relative who you don't like? You gotta make it explicit.
That is a pretty good argument for having a will, indeed.
For me personally, I am not attached to the concept of cash/assets enough to really care what happens with excess assets after I am gone.
It is something entirely different if you have offspring, and want to pass accumulated assets to them, I get that. However, given how much money was printed recently, all the cash I leave behind might as well be burnt, I really dont care either way. If I have friends in need, I might as well pass some of it on to them before I go.
Because otherwise you may find that your estate goes to the state, when in fact you want it to go somewhere else. Subject to the inheritance rules in your legal arena, which can vary considerably.
> he looked at me like I was an idiot about to have his identity stolen
I won't call you an idiot, but I will say you're significantly increasing the risk of social engineering. I had a vanity domain email and someone use another TLD and tried to switch my bank accounts using it. The bank customer service agents are very willing to believe in the equality and authenticity @lastname.com and @lastname.net. If you go to a HN post on vanity email, there are countless stories about customer service agents not understanding how email addresses work.
I still use the vanity email, but you just have to think about the phish-ability of it. I typically use login@domain.com or similar for logins, instead of first@domain, or first.last@domain. It is not guessable if someone knows my name, while being easy enough for me to remember and read out on the phone or say to a person.
I do own (or have a family member buy) most of the common lastname.tld's that exist. I'm just hoping that the confusion of uncommon tld's are a good defense. Eg. I hope CS agent won't easily believe login@vineyardmike.com should be login@vineyardmike.club or .wiki
I do like your idea of trying to trademark the name (and I considered it too) but my name is common enough (and a word in a European language) that others have tried already, and its already in use with a handful of businesses across the world.
The difference is that there can only be one owner of JohnSmith.com in the ICANN WHOIS database but there can be millions of John Smith on META platforms.
Yes, I accept that. I'm personally lucky that all the people alive with my surname in the world are related at the great-grandparent level. There's less than a handful with my firstname.
I briefly looked into trademarking my personal name (legal to do in Australia) but its cost prohibitive (vs verifying for multiple online platforms).
I even thought briefly about legally changing my name to include a new middle-name that was my PGP short key id. But Australia does not permit the use of numeric symbols in names. (Though I guess you could shift the hex string by 10 so 0-F maps to A-P. That wouldn't break the rules.)
Those are all interesting things you could do, but in what way would they help when we’re talking about the Meta platform? We’re considering the case where someone is actively choosing to use a name that’s not their own for some reason, and if that reason required impersonation they’d just make an account using your publicly available PGP middle name as well.
But most people would not be typing john@smith.net or any of the variants you mentioned into their browser address. My point still stands that domain names have a completely different set of constraints.
By now it’s become pretty clear that it’s not possible to preemptively defend against this. There are a bazillion gTLDs and on large social media sites display names are not unique.
It’s not just social media either. I remember reading something a few years ago recommending that you create an IRS online account to prevent someone else from fraudulently creating one on your behalf to steal tax returns. :/
Yes, that is very true. But it is a risk I'll have to take. But a good reminder to check if there are still 'dangling pointers' to old social media accounts.
I don’t think any of this really matters. You can just not have a Facebook account, almost none of us are in positions to defend our social status or prevent social engineering on Facebook. If you’re famous, that’s one thing, but there’s no point if you’re an average person.
Can't you just threaten to sue if they don't delete it? In the EU one could probably use the GDPR to lawfully take down a fake account. In France there's a right to one's image law that can also be used.
By that definition, email would then fall into the "social media" category, along with letters, postcards, telegrams, telephone calls, dinner parties etc.
There are three I just cannot get rid off it seems: WhatsApp, Youtube (incl. Youtube Music) and HN. And Youtube is becoming such a pain lately, with all those crap channel recommendations and whatnot, that I am sometimes considering subscribing outside of Youtube, e.g. Patreon or so, to the one or two channels I regularly whatch. Which would leave Youtube Music and Whatsapp, both of which are just too convinient for the time being...
What the fuck is deleteme. "Please pay us to have you removed for 1 year". And then what? They'll use all the info I provided to add me back? Lol, no. I'll end up worse than I started. And also that's a shit ton of money.
Edit: Looks like they also publish guides on how to do it yourself, that's actually kind of helpful. I guess the high price is to have someone continually checking and submitting removal requests on your behalf.
DeleteMe collects your information then does searches for that info against the databases that power all the online "people search" websites. If there are hits, they pay to have them removed.
If you don't renew your account, they just delete your data.
LIving in this capitalism that we are in has warped us as humans. People no longer do good shit, they figure out some grift that optimises some crap in such a way that makes them rich and uses marketing to make it seem like it benefits people. How long must this shit go on.
Funnily enough I was saying the same thing tonight. Here in the UK I think it became all out screw people over when Margret Thatcher and the City of London had their 1980's yuppie boom.
I under stand why the older generation in the former Soviet Union harp back to the good old days of the soviet union, life was simpler and more stable for many people.
Now we have to navigate recessions about about 7-10years, have so many financial products in order to not get screwed over because the state is no longer up to the job. Life has become a bit of a free for all, and the extent and deviousness of some people to get money or manipulate people is off the scale imo.
I also understand why we had to come off the gold standard, if we were every really on it, because it was/is arguably holding back the economy and innovation, so with fiat its easier to print money and keep the plates spinning, but in a global world, 3rd world country's have the cost advantage which is why so much is offshored to 3rd world countrys. When looking at central bank digital currency, the fact that digital money can be expired unless its spent, I think is a poor attempt to reduce the risk of boom and bust, good times and recessions. It also shows how money is being used by govt's and central banks to manipulate people like holding a carrot out in front of a donkey.
You're either too young or you were living in the West during the USSR years. I think you should watch Adam Curtis' Hypernormalisation documentary. It equally applies to the USSR and today's Western world.
> Here in the UK I think it became all out screw people over when Margret Thatcher and the City of London had their 1980's yuppie boom.
The one constant in all of it is the dehumanizing and scapegoating of the hated "others". It's not a new thing either, it's been pretty well documented from our earliest history. I would have thought The United Kingdom has a long tradition of doing just that, stretching way back before 1980, before the industrial revolution, even before feudalism.
The motivations of Satan in the Bible are very clear, so scapegoating or false demonizing isn't happening.
Religions are not by nature inherently sexist, see veneration toward the Mother Mary or toward Mahadevi. But there are countless examples.
All religions (a.k.a governments) that have lasted the test of time put men and women in a complementary position, as opposed to the modern state-mandated one, which actually is incredibly sexist, and seeks to scapegoat and demonize men in a frantic and irrational way.
>The motivations of Satan in the Bible are very clear, so scapegoating or false demonizing isn't happening.
Or is Satan a representation of the health of the individual and knowledge obtained by crypto haters? For example, the missionary's have a position which is highly recommended to increase histidine and histamine. That can put people especially teenage boys in awkward situations.
Or we could look at the garden of eden and the apple, knowing the effect the ursolic acid found in fruit peel (Victorian Xmas Pudding) like apple skin and some herbs can have on the body. We know about health effects of old style apples, not necessarily the new breeds found in food malls and stores, because of old proverbs like the Pembrokeshire Proverb.
>Religions are not by nature inherently sexist
Who are you trying to kid? Just look at their hierarchical structure and history of employment and storytelling. I'll tell you know the Roman Catholic church is massively sexist, because AFAIK there has never been a female pope! Ergo Catholics are sexist if not overtly, certainly subconsciously with their beliefs. Same goes for a lot of other religions.
> see veneration toward the Mother Mary
Ah yes, the immaculate conception, so putting aside how the immaculate conception was inspected, I think the Japanese have a word pertaining to this form of unusual insemination, its called bukkakeru.
> opposed to the modern state-mandated one, which actually is incredibly sexist, and seeks to scapegoat and demonize men in a frantic and irrational way.
I think the modern state-mandated one are trying to address the sexism in society, which is a great form of psychological warfare against males, which the military will love because they are always looking to undermine insurgents and terrorists, whilst not recognising their own actions are radicalising individuals in society.
I feel the same way. The sad thing is when companies do something horrible and people just say "What do you expect them to do? they exist to make money!" Like it's some impossibility to make money and treat people with decency.
Given the climate crises, the failure to distribute covid vaccines, mass hunger, and mass homelessness, it is hard to believe that capitalism has proven anything except its ability to prevent mass revolts.
I'll give you climate change, but the rest is a huge stretch. Go back at any time in human history and you'd be hard pressed to say they were better off under authoritarianism, monarchy, or feudalism.
The climate crisis and the sixth extinction is unfortunately the only issue that really matters from a historical point of view.
For two centuries, we have had exponentially increasing consumption, exponentially increasing production, and exponentially increasing waste.
Unbounded exponential growth is impossible in a finite planet. But capitalism requires unlimited exponential growth to function - "return on investment" is literally exponentiation.
Unfortunately, there is a multi decade lag between the causes and the effects.
Already, disaster is baked into the amount of carbon dioxide we have pumped into the atmosphere, and we aren't turning around. There are trillions of dollars of commitments for fossil fuel generation plants that will be still operating in 30 years and more.
The idea that people today will give up their standard of living so that their grand children will not experience catastrophe turns out to be completely unreasonable. No one will ever give up their standard of living. Technology will continue to advance, and this will continue to accelerate the growth of resource consumption and waste production.
> authoritarianism, monarchy, or feudalism.
I too find those systems enraging and unfair, but future historians will say, "They did not decimate the biosphere - only capitalism did that."
I am no supporter of the USSR nor of planned economies in general, but at no point were rulers in the communist party of the Soviet Union informed by their scientists of the effects of increased emissions, and then decided to double down on fossil fuel, and engage in a mass disinformation campaign to keep increasing pollution at the cost of our climate. I’m sure they would have, but they’re government collapsed before they were able, so, so far the climate crisis is a uniquely capitalist problem.
As for Poland, it is thoroughly a capitalist country. All of the largest coal mining companies and energy companies there are publicly traded (although some, including PGE is majority [58%] owned by the state). It is safe to say that Poland’s continuing carbon emissions are more then happy to continue under a capitalist rule.
> I am no supporter of the USSR nor of planned economies in general, but at no point were rulers in the communist party of the Soviet Union informed by their scientists of the effects of increased emissions, and then decided to double down on fossil fuel,
What do you base this on? Greenhouse effect was scientifically established in the 1800s and evidence of CO2 induced global warming in the mid 1900s. The IPCC was set up in 1988. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
> and engage in a mass disinformation campaign to keep increasing pollution at the cost of our climate. I’m sure they would have, but they’re government collapsed before they were able,
USSR may have have believed they would be a strategic winner in warming temperatures. At best they would not have been particularly inclined to sacrifice their energy and industrial development when their rivals were not.
> so, so far the climate crisis is a uniquely capitalist problem.
No it's not, even if you strangely ignore USSR's massive past contribution to atmospheric CO2. China emits more CO2 than all western countries combined, and plans to continue increasing output. You'll say China is capitalist to some degree, but its heavy industry, electricity generation, and fossil fuel industries (and more) are all under absolute control of the communist dictatorship.
The IPCC published their first report on climate change in 1990, the Rio conference took place in 1992, and the first real UN climate deceleration wasn’t until 1997 with the Kyoto protocol (I say real because this is the one where government promised to limit their greenhouse emissions; and then proceeded to fail). So I say that even thought the climate crises starts with the industrial revolution, 1997 is the year we start seeing the climate failure that will doom us all.
Just to state the obvious, if governments would have acted in 1997 like they promised to, then climate change probably wouldn’t have reached this catastrophic proportions which we are observing today. We had recently saved the ozone layer using similar measure, so there is no reason the Kyoto protocol failed other then the profit motive of fossil fuel companies which successfully lobbied against following through with the promises. The efforts of ignoring the Kyoto protocol were led by the USA which failed to ratify it. I believe there was significant lobbying involved from fossil fuel companies that influenced the senate’s decision to not even vote on it.
It's not a gotcha if you can support your claim. You claimed something that clearly isn't supported by the history of those events. Soviet scientists and officials certainly would have known about the link between fossil fuel usage and global warming, and obviously seen it at odds with their drive to expand their economy and production just as their rivals did.
Bringing capitalism into it is just silly. "Capitalism" is not to blame, removing capitalism does not fix it, and people don't need to give up capitalism to improve global warming. It seems to be bringing an unrelated personal bias against capitalism in and tying it to global warming, which is really anti-scientific misinformation.
We are arguing in alternative history here, which is never going to be a fruitful conversation.
My statements was about fossil fuel companies internal scientists discovering the link, which resulted in them thinking only about their shareholders’ profits when it came time to react. You have no proof a similar situation ever happened inside the soviet union.
Off course there were scientists within the soviet union which knew about the link, and even some that realized the scale of the human impact before the political collapse. But stating how the soviet leadership would have acted in the wake of the Kyoto protocol is pure fiction that has nothing to do with the world we live in.
Communists certainly contributed to the climate disaster, and continue to do so today, but by the time push came to shove, and we were set up to enact the essential international agreements to prevent it becoming a disaster, it were capitalist countries, and capitalist countries alone, that resisted.
I am addressing the contents of your initial comment.
> Communists certainly contributed to the climate disaster, and continue to do so today, but by the time push came to shove, and we were set up to enact the essential international agreements to prevent it becoming a disaster, it were capitalist countries, and capitalist countries alone, that resisted.
Also incorrect. China is a strong resister. Of course they like treaties that puts restrictions on the west and allows them to continue increasing emissions, which is what they push for.
I believe this is part of the misinformation campaign that the oil lobby pushed to kill the Kyoto protocol, and it holds no merit.
Western nations are responsible for the majority of historic emissions, and have gotten rich at the cost of everyone else’s future. They have the financial capacity to build out the required infrastructure with the money they have already made off of their pollution. This is the logic behind the exceptions to the Kyoto protocol. The US (or rather the oil lobby) touted this as unfair (which it isn’t) and instead continued to pollute at an accelerated rate. It was also always understood that the Kyoto protocol was a start which would get stronger in a later agreement, so China was never going to be exempt forever, and they knew that.
When the US killed the Kyoto protocol they killed every future prospects with it as well. The disagreement was always about this issue you point out, but COP after COP, non-western nations (including China) proposed a reduction (e.g. in COP 2009 China promised a 40-45% reduction from 2005 by 2020; this puts China in the same category as Europe with governments that promise action but fail to deliver) but COP after COP it was always the USA that brought up this as a disagreement and we continued to not make an agreement (COP-15 resulted in a non-binding agreement and China missed this target).
But this is all irrelevant when discussing capitalism as the only culprit of the climate disaster because most (all?) of China’s pollution companies are publicly traded either in Hong Kong Stock Exchange, or in the New York Stock Exchange, or both, with the Chinese state as its majority owner, for over a decade now. These companies operate for the profits of their share holders, not for the benefits of their workers like a communist entity would. These are firmly capitalist entities, one might call them state capitalist.
This is going a long way into the weeds I don't have an interest in trying to discuss it here. But you seem to be equating USA with capitalism or that historic emissions and economic development somehow means the blame can be pinned on "capitalism", again ignoring current and historic emissions from communist countries, or poor capitalist countries. Or that the CCP does not exercise de facto authority over all large corporations operating in China.
Sorry, I'm just not going to buy it. It just looks like you have a hatred of capitalism and trying to pin things to it. Better tighten up your argument a whole lot before you try it out on somebody else.
Most of Poland's energy infrastructure dates from the USSR days - energy grids don't just change on a dime. The point is: if industrialized countries, both capitalist and communist, emit greenhouse gases what's the rationale to point it out as a fault of the former?
Yeah, bring back rickets and toiling in the fields for sir and Vikings pillaging your village! Those halcyon days…
We've another comment replying to this one that bemoans Maggie Thatcher when I'd be willing to bet they weren't alive in the 80s and display a complete ignorance of, well, basically all recorded history prior to that. I'd say you couldn't make it up but it's actually very easy to parody and predict.
I'll leave you with Ray Davies singing a rendition of how his record company, manager, and agent ripped him off - sorry, exploited him as a worker, comrade - in the 1960's. Yes, grift and centralising of power to prey on the weak and ignorant are new inventions, if you were born yesterday!
Life will never be without challenges. We get comfortable in one way that used to be hard work, inconvenient or expensive and some new challenge pops up somewhere else to take its place.
In answer to your question, I think we died as a race when we gave up the nomadic life. We stopped moving around, got comfortable and started accumulating property.
> The only thing that’s going to stop every random company you have an account with from trying to extort a fee just to make sure an account is actually you is going to be regulation.
Remember the backlash when Eric Schmidt was pushing for identity verification for Google+. This is the flip side of that coin; we can't have it both ways.
> Remember the backlash when Eric Schmidt was pushing for identity verification for Google+. This is the flip side of that coin; we can't have it both ways.
No, that was a separate problem: Google+, and later YouTube, both pushed for having to always use a verified identity *without* the option to be anonymous, pseudonymous, or to otherwise assume a fictional identity - especially in venues where people would have many legitimate reasons to not use their real-identity that aren't nefarious, criminal or misleading at all: anything from teenagers with abusive parents, forums like Erowid; Google has enough furries and otaku in their own ranks who'd be opposed to this policy anyway - and there is genuine democratic value in being able to speak anonymously - I'm surprised it isn't an enumerated constitutional right in more places, really.
With Facebook/Instagram/Twitter's Verified-identity-costs-money feature the problem is that it seems the onus is on the individual to stump-up to avoid having their identity hijacked or misrepresented by someone else.
What the Internet clearly needs is the good-parts-of-both: no-one should be forced to use their single real-life identity on the Internet, but also that no-one should be allowed to hijack another real-life identity - and that, ideally, no-one should have to pay to have to protect their own real-life identity from hijacking or misrepresentation either. These are not mutually-exclusive or otherwise incompatible goals - and paying for identity verification is not unethical in itself either.
> Google has enough furries and otaku in their own ranks who'd be opposed to this policy anyway
Yeah, I would be absolutely devastated if I were required to link a "real life" identity, especially since I do not identify with that. Species dysphoria makes me uncomfortable. I need spaces to express myself. Not the body I happen to be trapped in.
(Basically agreeing with you and confirming that these people totally exist.)
It’s probably some sort of missing childhood syndrome, where you didn’t get to experiment enough with identities as a child. But as long as you are doing this with similar people and in a community, who cares, be happy.
What’s ridiculous is the types who want to force this play on others, especially the aggressive trans types, who claim any misgendering is basically violence, or want biological males in female changing rooms, because that’s the game they want to play. It’s extremely damaging narcissistic behaviour and wanting to control others.
> It’s probably some sort of missing childhood syndrome, where you didn’t get to experiment enough with identities as a child.
It could be the opposite. I was given a computer with internet access around age 5 and allowed to experiment all I wanted. I was a faceless entity at first, but after around a decade, I started exploring animal roleplay and eventually animal identities as I saw others doing those things.
Found a form that I felt like I identified with... and now that's my honest identity.
> as long as you are doing this with similar people and in a community, who cares, be happy.
I am <3 species euphoria is great, when I can express myself~
> I was given a computer with internet access around age 5 and allowed to experiment all I wanted.
Most identity experimentation games happen from age 2-3, and much of it depends on parent and environment feedback. Sitting at your computer "experimenting" is highly unlikely to be what our psychology and evolution needs for us to become fully mature adults. It's much more about direct feedback and interaction with parents, siblings and others.
Well, I'm autistic and have ADHD bad enough that my body will not even respond to my attempts to move sometimes. There are a million reasons for me to be unhappy with it, feel trapped and isolated inside my own head, want to escape/avoid reality, and choose to do so through fantasy. But it doesn't change the fact that I honestly identify this way now, no matter how I got here. I think explaining it away as some syndrome or illness is a bit minimizing. My identity is important to me.
Almost everyone finds ways to cope with the issues of life, or the traumas of childhood, whether that's extreme sports, or alcohol, or however you've been able to cope. As I said in my first post, that's fine, everyone has to find a way, and we shouldn't judge each other.
Except when your coping mechanism has negative implications for other people. As soon as you are forcing others or damaging them (note: easy to see how that works with alcohol for example), then it's not ok. Find a way to cope, fine. Just don't expect me to play along with it (we have interventions for alcoholics for a reason).
This kind of unnecessary combatism doesn't belong on HN in my opinion. It is (by some very limited measures, at least) a somewhat diverse community, and that works better when people aren't at each other's throats.
> I'm pretty sure thinking you're not "supposed to be" human is a mental illness and you should be seeking treatment for it, not leaning into it.
That's not what I meant by "dysphoria". I use "dysphoria" to mean that I feel a mismatch between my inner identity and outer body. It doesn't mean that I think the body is somehow wrong or incorrect, but rather that I'd prefer to be inside a different one and I am uncomfortable with this one.
I never think "I was supposed to be born as something else", because that isn't true. I was born exactly how I was supposed to be. Autism and ADHD are merely genetic differences. But one can grow to dislike their own existence and desire a different one, and that's not necessarily a mental illness in itself. I don't have delusions of transformation or rebirth or religion. I just feel like I identify as something else.
It's similar to how some people feel gender dysphoria or gender euphoria. HRT and SRS exist for gender/sex transitions, but unfortunately transhumanism or "species transition" isn't really possible. So I have to tough it out and try to make myself as comfortable as possible despite that.
This includes expressing myself online the way I want to instead of a way mandated by the laws of "reality". Having to identify online using the body would indeed be very dysphoria-inducing because I don't identify that way and I don't want to be seen that way online.
Going through ADHD treatment is helping me significantly (and with other mental illnesses too), because some of my discomfort probably stems from executive dysfunction (i.e. the body not listening to me when I tell it to do certain things), but I will never not be otherkin; take that as you will.
After seeing your Twitter account I can see that you're being sincere, but your reply to my post really does come across as edgelord - just letting you know.
Sorry about that, expression of "ugh yeah I'd hate that" tends to overlap significantly with sarcasm. Being autistic also hurts the tone a little.
I was being sincere, yeah.
(I... usually forget to put emotion into my text here. I'm always self-conscious about my comments getting reported somehow if I act too playful or anything. I try to be more serious and informative.)
I think the cases where you italicized might be better bolded? For me personally, italicization could emphasize certain words but sarcasm-ized others depending on the context.
I think this is the same problem, not a flip of it.
Tying real world identities to online accounts is bad, and Google+ did a lot to create the problem. Before that, it was unrealistic to believe that the name of an account was particularly meaningful
To be fair, using Meta isn't exactly required, and they have no power over you if you don't use it. Experian will collect information about you as long as you take any credit ever, even if you never directly interact with them.
I thought so too. Then when I wanted to sponsor my wife's immigration application, the government wanted to see that we'd posted sufficient photos of our relationship on social media as evidence that it was a legitimate relationship and not visa fraud. Once something becomes normal, there's a penalty to being different, I guess.
> government wanted to see that we'd posted sufficient photos of our relationship on social media as evidence that it was a legitimate relationship and not visa fraud
You’re fine if you say no. If you say you don’t have social media and they find you do, of course that’s fraud. But I know several couples off social who were asked, explained, and then showed photos off their camera roll and were fine.
I assume if you have a good excuse, like being Amish, they let it slide, but you'd probably need to make up for it with support letters from your Amish community leaders attesting to the realness of your marriage.
I never opted in to Experian or any of the credit reporting agencies.
Anyone who sets up a Facebook account has chosen to do so because they find value in it. If they ever stop finding value in it they can delete it.
I don’t see a problem with them offering an option for people who want it to validate themselves for a fee. Seems like a direct copy of Elon Musk’s idea for Twitter which I also don’t see an issue with.
I don't know what you mean by "opting in". The credit reporting agencies keep track of you without your consent by providing services to other companies and agencies.
Have you ever had a bank account? Gotten a credit card? A mortgage? Missed a student loan payment?
When I got my very first credit report, which I was entitled to by law, the reporting agencies asked me to very information they already had about my life and financial history dating back to my early teenage years.
It pays to check credit files, British Telecom linked someone else's bad debts to my file simply for trying to broker a repayment plan for the other person, and I got financially linked to other people I wasnt financially linked to.
Especially important if sharing properties as a student.
>When I got my very first credit report, which I was entitled to by law, the reporting agencies asked me to very information they already had about my life and financial history dating back to my early teenage years
Thats because they dont know if the data supplied to them is genuine or not. Postal addresses were also a problem, I know of programmers who would boast about how quickly they could clean millions of records a second in the 90's (in memory rather than disk), but the credit reference companies main issue is getting clean data. A bank might have one address for you, and another bank or loan company might have a different address for you, both work in that the post office deliver the mail but the addresses are different.
example
House Name
House No, Street
Town/City
Postcode(zip code)
House No, Street
Town/City
Postcode(zip code)
House Name
Street
Town/City
Postcode(zip code)
Post office should deliver to all 3 addresses, but a computer program see's differences, ergo cleaning data and recognising these differences were one and the same involved a lot of time.
Other examples is the name of someone.
A.N. Surname
Arthur N Surname
A. Name Surname
All the same person, 3 different but legal ways to do a name on paperwork.
>The credit reporting agencies keep track of you without your consent by providing services to other companies and agencies.
The contracts signed with banks and lenders of sort have blanket clauses where they can share their data with whoever they like. You have no control over this. So they do have consent and they sometimes use this for "fraud detection", so either dont deal with them, go cash and/or crypto.
> If they ever stop finding value in it they can delete it
Actually I can’t delete my Facebook account. I forgot the password years ago, and I get the recovery questions incorrect (I have to recognise people in photos from extended social graph and I don’t know them!). I’m not sure I even have the email account any more. I can’t delete the account.
You should be able to still delete it with a GDPR request. However if you have no actual way to prove the account is yours then it's not really reasonable for them to delete it.
The problem I have with it is that it's rent-seeking. Since FB and Twitter are as ubiquitous as they are, any company will suffer if someone is impersonating them on there. So companies will now be paying FB and Twitter for this "service" not because it gives them value but as protection. That will apply to a lesser extent to individuals as well.
Don’t creditors have to disclose that they are going to report to a credit reporting agency before you decide to take out a line or credit?
For example, I’ve always seen something like this in my credit agreements:
> You agree that we will give information about the Account to credit reporting agencies. We will tell a credit reporting agency if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement. This may have a negative impact on your credit report.
Indeed. And it is barely possible to keep from having a credit report at all depending on what you do. But it is difficult to avoid any of those forms.
I wonder what the age breakdown is. I could see a lot more younger people never having needed to get credit yet. If you still live with your parents and go to college or whatever you don't really need credit.
After that though you can't even really rent an apartment without a credit check so I'm not sure what you would do (I guess if you have a partner that handles it for you).
It is mostly the unbanked who have no credit. College track kids often get their first credit in the form of student loans or low limit student credit cards.
There are plenty of places that rent without credit checks. Where do you think all the people with no credit (or no SSN!) live? It might not be on the nice side of the tracks, though.
I thought it was all the people reading the domain as "Expert Sex Change" and being infuriated when they discovered it had nothing to do with gender reassignment.
As long as there is price transparency, people will vote with their feet.
Now - the 'sleight of hand' thing where you buy one thing and the later they change their structure, that's a hustle for sure - but otherwise, for 'new customers', I view this as just part of the pricing structure. And BTW I think they will mostly drop it because people won't like it and won't see a lot of value in it.
The only thing that’s going to stop every random company you have an account with from trying to extort a fee just to make sure an account is actually you is going to be regulation.