I worry that if we get lots of diff jurisdictions with diff laws, it may be easiest for an OS to comply iwth the most strict of them.

Lax ones don’t require age verification, but also don’t forbid it. Strict ones require it. You can comply with both at once.

Maybe doesn’t matter if you can easily bypass the age check. Which is true at the present time. But things like this, they often slip-slope into more KYC style of hard to get around. All it takes is a horrible event all over the headlines. If it “could have been stopped” with stricter measures, they’ll come. Once you have a hammer, all problems are nails.

it’s really no wonder society is as polarized: it seems to be by design.

For sure. And not in a conspiracy-theory kind of way! Facebook ex-employees testified to the US Congress, said exactly that. FB amplify the most divisive content on purpose. That is the most powerful emotion, to make people engage. Other employee whistleblowers talked to the WSJ about “The Outrage Algorithm”. And there’s a whole book, “The Chaos Machine” about that.

Polarization drives maximum engagement. Right up until society rips itself apart. And then it’s too late.

if the current trend continues, you’ll effectively become a prisoner to your own home

Same feeling for me. It’s oppressive AF. It feels inescapable, relentlessly expanding. I don’t want to be a hermit! If it’s not a store, it’s a rando who takes a selfie in a restaurant and you’re at the next table. Or at any kind of public event. Photo u/l’ed to their IG or FB. Then machine learning models spool up to wring out every possible inference. Those inferences can reveal so much more than most ppl understand.

Your categorization is on the money, “unnoticeable change”. It is the same on the tip top surface between their parents film camera photos, and their IG. But below that is a whole new world of capability.

Culture changes. Laws change. Tech possibilities change. But data is forever! We can never know how today’s data may be abused tomorrow, by who, and against who. We’re seeing data of people’s past lives weaponized against ppl, more and more often.

It also has psychologic effects. People are less willing to change their personal views, when their whole past is discoverable. That leads to more polarized societies over time.

That was my little rant, please feel free to leave yours below in the comments; I’m somewhat desperate to hear it.

I’m in the US. Lots here is commercial. Cameras are all over in most stores. Everything bigger than mom & pop tier and even some of those. Long ago, that was kind of okay. They were closed circuit. The video went to a literal video tape to be overwritten in 1-3 days. Now? It’s unavoidable mass surveilance coupled to AI and cloud based analytics. The bigger chains run sophisticated facial recognition and AI behavior analysis.

Is that just for anti-theft? Oh no! These systems are used to analyze customer behavior. “Modern vision technologies are turning store video footage into powerful marketing insights”. Are you staring at a product, or looking away? Did you stop and pause near a display? Do you appear interested, or distracted? Did you pick up a product and return it to the shelf? Or place it in your cart? Did you read the label first? What route did you take through the store? These are all literally what modern video customer analytics do.

“This is where modern video analytics shines: it allows stores to map the entire in-store customer journey, from the moment someone enters to the moment they make a purchase (or leave without one). More advanced models add pose estimation, which looks at body posture and hand movement.”

It’s like somebody told Orwell 1984 was MUCH too mild.

Oh, did you want to opt out? Sure! You can. All you got to do is stop eating food!

but it eats at me on a daily basis.

Totally with you, sir, ma’am or other. I try to be an upstanding person. I try to help those around me. To be kind to others. To support my community and my neighbors. I just don’t want to live in a fucking constantly monitored world without a lick of privacy left. Where every action I have ever taken is recorded, analyzed, used against me. I believe this erodes democratic societies. These data streams are inevitably abused by tyranical ones. It’s a cancer on our societies. It harms all of us.