France Bans Telemarketing Calls — While UK Lobbying Groups Push Online ID Laws Into America
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Two stories about privacy and government power drew 520 points and 477 comments on the anonymity front Tuesday, and they illuminate starkly different regulatory philosophies. Starting August 11th, France prohibits unsolicited commercial telemarketing calls outright — not merely restricted, but prohibited, with significant fines for violators. Hacker News commenters, particularly those in Europe, are largely celebratory, noting that similar rules elsewhere in the EU have meaningfully improved daily life.
The contrast with the second story is instructive. The piece titled 'The UK's War on Anonymity Has Come to America' describes a policy push — originating with organizations that successfully lobbied the Online Safety Act through the UK Parliament — now actively working with American legislators and state governments to introduce similar requirements in the United States. The France ban represents government restricting commercial actors to protect individual privacy; the UK-linked effort runs in the opposite direction, restricting individual anonymity online in the name of child safety.
The mechanism under discussion is some form of age or identity verification for online platforms. Any system robust enough to actually verify identity is, by definition, a surveillance system: it cannot confirm who someone is without creating a record of that person's online activity linkable to their real identity. The infrastructure required to comply with such laws is functionally identical to the infrastructure required to build a comprehensive online ID system.
The Hacker News commentary cuts across political lines. Libertarian-leaning commenters focus on free speech and surveillance implications; security-focused voices note that any database of verified identity becomes a high-value breach target; privacy advocates point to documented chilling effects on LGBTQ communities in countries where pseudonymity provides meaningful safety. The fact that UK-funded lobby groups are working directly on American state legislatures also raises disclosure and transparency questions the community is actively surfacing.
The practical reality, several commenters observe, is that online anonymity has already eroded substantially through commercial means — real-name platform policies, algorithmic account-linking, and data broker ecosystems can de-anonymize behavioral data without any law requiring it. The pending legislation would make that foreclosure explicit rather than diffuse, which is precisely why its opponents consider it worth fighting.