I can't find which document it was specifically, but I seem to remember that the hackers' ethos always been that it doesn't matter who you are, what your title is or skin looks like, but that your arguments are to be valued by its merit rather than by who says it. Age seems like another one of these properties you are stuck with

I agree with that, I'm not arguing for discrediting arguments by age and ask for authority of the elders or something of that sort. Age provides context, it's helpful with facilitating the conversation in a healthier manner. Just the other day I was having an intense argument with someone on reddit, at some point it occurred to me that they don't understand because they are too young(checked the profile, definitely some kid trying to have an opinion on grown up stuff) and my words don't ring a thing in their head. Instead of being angry for them being too stupid to understand, I decided that they are not stupid or bad people but just too young. I was at that age some time ago and I knew how it feels, so left them alone. They will understand when they understand.

This is because words actually don't carry much meaning, they invoke something that the other side understands already. For example, it's very hard to have a conversation about some aspects of a relation of 40 y/o people if the other party is in their 20s. You need to relate with something of their age and build it up and even then its likely they will understand it completely the wrong way. Over the years people evolve, they go over stuff and when you meet someone who hasn't been through the process you need to be aware of that otherwise you will mistake them for stupid(because, not everyone who ages ends up going through the transformation the same way. You better know if you are speaking to such a person or a younger person who has the chance).

What I don't understand is, why people assume that everything you know about someone is supposed to be used against them. Why everything needs to be malicious?

Sometimes I wish I'm able to knew things like this in discussion: - is person legally adult(not necessary due to being of age, emancipation is also ok, people who do emancipation usually more...adult) - how much education person really have? (it's _usually_ pointless to discuss anything related to science with children from middle school)

Exactly. The "Ideas are fighting" thing isn't true, its actually people trying to convince each other and they should be at least close or you end up pandering over the basic stuff draining away your energy.That's why discussions in schools classes are much more high quality, they happen between people who were through about same stuff and even if they discuss the basics it happens with people on the same page.

Its useful to have an outsider to look at this thing from a different perspective but they still need to be at about same level. It's extremely rare to have an unrelated genius, %99.9 of the time the the outsiders are people who didn't go through the basics that a homogeneous group went through and they just do a speed run on the basic ideas that everybody first though but didn't work. Still shouldn't be dismissive, has its place when the established understanding strayed away from reality but its not possible to base all the discussion on such a composition.

Thanks for the elaborate and thoughtful reply! I have little to add to the bigger paragraphs, but about the question at the end: I've been wondering the same and think it must be an information age thing. Not in the abstract or the "kids these days" sense, but in that everything is stored somewhere and processed in invisible ways

I don't remember caring that someone took a picture of me with their Nokia when I know that they'll at worst share it to a handful of people via Bluetooth or try to upload it to a friend's MSN channel via GPRS. It won't be uploaded to Facebook, facial-recognized, and stuffed into a global database. Or visiting websites: I operate a website and I know you can parse which pages I viewed straight from the access logs. I don't mind, you can see what paths I took through the website and you might learn how to make a better flow. But technically, drilling down to such an individual user level is tracking based on personal identifiers and so would require consent under 2018's GDPR. I'm happy that it now does because I don't want Google to track every page I visit, and ~everyone uses Google Analytics because then you get perks like knowing what search queries you are doing well on (how convenient that google removed referrers for privacy)

I don't really have a solid answer -- why do I care about Facebook and Google but not about John "Malicious Sysadmin" Doe? -- but maybe it makes sense on some level. I need to think about it more still

I think the problem is that the new communication methods are allowing for new modes of communications that we lack tools for dealing with malicious actors(like IRL when someone lies constantly, we know how to work with that person but we don't know how to deal with someone from the other side of the world who lies as a full time occupation preying for attention). The newer generation people are less and less interested with "talking to strangers" as the environment become too toxic and goal(like promoting a product or pushing an agenda) oriented when the internet became mainstream with the proliferation of 3G and iPhone/Android. IMHO There are not many real people out there, most people who create content are doing it as a job or as a side hustle and those who provide the platform treat people as numbers, probably not much different than butchers who are just trying to produce some meat so they don't see the animals as live being. Plus, there are psychos all over the place who are trying to harm people for entertainment.

As a result, real people are having real talk in the safety group chats where they know the members to som degree, IIUC.

Further tangent, I'm not big on digital ID and stuff overall but then I'll play an online game with cheaters and wonder if it's not the solution to things like this. Lifetime cross platform online game bans tied to your real life ID which you need to sign into this new all encompassing anticheat.

I don't think that anything should be as harsh ever but yes, having a reputation that goes everywhere with you is how we deal with problematic people in real life. That's how we stay civil without AI systems constantly scan us or some type of police constantly watching. Also, we tend to tolerate, forgive and eventually forget when someones behavior improves, so... Maybe actually having a continuous persona can help with the nihilistic tendencies too?

False positives aren't exactly rare. Cheaters trolled PunkBuster's memory scans by sending offending payloads matching blacklisted signatures over popular IRC channels, less recently they exploited an RCE vulnerability to deploy cheats to other players computers, mid-game. AMD released drivers hooking themselves into games processes, triggering detections. And there's a lot of less obvious problems with this approach.

And I hope they give their gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, salary and geo coordinates.

right, because everything has to be a hyperbole. Either it has to be context-free or full totalitarian environment, right?

Maybe the internet was a mistake.

I dream of a world, in which people are judged not by their age but by the content of their character.

There are other interaction modes than judging or hating. Age is useful for many of those, its especially useful for tolerance. Most cultures do have age based moral code for interaction which compensates both for experience(lack of) and decaying cognitive abilities due to age or provides credibility for perspective and trustworthiness.

This enforced loss of fidelity is among the primary problems for online communications.

You're right, for example age is useful when picking targets for scams. It would also be great for groomers.

So? Go protect them the proper way. Do you want also to have all your messages scanned because you may be up to something illegal? Should we refrain from encryption because can help terrorists? That's not my cup of tea, I don't like proxy "protections" that are supposed to protect us from evil at some huge cost like loosing privacy or human connection.

I don't subscribe to the idea that we should ban knives because someone can use them to stab someone.