I know your post is in jest, but I think you might not be aware of how suspicious right wing populists (especially bible reading right wing populists) are of Fed + Big Tech alliance. It will not take much to rally this group against these types of initiatives. There has been plenty of evidence of collaboration between Feds and Big Tech to suppress their political voice in the last 12 months (twitter files, FBI whistleblowers, etc)

I think a political strategy of getting rural school districts + 20 State governments to go on record saying they will not purchase or use computers that have Google WEI could be very effective.

No jesting on my part. I don’t buy into the “mark of the beast” narrative but if it works to help hold on to the freedom we have with personal computers I’ll hitch my wagon to it.

As the saying goes, an enemy of an enemy is a friend.

Type up a nice PR release (with lots of pictures) and start emailing to the griftier end of the youtube influencers.

> I don’t buy into the “mark of the beast” narrative but if it works to help hold on to the freedom we have with personal computers I’ll hitch my wagon to it.

It's also worth considering where this stuff comes from instead of ascribing anything the other team says to superstitious fools and their invisible sky man.

Branding people like cattle wasn't invented in modernity. It's infamous Nazi behavior, and the Nazis weren't the first to do it either. It's so old that people centuries ago saw how bad it turns out and put a warning against it in their ancient book.

You don't have to believe in the devil to believe that history repeats and learn a lesson from the people who came before.

> It's also worth considering where this stuff comes from instead of ascribing anything the other team says to superstitious fools and their invisible sky man.

I didn’t say any of that. You have no idea what I believe beyond that I don’t buy into the “mark of the beast”. Anything else you read into my comment is something you read in.

That you went straight to comparing my comment to Nazism seems a bit uncharitable.

Why does everyone assume that a reply is meant as a dispute?

I'm not comparing your comment to Nazism, I'm comparing universal identity systems to Nazi behavior, because that's what they are. Their primary use, the major thing they do that decentralized credentials systems don't, is to facilitate mass surveillance and authoritarianism.

My point is that this has been understood for a long time, and the people who say "mark of the beast" have a legitimacy to their concern that has been demonstrated throughout history, regardless of whether or not you believe the fine details of the allegory.

> Why does everyone assume that a reply is meant as a dispute?

I took your particular reply as accusing me of being critical of religiosity-- specifically "...ascribing anything the other team says to superstitious fools and their invisible sky man."

I took your statement about "branding people" as a statement on this perceived accusation that I was speaking unfavorably about religiosity.

Your clarification that your were comparing universal identification to Nazism makes me read your comment in a different light.

The problem is if right-wingers start opposing it publicly en masse there will be a significant chunk of left-wingers who will support it in response.

Do you remember when electronic voting machine fraud was a mostly left-wing concern? Today I'm seeing the same sources dismiss the possibility out of hand. That was a bit of an eye-opener.