> That's a lot of hyperbole, there's no cause/effect relationship I can think of here that could realistically produce your slippery slope.

Have you been watching the headlines over the last year? It's like there's a global push towards locked down and verified computing (age verification, TPMs everywhere, Captchas that only work on non-rooted phones, ...).

You can look out the window and see movement in this direction happening right now. Governments and corporations around the world can't get enough of this shit. Privacy matters, advocating for it is not a "slippery slope."

> this AI detection watermark [...] that to be clear can not track you in any way.

Is that clear? We have no idea what metadata they are or aren't embedding in SynthID.

> Google or anyone else could start adding those unique tracking watermarks you're concerned about any time they want,

The point is that this is bad and should be denounced!

I'm not going to mince words - what you're saying is dangerous and harmful.

> to be clear can not track you in any way

All they have to do is encode enough entropy for a database unique identifier. Systems like this have been used to do it for audio:

https://github.com/swesterfeld/audiowmark

SynthID payloads work the same way, and the paper discusses encoding a "user identifier":

https://arxiv.org/html/2510.09263v1#S5

All you need to do is encode a database identifier, GeoIP, or other identifying information, and you've violated a person's privacy without their knowledge or consent.

Once these systems become popular, the intelligence agencies will "suggest" that Google adds it to their phone cameras. It will start seeping into everything.

The "slippery slope" is not a fallacy. We're on the verge of having device attestation and identity verification to use the internet. This is so beyond fucked.

Stop defending this.

Saying this is okay is EVIL.