The EU Commission draft law to restrict young people’s access to the internet that it presented last week will come at a high cost: it will put online services behind age gates, expand the use of intrusive age verification, and undermine the privacy of all users. The EU Kids Act aims to protect...
  • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pubEnglish
    4 days

    It was never meant to.
    But it will be doing exactly what it was intended to do: surveil the citizens.

  • hneerqe@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10 days

    Coming soon, from the directors of ChatControl. WeDiddleKidsAct.

  • OnyxRex@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    10 days

    They want the internet to be as cable, radio, and books before it. It just took longer because of the complexity of the systems. They can’t stand that people for about 20 years had the means to educate themselves and they’ve been fighting to censor it since at least 2012. The problem is that now the tech bros are on board. Before they still had enough idealist types internally to keep them pushing back.

    It was only a matter of time. having been raised in the free and open internet it really breaks my heart.

    • hneerqe@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9 days

      A knowledgeable people is a free people. No system of government EVER would allow or encourage it.

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    9 days

    Privacy-intrusive age verification…for social media and video-sharing platforms.

    I stand by my hypothesis that this merely a protect the children justification to de-anonymize the internet.

    That way, when someone posts video of the situation on the ground in Gaza, the authorities know who it is, and can intervene.

    Here in the states, there’s all sorts of things the regime doesn’t want to appear on video, from ICE brutality and officer-involved shootings, to the conditions in for-profit detention centers, to the conditions in neighborhoods near data centers.

    I don’t know what all videos might be uploaded in the EU, but it’s not completely rosy and rainbows over there.

  • 9point6@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10 days

    I’ve yet to see any “protect the kids” legislation that isn’t either thinly veiled surveillance overreach or corporate collusion

  • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    9 days

    The purpose of a Law is what it does, not what its proponents loudly claim it’s meant to do.

  • DupaCycki@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10 days

    When a citizen’s initiative presents a serious issue, gets a record number of signatures, and provides some good, easy to implement solutions - the European Comission says it’ll do nothing, because it wants to focus on deregulation.

    The same Comission is perfectly fine with implementing new, insanely vague and/or complicated laws that benefit literally nobody other than big tech companies, at the expense of everyone else.

    And then the same Comission wonders why anti-EU sentiment is growing.

    We’re slowly but steadily getting to a point where the EU has all the dystopian surveillance and control measures in place as China does, except without any of the benefits that come with them.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      9 days

      The EU Commission is nominated, not elected, with only confirmation votes in the EU Parliament for members other than its head.

      Unsurprisingly, this executive organ whose members are chosen behind closed doors and not even by the democratically elected representatives of EU citizens has long been the most corrupt part of the EU, often pretty much selling the EU to large foreign companies known for giving non-executive board memberships and millionaire “consultancy” gigs to retired politicians.

      • DupaCycki@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9 days

        Yes, the Comission is a problem, but sadly, it’s not the only problem.

        The European Council is just as big of an issue. It’s mostly made up of member states’ heads of state/government, so technically it’s democratically elected, except the Comission’s president who also gets a seat there, for whatever reason.

        However, members of the Council almost always push for their countries’ best interests, instead of the EU’s as a whole. And they’re an even bigger issue when they happen to be anti-EU, like about half of the current Council.

        Which essentially means the only EU body that is fully democratically elected, and elected on an EU level is the Parliament. Which coincidentally has the least influence, and which isn’t free of its own issues either.

        The Parliament’s current president - Roberta Metsola - appears to be friends with some American billionaires, and her husband is the head of an American lobby.

        Does that sound like a conflict of interests? Well, that’s probably because it is. Usually, all MEPs are legally required to disclose such conflicts of interests, but for some reason she never had to.

        In case you may be interested, she’s also anti-abortion, part of Malta’s nationalist party, and one of the main pushing forces behind Chat Control.

        Read more here: https://www.politico.eu/article/roberta-metsola-lobbyist-husband-ukko-european-parliament-president-transparency/