The operating system was licensed by Google
The app was downloaded from the Play Store (thus requiring a Google account)
Device security checks have passed
While there is value to verify device security,this strongly ties the app to many Google properties and services,because those checks won't pass on an aftermarket Android OS
I would like to strongly urge to abandon this plan.
Requiring a dependency on American tech giants for age verification
further deepens the EU's dependency on America and the USA's
control over the internet.
Especially in the current political climate I hope I do not have
to explain how undesirable and dangerous that is.
As a resident of the aforementioned political climate, I find their concerns to be reasonable.
There are a number of comments in that same thread that indicate a mandate to utilize Google services may run afoul of EU member nations' integrity and privacy laws.
"Device security checks" is the most horrifying aspect as it basically means "officially sanctioned hardware and software", and leads straight into the dystopia that Stallman warned us about in Right to Read.
There is some amusing irony in the EU relying on the US for furthering its own authoritarianism. It's unfortunate that freedom (in the classic rebellious, American sense) never became that popular in the EU, or for that matter, the UK.
> leads straight into the dystopia that Stallman warned us about
IMHO, the push for age verification is just a stepping stone towards requiring a mandatory ID for all social media posts made from EU. Given the current trends against freedom of speech, it's not unreasonable to think that by the end of the decade any site, including HN, might need to link usernames with their respective eIDs in case posts come from EU IP addresses.
> officially sanctioned hardware and software
Right now, if you want to run an alternative OS, it's already an uphill battle to use tons of member state services, as well as to do banking. Even if you have microG available, the situation is terrible. I imagine it's going to become harder. I cannot understand why the European Commission wants to reduce our reliance on FAANG services, and at the same time they make Google Play a de facto standard, reinforcing the mobile duopoly. In this context, free alternative mobile platforms, such as Sailfish, cannot flourish.
> I cannot understand why the European Commission wants to reduce our reliance on FAANG services, and at the same time they make Google Play a de facto standard
It seems to be different branches of the EU? This has been a recurring problem in EU tech legislation - the EU government bodies are sufficiently autonomous that the right hand seldom knows what the left is doing...
> Hacker: One of your officials pays farmers to produce surplus food, while on the same floor, the next office is paying them to destroy the surpluses.
> Maurice: That is not true!
> Hacker: No?
> Maurice: He is not in the next office, not even on the same floor!
They aren't autonomous at all though. All EU law comes from the Commission, which is a singular body run by a single appointed president, with everyone reporting directly to her. The Commission answers to nobody and the Parliament can't tell it what to do, just rubberstamp what it produces.
This is the best case scenario for coherency in law making. It's designed to be as undemocratic as possible, so there's no need to make compromises or engage in pork barrel politics to get stuff over the line. The incoherency of the EU's approach is just a consequence of the incoherent thinking coming from the top. The EU always has extremely powerful but very low competency presidents, always for some reason those who were failures at national politics.
> The Commission answers to nobody and the Parliament can't tell it what to do, just rubberstamp what it produces.
That's not true. First of all, amendments can be introduced by both the parliaments and council so it's not rubber-stamping. But more importantly they have the right to censure the commission (Article 17(8) TEU and in Article 234 TFEU) and thus force it to resign.
The Commission can ignore amendments from MEPs by simply withdrawing the legislation and trying again, and it does. In theory the Parliament can force the entire Commission to resign at once (not change course), but then it'll just be re-appointed by whatever secret process was used the last time around. The power is hardly useful which is why it's only been used once, IIRC.
In practice the EP doesn't matter. The MEPs rubberstamp everything because they aren't serious politicians with serious ideas. They can't be, because they can't change the law, which means they can't have party positions or campaign on policies. It's fake DDR style politics that pretends on the surface to be democracy, where there appear to be parties and politicians, but they can't actually do anything so the only people who bother to turn up are those who already agree with everything the government is doing and just want to get paid to cheerlead. The EU Parliament is like that: the death of ambition, full of apathetic losers who drift into politics without any real idea of why they're there, or people who are using it as a springboard to national parliaments where some power is still allowed to exist (only in specific areas the Commission hasn't yet taken control of).
So it's all a dummy process designed to look democratic enough to confuse people whilst actually turning Europe into a unified dictatorship.
And it's designed to confuse people. Don't take my word for it. Take the word of the EU's own former leaders who routinely boast about deceiving and manipulating the public:
When people ask politicians today “What will become of Europe?” or “Where is European integration heading?”, we usually give an evasive answer. “We don’t want a super state” that is generally the first thing we say. I must admit that I have in the past often resorted to this kind of thing myself. (Viviane Reding)
Europe's nations should be guided towards the super state without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation. (Jean Monnet)
We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided we continue step by step until there is no turning back. (Juncker)
I sadly agree with what you wrote, but on this point
> The EU Parliament is like that: the death of ambition, full of apathetic losers who drift into politics without any real idea of why they're there
I have to disagree. There are many (or, "at least a few I know personally"? [1]) people who sit in the Parliament with a real intention of making good. Their power is simply null, though.
1. David Sassoli (deceased, ex president), Guy Verhofstadt (Renew), Patrick Breyer (Pirates), to name a few I follow.
I only know the name Verhofstadt but he's a hard-core federalist, no? Sure, people who define good as the EU taking everything over can genuinely view their "work" as doing good, but it's the sort of thing I meant by cheerleading. The Commission needs no encouragement and would be doing exactly the same things regardless of whether Verhofstadt existed or not.
Yeah, the actual power in the EU rests with the national governments (i.e. the Council). The Commission can propose laws, but they can't enact them (and for my money, the power to propose laws should go to the Parliament but that won't happen any time soon, unfortunately).
"right hand" pretty nicely fits. The EU/EVP is much more conservative/right wing then many of its citizens are prepared to accept. Its a pretty nice propaganda-machinery that made this possible. Ask a random EU citizen if they are aware that conservatives are leading the EU since 30 years... You'll be surprised.
> I cannot understand why the European Commission wants to reduce our reliance on FAANG services, and at the same time they make Google Play a de facto standard, reinforcing the mobile duopoly.
It's called bad faith, and it's an all too common problem with politicians and business types alike.
Von der Leyen and the rest of the Commission aren't politicians nor business types. They don't run for election, they're all appointees. And most of them have never run a business either.
Von der Leyen and the rest of executive branch of EU are appointed in a same way a lot of countries appoint their executive branch members — by a vote in legislative branch.
The EU Parliament was given a vote on von der Leyen. It was a ballot with a single name on it: hers. By the time it go to the rubberstamping stage the decision was already made. The MEPs couldn't propose other candidates for the vote, and the Parliament can't propose changes to the law either, so it's not the legislative branch of the EU. The legislative branch of the EU would be... the EU Commission. Which is also its executive.
The way von der Leyen was selected is a secret. Nobody knows how it happened. She didn't run in a democratic process of any kind, so she isn't a politician. If you ask EU fans they'll tell you the heads of state selected her. We have no evidence of this. That's the written process, but no records were produced of any such meeting, or a vote, or however it is that this decision was theoretically made. She could have been presented as a fait accompli by a single country, other countries could have been bribed, they could have been excluded entirely. We'd never know.
Nobody voted for Dick Schoof either, yet he is a prime minister of the Netherlands. That just how coalitions work -- a lot of trades behind closed doors and then a vote in a legislature. The bigger the chamber the more stuff happens before the closed doors or in a commettee.
>She didn't run in a democratic process of any kind, so she isn't a politician
The word you are aiming for is "аппаратчік" -- carreer party member. Which is a fair point, but I don't see it as something fundamentally wrong. I want an experience faceless bureaucrat to do the very valuable faceless bureaucratic thingy -- the technicalities, of which are many. I like, it's great.
> and the Parliament can't propose changes to the law either
They sure can and they sure do it. Commission gives a draft, the chamber votes on the first reading, then a committee in of the parliament can do whatever with the text, including changing "approve" to "reject" making it the opposite of what commission proposed. Which is then voted again by the parliament and again by the council ( which is basically an upper chamber ). I'm not sure whether the chamber can bring back voted down amendments or introduce their own during second or third hearing, as I didn't read the procedural rules, but I suspect it's all there.
If anything, the whole thing is more resembling the original US double chamber parliament than the current US, because the EU of now is as fragmented (or you can say federated) than US was when it originally formed.
von der Leyen is neither experienced nor faceless. She's famous throughout Europe for her gross incompetence, especially having led the German military to ruin. Given that she failed at running a single department in a single state she has no identifiable characteristics that make her qualified for her current role.
She is however notable for being a terrible negotiator and constantly being at the center of corruption scandals. Wikipedia has a sample.
But that is how the EU rolls.
There's no similarity to the US. Congress is the supreme power and originates all law. They might take suggested drafts from the executive branch, but outside of carve-outs where Congress lets the executive branch pass its own regulations, the civil service can only make suggestions for legislation. The EU is backwards: only the civil service can change the law, and the so-called Parliament is reduced to suggesting changes.
I applaud you for being someone who finally talks about European Union institutions with apt knowledge of them, unlike even most news providers.
The structure of the Union is grim. I wish it was different, but how to change it now? It would have to be the Commission itself that suddenly decides that most of its powers need to be delegated to the Parliament.
It can't be changed, the foundations of the EU are left-ideological from the start as observed by many of the people who set it up. The only way forward is for every country to exit.
In this case it seems more like incompetence mixed with classic Euro bureacracy. The suits don't know better and consumers are braindead so won't even notice
> "it's not unreasonable to think that by the end of the decade any site, including HN, might need to link usernames with their respective eIDs in case posts come from EU IP addresses."
A rule of thumb that works too often is "how is mainland China doing things?"[0], and assume the West will follow behind shortly.
(tl;dr: Mandatory digital ID, with central government attesting and holding personal data in escrow. The "privacy-preserving", "least-bad option" a sizeable portion of even HN itself advocates for).
> "This means that companies, like social media site Weibo or online shopping behemoth Alibaba, will no longer be able to see the personal information of their users with digital IDs — but Chinese authorities will be able to see the real identity behind online accounts across a range of sites."
Believe it or not, China has far and away the largest Christian population in the world. (I know, I know, culture, percent of the population, etc, this is just a fun fact that runs counter to intuition.)
It's already close to impossible. Banking apps and government apps are close to mandatory to function in today's society, yet they plain do not work on Lineage, even with microg, or they work but need ridiculous workarounds. Never mind other "soft mandatory" things like messaging apps or whatever.
I'm dedicated and I have a literal PhD in computer science, yet I'm fucking exhausted fighting this battle all the time. 0.1% chance someone has the capability to, and willingly goes through all this bother.
Can't you have two phones: a Lineage phone for personal stuff and a Big Brother phone for banking and government and everything else uninstalled or disabled?
> I cannot understand why the European Commission wants to reduce our reliance on FAANG services, and at the same time they make Google Play a de facto standard
You'll be surprised, most of the time it's simple ignorance: the people making decisions don't know everything about everything. Hence democracy comes to rescue.
But the way the European Commission takes decisions is anti-democratic (secret draft documents, undisclosed lobbying, overlooking the role of the Parliament…)
> In this context, free alternative mobile platforms, such as Sailfish, cannot flourish.
If you are a system that depends on people being constantly under the yoke of your jurisdictional powers, you do not want a strong, free, ecosystem. You want as little diversity as possible, ideally two so there is an illusion of choice.
I would honestly love that. No more paid trolls on social media, the democratic process has a chance to adapt to technology, we can avoid the fate of the US.
Companies are neither minors or adults. Account management for paid shills will be handled between customer support backend infra and social media API servers, not subject to any particular rules.
... and all the social media posts having been pre-approved by Minitrue. What a glorious world we shall live in.
This is no longer just rhetoric. Meanwhile, the EU’s polite, tea-drinking cousin, the UK has quietly deployed a “social media surveillance unit.” Not to fight trolls or bots, of course - but to ensure His Majesty’s Subjects think correctly in public. Doubleplusgood, wouldn’t you say? [1]
One does not have to be anti-immigrant to not be happy about immigration policies. It is known at this point that the Kremlin is actively helping migrants to come to Europe. If an enemy knows that this will be to the detriment of Europe, maybe Europeans themselves should also acknowledge that?
Yes but (risky absolute statement) criticizing the policies themselves, in isolation from the immigrants who are already here, never got anyone in trouble with the law.
I think US republicans are going into panic mode because a lot of the people who get punished for this are right wing adjacent, not very bright people, and they misinterpret this as their equivalents in Europe somehow getting suppressed.
So they try the same tactics as they know from home, asserting their rights, conflating separate issues, slippery sloping etc. And they freak out when it doesn’t work.
The UK arrested around 12.5k people in 2023 over social media posts, according to the Times. Not all of them related to immigration at all (but I would wager: many are).
It is sufficient to 'cause distress' - against whom, or in what form, or what qualifies as 'distress' is deliberately kept vague to maximise persecution rates. Some cases saw a squad car with six Bobbies take the very average, middle-class parents of a teenage daughter to the precinct to question them on why their daughter has had strong opinions on the way her school's new head was chosen [1]. While - as so often - no-one was later sent to a court for sentencing, the chilling effects are there, and I'd say half a platoon of police officers descending on someone's front lawn is definitely "getting in trouble with the law".
> More often than not, the police record these episodes as “non-crime hate incidents”, with over 13,200 recorded last year. What’s so extraordinary about the police’s zealous pursuit of these non-criminals is that the rate at which they’re catching actual criminals is falling. Fewer than seven in 100 crimes now lead to a charge or summons, down from 17 in 100 in 2015. In the year to September 2023, the total number of burglaries left unsolved stood at 213,814, a rise of 4 per cent on the previous year.
So ... police gets their numbers up persecuting people for wrong thought while they avoid having to deal with actual, real criminals which might fight back violently. And Whitehall is clapping to it.
Then there is the case of David Wootton - who is currently fighting against a verdict that declared him having a tasteless halloween costume in a social media post (dressing up as the Manhattan Area bomber, with an arab headscarf, an 'I love Ariana Grande' t-shirt, and a backpack that read 'boom') to be a count of 'hate crime'. He faces up to two years in prison over that. Deeply tasteless? Sure. A 'hate crime' worth of spending two years in prison over? Seriously?
Let's move away from the UK - to Germany, an actual EU state. Which reintroduced a lèse-majesté law that makes it more prosecutable - and carries harder sentencing - if you post something against a politician that they do not like. That law is used most happily especially by the Green Party, but they all are complicit. It led to early-morning Special Forces raids against the former flat of someone who called a politician '1 dick', and standard raid against someone who called a former minister of economics 'a doofus' in what could easily be understood as satirical use of a common brand name. Sometimes, quoting them with wrong interpunctation is reason for a raid, and sometimes just quoting them is enough. And the state prosecutors? Laugh on American TV about how they know they never get most of the cases through a proper court case, but 'the raid in itself is the punishment already' [2].
And, fun fact: Courts have decided that even stating the truth about a politician can qualify as a prosecutable insult ("Schmähkritik") if it is 'sufficient to negatively impact their future political work'. So better thing twice, and have an exit plan before you point out that Patrick O. Litican is a compulsive liar, with a list of deliberate lies told by Patrick in the past, and casting shadow over a bold claim he has just used to shoehorn another policy in.
These aren't aberrations. They're stress-tests of the system’s tolerance for dissent. And it’s failing - gloriously, publicly, and with a press release. Europe is on a dark, dark trajectory, and it needs to be monitored very closely when they keep increasing policing powers.
It’s funny that you can’t point to a single case that proves your point and be done with it (you still haven’t), and you need to frame it all in what looks like delirious ramblings.
There is a human trafficking business fuelled by huge amounts of public money given to NGOs and related, within Europe, by the hands of politicians that are lining their own pockets with this public money. And their political parties are silent about it... (maybe because they distribute part of it within the party contributions latter or who knows). We are talking about thousands of millions of euros annually.
Why are not the "journalists" in Europe investigating this? Je!
I mean, the Kremlin doesn't have such a wide area of influence over all the European borders; they only have influence over part of those borders, in a typical mob-like way (their way, their mob oligarchy). They could not be doing all what is happening alone without help from within Europe. It's all about public money and some politicians pockets within their respective countries - it is an inside job... , cut that money to those NGOs and related, process those corrupts, and see what will happen.
The german green party’s effort to phase out nuclear energy ended up being spearheaded by someone on Kremlins payroll. Spycraft and international politics is not about wearing trenchcoats after dark, it is about influencing, capturing and manipulating the correct people with the most leverage. It is also far easier to influence someone who is already corrupt - they already probably have compromat on them and they are already OK with doing something bad. Similarly, well natured people are just as susceptible to being influenced unless they are very diligent about refusing donations.
Because we all know that an instrument given to law enforcement, once installed, is never used for other things later. All the things we set up to combat terrorism or protect children turned out to be used for those exact use-cases.
The problem is the instrument in itself, and the message it sends - not the officially intended use.
Unless they are government backed trolls with fake ids issued ad-hoc by that government. That's one of the possibilities.
People already sell access to their Google accounts so buyers can run not-that-legal ad campaigns. Creating one extra step won't do much to solve problems as long as the incentive is big enough and budget is sufficient.
In the 1930s, the Dutch government conducted a census that included religion. The Netherlands, after all, had a comprehensive population registry system (Bevolkingsregister) established in the 19th century. This registry was centralized, continuously updated, and included religion, addresses, family connections, and occupations.
After the German occupation in 1940, the Nazis accessed and exploited the Dutch population registry, including religious affiliation.
About 75–80% of the ~140,000 Jews in the Netherlands were killed.
This is the highest percentage in Western Europe.
Compare that to France, which had a more fragmented administrative system, and less complete central records and 25% of Jews in France were deported and killed — a much lower percentage than the Netherlands.
As usual, when reaching the Godwin point, the idea is not for you to take it at face value, but to extrapolate to your situation.
The concentration of power and centralized people tracking are eventually always abused, and once your system becomes less free (which has historically eventually happened on a long enough timescale), you will pay the price for it.
In our case, having a full history of all opinions, interactions, locations, and behavior linked to full identity of people is what we are ultimately talking about here. It's already well on its way, but it will make it worse.
The more you concentrate power and feed data about people, the greater the potential damage.
And of course, it doesn't need to be a full-on dictatorship to get problems with those.
It's a spectrum of increasing problems you will get, the more you lean into it.
> In our case, having a full history of all opinions, interactions, locations, and behavior linked to full identity of people is what we are ultimately talking about here. It's already well on its way, but it will make it worse.
Well, not really. Age verification doesn't have to, and IMO should not, lead to a linked identity. Just a blind check "are you a real human older than X years old? Yes! OK". That way you get the benefits of age restrictions and real human validation, without any of the potential privacy ramifications.
But to be clear, most real people's online presence is under their own names (or linked trivially to their own names, like a cutesy turn on their name for an instagram handle that is linked to their Facebook account which has their full name). It's already possible, and done, to track your public social media presence and interactions. Places like HN and even Reddit are much more niche than that.
That's the whole point of this thread, the current setup makes a google account mandatory, with all the terrible consequences on private life that it has.
Not to detract from the rest of your message, but it wasn't centralized; the data was collected and stored in each municipality separately. The only part that is centralized is the historical archive: after death, each person's info card is moved to the National Archives.
This system has never been centralized, even after digitization: birth records are still kept only in the town of birth, and when moving house your active records must be officially requested and the transfer manually authorized between municipal systems.
>This registry was centralized, continuously updated, and included religion, addresses, family connections, and occupations.
Sorry, but why would the Dutch government need to know all those details in the first place? Did Dutch citizens never ask that question back then? Nazis or no Nazis, that was an issue waiting to happen. I guess it wouldn't have mattered if they did, since the Netherlands was a kingdom and people didn't have much say into how the monarchy ran things.
To do governing properly you want to understand the impact your policies are having, and I general that means more data can give you better answers. In a world where the invasion had not happened yet it was not unreasonable to collect as much as we could and store it in threefold. Things are different now, once bitten twice shy.
Do Americans or Europeans ask any questions with regarding to why the Government wants to pass these anti-privacy laws, or how is it even supposed to reduce "child grooming", etc.?
Maybe the Dutch citizens did ask these questions you think they did not ask, but the Government won.
Your post highlights how shocked people who don't live in a database state can be when they encounter one.
In the UK you can expect to be asked your ethnicity, sexuality, sex, gender, religion and a few other things every time you apply for a job or interact with the state.
We're already there if you live in places like Germany or the UK. Go on social media and criticize some politicians in the UK/DE about their open borders policies being directly responsible for some of the terror attacks there, and there's a high chance police will knock on your door for "being a right supremacist" and for committing the "speech of hate". I think France, Italy are also following the same path. You know you don't have free speech anymore, when saying facts gets you in trouble.
And this is only the beginning. It will be more and more difficult to speak against the actions of your government the more unpopular the politicians become and the more people hate the results of their policies. And instead of changing course and following the wishes of the voters, politicians instead will clamp down on free speech.
>Go on social media and criticize some politicians in the UK/DE about their open borders policies being directly responsible for some of the terror attacks there, and there's a high chance police will knock on your door for "being a right supremacist" and for committing the "speech of hate".
In the UK that happened when a woman phrased her criticism of open border policies as a call for migrant hotels to be burned down.
This was controversial as many who wanted closed border policies (like Nigel Farage and supporters) thought that rallying crys to re-enact some kind of version of kristallnacht should count as protected political speech.
I was talking about something else: Nick Griffin and Mark Collett (2004–2006) and Ann Cryer (2003) who got dragged through the courts for "race hate" for speaking up against the Muslim grooming gangs, which the political establishment brushed off as racism and hate speech, until they couldn't cover it up anymore.
Now it would be naive to assume the political establishment only stopped at one cover up and there's not more under the rug that haven't been yet uncovered.
Just like with the post office workers scandal, you realize the political establishment doesn't exist to protect you the taxpayer, it only exists to protect itself from the accountability of its citizens and will go to great length in censorship, suppression and legal battles to defend itself, since there's nothing for them to loose if they loose, as none of them are ever going to jail for their mistakes, but if they win, then their image stays clean and can stay in power for longer.
Ah yes, that totally nullifies my clients' rape charges your honor. Sure there's whiteness and DNA evidence, but he insulted their religion and since nobody ever gets away with insulting Christianity in this country, they get a free pass from the rapes as compensation for their trauma.
There’s nothing in your article about the rape so I’d have to trust you on that, but I can’t given how liberally you mix your own beliefs with sourced information.
You mean France and Italy where the parties which blame open border policies are governing? Somehow the whole rightwing discourse looks to me based on scare tactics: it will be so bad, it's not yet bad but just wait and it will be! All fortune tellers in that wing indeed.
>You mean France and Italy where the parties which blame open border policies are governing?
Is Le Pen governing in France and I'm not aware of? Because I've never seen Macron do that.
And people are the ones blaming open borders, then some parties choose to capitalize on that (even if they ultimately do nothing), while some other parties choose to suppress that viewpoint as being right wing propaganda and that in reality there are no issue with open borders, that all the crime is imaginary, which is why they push for online censorship and anti-encryption laws, to make sure only their viewpoint becomes the only legally allowed one.
Let me underline again that with the "fortune teller". I don't take the absolute view on the internet freedom of speech, that hate speech should be allowed. As hate speech is not allowed on the playground (you get your parents called in) and not allowed on the street (you get slapped) it's not acceptable on the internet either. We can talk details, that the current implementation is faulty, and please come up with proposal how to make it better without running into the full censorship which nobody wants, but also not allowing campaigns based on straight out lying - campaigns all too pervasive nowadays (and yes in real life lying is penalized as well, so there). Or ok if you think lying and aggression on the internet should be permitted because dunno internet, at least be sincere with that and don't beat around the bush showing an imaginary boogieman.
You're moving the goalposts to hate speech. When saying uncomfortable negative facts about government's actions are considered "hate speech" then you're no longer living in a free country. You must realize that.
The whole hate speech can of worms is such a dangerous slippery slope since the government can just sweep all criticism of itself and its actions as "hate speech" whenever it feels like it, and just ban it, problem solved, no more criticism, all citizens are happy, just like in USSR.
"Hate speech" is too broad of an umbrella to ensure it will never be used in bad faith because it 100% will be and it is. Whichever political party will come to power next will 100% gonna weaponize the existing speech censorship rules implemented by previous regimes, in its own favor to further entrench their own power. History proves this yet people are oblivious an think the solution is even more speech censorship.
Like you correctly underlined, we are talking here about a slippery slope. Because all what you present is imaginary implications - in the realm of possibility, I agree, just still imaginary in this moment. Now, what could be done to avoid the slippery slope? Is the law really saying "hate speech" without any qualifications?
Nothing I said is imaginary. That's like saying Hitler's rise to power was imaginary or that the Holocaust was imaginary. If it were imaginary they won't be spending so much effort on censorship.
It's the classic subversion and propaganda stages of denial, the deeper you dive:
Stage 1: It's not happening, you're just imagining it
Stage 2: OK, it's happening but only a little bit no need to exaggerate
Stage 3: OK it's happening a lot but here's why it's a good thing that it's happening
Nobody is suppressing the view that outsider migrants are the root of most evil in the west, just as nobody suppressed view that the outsider Jews are the root of most evil in the west in the 1930s. It's been a mainstream view in multiple mainstream media outlets for years.
> while some other parties choose to suppress that viewpoint as being right wing propaganda and that in reality there are no issue with open borders
To start with, there is no such thing as open borders (unless you mean Schengen?).
Second, saying someone is spouting nonsense isn't "suppression". Especially when the "suppressed" viewpoint is being proudly repeated almost daily on TV, radio and online on media sponsored by billionaires investing heavily into passing this message (like Bolloré).
Third, Le Pen isn't governing in France, but her party (reminder, she was banned from standing for office for corruption and stealing public money to enrich herself and her family, so it's no longer her), which has around 1/3 of the votes is crucial in maintaining the current ruling government. Without their support, the government has ~1/3 and fails a vote of no confidence immediately (the other 1/3 hates them both and would happily bring it all down in the hopes of new elections). So they are de facto exercising a lot of control.
Stefan Niehoff was prosecuted for a tweet that compared the policies towards COVID-unvaccinated people to how the Third Reich treated Jews. He also made comparisons to the Nazis with respect to how the German government is treating the AfD. These are both criticisms of government policy with respect to public health and handling of democratic opposition parties. The man was put through a criminal trial and then found guilty, being fined for his tweets.
He is not an exception. Twice in August 2022, the American playwright, satirist and longtime Berlin resident C.J. Hopkins tweeted cover art from his book on The Rise of the New Normal Reich. This art featured an image of a Covid-era medical mask with a barely-visible white swastika superimposed upon it. In his first tweet, Hopkins wrote that “Masks are symbols of ideological conformity. That’s all that they are, and that’s all they ever were. Stop pretending that they were ever anything else or get used to wearing them.” In his second tweet, Hopkins simply quoted Health Minister Karl Lauterbach’s notorious statement that “Masks always send a signal.”
For those tweets, Amazon Germany promptly banned Hopkins’s book, and eight months later the Berlin state prosecutor’s office informed Hopkins that he was under investigation, because they believed his tweets violated German criminal statutes against “the use of symbols of unconstititional and terrorist organisations.” In January of 2024, Hopkins was tried before the Tiergarten Berlin District Court and acquitted. In many countries that would be the end of it, but in Germany double jeopardy is not a thing. The prosecutor appealed, and Hopkins found himself on trial once again, this time before the Berlin Court of Appeals. The appellate court overturned his acquittal and found him guilty.
So these are two men who have been prosecuted for their criticism of policy, without groups being involved. But the more common pattern goes like this:
Activist: We must welcome infinity Muslim migrants.
Person: No we shouldn't. That would be bad.
Activist: Why do you say that?
Person: Because they commit crimes at a higher rate than we do and their culture is incompatible with ours.
Activist: That's hate speech and you are going to be fined/imprisoned for it.
When the left is obsessed with group-based identity politics, there's no difference between banning criticism of groups and banning criticism of left wing politics. Enforcing the former is simply a way to prevent anyone explaining or justifying their position, meaning they can't actually advocate for it. It's no difference to an outright ban on opposition.
I do believe you will say it endlessly, as you're clearly in denial about what's happening (lemme guess, are you German?).
Germany is months away from outright banning the AfD, the primary opposition party that has hundreds of MPs, on the basis that the SED um I mean the SPD hates their policies. That's what punishment of dissent looks like, what a regime looks like: bulk disenfranchising a quarter of the population because they object to left wing policy.
If they get those judges appointed it'll likely be lights out for German democracy. All the AfD MPs will disappear overnight, leaving the left wing parties with a majority. They will then launch a vote of no confidence in Merz and take over the government, at which point the already extremely harsh oppression of the left's enemies will be ramped up much further still. The right will be fully driven underground by many more prosecutions of the form you claim aren't about punishing dissent, and Germany will be fully converted to the DDR model in which there are theoretically competitive elections, but the only parties allowed to exist are all on the left.
I really hope you're not German, that you're just very stubborn instead. Because if Germany does get turned into a left wing dictatorship there's no limit to how crazy and dysfunctional life there will become. The USA will be paradise in comparison.
Am I understanding you correctly here - your idea of free speech is that people should be able to wear/use Nazi symbols proudly? That's what you mean when you say there's no free speech in Europe?
Both of those men used the Nazi symbol as a warning: "this policy seems bad in a totalitarian way, like what those very bad people did in the 1930s, so we shouldn't be doing that". They didn't wear these symbols, nor present them as a representation of their own beliefs, nor glorify them in any way. They used them as a compact representation of where they feared the slippery slope can lead.
Discussing history, learning from it and avoiding a repeat of it is a foundational justification for political speech. If Germans cannot point to their own past to warn about the present - and under the current German government they clearly can't because people who do keep getting prosecuted - then they cannot learn from it and might well repeat it.
All of this is obvious. The last two paragraphs were already very clear in my previous post. There was no way to interpret them the way you did, so I don't believe you are arguing in good faith. At his trial, CJ Hopkins pointed out that mainstream German media routinely printed the swastika on their front page in relation to the AfD, yet they weren't prosecuted under the same legal theory he was being prosecuted under. The symbols aren't really banned. The judgement, when finally read out, didn't make any mention of the defense arguments at all. It was a show trial and everyone knew it, including independent journalists:
They did that knowing that Nazi symbols were banned in Germany. They did it on purpose to get in trouble with the law in order to conflate the two things: 1) using Nazi symbols, 2) criticizing government policy.
it's a classic motte and bailey approach, and I'm sure they're grateful to you for defending their demagoguery.
I already addressed your claim Nazi symbols are forbidden in the post you clearly didn't read (again).
It's darkly amusing that you guys have gone from "source?!" to "it's good that the provocative troublemakers are being punished" in the span of about 5 posts whilst you simultaneously flag kill FirmwareBurner. Nothing screams "we have free speech in Europe" like aggressive censoring of people who point out you don't.
Whatever dude. You can deny what's happening for a while, but one day you'll wake up and realize everyone around the world just sort of ambiently knows that Europe has become a totalitarian dictatorship.
Then skip all the articles talking about your First Amendment as if it’s somehow relevant :D
It’s hilarious how far you have to reach to get any criticism where I simply asked you for one, one single case of someone going to jail for criticizing policies and you just can’t provide it.
Instead endlessly moving goalposts and projection of your own understanding of how laws should work.
Btw the anti hate speech laws are there to prevent disasters like those from the Nazi time, and for a good reason. Speech has consequences.
> I simply asked you for one, one single case of someone going to jail for criticizing policies and you just can’t provide it.
Stop being a troll. I never said people went to jail for that. Read my comments again. I said people in Germany got in trouble with the law for that, which they did, and I posted proof.
Now you're unhappy you've been disproven so you're being a disingenuous bad faith commenter and moving the goalpost from getting in trouble with the law to going to jail, as if that makes Germany's censorship less worse ("Oh, I only got dragged through court by a politicians for calling him a dick on Facebook and only ended up with a 7k fine, at least I didn't got o jail for that, thank god, such a free country I live in").
>Btw the anti hate speech laws are there to prevent disasters like those from the Nazi time, and for a good reason. Speech has consequences.
Congrats, Germany today is doing exactly what the Nazis and the Stasi did: banning free speech to "prevent the evil guys from getting power". Do you see the irony in what you're advocating?
And FYI since you keep bringing back the Nazi argument for speech censorship, Hitler didn't get to power because Germany back then didn't have enough speech censorship, because it did and that's why people voted for Hitler since he capitalized on the citizens' frustration with the Weimar Republic's policies and they way they didn't listen to the peoples' grievances and instead responded with speech censorship to crush them .... just like Germany (and UK) are doing ...today.
Speech censorship doesn't make people's grievances and hate for the establishment politic parties go away, it only radicalizes them further guaranteeing the rise of political extremism. AFD already got nearly a third of the votes. In the future when they become a majority, how are you gonna speech censor over half the country? The only guarantee is when they get majority votes they will use all the "guns" against you, that the establishment used against them. History proves this.
So how many times do you have to repeat the same mistakes to re-learn the same lessons?
> or the UK. Go on social media and criticize some politicians in the UK/DE about their open borders policies being directly responsible for some of the terror attacks there,
Could you give any examples of this happening? I assume you aren't referring to the one who called for migrant hotels to be burned down with brown people inside in the middle of race riots?
This is an article that I came across a while ago that speaks to a number of instances in Germany and the UK of people arrested for speech that would be considered acceptable in the states.
Things like calling politicians idiots, giving the middle finger to someone, and insinuating government policy is ineffective.
Show me the story, and it it’s as portrayed (someone went to jail for flipping a politician off), I’ll change my mind.
Until then, it’s made up.
Not to mention that it’s irrelevant to the the original point about hate speech and migration but whatever, you managed to change the goalposts now defend the new ones :)
The OP referred to Germany. Never mind politicians, a quick search brought up a couple of cases where people faced serious penalties including driving bans for flipping off an unmanned speed camera. [1,2] Failure to pay the resulting four-figure fines would certainly have resulted in jail sentences.
I can't find any backing for their assertion that people have gone to jail for obscene gestures toward government entities in either Germany or the UK, but obviously we have already slipped a long way down that particular slope. Apathy doesn't seem like the smart option. It's hard to put it any better than you did yourself: "Here the wolf is clearly visible."
Yes but not the politicians but the police. Yes but not hate speech but criticism of policy. Yes but not criticism of policy but the middle finger. Yes but not to jail but a fine. Yes but…
Because what is right and wrong can be subjective, I could argue that if you said Strawberry is better than Kiwi, that's hate, and suddenly you find yourself on the wrong side of it.
Don't dare say anything with the remotest chance of being controversial or that could have a hint of upsetting someone, don't even think about expressing an opinion that someone might not agree with.
The problem in your ideal digital world isn't that the bad abuse the freedom they have now, it's that the bad will also abuse the lack of freedom everyone else will have then, and suddenly everyone with no ill intent is on the wrong side of the enforcement.
The comment you just replied to would probably find itself on the receiving end of it because of the wording and tone.
With that exact sentence, you could be labeled a racist because I know the code you're using. What YOU really mean is that New Zealanders are better than South Asians.
I wouldn’t get labeled racist by anyone serious and I certainly wouldn’t get any trouble from the law. Try flagging my comment and see if it gets removed.
The thing is the "I know the code you're using" could be entirely made up in the head of the judge/prosecutor with the person being accused of speaking in codes not even having the slightest clue about what the hell the judge/prosecutor is on about.
I've been told that my rainbow flag lapel pin is anti-Christian hate. This opinion seems to be gaining in popularity. If society decides this is the case, which some elements of society are currently making a concerted effort to see through with dozens of bills across dozens of states, is it incumbent upon me to accept it?
Right now in Europe there are people arguing that it's fundamental to the nature of Islam that adherents hate anyone who is not Islamic. They can cite Quran saying some pretty horrendous stuff about non-believers, that they need to be killed in a holy war and things like that. Is it within the bounds of society to decide that being Islamic is ipso facto a hate crime?
"Hate speech" is an excuse to attack people that are not conforming with state/government opinion. It is basically the modern version of "someone has to think of the children". And it is played through conservative, family-value people, like you seem to be.
That’s just false. Hate speech is (simplifying) when you blame a group of people for everything that is bad in the world, and the only thing that group can do to appease you is to cease to exist.
>>public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence toward a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation (= the fact of being gay, etc.)
Godwin's law... But to stay a little more serious: I get your point of view. The question is, is it a good idea to give up anonymity for everyone to fight the nazis? Should we give up our freedom to fight terrorism?
This isn't as good of an example as you think it is. There are crazy communists out there that routinely associate criticism of the existing banking institutions with antisemitism.
By this logic we are no longer allowed to reform banking no matter how flawed it is, even if the flaws of the banking system give rise to actual antisemitism due to unaddressed economic dysfunction. Dysfunction that the banking critics point out and which they claim has more to do with how those institutions are structured and what policies they have enacted than the people inhabiting or benefiting from them.
Dumber yet. There are even more extreme offshoots of communism where simply criticizing capitalism without being a communist means you are a fascist or nazi. It's pretty clear to me that those communists believe they have a monopoly on criticizing capitalism and if you gave them enough power, they'd enforce that monopoly on everyone.
Even dumber. The moment their communist utopia fails, they will start looking for "capitalist" scapegoats rather than fix their institutions according to the non-communist criticism and commit exactly the crimes they projected onto you, which you never had the intention of ever doing, because you actually are somewhat of a pacifist and genuinely believe that your policies and institutions are inclusive to all and work without the need for scapegoats or enforcement through violence.
> Freedom is the great American commitment, but as Snyder argues, we have lost sight of what it means—and this is leading us into crisis. Too many of us look at freedom as the absence of state power: We think we’re free if we can do and say as we please, and protect ourselves from government overreach. But true freedom isn’t so much freedom from as freedom to—the freedom to thrive, to take risks for futures we choose by working together. Freedom is the value that makes all other values possible.
Snyder is an historian specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust, who previously wrote an award-wining book on that area during the 1930/40s:
Good luck convincing America to go along with this, especially in the current political climate.
The EU doesn't have power beyond their jurisdiction, as much as they may pretend otherwise. Facebook and Google go along with what the EU wants because they make money there, and have physical properties located on the continent. YC does not.
SK had this, and it appeared to have turned their entire WWW into 4chan with cult radicalisms. Their state of online speeches and its real world negative consequences are crazy. People on permanent records in real name never backs down because they more tangibly feel their mistakes as threats, and if you think about it, people who never backs down even if they are in wrong are effectively cultists. It's clear what these types of totalitarianism do and where this path ends. It's crazy EU don't get that.
There's not a trend against freedom of speech so much as existing laws outlawing certain categories of speech being applied to the internet. If you lie in a commercial context, that's fraud; if you lie in court, that's perjury; if you tell your buddies to go do crimes together, that's conspiracy to commit; if you tell someone to give you money or else, that's blackmail...
If you come from the perspective that there used to be freedom of speech and now there's all those pesky laws restricting what you can say, it looks like a slippery slope. If you realize that people have been required to check ID when selling material unsuitable for minors in physical stores since before the internet existed, it seems a bit more unlikely that ID requirements will expand to cover everything else.
The trouble with these analogies is that they ignore the nature of the internet.
If there is a law in one jurisdiction that says you have to be 21 to buy some product and a different jurisdiction sets it to 18, or has no age restriction at all, and someone who is underage in the first jurisdiction goes to the second jurisdiction to buy that thing, what happens? The seller sells it to them. This has always been a completely normal thing for people to do in border towns, or when people e.g. visit Amsterdam because of less restrictive drug laws.
The internet allows anyone to visit the site of a supplier located outside of their jurisdiction. That's completely normal an expected too. It also makes things like age verification laws for digital content pretty much entirely worthless, because most of the suppliers weren't in your jurisdiction to begin with and the ones outside of it are... outside of your jurisdiction.
Governments now want to pretend that it matters where the user is rather than where the site is, but that's a joke because there is no way for the site to even know that. If you try to require it then they'll either ignore you because they're actually entirely outside of your jurisdiction and you can't impose penalties on them for not complying, or treat IP addresses in your jurisdiction differently (possibly by banning them entirely) and then people there will just use a VPN.
Neither of these cause the law to be effective and ineffective laws are inefficient and embarrassing.
> Governments now want to pretend that it matters where the user is rather than where the site is
This is not a new thing either. Whenever something somehow touches multiple jurisdictions, it's generally safe to assume that laws from all of them apply. Countries can and do make laws that apply entirely extraterritorially. When that makes it difficult to do a thing while complying with all applicable laws, you either have to not do the thing or pick which jurisdictions' laws you want to break and deal with the consequences.
I don't think most lawmakers will consider the potential embarrassment from difficult-to-enforce laws much of a deterrent against outlawing what they want to outlaw. They're more likely to put additional requirements on third parties to assist with enforcement (e.g. VPN providers are an obvious candidate.)
> Whenever something somehow touches multiple jurisdictions, it's generally safe to assume that laws from all of them apply.
How do you suppose this is supposed to work on the internet? Is every globally-accessible social media site supposed to implement Saudi Arabia's blasphemy laws and China's censorship of Tienanmen?
> Countries can and do make laws that apply entirely extraterritorially. When that makes it difficult to do a thing while complying with all applicable laws, you either have to not do the thing or pick which jurisdictions' laws you want to break and deal with the consequences.
But that's the point. There will be services that actually are outside of any given jurisdiction and have no fear of penalties from it, and then those laws are pointless because they're unenforceable.
> I don't think most lawmakers will consider the potential embarrassment from difficult-to-enforce laws much of a deterrent against outlawing what they want to outlaw.
That's only because they have no shame. It's the government which is humiliated, not the politicians. Which is why the voters should learn to punish them for their vandalism of the public trust.
> They're more likely to put additional requirements on third parties to assist with enforcement (e.g. VPN providers are an obvious candidate.)
How is that supposed to work when the whole purpose of the VPN itself is to be in a different jurisdiction?
The typical go-to in these cases is to try to use the financial system, but that doesn't work in this case because there are plenty of foreign VPN services that will offer the service "for free" by installing a residential proxy on your machine or accept payment in cryptocurrency in an amount that a normal person could easily mine themselves. And then unsophisticated users do the former and sophisticated users do the latter and the only thing you get from banning payments to foreign VPN providers is the facilitation of DDoS botnets and increased and familiarity of your population with cryptocurrency.
> If you realize that people have been required to check ID when selling material unsuitable for minors in physical stores
Not a great example.
No physical store would bother to check the ID of anyone clearly not {too young or borderline}.
Digital ID requirements are such that age verification of some form is required for every single connection .. and to assume that a connection from {X} might well require another ID check an hour later as it might well be a different person at the same computer or another device altogether.
That's an expansion from {only check young looking people} to {check and possibly retain records for _everyone_}.
> No physical store would bother to check the ID of anyone clearly not {too young or borderline}.
Except where police cadets or paid informants go into stores to buy age-restricted goods. A convenience store near me got whacked with that recently, and now has a no-exceptions ID policy.
It's not the assertions made that trouble me, it's the quality of any actual implementation and the scope for deliberate or accidental side leaking of knowledge that should be zero .. but likely (in a pragmatic view of a political world) is not.
Absolutely, security is entire process that needs frequent sanity checks, by nature it's hard to get right in practice no matter how sound some central component is.
To be fair my main motivation for comment was the up thread comment about physical ID checks of the past being an indicator that not much would change with digital checks.
In the event of a physical store ID check system failure you have one owner at one location having access to just the ID's checked (perhaps blackmailing underage drinkers into dubious acts).
In the event of a digital ID check failure there's potential to leak all the ID's and access patterns of all users across the board thanks to the ease of digital storage and communications.
Well yes that is true. If provider is what ties together age and identity... If all the eggs are in one basket then hacking one provider hacks all. Having many providers and doing real security audits and requiring them to not keep logs and all that might help but not 100%...
And a shady government might sort out some shady deal or backdoor with providers. I don't think EU is that government though (I bet Russian is but ironically they don't care about this stuff they just install black boxes at all ISPs and monitor your traffic directly)
There is no "freedom of speech" in the US sense in the EU/UK. That's often a cause for misunderstanding between the two sides of the Pond.
There are many things that you are not allowed to write or say by law in EU countries simply because the legislator has decided that they are wrong opinions, and it is generally accepted that the State can and should implement such controls.
Note that lying is not a crime in general. Your examples are for very specific contexts.
That's a common misconception. The European Convention on Human Rights guarantees freedom of expression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R... and is legally binding in all member states.
Sure, there are exceptions but in the USA too freedom of speech is not absolute either.
> there is more freedom of speech in most EU countries than in the USA
A quick look at Steam says otherwise. All the games that credit cards companies pressured to get removed from Steam, were already long gone in Germany. Because that's the level of government censorship that is completely normal in Germany.
The only reason why one might get the idea that Germany ain't so bad is because Germany doesn't do (much) Internet censorship, so we have access to the much less censored outside world. If German law would apply worldwide half the Internet would be wiped out.
Germany has a rich history, particularly in the gaming industry. Not the best example for "EU countries" since most of their censorship was blood and gore and anything related to Nazi symbolism, which was a plague of video games in the 1980s-2000s, since they were always the bad guys in video games, leading to heavy censorship in video games. In 2018, they lifted it significantly, and the list of censored or banned video games in Germany is relatively short.
Including things like "media bias" and other dubious criteria in freedom of speech rankings is obviously skewed.
Whatever the ECHR might say what I wrote in my previous comment is factual. In Europe "freedom of speech" comes with a long list of small print.
In fact, this is so embedded that the article of the ECHR you quote provides for restrictions and even states that they are "necessary": "subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society"." QED
The distinction is academical. As I wrote, freedom of speech is not absolute in the USA either, think copyright law or gag orders etc. And arguing about this day after Colbert's show is cancelled...
The internet will never run out of idiots arguing that there is no freedom in the EU and freedom of speech is a uniquely US thing. The German constitution guarantees Freedom of Speech? Doesn't matter. The US limits plenty of types of speech? Who cares.
> Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, false statements of fact, and commercial speech such as advertising. Defamation that causes harm to reputation is a tort and also a category which is not protected as free speech.
> Under Title 18 Section 871 of the United States Code it is illegal to knowingly and willfully make "any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the president of the United States." This also applies to any "President-elect, Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of President, or Vice President-elect."[45] This law is distinct from other forms of true threats because the threatener does not need to have the actual capability to carry out the threat; thus, for example, a person in prison could be charged.
> The German constitution guarantees Freedom of Speech?
Article 5 of the Basic Law guarantees freedom of expression, freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by broadcast and film. It immediately restricts those freedoms with "limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons and in the right to personal honour." https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.h...
Many kinds of speech aren't covered by the enumerated freedoms in the first place, and "protection of young persons" is the basis for age-verification requirements.
Though given that the US constitution claims to guarantee freedom of speech while many things that people would ordinarily consider speech remain illegal, maybe "freedom of expression within limits" and "freedom of speech" is a distinction without difference in practice. But I think the former approach is more honest.
I am not a lawyer, but, including as in the US case the interpretations adopted by the constitutional courts, the "freedom of expression in spoken and written word and image" is considered to not enumerate a limited list of expressions but cover all forms of expression.
It is true that paragraph 2 allows limiting expression, but the point here is that generally it is not permissible to limit speech based on its content, but only due to other "general laws" that aim to do non-speech related things (including upholding other constitutional rights).
In the case of protection of honor, I find interesting the interpretation of the constitutional court that this does not limit speech if there are alternative non-demeaning ways to express your opinion. This to me seems the strongest divergence to the US concept of Freedom of Speech. If you can express the same content in a less demeaning way, the courts can force you to do so. Still: It is considered crucial by the constitutional court that general laws do not limit the freedom to criticize.
Overall the court has noted that the limits of freedom of expression need to be as small as possible, and that there always needs to be a balance of other (constitutional) rights being protected when there is such a limit placed. Laws can not arbitrarily restrict speech, and the special importance of the constitutional right to freedom of speech needs to be considered.
The protections around speech are constructed differently than in the US, but overall seem to arrive at roughly similar results. It is also important to note that protection of speech has varied quite a lot over the 20th century in the US. From 1919 for 50 years, Supreme Court precedent was that advocating against the draft was illegal:
"The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. ... The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree."
In this case the clear and present danger is that of "hindering the governments war effort". This was the status of Free Speech in the US at the time the German constitution was written.
So yeah, there are important differences, a ton of nuance, many similarities between German and US cases, etc... Which is why I can't really consider anything that boils down to "Well the US has free speech, unlike EU/Germany/...", without even hinting at the freedom of speech trade-offs that are made in both systems, as an argument made in good faith.
Well, the Internet will never run out who don't read because I can't see anyone arguing that there is no freedom in the EU. No-one is arguing there it is absolute in the US, either. I guess insults are easier than a thoughtful reply.
"in the US sense" being the key word. Hence my previous comment about people not reading...
None of the replies I got address the point. They are at best beside it, at worst they are misrepresentations and bare insults (guidelines, indeed!) for no apparent reason. Is it because "EU good, Trump bad"? I have no idea.
The restrictions on "free speech" that European countries implement, and which are increasing, would be unthinkable in the US because of their understanding of "free speech" and the legal protections in place.
> The restrictions on "free speech" that European countries implement, and which are increasing, would be unthinkable in the US because of their understanding of "free speech" and the legal protections in place.
Concrete examples please.
Please also explain how examples differ fundamentally from limits on speech that have historically been and are currently imposed in the US.
>The restrictions on "free speech" that European countries implement, and which are increasing, would be unthinkable in the US
This is why you don't get a "serious" reply. You think too highly of US free speech, and it does not have a foot in reality, and you use "US good, Trump bad" crap when Trump is not even mentioned, it is more than you have a bias of "US good, EU bad".
>"in the US sense" being the key word
There is no difference; free speech is free speech. That is your core issue in the argument.
We haven’t learned anything. We’re already caught in a radicalization spiral between the far left and the far right, echoing 1930s Europe. AfD is currently the most popular party in Germany, France is stuck between the National Rally and the openly communist New Popular Front, and if you think they won’t gladly exploit existing restrictions on free speech once they take power, you’re in for a rude awakening.
You argue about the EU as if we were still living in 2005.
Regarding France, it is a big stretch to paint the National Rally as "far right" at this point. The label is mostly over-used to create tactical FUD against them.
Likewise I would not say that the New Popular Front is communist, either, although as a coalition it does include parties that are.
> Regarding France, it is a big stretch to paint the National Rally as "far right" at this point. The label is mostly over-used to create tactical FUD against them.
Their main talking points are against immigrants. They have extremely suspicious connections to the Kremlin (Russian bank loans that literally saved the party from bankruptcy, and resulting lack of condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine). They've been caught in corruption scandals. They are anti-EU (used to be for leaving the EU, but after the disaster of Brexit, toned it down to just renegotiating everything the EU is for).
There are traditionally right parties in France that are much more mellow than them. If LR and MODEM are right, what else would RN be other than far right? Yeah they're not as extreme as the lunatic born in Algeria who wants to expel anyone not born in France and who wants to ban non-French names, but they're still pretty extreme for the French political spectrum.
And yeah, the NFP aren't communist. Even though they have socialist and communist parties in their coalition, they're barely socialist.
None of what you mention or claim make them "far right".
"Euroscepticism" used to be quite significant in the "traditionally right" and Gaullist parties in France, like Thatcher was in the UK. And that was before the massive EU power grab of the recent years.
MODEM is centre (I mean it's Bayrou's party, so as centre as can be!). LR has effectively split with the 'right' now allied with RN and the 'left' allied with Macron. The LR now allied with the RN is not so different from Chirac's RPR when they won the general election in 1986. It it right, not far right but not centre right, either.
The original National Front (FN) was far right but it has shifted left and now RN is the de facto main party of the right. It is the largest party in Parliament and it is difficult to argue that 30-45% (depending on elections) of the French are "far right": They are not and the party isn't.
Actually, I would say that your comment illustrates was I mentioned in my previous comment. There has been, and still is, a rather insidious narrative in France and Europe that labels anyone against the current level of immigration and against the current EU trends as "far right" to shut them down. The only result is to make those parties get more and more votes as people's concerns are ignored.
> It is the largest party in Parliament and it difficult to argue that 30-45% (depending on elections) of the French are "far right": They are not.
Objectively, they are. And another 30% are for centre/centre-right/right.
> MODEM is centre (I mean it's Bayrou's party, so as centre as can be!
They are more and more leaning centre-right to right as can be seen by their policymaking (prioritising business over people and ecology, e.g. by refusing to even discuss reducing government aids/tax cuts towards businessess, but instead proposing to cut public holidays).
> There has been, and still is, a rather insidious narrative in France and Europe that labels anyone against the current level of immigration... as "far right" to shut them down
> The only result is to make those parties get more and more votes as people's concerns are ignored
It's funny, because the minister of the interior has been very strongly anti-immigration for quite some time now. And anti-immigration laws have been passed, with support for RN. How is that "ignoring people's concerns". And it's always funny how the people most voting for RN are either from disadvantaged post-industrial areas, where there are few migrants, or from rich posh areas, where there are few migrants (other than rich foreigners buying property). RN are just successfully blending the message and advertising migrants as the single big thing that will "solve" all issues, regardless of how factually incorrect that is. While stealing public money to enrich themselves.
Subjectively (and subjectively anything can be anything so...), but not objectively because, as said, there is nothing "far right" in their manifesto. Again, being anti mass migration and eurosceptic does not make a party far right.
> by refusing to even discuss reducing government aids...
I would argue that their refusal to really cut government spending in general makes them more left-leaning... So perhaps they are indeed centrists overall, then?
> It's funny, because the minister of the interior has been very strongly anti-immigration for quite some time now
Ah yes the nominally LR guy who's serving in Macron's government and who has objectively not done anything in practice (well he has no power to and has been in the job for less than a year...) although he is good at talking tough but that 'talk' is in fact mostly calling for existing laws to be enforced...
And so we get back on my previous claim that the narrative has been so skewed against any action on issues like immigration that he is described as "hardline"
> And it's always funny how the people most voting for RN ... where there are few migrants"
That's clearly not true since even the days of the FN. There are post-industrial areas that used to vote communist and switched to RN and there are areas with immigrants, historically the South East for instance. Now it is widespread, anyway: for instance in the 2024 general elections they came in first in the first round in 297 out of 577 (basically half) constituencies.
It's odd to see this refusal to face reality and to keep denying that immigration is an issue throughout Europe.
> I would argue that their refusal to really cut government spending in general makes them more left-leaning
That's a common misconception (that right leaning governments are somehow fiscally responsible. Some are, to a fault (austerity), but many are only paying lip service).
But in any case, the Bayrou government are trying to lower spending and raise revenue. Entirely with policies which are right-leaning, such as privatising government owned companies, and reducing the amount of public holidays, or lowering spending in the public sector. While the left leaning parties are crying to reduce government subsidies to businesses, which could be an easy budgetary win.
> Ah yes the nominally LR guy who's serving in Macron's government and who has objectively not done anything in practice (well he has no power to and has been in the job for less than a year...) although he is good at talking tough but that 'talk' is in fact mostly calling for existing laws to be enforced...
This is a concrete law voted in to curb immigration and make it easier to expel illegal immigrants or abusers of the asylum system. Yet, to people like you, and far right politicians, nothing is being done! We're being overran! People in power are ignoring the provlem!
> switched to RN and there are areas with immigrants, historically the South East for instance
Like Nice, where the immigrants are rich Russians, Brits and Arabs.
> It's odd to see this refusal to face reality and to keep denying that immigration is an issue throughout Europe.
It's extremely odd seeing how people focus so narrowly on this issue, and somehow think it's existential and nobody is doing anything about it and it's going to ruin the country... And have been saying the same thing for decades. Yet many things are being done, and it's obviously not that existential of a threat if the country is still there... And it's the main topic discussed all the time in political debate! And regardless of any measures, far right politicians just don't shut up about it.
It's just an easy distraction and an easy thing to point to as the source of all evils that can easily be fixed. And that is the hallmark of a modern European far right party, pointing the finger at the EU and migrants for any and all issues. Regardless of substance (like the fact that without migration, France would have had negative population growth for decades, which would have made the already difficult to handle public budget significantly worse).
I spent 10 days in Nice and the close suburbs in June, and have been there and in the area 5-6 different times over the past 10 years.
Nice attempt at invalidating my opinion, but you still haven't explained how a new law being passed to curb immigration is politicians ignoring "The Problem".
> I spent 10 days in Nice and the close suburbs in June
Considering that you claimed that in Nice "immigrants are rich Russians, Brits and Arabs", I must tell bluntly: Either this is not true or you didn't leave Le Negresco hotel.
Either way this perfectly illustrates my previous comment. Next time in Nice my humble suggestion is that you try to see the reality (Google "quartiers sensibles a Nice").
> you still haven't explained how a new law being passed to curb immigration
If you have lived in France long enough you would detect that this is the same as it always is: This is not a law to curb immigration and it won't curb immigration. This is a law for the show and to be able to claim that the government is tough on immigration. There are no "tough" measures against immigration.
It may do so in some of their written papers, but in practice I risk going to prison if I dare say some things. Soon enough it will be illegal for me, the grandkid of a devout communist party member, to say that I agree with what my grandad believed in, it is already illegal to do that in the Czech Republic.
If there's an argument here, it's a mess. You first talk about speech. Commerce is barely speech--it's actually using the public market--and there is a legitimate opinion that applying civil rights to companies is already a corrupt abuse of our society. Perjury is strictly limited to one context existing since the dawn of time (courts), it is also very proceduralized what they can ask you, and even then there's a carveout for not incriminating yourself. Conspiracy and blackmail are only secondarily about speech. There's a criminal intent that you either made clear yourself or they have to prove.
The internet is like media (press) or communication by letters. Both extremely established in terms of guaranteeing freedom of speech and in the latter case, also secrecy. And the ID identification (that you then make your argument about) is only loosely related to free speech strictly. It's about being constantly searched and surveilled with a presumption of crime.
When Microsoft proposed such a scheme in the early 2000s under the name "Palladium", even the mainstream press decried it as a nightmare scenario. Google did pretty much the same thing in 2014 with Safetynet and there was barely a whimper. How did we lose our way?
Back with palladium the people that used computers were still mostly knowledgeable like us. These days everyone carries a phone and nobody really understands the impact. In fact many people in the EU are even against the opening of iOS because they feel comfortable in apple's walled garden. Many people consider privacy a lost battle (I often get the argument "why are you railing against this, you have no privacy anymore anyway"). And that's from intelligent people usually.
People often say things like this, but it's not supported by polling (or my own extensive anecdotal evidence) whatsoever. [1] For instance 81% believe the risks outweigh the benefits of corporate data collection, and 66% believe the same of government data collection.
64% would be uncomfortable with companies sharing their personal data with outside groups doing research that "might help them improve society", which is great because it shows people understand that such phrases aren't just about sitting around and singing kumbaya.
What people say in polling is different from what they will actually do.
IMHO "would be uncomfortable" is not a strong opinion. "Oppose and actively seek to prevent" is a strong opinion. In my experience the majority just have a sense of learned helplessness.
I agree in general, but the person I was responding to was implying the equal but opposite in that claiming he "often" faced the argument of "why are you railing against this, you have no privacy anymore anyway."
People are usually quite interested to learn about ways to can work against the dystopia to some degree. For a specific example I've converted numerous of people to Brave users just by demoing the ad-block and privacy features. People who have never used ad-block are often in borderline disbelief. Not once has a person ever been like 'oh why bother.' That is just literally unbelievable.
I actually did have a relative refuse adblocking via DNS after I demonstrated it on their iPhone; it kept them from watching ads for free stuff in a game, and it's not easy to toggle on the iPhone.
That's one out of dozens though. Most people are thrilled by the improved experience.
> In fact many people in the EU are even against the opening of iOS
True, but I am not sure it is even that many people.
This whole narrative is strongly driven by Apple themselves, one of their strategies against regulations like the EU Digital Markets Act is to rally its userbase against the EU.
They figured out that much of the population is easily manipulated and controlled by exploiting their desire for "safety and security" --- in stark contrast to that classic Franklin quote (yes, I know the context isn't the same, but the words are otherwise a perfect fit for the situation.) It's only a minority of the population; and I'd suspect a smaller minority in the EU than the US; which is willing to argue against it.
Next time you find yourself arguing for something or doing things a certain way, throw in an "it's better for security" or similar phrase with a plausible-sounding argument why, and see how easily it shuts down the opposition. In my experience, many won't even question it.
On a PC people are used to tinker around, the whole ecosystem is built around that assumption.
The smartphone was a closed ecosystem from the start, tinkering around was an uphill battle fought with custom ROMs that only few users dared to try (if the bootloader wasn't locked down to begin with). Adding more restrictions didn't have much impact on most users.
same idea has been pushed since forever(you can include ACTA and other copyright protectionist movements like that as its originators too) over and over again.
People need to protest all the time and win, legislators can just keep pushing it over and over again.
What's even worse you get really smart people seeing noting wrong with this.. Meanwhile this reeks of same methods that were used in my country under communist regime.
> There is some amusing irony in the EU relying on the US for furthering its own authoritarianism.
I think you're trying too hard to post cynical remarks as if the were this major gotcha. Even though the bill is quite awful, Occam's razor is quick to point out this has all the hallmarks of an overzealous technocrat than authoritarianism. Try to think about it for a second:
- the goal of the legislation is to ensure adult content is not provided or actively pushed to children,
- adult content is pushed primarily by tech platforms,
- the strategy is to allow access to adult content only to users who prove they are adults,
- the strategy followed is to push an age verification system.
- technocrats know age verification systems can be circumvented if tampered with.
- technocrats proceed to add provisions that mitigate the risk of tampering age verification systems.
The detail you're glancing over is US's hegemony over social media and tech platforms. The world is dominated by three platforms: Microsoft's, Apple's, Google's. Even Samsung is not European. How do you expect to push a technical solution for an authorization platform without leveraging the systems that people use?
Also, the way the current US administration is pushing their blend of fascism onto the world is something I do not find funny. If anything, this would mean the American fascists are succeeding.
> How do you expect to push a technical solution for an authorization platform without leveraging the systems that people use?
Imagine a world in which there are ten thousand phone platforms, some of them are developed by communities rather than business entities, and anyone can easily create a new one. Can your system function in that world? If so, then do it that way. If not, then assume it shouldn't work and stop trying to build it.
> Imagine a world in which there are ten thousand phone platforms, some of them are developed by communities rather than business entities, and anyone can easily create a new one.
You'd be imagining a world that's very different from reality. Lawmakers have to operate in reality, though.
Most of the problems we face with computer technology are because of the dominance of a few megacorporations. Policies that increase their hegemony are making the problem worse, not better!
It's completely unnecessary,there are plenty of parental control options and software for parents to install.
What will happen in reality is that videos and information is labelled adult content when in reality it isn't, e.g. videos of democratic protests. How do I know that? Because that's what's already happening.
Maybe an easy to manipulate technocrat with an authoritarian figure guiding them from behind.
> the goal of the legislation is to ensure adult content is not provided or actively pushed to children
It always starts with the children or terrorists. It's an easy way to sneak the idea in your head. You wouldn't want children to be harmed or terrorists to win, would you? Once you got used to the though, everything else follows.
Name something you want or like I can lazily turn it into a "think of the children" situation.
Hate to say it mate, UK is already one of the worst offenders.
In their own "internet bubble," with curated Google searches that only present a very "Commonwealth countries bias" in search results. After I worked in the UK for a couple of years, I noticed there is a strong bias toward the same sites (Government and UK companies, especially biased toward "facts"). Second, you leave the UK. You will never get it. Try a VPN outside of the UK and search for the same stuff, you will notice it right away.
The UK have used the "think about the children" excuse for different stuff they don't like (Remember the Porn pass Idea? Where you had to go down to your local Tesco to get a "wanker pass" from the cashier.)
Same thing, now just for EU, and they use the "protect the children" excuse, but they have now started to aim at video game companies and others to "verify" age for the sake of "protecting the children". It is horrifying that they want to ID children in the excuse of their "safety". In a couple of years, they will likely offer free in-game currency to trick users into giving away their personal information.
AFAIK there are still cracks available, although it's been getting more difficult over time.
This is another one of the reasons why I'm opposed to the current trend of "memory safety" that the megacorps are so enthusiastic about. When insecurity is freedom, and security means securing against the user's control, attacking insecurity will only close off paths to freedom.
The strong integrity can be faked if you have the keys from a trusted phone that has a security flaw that allows key extraction. I think google bans these from time to time.
You can't have privacy-friendy age verification that is also compatible with tinkering.
The problem is relay services that supply positive age verification results to any interested user for a fee. With a non-privacy-preserving solution, those aren't a problem, law enforcement can just track whose credentials those services are using and shut them down.
I'm not a fan of the whole idea in general, but if we have to choose, I choose privacy over hackability.
But you can, and GrapheneOS shows exactly why. And there are developers who instead of choosing fake and flaved* Google "attestation", choose to conduct hardware attestation.
*Google claims phones not updated for the last 8 years are secure merely because they have privileged Google services. Tell you what: many of them are rooted, with Google play services blind to it, and still claiming phones are "verified".
You don't even need to consider politics to acknowledge this is dangerous, wildly irresponsible of a government to tie internet access to a foreign corporate entity's control. The privacy concerns of not being able to use a device free from Google services, may only be second to the sovereignty issues it introduces.
Whoops, Google have delisted your government app from the Play Store, how quickly can you de-couple your citizens internet access from the corptocracy?
Guardians of minors are responsible for what they view, as well as what they drink or breathe. So they should make sure their devices are configured properly, same way they make sure there is no alcohol or tobacco intake.
> As a resident of the aforementioned political climate, I find their concerns to be reasonable.
No. The lesson is that stuff like this is concerning what ever the "political climate".
Anyway, you mainly don't want the gov in your vicinity to snoop. Non-local OS:es is probably advantageous in that regard if you choose to run proprietary code...
>No. The lesson is that stuff like this is concerning what ever the "political climate".
We say this, but many also want to entrust all our PC games to one closed source launcher. Or have videos/TV all on one subscription service. There's definitely a spectrum of benevolent and greedy dictators people draw lines on.
> many also want to entrust all our PC games to one closed source launcher
I think that is far more that people like the other closed source launchers less, and each launcher potentially adds it's own stream of notifications and adverts to their system so there is a cost to having multiple active even if the PC resource cost is practically undetectable.
Furthermore if comparing game launches and related issues to political climates, I'd consider all the current closed source ones to be the same in those respects. Also we are not subject to several local political climates at any one time in that way (though we are when looking at a wider scale, of course).
> Or have videos/TV all on one subscription service
While there are other issues (each service tracking you etc.) this is more due to the fact that each service charges what we used to pay (in fact more, as in some cases prices have gone up by more than general inflation) for a single service that provided the same amount of content that they cared about. This doesn't really equate to trust on political climates (except where commercial greed is considered a political matter).
> I think that is far more that people like the other closed source launchers less
Why does one need a game launcher? Cannot we just like run games as we run any app? Having to use a launcher that by default requires internet connection, even if the game itself doesn’t, sounds like a very specific choice of how to do things. We don’t run any other kind of program like that.
I don't think Steam requires internet access past initial login. In any case, I'd much rather have our lord and saviour Gaben, between me and toxic corpo X than have to deal with the corpos directly when an issue arises. I'd also much rather give Gaben my coins since he essentially made gaming on Linux viable. Right as Microsoft decided to fuck around, our lord Gaben came to the rescue. It'll be sad when he one day retires, but hopefully he'll be able to find a decent successor.
I think that you need to set it to be able to launch online, but maybe I am wrong.
I have no issue with steam per se. It has actually kept on its path threw the years and it actually invests back into gaming with games and steam deck/proton. However, I find it hard to trust good intentions after many platforms with good intentions were at some point sold and enshittified. I would rather have DRM-free games that do not depend on a launcher that maybe after 10 or 20 years will not work the same.
Otherwise, steam is a great platform and a rare example of a platform that not only has not enshitified but invested back to the product they sell in ways that benefit users.
I don't think one excludes the other. I want DRM-free games, but I would also like a launcher like Steam, so I don't have to manage my library most of the time. For example, I have 1000+ games, of which I only care about, let's say, 50.
With a launcher, I can back up the 50 I care about and leave the storage of the rest to it. If they were to disappear without warning, I don't ~really~ care, but I still have easy access to them. Then the launcher can also take care of compatibility issues with old games automatically. Say a game is dependent on X, which was made in the Win XP times and no longer works, the launcher can find a modern fork/substitute and auto replace it, so that I don't have to fuck around with it myself.. There's value in it.
Then you get the platform itself with good guide integration, mod workshop integration, friends (game invites, sharing, etc), combined store...
It's kinda like what I believe GOG is trying to do, though I'm not very familiar with them since I just don't like how much their launcher pings (blows through my NextDNS usage limit in a week).
> this is more due to the fact that each service charges what we used to pay (in fact more, as in some cases prices have gone up by more than general inflation) for a single service that provided the same amount of content that they cared about.
That is because the introductory prices were not 1 to 1 to the business’ existing revenue streams from cable and satellite transmission fees. Especially considering that before, there was a very limited supply of content restricted by time slots, and now you are buying far, far more on demand content without advertising breaks. And without contracts with a cable or satellite company.
People are spoiled, and don’t appreciate how much easier and cheaper it is to watch or listen to most content than it was pre streaming services.
One only needs to look at market cap graphs of the various media companies to see that streaming isn’t the cash cow people think it is.
> That is because the introductory prices were not 1 to 1 to the business’ existing revenue streams from cable and satellite transmission fees.
Bad pricing descisions are a them problem, not a me problem. But it isn't just pricing of individual services that is the issue, it is the separation of content amonst many services which is the companies gauging out what they can with no care for how inconvenient it is for the audience, at least those who don't turn back to the high seas.
> without advertising breaks
Despite the increasing prices, and the need for multiple servies at those prices, the adverts are very much coming back. All the conveniences of streaming are being taken away and companies are surprised that we aren't happy paying for that…
> People are spoiled […] see that streaming isn’t the cash cow people think it is
If they are, then they were spoiled by the companies being deliberately misleading to get them hooked in the first place. My level of sympathy is limited by their level of honesty and “prey I don't change the deal further” attitude.
When the question is “but how did you expect us to make good business under those conditions?”, a perfectly valid answer is “you very much lead us to believe that you could”.
> When the question is “but how did you expect us to make good business under those conditions?”
There is no “make good” since there was no contract about long term expectations.
Even the media business’ leaders don’t know the future. Fewer eyeballs watching or listening to a specific piece of media means the cost has to be amortized over a smaller audience, meaning higher prices, or less quantity and quality of media.
Price volatility should be expected in a changing business environment, and the media business got rocked by increasing supply (Meta/ByteDance/video games/on demand historic catalogs/etc) in the last 20 years, as evidenced by the change in their market values.
It’s just business, so no one needs your sympathy, but it is also weird to see supposedly numerate people gripe about the effects of rapidly shifting supply and demand curves.
> but it is also weird to see supposedly numerate people gripe about the effects of rapidly shifting supply and demand curves
I suppose. But it is also weird to see supposedly numerate businesses repeatedly having the same trouble then blaming everyone else for it.
It is almost like they are deliberately running a long-term bait & switch everytime (see also another item coincidently on HN's front page today, Stop selling "unlimited", when you mean "until we change our minds").
This is genuinely a real issue. It seems that most people cannot forsee an issue down the road unless it just happens to personally affect them after it took place ( ideally immediately after ). Valve is a good example, because while it is providing good value for the service it provides, it will not stay like that forever, but the environment it did set up will. And it will hurt once MBAs divvy up that kingdom. Just sayin'
And obviously it is not just one arena, because it seems to be one glaring issue with human beings: they do not want to see the road ahead. And the ones they do are, at best, ignored.
the issue is that incentive structure is different from some of those that you've mentioned.
Steam makes the most money if it bridges interests of consumers and publishers together - they don't profit by screwing over the customer(either publishers or end users). Is depending on them a problem? yes, but least likely one. preferably you could move your digital licenses to any provider you want.
Meanwhile subscription services profit the most from enshittification, especially ones that offer 'free' access with ads, or different tiers.
and this current issue isn't even about dependence on google - that's bad in itself - but about gigantic governmental overreach and step towards killing anonymity online under guise of protecting the children.
It is even worse when you consider some EU countries already went after people when politicians got insulted online.
Yeah I'm glad I don't live in a two party state. The zero sum game politics that results in rips the country apart. You see this in the US and also in the UK (Brexit etc)
It's not better in countries with multiple parties where nearly everyone (every relevant party) wants authoritarianism in the name of "fighting hate speech".
It is all the same, under different names. Plus even in countries with multiple parties, it is usually only two parties that have a chance, but again, they usually (or always) have a similar (or the same) goals.
Not really, in Holland we usually have a coalition of at least 3 parties in government. No one party is ever big enough to have a majority. And yes they are quite different. This makes coalitions difficult to form and very unstable but I still far prefer it over a two-party system.
(I wish non-Americans wouldn't spend all their time tripping over themselves to try to insult Americans. If you didn't feel so insecure about yourselves and resentful of the success of others, you wouldn't feel such a need to justify your existence.)
In this case, however, it's your poor English to blame. In English when you talk to another person, that other person can be called the other party. It's not an attitude, it's a very neutral term.
From the telegraph.co.uk: "Elite police unit to monitor online critics of migrants" and there are people worried about the "political climate" in the US lmao
The UK in the last 2 decades has been far more totalitarian than the US, even up to 2025. But the people in England seem to accept it and openly defend government encroachment even here on HN. While even smallest steps towards eroding rights in US have people there decry it, so it's far more controversial and newsworthy
But it's nice so many people care about the last few places where hard freedoms exist. The biggest risk is missing the forest for the trees and not seeing the local extensions of short term political comprise.
I am forever thankful that Trump won the last election. If it were a Democrat party at the helm it would be practically impossible to have opposition to this, as most of the left would simply fall in line and cancel anyone daring to oppose the party. Look at how Obama strengthened the Patriot Act and carried out mass deportations with but a tiny grumble from the press.
Here is a list of every state and federal bill proposed in the United States in recent history (that I could find). Have a look at the letter beside the names of the sponsors. Then, after you've discovered that online surveillance bills are almost entirely written by republicans, go read about how your president is bankrolling ICE and their purchase of US citizen's air travel data.
Protecting Kids from Social Media Act (Tennessee HB 1891)
Sponsors Representative William Lamberth (R‑TN)
Requires: Social media platforms to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent for under‑18 users; restricts retention of verification data; allows parental monitoring & time limits. Went into effect January 1, 2025.
Utah Social Media Regulation Act (SB 152 & HB 311)
Sponsors: Sen. Michael McKell (R) , Rep. Jordan Teuscher (R-District 44)
Requires: Mandatory age verification for all users; parental consent and oversight for under‑18s; bans algorithmic targeting to minors; curfews; data‑privacy protections. (As of mid‑2025, enforcement blocked by litigation.)
The Walker Montgomery Protecting Children Online Act (Mississippi HB 1126)
Sponsors: Walker Montgomery (R‑MS)
Requires: Digital service platforms to verify age using "commercially reasonable" methods, obtain parental consent for users under 18, limit collection/use of minor’s data, moderate harmful content (self‑harm, grooming, etc.)
Texas SCOPE Act (HB 18, “Securing Children Online Through Parental Empowerment”)
Sponsors: Bryan Hughes (R-District 5)
Requires: Platforms to verify the parent/guardian age if the account is for a minor; parental consent before collecting data for users under 18; content filtering for self‑harm, etc. Enforcement partially blocked by lawsuit.
Kids Online Safety & Privacy Act (S. 2073 – pending)
Sponsors: Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA)
Requires: Commission study into age‑verification technologies; does not mandate verification itself
Utah Social Media Regulation Act S.B. 152
Sponsors: Sen. Todd Weiler (R)
Requires: Mandatory age verification, parental consent, time‑bed restrictions, limits on algorithmic recommendations; currently blocked in court
Mississippi Walker Montgomery Protecting Children Online Act (HB 1126)
Sponsors: Representative Walker Montgomery (R‑MS)
Requires: Age verification for digital services, parental consent, limits on data collection and harmful content moderation
Georgia Protecting Georgia’s Children on Social Media Act (SB 351 / Act 463)
Sponsors: State Senator Brandon Beach (R)
Requires: Platforms verify age of new users; under‑16 require parental consent; schools to ban social media access
Virginia Amendment to VA Consumer Data Protection Act (SB 854)
Sponsors: Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg (D) , Sen. Lashrecse Aird (D)
Requires: Requires age determination, parental consent for under‑16, limits usage to 1 hour/day unless overridden by parent, fines up to $7,500 per violation
Louisiana HB 142 (and HB 570) Online Age Verification for Adult Content
Sponsors: Representative Laurie Schlegel (R)
Requires: Websites where ≥ 33% of content is adult must verify users are 18+ via IDs or transaction data; private causes of action allowed
Ohio HB 96 (2025 law)
Sponsors: Bryan Stewart (R-Ashville)
Requires: Criminal penalties for commercial sites failing to verify adult content users
Iowa SF 207 / HF 864
Sponsors: Kevin Alons (R-Disctrict 7)
Texas SB 2420 (App-Store Age Verification)
Sponsors: Angela Paxton (R)
South Carolina HB 3405
Sponsors: Representative Brandon Guffey (R‑SC) prefiled Jan 2025
Proposed: Require app stores to verify age and obtain parental consent for minors; still pending
Protecting Kids on Social Media Act (S. 1291 federal bill)
Sponsored by: Senator Brian Schatz (D‑HI), Senators Tom Cotton (R‑AR), Chris Murphy (D‑CT), Katie Britt (R‑AL)
Requires: Social media platforms to verify user ages, prohibit access to under‑13s, block algorithmic feeds to users under 18, require parental consent for minors
App Store Accountability Act (H.R. 10364 / companion Senate bill)
Sponsored by: Rep. John James (R‑MI‑10); Senate version by Sen. Mike Lee (R‑UT) with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D‑CT)
Requires: App store operators verify ages and obtain parental consent before minors download apps or make in‑app purchases; federal preemption and FTC enforcement
Now go and find how much opposition there was to such laws when the Democrats were in power. Spoiler: it's negative. Whenever Democrats inherit a law like that from Republicans they expand its scope with giddy abandon as the media and their "vote blue no matter who" followers stand by and clap.
My thesis isn't that Democrats write those bills, my thesis is that there is never effective citizen resistance against government overreach when Democrats are in power. People can only be free when they are fighting the government and people only fight Republican governments, ergo we must vote Republican to keep the fight going. Both sides are our enemy, but one side enjoys a much larger cult following that will never attack it.
The war on the free internet is accelerating. Without real push-back to these dystopian laws and consequences for the people proposing and lobbying for them, you'll miss what will ultimately end up being a temporary anomaly of mostly unrestrained free flow of information. It's not an hypothetical scenario or something that will develop down the line, it's happening today, worldwide.
I heard from a friend last night that they were unable to see posts on X about current protests in their country because those were considered "adult" content which can now only be viewed after submitting to an ID check. Not porn, video of a protest.
It’s really important to remember in this context that “the purpose of a system is what it does.”
Do not think for a moment that ID verification primarily protects children and only incidentally enables authoritarian restrictions on speech. Do not think for a second that verification initiatives are designed without anticipating this outcome.
The phrase does not mean that you can pick any single effect of a system and claim that is its purpose, as your linked article does in its examples. (Ironically, a form of reducto as absurdum.) It is a heuristic, a pattern of thought to attempt to overcome the bias towards judging systems based on the intentions behind them instead of the outcomes they produce. The point is that when you choose a course of action, you are implicitly choosing its negative effects as well, and the choice should be judged on all its effects. You are making a cost / benefit analysis, and if that is not explicit, it can easily be wrong.
I think you're taking it too literally. A more generous interpretation would be "what it does can be a better indicator of what the true hidden motive was for nefarious state programs".
I have to agree that this is problematic in the sense of ascribing malicious intent, but it is actually a useful concept when performing an honest/truthful analysis and trying to acquire new knowledge and perspectives so you can compare them. i.e. the analysis of what it ought to do versus what it actually does.
Given a software product, there are often marketers/advertisers telling you what use cases they envisioned for their product, but you as the customer actually know more about your core business and your own needs. Hence you choose the products not based on what the vendor claims about the product i.e. the intended/prescribed purpose, you care more about what the product can do for your business and that includes discovering ways to use the product that the vendor could have never imagined in the first place.
Does your hospital kill more people than it saves? If so, you might be describing the 19th century Vienna General Hospital, which had two maternal wards: one staffed by trained physicians, suffering up to 30% mortality, the other by midwives, only experiencing 2~10% rates. The difference was so pronounced, local women desperately avoided the first ward, begging to give birth in the streets rather than be admitted there. Ignaz Semmelweis later attributed the disparity to doctors having performed autopsies before attending births without disinfecting their clothes, hands, or tools, dropping to only a few percent with disinfection.
Or if you limit your demographics, perhaps you might be thinking of the Tuskegee syphilis study, where treatment was intentionally withheld for a progressive, life-threatening disease without the consent of the patients, making its purpose to slowly kill the participants by its own admission?
Yes, if your hospital does seem to kill more people than most and there's no alternative explanation like accepting more severe cases, then its purpose might be inverse or orthogonal to its stated goal.
Sadly the old guard of free speech and privacy activists on the internet has long gone, drowned by a sea of unprincipled populist reactionaries - if their team decided that the content is "problematic", then they are entirely justified in censoring and punishing the speakers for daring to speak it, and entirely justified in protecting everybody else from having to suffer the horror of reading/seeing/hearing it, and it matters not whether the mechanisms are legal or ethical because the ends justify the means.
>the old guard of free speech and privacy activists on the internet has long gone, drowned by a sea of unprincipled populist reactionaries
which is an unnecessary ideological divide if your concern is free speech and privacy; too bad the old guard of activists chose sides and alienated additional support for their cause.
If the "rightie libertarians" from sibling is correct, then it actually describe the dynamic I have noticed.
It is free speech as long as you are politically right, no matter how far extreme right you are or what you are saying. But, if you are left or oppose the far right, then criticizing those is not free speech, but rather a restriction on it. Suddenly you should shut up, all sorts of additional rules apply to you. It is wrong to argue with far right, to say things that are uncomfortable for them or call them names, call them nazi even when it is clearly the case. But if you are just a little radical feminist, you are valid target for any amount of abuse which suddenly counts as free speech. Your leftist or feminist speech does not count as valid free speech.
Eventually, it started to look like "free speech" is tactically used expression to create an asymmetry and applies only to certain ideas. Or certain people ideas.
I am saying that "I support free speech" ended up associated with "I am pro far right, but do not want to openly admit so, but I will gladly accept suppression of left, progressives, liberals and anyone who criticizes right".
And that eventually we realized that "old school free speech groups" just wanted to shut up opposition to far right.
It ended up associated with the far right, because poster child for "defending speech" was only and exclusively far right. Really.
It was never "I strongly disagree with an annoying progressive, but I will defend their right to say it". It was always "how dare you criticize far right or call someone far right, you are preventing their speech by opposing them".
> people on the left who are against free speech I suppose, yes.
Funny enough, far right and conservatives were openly against free speech again and again and again. Including in very practical ways. And we see that right now with Trump, Thiel, Musk, Vance and the rest.
People "on the right" nor self styled free speech advocates never minded that. There was never any fascist movement for freedom, the openly stated goal was always to remove the freedom. But if you are not one of them say so and mean it as a criticism, you are somehow supposedly preventing their free speech.
> It ended up associated with the far right, because poster child for "defending speech" was only and exclusively far right. Really.
It ended up being associated with the far right by far leftists. Really. Go outside internet bubbles and ask normal people on the street. People don't think free speech is "far right". Really.
> It was never "I strongly disagree with an annoying progressive, but I will defend their right to say it". It was always "how dare you criticize far right or call someone far right, you are preventing their speech by opposing them".
I've heard that a lot, so that's false.
> Funny enough, far right and conservatives were openly against free speech again and again and again. Including in very practical ways. And we see that right now with Trump, Thiel, Musk, Vance and the rest.
I'm not seeing where the humor is.
> People "on the right" nor self styled free speech advocates never minded that.
Also wrong, many free speech advocates have greatly minded conservative efforts to censor speech in the past.
> There was never any fascist movement for freedom,
No, but that appears to be a strawman of your own construction by equating free speech advocates with fascists.
As a group, those who bang the free speech and privacy drum be seen as being more to the right than 20 years ago, but I doubt it is significantly because individuals changed their other political opinions. More because some of the group dropped out as they have been silenced by fear or just changed their outlook on it as political landscape has changed. Also in some part because those remaining in the group are just viewed as being more to one side of the political spectrum than they used to be simply because of this view.
I parsed this entirety as a single noun cluster: "the old guard of free speech and privacy activists on the internet"
and to me that can be summed up as "the EFF", and the EFF is decidedly left whinge, and does not attract the support of others who are concerned about free speech.
free speech on the pre-web internet didn't really need a group, it was a given and generally accepted by all parties
But in that case, the EFF didn't go to be rightie libertarians. They if anything may have gone further left, it's just that they no longer champion free speech. Which is basically what I said, just applied to the group rather than individuals.
Not commenting on ID checks but depending on the protest, some images can be violent and definitely "adult".
I never understood why we go out of our way to "protect" children against seeing naked people, but real people in a pool of blood, nah, no problem. I think that people bloodily fighting each other for causes that I have a hard time understanding even as an adult may not be what we want children to be exposed to without control. Images of violence create a visceral reaction and I don't think it is how we should approach political problems, in the same way that porn may not be the best approach to sex, the same argument for why we don't let children access porn applies to political violence too.
The point I wanted to make is that whatever your opinion is on ID checks to access to adult content, "adult" doesn't and shouldn't just mean "porn".
Ostensibly these laws are to protect kids from porn, but that isn't really the case. They instantly expand to everything else "adult", and it's very easy to argue that talking about politics, or discussing evidence of war crimes or genocide, or apparently showing a real and current protest, are "adult" conversations.
And with laws like this, people, adults, everyone, lose the ability to participate in those conversations without doxxing themselves. Some of these things are difficult to discuss when you fear retribution.
It's not about the porn. It was never actually about the porn. The porn is just the difficult-to-defend-without-looking-like-a-pervert smokescreen. It's designed to curtail the free flow of information and expression in far more areas. The people behind these laws are liars.
We are approaching a time when most of that free flowing information is LLM generated propaganda and advertising. The average person can no longer go on the internet and trust any of the things they see or read, so what's the value of such information? I would prefer the free internet of the 90s and 00s, but we're losing it even without these laws.
> We are approaching a time when most of that free flowing information is LLM generated propaganda and advertising. The average person can no longer go on the internet and trust the things they see or read
The average person could never do that; critical evaluation was always needed (and it was needed for the material people encountered before the internet, too.) The only thing that is a change from the status quo ante in the first sentence is “LLM generated”.
Maybe, but it's not possible to critically evaluate everything you see and read. For sure most people don't, and probably no one does all the time. So if before 10% of information was lies and manipulation, most of the information was still good, or at least something that a real person thought was good. Now, or soon, anything you read or watch has a 99% chance of being generated by someone who wants to manipulate you, because those who want to manipulate have something to gain from it, and are willing to spend more money to do it than those who want to share the truth.
Actually I think with LLM, the average person is more likely to be critical of anything they see now than ever before, as they know that it could be AI generated. In my non IT circle, now even genuine content is being doubted as being AI generated.
This state is not going to last long because LLMs are getting better and the people who write prompts are getting better. Soon the vast majority of content on the net is going to be generated by LLMs to influence you in one way or another, be that politically or as a consumer, and the content is going to be indistinguishable from human writing. And you can be virtually certain that the groups and people with the lowest moral standards will use it the most to sway public opinion.
This reliance on hackers and other antisocial snowflakes in FOSS world is one of the reason we are where we are.
Political problems cannot be solved through technology or yet another forked FOSS project. They require political power, numbers and threat of violence to those in charge.
The population (especially the youth) is anesthetized by social media, shorts, fear-inducing news, economic hopelessness, climate extremes..
In the meantime, everything is getting integrated - banks, tax systems, tech platforms. Now this age verification..
And of course, AI is being implemented everywhere so that no one can evade the big brother.
As it stands now, this Internet is no longer salvageable imo.
> Without real push-back to these dystopian laws and consequences for the people proposing and lobbying for them
If anything, I’m seeing more calls for internet regulation on HN and other tech places than in the past.
Every time something is shared about topics like kids spending too much time on phones or LLMs producing incorrect output, the comments attract a lot of demands for government regulation as the solution. Regulation is viewed as the way to push back on technological and social problems.
The closer regulations come to reality, the less popular they are. Regulation seems most attractive in the abstract, before people have to consider the unintended consequences.
The most common example I can think of is age verification: Every thread about smartphone addiction come with calls for strict age-based regulation all over the place.
Yet the calls for strict age-based internet regulation generally fail to realize that you can’t only do age verifications on kids and you can’t do it anonymously. The only way to do age verification is to verify everyone, and the only way to verify that the age verification matches the user is to remove the possibility of anonymity.
The calls for regulation always imagine it happening to other people and other companies. Few people demanding internet age verification for things like social media seem to realize that it would also apply to sites like HN. Nobody likes the idea of having to prove your identity for an age check to sign up for HN, they just want to imagine Facebook users going through that trouble because they don’t use Facebook and therefore it’s not a problem.
Engineers want some kind of regulation because they feel like computer systems, which they nominally control, are out of control, because of the business people's demands. They want the right to say no without having to have the consequences of saying no. But then when regulations come in, they're not about regulating business, they're about regulated interactions between people and business. And whereas the idealist sees a regulation as a chance to change things for the better, a regulator sees a regulation as a chance to preserve things as they were just before they became bad. (It takes a politician, not a regulator, to change things.)
They always start with "think of the children", but that's just the opening salvo. The wild west days of the internet are definitely behind us. We'll be lucky if we still have private personal computing in the future, or any semblance of free speech.
If we're to regain any ground here we need to adjust the messaging wrt terms like "wild west" - that's precisely the kind of terminology that scares the average voter into thinking the government needs to do something about this whole internet thing. We need to use patriotic and inspiring language, like "free" as in "free speech for the internet," or "safe and private" etc
I'm not sure this old horror story still works. The things to be afraid of have changed too much and at a far larger scale than people then could comprehend.
The "temporary anomaly" is one of perception. It was individuals talking to individuals. In terms of volume the world has never had this much free flow of information, and its never been easier to transmit encrypted data within a group.
At the same time the problem with letting the internet be without government means it pushes digital crack to all children, and an oligarchy of (natural) monopolies tightly control certain powers through systems like "sign in with Google".
The options for companies to instead use a government backed digital identity seems like an obvious step forward if designed carefully enough.
That requires the right mindfullness of people's rights, eg the right story. I just don't think the war on the free-internet narrative from 30 years ago is up for it.
But the "digital crack" isn't what the government wants to restrict from children.
They want to stop children from accessing porn, which really isn't all that bad. Certainly it's not nearly as bad as wasting hours on perfectly legal social media and streaming sites
We didn't quite yet. We're still here, pretty anonymous, I'm sure your real name is not deadbabe :) IRC still exists where you can just pick a nickname from thin air. And most of these things will stay, underground. It's the commercial mainstream that will bow to this, sadly.
Unfortunately, the expert in debugging Arduino electrical errors, or in numpy, or in evaluating what the burn pattern on your spark plugs means, or in identifying that strange object in your telescope, won't be on IRC. He'll be on Reddit, where you'll need a government-provided ID _and sanctioned device_ to participate. Or on Facebook, where you'll need a government-provided ID _and sanctioned device_ to participate. Or on whatever large, popular platform replaces them, where you'll need a government-provided ID _and sanctioned device_ to participate.
But rest assured, so long as you want to discuss privacy and nostalgia of the pre-invasionary internet, you'll find a knowledgeable expert on IRC.
Maybe there is an astronomy channel, maybe there isn't. The official page [1] requires longer to install the client to even know which channels exist. That's arguably worse than Reddit, which requires no software nor registration to know which communities exist.
What do you mean? The webchat client is linked right there in the second paragraph, doesn't require you to install anything and let's you connect and list channels as a guest without registering. It took me like 30 seconds to find out that there is indeed an astronomy channel.
In Germany, before I can send an anonymous message on HN, I have to send a picture of my passport to some government agency and have a video call with them, so that my phone is allowed to attach to the internet.
Could you elaborate? I lived in Germany for a while and I never had to send a picture to a government agency and have a video call with them to access the internet. Phone, laptop, and desktop.
Never heard anything like that from many people I know in Germany.
I feel like there is a huge chunk of context missing here.
Sure. The difference is probably that you had a contract assigned to your home address, so they had your identity and your banking coordinates already, no need to ask.
I'm referring to sim cards bought in a supermarket. Prepaid, no contract. The activation process, regardless of the brand (I've tried many!) involves those video calls.
Oh that sucks deeply. In Spain they have something like that too. But in Holland you can still buy one in the supermarket without registering anything (though you'll have to top up by cash every single time if you really don't want to be traced).
I think Ireland still doesn't require registration either.
Amusingly, one of the prepaid sim card that i got in an airport required as a first step that i install an app on my phone (with my previous sim since internet was needed) just so that the app could refuse to proceed because that sim was not German...
The European union never ceases to amaze me. Whatever happened to becoming less dependent on American corporations?
They flip flop on this stuff at least once a month, and the most annoying part is that they always herald everything they do as some new epoch-defining initiative only to quietly forget about it and do the opposite a few months later.
If nation states are dogs, then EU is the chihuahua: loud, proud and extremely ineffective.
Ineffective? Extremely so? From open borders to open roaming to the various legislation that my tiny country would never be able to force corporations into if we didn't have it at the EU level. Heck, the currency. There's so many aspects I take for granted in life and don't even think about anymore. I can just pay anywhere without thinking or conversion fees. Must have been amazing for trade though it's nearly as old as I am so I don't know how things were before. How in the world you come to a worldview of the EU being extremely ineffective, I cannot imagine. Are you from the EU?
There was an article in the New York Times last week about how many E.U. countries have actually gone back to border checks. Most recently, Germany and Poland.
But border checks in the EU are a bit more relaxed. Sometimes they just wave you through - other times you just show your government id (which in many EU countries you are required to carry at all times) and they maybe check the car boot.
Yeah, I'm not sure how to directly fight it yet (besides voting as I've always done) but I'm avoiding border queues on a weekly basis now. It's a shame, but for now you can still drive right through on a dozen other border points, just not the highway
France apparently also had this around their Olympics or soccer world cup or something. It's not unique and so far it has always been a fad, usually to please nationalist voters for a while
The European commission, the top of the EU's unelected and mostly unchecked bureaucracy, is currently suing its data protection office after it declared that its use of Microsoft 365 infringes data protection laws.
I mean, the EU wants to force browsers to recognize its own web certificates, while allowing Google to selectively deactivate your phone's capacity to conduct ID checks. It's the same with the "EU Cloud initiative", that at the end was full of non-EU companies.
The aim of the EU bureaucracy is not sovereignty, but extension of its power, nowadays called as "regulation". And when in place, it can't be removed, even if it's clearly self-harming.
The EU is not a hegemonic state, but rather an economic supranational organization. France/Germany tend to be primary proponents of increased EU strategic autonomy, while Poland/Czech/Baltic states are less supportive.
Similar to recent discussions of self-hosting, it's a tradeoff of autonomy/control vs efficiency.
> The EU is not a hegemonic state, but rather an economic supranational organization. France/Germany tend to be primary proponents of increased EU strategic autonomy, while Poland/Czech/Baltic states are less supportive.
Well obviously, these states know how bad the Russians are since they were terrorised by them for decades. They'll be the first on the chopping block. And they know that Europe does not have much deterrent of its own right now so they're screwed without the US. Though this will come.
Sure, nobody is denying that. That does not contradict the argument (not mine) that perhaps people lived more secure lives under Soviet rule.
Note that I define "more secure" as in not living in fear of losing home and income. Not necessarily that their standard of living was as good as those in the West.
It depends: if you are part of the party and things are going good then yes. However, if you are from a group of people that you government has decided is trouble, then you tend to disappear in the night. Like my mother in law who says things where so safe when there was police on every corner in Spain during the dictatorship but my father in law was hiding "reds" under the floorboards as they where Jewish and being procecuted. One does not take away from the other, instead of criminals threatening you it's the government goons.
> if you are from a group of people that you government has decided is trouble, then you tend to disappear in the night.
So this really is a case of survivorship bias. Those that survived the Soviet times, remember it, not fondly, but as a more secure time. Those that didn't survive, we don't hear their accounts very much.
> my father in law was hiding "reds" under the floorboards as they where Jewish and being procecuted.
> Germany tend to be primary proponents of increased EU strategic autonomy
Germany isn't doing this as much anymore, because Germany Inc has become increasingly dependent on their investments within the US [0], especially after the triple whammy of the Biden-era IRA [1], the sanctions on Russia sparking a domestic energy crisis [2], and Chinese players outcompeting German industry in China [3].
This can be seen with Germany purchasing American weapons for Ukraine over French objections [4]
> They flip flop on this stuff at least once a month
Because in the background it's a French vs German vs Irish vs Czech vs $insert_eu_state business interests competing with each other.
Notice how it's almost always French legislators and businesses that mention "domestic EU tech" and not Polish, Czech, Romanian, Dutch, or even German policymakers or businesses?
That's why.
National interests always end up trumping the EU in it's current form. And for a large portion of the EU, American BigTech represents the majority of FDI (tech and overall).
Japanese and Korean automotive players did the same thing with the US in the 1980s-90s in order to ensure their interests remained aligned (though the Plaza Accords did play a role)
(the entire video is interesting and informative, I've skipped it to the France-US specific part, up to about 11:02 where Australia is introduced as the US sycophant it is)
Whether it's logical or not, offences past, even those thought forgotten, are easily recalled when under similar pressures.
From an American NatSec perspective, French strategic autonomy is viewed as a positive, as can be seen with Elbridge Colby's work (and similar work by Mastro and Doshi), and a lot of the initiatives led by the Biden admin, as this would allow burden sharing because the US is no longer in a position to manage a two continent war. France does our dirty work in the Sahel and can help in the Indo-Pac (as was seen with the US, France, and India jointly armtwisting the UK into ceding Diego Garcia to Marutius)
In Australia's case (and to the US's benefit), alignment with France makes sense and has been something that has come up in Australian NatSec for years.
New Caledonia is barely 800 miles off the coast of Australia and NZ, and both New Caledonia and French Polynesia have faced pressure due to China, especially after the recent violence in New Caledonia was linked to Azeri [5] disinfo networks on TikTok, along with decades of covert ops by China in New Caledonia [6][7]. France has also been an active defense partner with India and Indonesia - both of whom are increasingly cornerstones of Australian defense.
By every single standard, having an active "Indo-Pac" France is a net benefit for America+ strategy and Taiwan.
That said, French NatSec "strategic autonomy" does not have anything to do with French industry's alignment with marketing a "European first" tech story.
France has similar issues to the US with power politics (as can be seen with France, US, SK, and Israel sharing a similar CPI score), and the biggest booster and beneficiary for "European Tech" is Xavier Niel [0] (France's Mark Cuban or Elon Musk), who is on a first-name basis with Macron [1][2] and whose Father-in-Law (Bernard Arnault) has personally played a significant role in French power politics for years [3][4]. Arnault is also the reason why every country negotiating with the EU ALWAYS tariffs congac and champagne - Arnault's LVMH owns Hennessy and all the other congac producers, and the majority of champagne producers.
End of the day, this is just another inter-elite conflict between vested business interests like any other, but couched with the flag of nationalism.
Nothing wrong with that, but this is why you don't see alignment amongst EU member states - as each state is supporting their own vested business interests amidst a trade war. For example, there's a reason all of us American tech investors end up working with the same handful of politically aligned law firms in Czechia or ending up in the same IT Parks in Eastern Europe.
It's easier for the US to manage the relationship with Marutius instead of with the UK [0] while buying favor from India and France [1].
It also aligns with Mastro, Doshi, and Colby's doctrine around the US retrenching in the Indo-Pac and the UK concentrating on the European continent [2] as the US increasingly cannot guarantee boots on the ground in Europe and Asia at the same time.
With the UK in the Indo-Pac, British supply chains would be stretched with marginal benefit for the US in an Asian theatre, but the same resources spent on BIOT could be better spent on British possessions in Cyprus, bases in the Middle East, and the North Atlantic.
For example, the violence in New Caledonia was instigated on TikTok by Azeri disinfo networks [0][1] due to French support of Armenia, which itself is due to French support for Greece+Cyprus against Turkiye, who is the primary patron for Azerbaijan.
Algeria has been doing something similar [2] due to French support of Morocco, and China's UFWD aligned groups have done something similar in the French Pacific [3]
Unless you're insisting I'm a troll or a bot, which I strongly disagree with. I've worked closely with EMEA (and especially French institutions and businesses) in my current career and previously when I worked in the policy space. I just kvetch on HN because it's not significantly on any radar yet and the anonymity is appreciated.
I would push back on this. That is in large part French propaganda in service of French interests—manufacturing consent for continuing French imperialism over their maltreated colonies; and delegitimizing narratives that speak counter to that—delegitimizing the political voice of the people actually living there. Which they do flagrantly: the French mainland government has done wide-scale internet censorship in New Caledonia[0,1] to suppress anti-French-government speech—a human rights atrocity.
That's not to claim there's no foreign interference. I'm sure there's a large kernel of truth in that French claim. But hammering on that point is a form of dehumanization: it's to say people who disagree you, having been misled, no longer have the right to a voice, and are fair game to be silenced. That's atrocity. That's bad-faith rationalization by an actor pointing authoritarian weapons at their adversary, which they were intending to do anyway.
It's difficult to speak with nuance on this dilemma: that every political debate in existence, today, is saturated with bad-faith actors, allying with both sides. But people tend to view this through one lens, selectively amplifying the bad-faith on the other side—as if it entirely invalidates them, instantly wins the debate—while minimizing it on their own side. If you don't want your voice silenced because of what other people, who are not you, said—you should not advocate doing that to other people. If you don't to wake up one day with all your favored newspapers and media sites blocked by government order—you should not wish for that to happen to other people.
> I would push back on this. That is in large part French propaganda in service of French interests—manufacturing consent
Ilham Aliyev, the dictator of Azerbaijan, has publicly pledged to help French territories secure independence [0] and hosted separatists with full state honors on multiple occasions
> That is in large part French propaganda in service of French interests—manufacturing consent for continuing French imperialism over their maltreated colonies; and delegitimizing narratives that speak counter to that—delegitimizing the political voice of the people actually living there
That could be true, if there weren't 3 referendums organised to give those people a voice in deciding their fate. They all failed, progressively more in favour of New Caledonia remaining part of France.
After the last one, and the announcement the end of the franchise restrictions to ensure that those referendums gave a fair chance to the pro-independence indigenous people, a targeted propaganda campaign stoked rioting. People were waving Azeri flags while rioting ffs!
> But hammering on that point is a form of dehumanization: it's to say people who disagree you, having been misled, no longer have the right to a voice, and are fair game to be silenced
It's the misleading group that was attempted to be silenced, not the people. The people in question had been given three referendums to give their voice, via official channels. Rioting because Azeris told them so isn't a legitimate way to voice concerns.
On one hand, there is a will from some people to be less dependent.
On the other hand, the EU bodies as well as national reps are besieged by lobbyists and diplomats, and without much backlash from constituents, it's very hard not to find someone that will do what you want. Just look at this former EC commissioner [1] working for Uber.
Flip-floping happens occasionally when the public catches up.
EU is a great chihuahua, authoritarian laws get passed, national politicians say that there's nothing they can do, but they benefit greatly from all the new posibilities of control over the internet.
I mean.. great for the politicians, not for an average european.
You need to put yourself in the EU governing people shoes for a minute.
Their predecessors, who were from the WW2 and Silent generations, did not care about the free Internet because they relied on the large mainstream media consuming baby boomers. They had a direct line to them.
But the boomers are between 60 and 80 and vanishing. The following generations are in panic mode.
So until recently the "free" Internet did not matter politically in the EU. Tech was used to trigger color revolutions abroad where the demographics were younger.
But now the unelected EU commission inherited that Internet things and are on the wrong side of it. Worst almost everybody in the EU speaks English and listen to Joe Rogan & co.
And while the US Gov might be able to control the Joe Rogan type the EU does not.
So their only move is to crack down on the Internet and limit it with a Chinese firewall type system. But they obviously do not have the ability to do so without the capabilities of an US tech giant (remember their own systems are on Office 365, every phone is Android or Apple). And this would also be in the interest of the US because it would give them a solid control over the EU.
Remember the first goal of a system is to survive and I do not see another realistic path.
A few decades ago, Europeans would usually learn another European language, often for economic migration purpose. But the "Internet generations" learned English early and ... on the Internet.
I only mentioned Joe Rogan because it is the most popular, but all the big american podcasts are very popular in Europe.
Also the lines between entertainment and politics have been blurred and Europeans follow much more what Trump says than let's say Ursula.
Also, why do you think the Macrons are suing Candace Owen? She is an niche podcaster with a show on Rumble (a platform which in a way blocked in France).
Would Helmut Kohl have been threatened in his own country by what Alex Jones was saying in the 90s?
The role played in the US by grassroot conservative bigots have no equivalent in the EU.
The push for authoritarianism seems to come purely from above. My intuition, from personal anecdotes, is that after 30 years of widening gap between the haves and the have nots, the haves are increasingly terrified buy their own populations.
Unfortunately these bigots are also active in europe. Especially that org from Ashley Kutcher. They have several EU Commission members actively listening to them. This is where all the ChatControl idiocy comes from.
That seems odd considering that the extreme right is the one using social media most to influence the voters with disinformation. I would expect the extreme right to be completely opposed to age controls on social media.
Porn is not such a big deal but social media flooded by Russian/Chinese/American propaganda is destabilizing our societies. The least we can do is try to keep our youth from losing their minds over it.
Age verification is not a conservative talking point in Europe. I live in Western Europe where conservatives simply do not exist and the government is trying to push an age verification solution too.
I live in Western Europe and conservatives were ruling the in my country until one of them blew up the government (over a typical topic that conservatives are obsessing over).
Apologies if it isn't, but since this is a new account only writing anti-EU comments so far, seems like troll army astro turfing. (I think it's worth calling that out, since we don't need HN poisoned by that stuff.)
Because they need to put a lid ASAP on internal discourse, so they are rushing any form of digital control.
People do not realise how dangerous the situation is. We are already in the kinetic phase of a world war with conflicts erupting everywhere, any major financial problem will trigger a chain reaction.
Just recently:
- A lot of people don't want to hear this but Trump just wiped the floor with Ursula with the new trade deal. It will collapse the EU economies even more.
- At few days earlier China humiliated the EU just by packing the official delegation in a bus with nobody to welcome them.
- And of course the EU inherited the Ukraine situation and is loosing a major war.
Once a major power find itself in this situation it get challenged from the inside. Individual countries will be tempted to elect Euro skeptic leaders and breakaway from the sinking ship by making deals with Russia, the US or China to save themselves.
The initial idea and force of the EU was "stronger together". But if a succession of strategic moves by its leadership make you weaker then the deal is off.
Europe is going to have to swallow (probably choke) on the pill that the avg US worker works four hundred more hours a year than their German counterparts. Two hundred more than the average Frenchman.
If the EU is going to boost defense spending to cover a gap in the US funding of staving off the EU's bad neighbor, there is going to be pain. Either more working hours, less social programs, higher taxes, or some combination.
They'll probably reach for more draconian regulations to squeeze as much money from industry as possible, and likely kill it in the process. Then they will complain that they are beholden to foreign companies.
Essentially, the core user journey is a privacy preserving "over 18" check. I suppose this prevents under 18's from accessing porn, in the same way that most blocking technologies impose an expense on everyone but fail to block tech-savvy children.
Doesn't seem like it could ever stop someone with a bittorrent client, unless you have to attest you are over 18 to even use bittorrent.
If they could have stopped BitTorrent they would have long ago.
So no, this is totally ineffective. And it's not like there's actually a problem. There's no crisis of messed up kids or young adults. We all had access to porn in some form and we all turned out fine. I used to watch the late night pay tv which was just 'scrambled' by removing the sync signal. It was easy to put that back with some electronics chops. I saw my share of gangbangs and cumshots and I did not get messed up or get weird ideas. In fact I often get compliments I'm a sensitive and caring lover. I never do or push for the dirty porn tropes (unless she asks for them :)
So did most of my school friends. Also video tapes got passed on at school and later CDroms (when the writable DVD came I was already an adult). We all had plenty.
This is all to mitigate a "crisis" which doesn't actually exist.
I don't want to ban porn or anything but the problem has definitely become worse than when I was growing up. I have a zoomer roommate that had unfettered access to the Internet and has some trauma she's still working through. I think the intense age verification laws popping up are going to be a big net negative but I think something needs to he done. I just don't know what that is. Maybe educating parents and children?
Im also "almost zoomer" that had unfettered access to much more diverse internet that zoomers ever had. Videos of extreme violence, murders, porn, war, bullying, and all blends of those to a degrees would surprise most. That happened when I was 7+ years old.
Does seeing these things mean I am broken in some way? It for sure didnt make me agressive or violent, actually Id say that it had quite the opposite effect.
I dont buy the "we must protect children by denying them access to whatever I feel like to prevent trauma", in fact the opposite, I feel the denying of access creates trauma when the false world-view eventually gets shattered by truth. It wasnt problem when I was 8, because I didnt have a false view about the world. It didnt traumatize me, I was just learning ugly stuff about real world.
Now it seem the only publicly acceptable option is to shelter everyone (without their consent, and ideally awarness) until they 18, and then throw them into the world and watch them struggle as they try to reconsile their dream-like version of reality with real world.
The content easily available on the internet in the 00's is way far far far beyond what is available today.
Liveleak was an everyday video host and they had terrorist beheadings on the front page. Once the masses moved online and the power players consolidated everything into modern social media (reddit, facebook, youtube), it kinda sucked all the air out of the room and killed all the small sites, of which there was no shortage of "test the limits of free speech" content.
That being said, the modern incarnation of social media has probably caused far more youth mental destruction than rotten.com or faces of death.
There's a difference between passing on video tapes and having a pocket machine with an unlimited amount of adult content. Just my opinion, but I think it's worrying kids can access it in basically a few clicks.
But I agree, forcing verification will not be effective enough, kids will find their way. The real solution is more education on this topic from younger age.
Then don't give your kid a smartphone. Even with a safety argument - a regular cell phone does that. The smartphone is just not necessary at a young age.
It's a choice and it comes with consequences. Parents can step up if they so choose - the problem is they don't choose.
If even the exact parents a child don't care, why should I? They've decided it's okay, and it's their kid. I'm inclined to just agree with them and move on.
Some porn videos were shared via Bluetooth in my school. From my perception, things you get from real people makes you more likely to think it's something real you ought to know about and not just an internet thing. Seems much better to me that kids can discover it on their own terms and know it for what it is
There is actually a crisis of messed up kids and young adults and access to porn is related to it, but in the opposite way. The thing that is messing up boys and girls is anti-male puritanism that condemns male sexuality as inherently degrading and evil.
As girls grow up and become women, they become disinterested in men, due to the perceived danger. When boys grow up they become avoidant men who are scared of approaching and asking out women, due to the perceived risk of ridicule, shaming and legal action. This prevents the formation of stable marriages, which then culminates in low birth rates.
True, consensuality is difficult to ensure if you're not good at reading the signs. Especially with autism. It is deeply important though. I frequent sexually tinted parties and we have security, safe zones and coloured armbands (though these don't replace explicit consent, just an interest to be asked for it in the first place).
I don't think it's specially a male issue to worry about this because some of my female friends mention being worried about this too. But because of the role models still prevalent even in progressive communities they don't have to do the approaching so much so it's less of a problem for them.
I also think this is a very specific autism/adhd thing. I see this mostly in neurodivergent friends. And avoidant attachment is more of an upbringing thing (physically or emotionally absent partners). It doesn't really have anything to do with porn.
I don't care about stable marriages or birth rates though. I'm happy to be polyamorous. A lot happier than before I knew it existed. Having a traditional family would be a prison for me and I've always felt that way. The religious community in particular advocates this as the only moral way but it isn't. In fact my poly friends are much nicer and considerate people than my religious friends.
The human population is way too big anyway. If we had half or a third of the population we'd have far less problems. Environmental pollution, housing, fighting over scarce resources leading to wars. I'm proud not contributing to this by not having kids.
> There's no crisis of messed up kids or young adults
This is objectively not true. Not to say that a porn ban combined with age restrictions would help, but it's just objectively not true.
* Rise of incels as a thing, and even violence committed by them
* Various loneliness epidemics
* Rise of movements such as the 4B in South Korea, where women flat out refuse traditional relationships with men
* the rises in STDs and teen pregnancies can probably be explained by other factors
* The rises in various diagnosis (ADHD, etc) and rates of sexual assault can probably be explained by just having more rigorous reporting and testing, as well as higher awareness, but the rise of specific types of sexual abuse (like a popular one, choking without consent, which can easily lead to brain damage) can be directly linked to its prevalence in porn
* significant differences in opinion on equality and general political leanings between boys and girls
That's not to say that porn is a problem, and removing it for <18 will magically make everything fine. But things are decidedly messed up for a lot of teens and young adults, and parts of that messed upness can be potentially inspired by porn, and "the manosphere". The second one is more important IMO.
The single biggest driver of the things you mention is the war on boyhood. It has nothing to do with porn or "the manosphere" and everything to do with the alienation of young men in effort to force equal outcomes.
I wish the left would just own up and take the L on this, and go back to race/gender/sexuality blind "everyone is awesome and everyone is equal" policy. Maybe we could start winning elections again.
If I were a kid, I could see myself downloading Opera GX and enabling the free VPN. It's probably not "tech-savvy" because the browser gets a lot of ad views on YouTube; it would be pretty obvious.
Or using a torrent. Or trading a fileshare with your friends. Or finding a box in the woods. Or finding dad's "tax returns" folder. Or getting on TOR. Or finding an open directory. Or asking AI to produce something.
Basically anything other than going to a legally compliant website and trying to attach your mom's passport to the age verification app and doing the challenge.
I think social media does more damage than porn. We should just instead legislate that all social media has to shutdown and just let everyone watch porn and be done with it. Sure, you wind up with ED if you watch that stuff since you were a kid, but hey, if birth rates around the world are anything to go by, no one seems to really want to bring children into this world anymore anyway, so it's not as if that actually matters anymore.
The one good thing (in principle) about a service like this is that social media is much more centralized, so this kind of system could put seemingly-effective age restrictions on social media. For example, no under-14's, or under-14 requires a supervising guardian and has other guardrails.
But this still wouldn't stop determined kids from VPNing to another country to make their account, and wouldn't stop peer pressure on kids from bleeding to parents to help them.
What do you think will happen when the EU regulates the “centralized” social media companies? Kids will just flock to other services that don’t care about EU regulations or use a VPN.
We see something similar in the US with age verification for viewing porn in some states. Mainstream porn sites that I’m sure you have heard of that aren’t based in the US just ignore the laws and VPN sales skyrocket in those states.
I’m not suggesting a government ban. Android, iOS, Macs and Windows all have parental controls built in that allow parents to block access to websites, installing apps, etc.
It seems reversed, that the default is legal eligibility, and that minors should need to prove their status. They're the ones who need policing, after all, not us.
For instance, it's not illegal for me to be served alcohol. If I'm not carded when being sold a drink, nothing illegal has taken place.
If the lawmakers are being cowards and not saying they want to round up and ID all the children from birth until they are eligible to participate in the adult world, that's their battle to fight and not our burden.
> Essentially, the core user journey is a privacy preserving "over 18" check.
You can not check the age without breaking the privacy, technically it is Not possible; this is like a religious faith exercise, not science.
What one read in the specification is, firstly you install an official software in your device, the device becomes identified "as you" the first time you verify your ID and receive your unique internet ID hash, linked to your personal data at the identifier platform.
In addition, your unique internet ID hash will become you, and each time a Non-porn-related platform ask for it, you will leave track of who are you -as internet ID- to the platform (finger printing), and also what you visit to the identifier platform.
Yeah, I said Non-porn-related platform, literally, because what we are reading here is about an Internet digital ID hash for each EU citizen,
Lets be clear, if it were to protect the children from porn, it would say "verify with the personal internet ID only for porn sites", in company with all the adjectives derived from porn, exclusively, with specificity, nothing more.
But what we are seeing here about this matter is deliberately open to interpretation, they say "platform that can be considered to be accessible to minors"... boom, What does this mean, News for adults? Criticise a corrupt government for adults? In my village this is called a back door trojan, because when they want they redact the directives, laws, with precision.
Anyway, I invite the reader to take a look to the Digital ID directive on its own,
After this, they only have to define progressively, frog cooking time, and increase the affected Internet platforms with obligatory identification, and then we will think that the Great Chinese Firewall was a children game compared with this.
The "it's to protect the children" political tactic to break privacy is quite old. In addition we should remember the other EU law about breaking the encryptions.
My humble opinion.
PS: Ironically no more of two months ago I was saying that as I was European I have freedom and I didn't need a tooling for circumvent something like the Russian and Chinese censure. Oh my... If I were know this, I was absolutely blind about what someones try to cook.
I keep coming back to the actual solution being to keep kids off the internet period. If you are under 18, and online without some sort of adult supervision, we have failed you. Maybe that ship has sailed with so much coursework requiring online access, but I maintain that perhaps we should declare it lost at sea and try again.
Because the practical reality here is, like, porn is the big scary word, but the actual danger to kids is *other people.* Other addictions still exist. Removing one vice without solving the underlying systemic problem merely shifts the goalposts, and everyone is up in arms about what a slippery slope that is for good reason.
EDIT: Clarity here because I phrased that badly in a hurry: I'm in disfavor of internet access being a requirement for schoolwork, but I failed to set that context initially. If parents trust their kids enough with access, once they've reached a certain point of maturity, that's fine. I'm against technological age gates and I'm against removal of bad content from the net at large. Parents should decide when their kids are ready, and guide them appropriately.
I will leave my original remarks unedited so the remaining discussion is sensible. (Sorry!)
> I keep coming back to the actual solution being to keep kids off the internet period.
W T F ? ? ?
> Because the practical reality here is, like, porn is the big scary word, but the actual danger to kids is other people.
Bad news, Champ. Other people also exist off of the Internet. They always have. The world is not entirely safe. And that does not mean children shouldn't get to be part of the world.
While there are absolutely issues with kids coming across things they shouldn’t, I’d argue an equally large issue is parents buying into the delusion that they can keep their children contained within a bubble of perfect innocence until adulthood.
That idea has never really been realistic short of keeping them isolated from society until 16-18 (which most would consider abuse), but it’s not even slightly possible today with how readily available information has become. It’s an inevitability that they will learn about the topics you’ve been avoiding and take on external influences you may not approve of.
Now to be clear, I’m not advocating for letting kids run wild on the internet with no guardrails, especially earlier on. Guardrails are important, but it’s even more important in my opinion to try to stay ahead of what they may encounter by talking with them about those things so when they eventually run across it, they’re not flying blind and might even seek your guidance about the incident since they know you’re not going to get angry about it. That’s much more likely to bring positive outcomes than if they ran into these things without parental support.
You know what helps? Proper sex ed around the age of 12-14. That's what we do in Holland. And why we had one of the lowest teenage pregnancy ratings. Unfortunately the conservatives are complaining about this more and more (the Lentekriebels program) because they mention that men can also love men. This porn filter is also from their corner.
Yeah, I'm nodding in agreement here for the most part. I didn't mean to suggest crazy helicopter parenting surveillance nonsense, just ... the idea that giving young minds the whole dang net and letting them loose without any guidance or oversight is kinda dangerous. Growing up we always had an adult in the computer lab, or the library, where most computer coursework was being taught. I had "the real internet" right there, but if I actually got into trouble, someone was bound to notice, and I could always ask for help.
The point I was actually trying to make is just this: if the parent's goal is to block content, then the simplest thing to do is to be there when the child is surfing the net. That shouldn't take crazy technological measures. At some point, most parents realize their kids are mature enough to handle things and back off, but the parent should be making that call for their own kid. I don't think the government should be doing it on their behalf. If the government believes the internet is dangerous for young minds, then it should focus on the thing it can control: educational curriculum, primarily. Trying to "fix the internet" is a fool's errand.
Couldn’t disagree more. I watched my first beheading video at 13, let alone porn. I still remember it, Nick Berg. I think I turned out ok. My online freedom was largely why I became who I am.
As for other people being the danger, there’s some truth to that for women. I have a daughter, so this will be a concern. But you know, she won’t die. Everyone goes through trauma. The key here is to make sure she feels comfortable enough to talk to me and to my wife before doing anything (too) stupid.
I snuck out of my parents’ house to go see a girl when I was 16. Took my dad’s station wagon. On the way, some car tried to pass me and ended up hitting a big truck on the side. Truck was fine, I was fine, that fella was not. He ended up on the side of the road. Me and trucker just kept going. I still think about that guy a lot, because obviously the correct thing to do would have been to call 911, but I was a dumb 16yo who was out past midnight to go see a girl.
Point is, if things went a little differently, I could have been the one who crashed, or even dead. But that doesn’t mean that the girl I was going to go see was somehow a threat to me. It means I was doing something dangerous.
Again, this is easy to say as a man. The threat model for women is different. But prohibiting minors from the internet without supervision is totally absurd, and I feel bad for any parent who helicopters their kids like that.
Ultimately your kid will grow up and have their own life. Do you want to be remembered as the parent who had them under lock and key in the name of safety, or as a parent who monitored from a distance and occasionally let them do stupid things so that they could learn from it? For me, the latter is far more preferable.
> Ultimately your kid will grow up and have their own life. Do you want to be remembered as the parent who had them under lock and key in the name of safety, or as a parent who monitored from a distance and occasionally let them do stupid things so that they could learn from it? For me, the latter is far more preferable.
You're trying to logically and emotionally appeal to people whose amygdala have been hijacked by a moral panic.
I'm kindof horrified that your immediate response is to defend a beheading video as something a 13 year old should watch. As a normal thing. What the actual hell. Like, the rest of your argument has some good points, but you led with something guaranteed to offend.
I was not clear enough, so I will try again. If parents do not want their kids to access "bad content", whatever that means to them, then they need to supervise the access. If parents are okay with their kids accessing bad content, then that choice is theirs to make. The internet itself should not be the gatekeeper here, neither should the government, but the parents do need to actually parent. I do not believe technology should be doing the parenting. And BECAUSE I believe this is a choice the PARENT should make, I also do not believe unfettered access to the internet should be a requirement for students. As long as that is a requirement, the parents aren't in control, and we get draconian laws trying to "fix the internet."
You have wildly misinterpreted my intent, and admittedly it is because my opening sentence was poorly phrased.
I largely agree with your second paragraph, but the solution isn’t necessarily to give parents control, but rather to stop draconian laws from passing.
As far as the beheading video, why be offended? Yes, I think teenagers will be naturally curious, and that gore videos will be on their watch list along with porn. It was true for most of my friends, and admitting this truth rather than running from it is how you deal with it. It’s not "defending" when it happens as a matter of course.
Again, you’re basically arguing for draconian powers not for the government but for the parents. To me, this is two sides of the same coin; whether the jailer is the government or the parent, when I was a teen both would have been the enemy. I personally don’t want my child to think of me as the enemy. Other parents can make different choices.
And yes, I think it was fine for me to watch that video when I was 13.
The reason I think it was fine to watch the video at 13 is because it was major news at the time. The Iraq war was just starting up, and I believe Nick Berg was one of the first troops taken prisoner and executed. I wanted to see for myself what other countries were doing to our soldiers.
As I got older, I realized it wasn’t so clear cut as good vs evil, and that we were often the evil ones. (Regardless of the reason, blowing up someone’s home with some of their family inside is evil, and there were civilian casualties in the Iraq war.) But at the time, it was a major formative life experience for me. It galvanized me into wanting to join the marines, which of course would have been a huge mistake. So you could argue that me watching the video was harmful in that sense, since it influenced me pretty heavily.
I take a different perspective. Freedom is about freedom to view something and decide for yourself how you feel about it. It’s easy to forget how mature you felt at 13. If at the time you tried to stop me from watching that video, I would have been furious, and said that you’re preventing me from seeing what’s really going on in the world.
Now, I personally think that that freedom also extrapolates to the rest of the evils viewable on the internet. I watched a lot of cartel videos, some war footage, and so on. You can argue that 13 is way too young, and maybe I’ll even agree once my daughter reaches that age. But if a kid is genuinely curious to see what reality is actually like, I personally find it a little repulsive that we as a society think it’s so awful, and that we say children should be babied for their own protection. If you tried that with me at 13, I’d have given you the finger and figured out a way around whatever security measures you put into place. In my opinion, the correct thing to do is for a kid to have a close connection with their parents, to tell them that they’re curious, and for the parents to explain the reasons why the kid might not want to see it. (This also forces you to explain why it’s so horrible. Surgical procedure videos are equally graphic, but we don’t call them horrible.) And if at the end of that process, your kid wants to watch those videos, be it porn or gore, you should seriously consider their request. Your options are to be supportive or for them to do it in secret. Thinking you’ll stop them is wishful at best.
Yes, it’s uncomfortable. I don’t personally know what I’ll do when Kess comes to me or her mom asking about that. But "forbid it in all circumstances" is in my opinion an extreme overreaction given what’s at stake. At worst, it will cause them some emotional trauma. It arguably did for me. It’s good to protect children from trauma. But if they genuinely want to go through it, who are we to stop them and say we know better? Let them figure it out.
We’re their parents. It’s easy to believe we do know better. And in most cases we probably do. But at the end of the day, by forbidding this content, you’re waging war on your child’s curiosity. I personally find that as horrifying as it probably felt hearing me say that there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s fine to disagree.
If this comes up the future, I’ll point back to this comment as my canonical response on the topic. If after reading it people still want to be offended, then okay. But I’m not trying to tell you how to raise your kid. I’m saying, you’re fighting a losing battle if you think you can stop them.
Just to add to the video you have watched: upon watching such videos, I made the realization that life is precious, and that I am happy with where I am, and it made me cherish life more. Sounds positive, right? Similarly, bad trips from psychedelics can be a highly rewarding experience, too.
I do not think that him stating what he has watched implies that he thinks one should watch this something, just that he did, which does not imply endorsement.
So many people advocating for this in HN and elsewhere when it's so clearly a draconian slippery slope for invasive surveillance and choice restriction. After these things get implemented people pretend it was always like this.
We don't need the governments to mass surveil us to protect us. We need them to sort the economy and stop invading countries and being deferential to corporate interests instead of the people they represent.
It's such an obvious push that If you don't want to see it, it makes me think you're shielding yourself to avoid contending with the reality: These politicians and govs all around, including the countries you claim "work" are absolutely power hungry and beholden to interests other than yours and will push for as much total surveillance as they can, including as much curtailment of freedoms as they can.
Obviously that won't mean elites will actually face justice or crimes will actually be solved because more surveillance is not accompanied with more government transparency, quite the opposite and bigger and more powerful burocracies, with more authoritarianism, allow for easy hidden exceptions that you can't question.
It's nothing new. Corruption is common. It's just mediocre to see "hackers" pushing for it just because the government and corporations tell them to, because foreign country bad, bad social media influences kids, drugs, word-ism, etc.
At the time this comment was posted there was only one other comment in this entire thread.
You say “so many people are advocating for this in HN” but this thread was empty except for one other comment (which was also critical of this) at the time you posted your comment.
I think if you use critical thinking to read you may easily find I'm talking about my experience with reading comments in relation to imposing age verification for online access, which means digital ID for internet access.
HN and even the GitHub comments mostly start with the assumption that of course we should do this. Of course we should restrict social media to under 16/18s and either are in favor of ID to access the Internet or pretend it won't happen by consequence of this.
Now try to address what I said instead of poorly calling me out.
Or at the very least, many here support the goal of keeping children and/or teenagers off of social media entirely, while disliking the means of ID verification. But it's not like there's any other obvious means.
> It's been a relatively common position to find, at least before the most recent hubbub around Steam, Itch.io, Britain, etc.
If you stretch the definition of "recent" to ~ 60d then you can also search for the pornhub/France thing. Quick google nets this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44210557. There are likely others, too... but I'm lazy :).
I don't think you are fully wrong, but the issue is your rhetoric is very much used by conservatives or "both sides are bad" which are just mask-on conservatives who end up voting the same way. And the problem with conservatives is not really the ideals and ideas, but the fact that they vote Republican (or whatever the equivalent party is in other countries), that all pretty much are the exact opposite of those ideals.
Age verification is already a thing IRL, there is no reason to not extend it online considering so much of our lives is digital. Overall I think anonymity should be reduced on the internet in general - a big reason of the world issues, especially in USA is that ideas can grow in forums where people under etherial identities can tell lie after lie without any repercussion.
How can you criticize those for voting Republican when you're advocating for the extremely authoritarian and dystopian position of banning anonymous discourse online?
Im criticizing voting Republicans because in practice, they are the ones that vote for people who are actually in the process of implementing authoritarian measures in real life. So when those people start talking about anything they deem as authoritarian or dystopian, its a moot conversation because they are the LEAST qualified to talk about those things.
> a big reason of the world issues, especially in USA is that ideas can grow in forums where people under etherial identities can tell lie after lie without any repercussion.
See, I wouldn't have as much of an issue if you were honest about this real intention, because of how on the nose it is to reasonable people.
The idea that I will have to upload 3D models of my face and ID, or get permission from Google, just to go online because you don't like the idea of someone else's kids using the internet is absurd.
Please stop using appeals to children in your quest to "stop ideas from growing".
You don't have to upload your face, you just have to have a stable online identity that can be tied to you.
In the same way that you have a stable IRL identity that is your actual body so when you go into public places, you can be identified later if need be.
Similar systems are rolled out where I am, and they all involve proving you're the real living person that matches your ID, and not just someone who took another person's ID or knows their credentials, via live video of multiple angles of your face.
> Age verification is already a thing IRL, there is no reason to not extend it online considering so much of our lives is digital. Overall I think anonymity should be reduced on the internet in general - a big reason of the world issues, especially in USA is that ideas can grow in forums where people under etherial identities can tell lie after lie without any repercussion.
Ah yes. Anonymity is the only thing that enables dishonesty and of course it's the government's moral duty to regulate it.
Once anonymity is banned, the world will be honest and good and True and we'll all look back on the Bad times thinking how silly we all were.
The best part of minority report was the way everything constantly tracked identity through retinal scans; i can't wait for the future!
> it's so clearly a draconian slippery slope for invasive surveillance and choice restriction
It's a privacy preserving over 18 check.
Is it a "slope"? Sure, you can imagine an extension to the system that is "worse".
Is it "slippery"? This thing isn't draconian enough to be effective. It will be a minor speedbump that prevents exactly zero determined under-18's from accessing anything that they'd want to. So then the question is, does the government react by trying something more draconian, or does it give up?
Things like this are a pain in the ass for GrapheneOS users. It's not great to get locked out of legitimate usage of things when using an OS that actually puts privacy first.
Do you really think this will stop there? Websites need to contact an attestation server and the EU can just ban verification for any website they don't like.
It is amazing. All the US companies have to do is dangle a “free” solution and the EU will go for it, and then be all surprised pikachu at the terms they agreed to.
EU isn't at all capable of doing that because it's not a hegemonic state, it's just bunch of a countries coming together to coordinate on doing stuff.
My guess on what happened this time is, people were tasked to implement a way to verify age anonymously and this was the only feasible way to do it because of their constraints that don't allow them to do bigger stuff that China or USA will able to do through having the budget and enforcement power.
I don’t disagree, my argument is why continue? The scientific method is thrown out the window. Age verification, oh you need the cooperation of member nations of the EU, ok, wait, everyone has different systems, ok, new objective - standardize the systems so we can do age verification like we want.
I know politics isn’t logical but if you keep drilling down the root cause, eventually you’ll hit bedrock.
Because countries don’t want to give away more sovereignty?
EU needs to federalize but europeans are still too nationalistic for that to happen. Even Germany is too tiny to matter in the global stage but even small countries with population of a city in America will be like “we are special, we can take on USA and China because of our intrinsic characteristics. Even if we can’t we are definitely better than our neighbors”.
Regulation and lack of capital. Just read the report from Mario Draghi if you don't believe me.
We have EU regulations, those are much tighter than in US, on practically every front. Labor, finance, environment, data, AI, you name it, we have it regulated. And then you have the country level regulations on top. That's right, EU sets the floor, not the ceiling.
Suppose you have a start up in Poland, you have managed to get funding and you are offering services in your country. You want to do that in Germany? Get ready for complying with new set of regulations. And you better hope that individual German states don't have something extra on top of those.
All of those regulations have purpose, it is possible that they were designed by well meaning people and bring some benefit. But their compound effect is catastrophic. It is not that you can't push trough, you can, just look at Kiwi or Mikrotik. But it's an uphill battle and your competition from overseas has it so much easier, that they can end up outgrowing you, and eventually buying you out.
> You can’t say there’s regulations and then give it all to a monopoly…
Why? These are very closely intersecting things. It is very convenient for government to regulate and force monopolies to do what the government needs. And vice versa, strong regulation allows monopolies to avoid the emergence of new competitors. Win-win.
A lot of this is legacy holdovers from the Biden era.
Both the US, the EU, and the rest of the OECD began the process of aligning digital services taxation and regulation [0][1] under the Biden admin, as it was also a fig leaf tossed at the EU by the US to prevent a potential trade war with the EU [2] due to the IRA and CHIPS act.
The US has now removed itself from this OECD initiative, and most other major markets have begun to as well either due to US pressure or their own self interest. It also played a role in reducing Biden/Harris' chances in 2024, as much of the Obama era tech coalition shifted support and donations to the Trump-Vance campaign due to their support for repealing and fighting against digital services taxes globally.
The US also removed it's gloves when negotiating with the EU this admin compared to previous admins, so dangling the threat of retaliatory measures is not well received and can elicite a quasi-hard power response.
Where do you get from that we are capable of doing it ourselves? All EU-made software I've used was terrible, and the one that was a bit better than terrible was bought by a US company.
Where do you live? I live in Sweden and I have used a lot of not so bad software from Sweden. Maybe its just your country, but at least in Sweden the government can make software for its services that works well, better than what I've seen from the US government.
> and the one that was a bit better than terrible was bought by a US company
But here you say EU can make great software? Just that USA then buys it. So we should just ban USA from buying our great software companies, is that what you are saying?
Most closed source US software is garbage too. Some stuff, like Steam, is beloved anyway. But actually the program itself is terrible and slow even on decent computers.
Struggling to think of corporate produced software that doesn’t suck. iOS Safari is ok, I guess.
Sure but "almost all tech is bad but almost all non-bad tech is American" in effect means European software is seen as bad. (And as an American who's spent a lot of time in Europe, this has been my experience, personally.)
In America the least bad stuff eventually rises to the top. In Europe it feels like it's all just one shared pit.
The reason is because Americans buy the other tech firms, so its not because they don't make non-bad tech its because USA just monopolizes it via very aggressive acquisitions.
At least in Norway, the user -facing state services are good. They used to suck, but are now good.
I can do most anything online, haven’t had to physically visit an gov office for years, outside voting and getting a new passport photo. And everything just works.
Edit: and before anyone points out that we’re not in EU, yes - but we’re in the EEA.
Because most politicians in most countries (even most dictatorships) feel that interfering with the free market is too radical. They feel it's fickle and too risky to upset.
Anyway, if a government tried to make a European smartphone design, it would be treated as any other government supply contract, resulting in a terrible design-by-committee. So in the end, all politicians are willing to do is wait around and say "someone should do something".
It's actually a little better than that. One thing they can do, and have done, is make funds available for individuals and small groups who want to have a go themselves. Notably NLnet funds a lot of projects. They're all small projects though so they're not really capable of displacing megacorps in the free market. Stuff like MNT hardware remains niche hacker stuff.
Cool, in what court? EU court? It would be the EU doing this. Want to do business in the EU, GDPR extends to giving us the keys as well if you’re going to valet park here. Or they can go kick rocks while smart engineers in member countries build a new android. After all, a lot has changed since someone decided to bolt Java onto a Linux kernel.
In the US due to various historical economic factors there's a lot more money going around. Basically the EU has to ship $100 of steel to America to get $100, while America can just print it. America has been printing money and giving it to the rich for a long time, resulting in the American rich having relatively huge piles of money and not enough to spend it on, resulting in highly speculative things getting funding, i.e. venture capital.
There isn't really venture capital like that in Europe. Your business has to bootstrap. There are big businesses that could fund big ideas but they are big because they do one thing well - a company like Airbus isn't going to branch out and build an AWS.
Google rolls into town and wants to spend half a billion euro on a datacenter? Sure thing. They'll say that it'll boost the local economy while being built - by creating a couple of thousand jobs for the contractors that are going to build and maintain it, and then some onsite jobs for the next decade or two, creating a couple of hundred jobs for techs / engineers.
And as long as they keep playing ball with google, projects like that will pop up once in a while. If you're difficult, there's also a risk of the rich tech companies taking their business some other place.
With that said, I've recently noticed more voices for building our own stuff - as there's a real risk that US tech companies will simply comply if pushed enough, say, by a POTUS that's out for blood and wants to hurt certain foreign users. Ban/lock out certain users from gaining access to software, turn off their infrastructure, etc. who knows.
But, alas, there just isn't the same willingness to pour in capital on the important things. For private investors it doesn't make much sense, unless they have a bulletproof contract with domestic users willing buy their service - and using state funds isn't too popular, either.
Truth be told, any of the big tech businesses can undercut any competition, and probably build better and faster. If anything, it could be the case for tariffs - outsourcing critical infrastructure will leave you very exposed. If European countries all over the board started to abandon US tech companies, they'd cry to Trump, who in turn would probably start a trade-war.
Now replace Google with an EU company doing it in the EU for EU jobs and everything you described. It’s not like money only comes from the US.
You are right to be worried. US companies under this administration can’t be trusted to follow the law. Why should they, when our commander in chief isn’t and has a panel of judges who let him do whatever. Just the other day he suggested Obama be investigated for treason. So yeah, we’re toxic, and you all should seriously quarantine yourselves.
EU businesses are pretty conservative. They don't have the insane amounts of capital that arose in Silicon Valley as a result of the Bretton Woods system. There are companies that size, but they're all in, like, manufacturing, or coal mining. There's no EU company that both has a billion dollars and knows how to be AWS. There are companies with billions of dollars (euros) and there are different startup companies that probably could be AWS if they tried really hard, but never the twain shall meet.
> They don't have the insane amounts of capital that arose in Silicon Valley as a result of the Bretton Woods system.
Why would you say all personal finance advisors from Europ advise their clients to invest at least 50% in the US? The aggressive ones suggest 70-90%. 53% of The Norwegian sovereign fund is invested in the US, 24% in Europe and 23% the rest of the world. Their biggest investments are in Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Google, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, Broadcom, etc, as one would expect.
Why don't European investors move their investments from US index and into European companies and businesses? Norway alone has ~1 trillion Euros invested in the US. Surely they can move it to invest in European tech, no? that can make a couple of European AWSs.
Investors invest where the money is. The money is in the US. As a result of the factors I already stated.
The best way to get more euros over time appears to be to exchange them for US dollars, invest in US stock markets over time, and eventually exchange them back for euros. So rational investors will do that. It will work as long as the American regime doesn't collapse its currency due to overprinting, in which case all those euro investors will lose all their money.
An individual investor doesn't care about improving the economy of their country at all. They only care which investment will make the money today. And the investment market is just a collection of investors. Never make the mistake of thinking investment markets are rational economic planners - that's the fallacy of composition.
European governments may want to prevent this situation, but they're all pretty locked into the free-market regime, so there's not a huge amount they can do. They can't just give out free money, either, since there's a lot more state-backed financial crime and corruption over there, due to having enemy countries in close proximity.
It's largely a political issue. At this stage you can't create alternatives to Google and other U.S. tech giants without removing them from the market (so essentially the Chinese approach, which has allowed them to build their own massive tech giants). But that path is nearly impossible for the EU due to the risk of U.S. retaliation. The EU can't even implement a digital tax.
You also can't just say, "Here's a few hundred billion in public support to create alternatives to U.S. tech giants", because the U.S. would argue that it's unfair state aid and retaliate.
There isn't enough private capital in the EU with the risk tolerance required to take on such a challenge independently.
We also lack a reserve currency like the USD, so we can't print $2 trillion a year, much of which ultimately flows into the U.S. stock market and further boosts U.S. tech companies, making competition even harder.
EU markets are already fully penetrated by U.S. behemoths that can either withstand or acquire any privately funded competitor, thanks to their massive cash flows and valuations.
For all these reasons, the outlook isn't very promising.
>>There isn't enough private capital in the EU with the risk tolerance required to take on such a challenge independently.
That can be improved by making traditional investments (real estate, land) less attractive while making investments into businesses more attractive. You just need to change tax incentives by removing capital gain tax and introducing real estate/land value tax (or raising it).
Removing red tape would help as well and then making the common market really common.
As it is there is very little incentive to invest in companies here.
> That can be improved by making traditional investments (real estate, land) less attractive while making investments into businesses more attractive. You just need to change tax incentives by removing capital gain tax and introducing real estate/land value tax (or raising it). Removing red tape would help as well and then making the common market really common.
That's unrealistic. Majority of people in the EU own property and/or land, and no one wants to pay even more taxes on it. In my EU country, the majority of politicians own more than two apartments. I don't see them working against their own interests.
Yes, it's unrealistic because the plan is for people who already own property or land to extract rent from productive class, especially young people.
That's why nothing every changes. Ever increasing taxes on productivity to benefit the real estate/land owners is how EU operates. No wonder we have fewer and fewer children and there isn't many people willing to found new businesses.
It's a death spiral which will end with the youth rebelling or going extinct. The latter being more probable looking at current fertility rates.
I think there are two aspects of it, one political - we didn't have democracies with strong leaders for quite some time, but I don't believe it's inherent to it.
Another is economical - with tech (absolute) free-market would for sure benefit the biggest player. I don't believe in absolute free-market economy anyway (and we don't have it), and I think EU (and other countries) should protect their (tech) businesses. For example EU can start with above mentioned service tax, Trump started with tariffs anyway.
Side note - Russia had very strong domestic tech for a long time, and one of the reasons I believe was the fact it's a big market mixed with different language. I don't think dictatorship played as big of a role.
Information warfare is real and can leverage all the learnings of the past. Algorithms designed to show you only specific content. One sided points of view. Nothing more than propaganda. Tools of information warfare. This is why you can’t just blindly go with whatever Big Tech proposal.
The EU has some of the brightest minds in the world. You can do this.
What outlook? What planet are we on? Why are we debating who makes better handcuffs? Do E.U citizens prefer their handcuffs be made in Europe? I'm so confused.
The only will you get from EU is to protect incumbents and the only plan is to make another centrally planned fund that distributes money to chosen entities.
EU is very good at removing the carrot while wielding a big stick for would be entrepreneurs.
Because national interests always end up trumping the EU in it's current form.
American companies like Google [0][1], Amazon [2][7], and Microsoft [3][4][5][6] have spent billions in FDI and hiring, thus building strong relationships with EU states like Ireland, Romania, Poland, Finland, Sweden, and others, but French and German competitors haven't (or don't exist depending on the service or SLA).
This means a significant portion of EU member states have an incentive to maintain the relationship, because the alternative means significant capital outflows. A Polish legislator doesn't have to answer to French voters, so they will incentivize the relationship with BigTech. Thus, these nations will lobby tooth and nail against destroying the relationship.
It's the same reason Hungary courts Chinese FDI [8] and enhancing the Sino-Chinese relationship as leverage against the EU pushing too hard [9].
Don't kid yourself, the US is going to war against anyone that tries to regulate big tech as we are seeing with the US government going against Brazil and the Pix payment system
No it doesn't work that way. That's a lot of political will for little monetary gain. Don't forget that countries in EU are still quite capitalist and many of the bigger companies have huge investments in the US. EU itself is a quite neoliberal org too. It has all sorts of forced privatization laws.
The post WWII doctrine of US that's applied in Europe is strengthening the bigger businesses. Those businesses use US tech since investing in an actual European tech sector is expensive. Especially after all the first players took critical positions.
The time to invest in that sector was in the 80s and 90s. Europe had a different relationship with the US and it was trying to encite small ex-Soviet states to join, so they can exploit the cheap labor. So nobody actually invested in local tech sector.
It is now an uphill battle that'll cost more than the original investment. Only countries with strong independence urge like France is willing to fight it. Most of the EU countries are not.
I use GrapheneOS as a daily driver and I absolutely love it. It should be the default. There's already one app I use that must do something similar and absolutely just won't run on it, so I have an entirely separate phone running stock Android just for that one app. Still worth the hassle.
Glad I don't live in a place where all this madness is taking root, but still, the trend itself sucks.
By design, this app isn't mandatory. There should be an alternative way to do age verification. If you can't access a service because you can't run the app, the service fucked up.
Furthermore, there's nothing stopping the governments implementing these standards from permitting GrapheneOS' signature. It's one of the ROMs that actually has a reliable signature so unlike random images from XDA there's a case for it to be permitted. Google's integrity check isn't just a binary check, it's a combination of a hash and a pre-defined list of suggested acceptable hashes.
> By design, this app isn't mandatory. There should be an alternative way to do age verification. If you can't access a service because you can't run the app, the service fucked up.
So you complain to the service, they either ignore you or tell you to use the app, and then what? They are not breaking any law as far as I can tell.
And even if it was, class actions in Europe are close to inexistent, and it's not worth it for any one consumer to take the multinational running the service to court.
> there's nothing stopping the governments implementing these standards from permitting GrapheneOS' signature
Alternatives to legal identification requirements being available isn't my experience. How do you even imagine that? Going to a local post office to show an ID anytime you want to open pornhub and your i_am_adult=token cookie has expired?
What e-government website? If there were one, I should hope they'd be using it instead of GDPR-flouting third parties that I've seen so far
If you mean something like DigiD, that's only for government websites themselves. A lot of water will need to flow past parliament before they open that one up to pornhub
The only winning move is not to play the game. One has to have a phone these days but you don't have to do your computing on it (during personal time). Use a real computer instead.
I would agree, but sadly that's not supported by this government verification software. If you want to use the internet, it sounds like this will become mandatory for many websites hosted in the EU that have content that needs to be locked away from kids under 13 or so. If you think we should oppose that, I'm right by your side
EU wants to push more control on the internet, today it's "think of the children" but when the infrastructure is rolled out, it'll be "real name verifiction" on social media, chat control, etc.
Whoever is pushing this in EU has to be removed before things will get better.
This has nothing to do with age verification, but everything to do with identifying users on various services. They can compell the providers of said services to give them access to how each, now identified, user is using the service. Since a lot of our lives are digital, this is a major transfer of power from the people to a select few.
A question I have is who voted for this? I sure didn't.
> They can compell the providers of said services to give them access to how each, now identified, user is using the service.
The whole point of this is that they can't, which is unlike the systems they had used before. The only information that the service provider receives is that an age check has passed.
Without getting into the ideological weeds too much, is there a solid technical reason for this? Like if this verification wasn’t in place, could I just alter the source code or binary to always return “yes I’m 18” (or whatever) and completely subvert the intent of this tool? If so, is there a straightforward way to prevent this without involving Google?
> if this verification wasn’t in place, could I just alter the source code or binary to always return “yes I’m 18” (or whatever) and completely subvert the intent of this tool?
Kinda, yes.
(slightly simplifying the mechanism here)
This seems to be based on the EU Wallet project, which is still work in progress. The EU wallet is based on OpenID (oidc4vci, oidc4vp). The wallet allows for selective disclosure of attributes. These attributes are signed by a issuing party (i.e. the government of a EU country). That way a RP (relying party) can verify that the data in the claim (e.g. this user is 18+) is valid.
However, this alone is not enough, because it could be a copy of that data. You can just query a wallet for that attribute, store it and replay it to some other website. This is obviously not wanted.
So the wallet also has a mechanism to bind the credential to a specific device. When issuing a credential the wallet provides a public key plus a proof of possession of the associated private key (e.g. a signature over an issuer-provided nonce) to the issuer. The issuer then includes that public key in the signed part of the credential. When the RP verifies the credential it also asks the wallet to sign part of the response using the private key associated with that public key. This is supposed to prove that the credential was sent by the device it was issued to.
Now this is where the draconian device requirements come in: the wallet is supposed to securely store the private key associated with the credential. For example in a Secure Enclave on the device. The big flaw here is that none of this binding stuff works if you can somehow get access to the private key, e.g. on a rooted phone if the wallet doesn't use a secure enclave or with a modified wallet app that doesn't use a secure enclave to store the private key. You could ask a friend who is 18+ to request the credential, copy it to your phone and use that to log in.
The law designed this as a privacy-friendly and convenient alternative to traditional identity verification, and stipulates usage should be optional.
Without the wallet, you'll be forced to jump through the same hoops as you're doing right now. Depending on what EU country you live in, that can be anything between "no real difference" to "making an appointment to exchange stamps on documents".
That’s not what they said. They said that when age verification is required, it is intended to be optional to use the EU digital wallet for that, and other ways are possible.
Of course, once upon a time JavaScript was optional, and now it feels like half the web won't work without it. Cookies were optional but now many sites don't even bother with a "Reject All" choice. Google Play was optional on Android, now banking apps don't work without it.
Tried to do KYC with an institution in North America lately? They used to allow diverse options - eg. physically present yourself, get a notary to attest, upload signed documents & ID - but now app-based applets which offer little to no visibility into just what data they're hoovering up from your phone and no way to manually review what you're sending before submission (...to outsourced or even offshore processors) have displaced most of those alternatives due to their convenience (especially to those who don't care about privacy) and cost competitiveness (to the service providers). Filling out customs declarations when traveling is going the same way (with longer, more customer-hostile terms of service and privacy policies than came attached to the old paper forms).
The option that's most convenient to the masses tends to become defacto, and push out the last bastions of safe alternatives relied on by nerds like me - who pay attention to this stuff and try to advocate for user agency, data sovereignty for users, and the means to maintain a healthy privacy and security posture.
I would love to see some kind of attestable flavour of Android that I as a user control the keys to (in my own case I'd even be willing to provide assurances backed up by insurance, a bond, my reputation, repudiation to some degree of vendor liability if things go wrong, etc) with tooling to help me achieve a high level of security in a low-friction manner.
> Don't need "copy" here for that. They can just do the verification on your device without any technical tricks
Yeah. that's where this system fails. It only stores a single attribute that you wouldn't mind putting on someone else's phone. In the full EU wallet the 'over 18' attribute is part of a larger set of credentials that is basically your entire digital ID. If you were to put that on someone else's phone they would be able to identify as you to numerous government and adjacent services. You'd be a fool to share that.
This whole scheme feels a bit rushed and not thought through.
Even if the private key is perfectly bound to the device and can't be copied, can't you still just ask a friend who is 18+ to scan the QR code on their device and verify age? I don't see what problem these device requirements solve exactly, unless the plan is to somehow criminalize verifying on behalf of other people
All it would leak is that an age verification request happened. The RP would request you/your browser to forward the request "hi can you pls verify if user with nonce 123456 is 18?" to your IDP of choice.
And then the IDP gives you "yes the user with nonce 123456 is 18" signed with its private key, which you forward to the RP.
The only data "leaked" would be which IDP you used to the RP, and that there was an 18+ verification request to the IDP. The IDP wouldn't need to know which RP they're signing the proof for.
This does allow proxying the requests, but honestly, how locked down does this need to be? It's far easier to just snatch your parent's drivers license or passport at that point.
> You can just query a wallet for that attribute, store it and replay it to some other website.
Uh, replay attacks are a solved problem in pretty much any industry standard challenge-response authentication, including OpenID. Am I missing something?
Doesn't this system have more privacy constraints? E.g. the website you're visiting shouldn't be able to learn anything about your identity beyond the attribute (above 18), and the identity provider shouldn't know anything about which website you're visiting.
It does seem like people tried very hard to make it privacy preserving.
The tool could have a mode where it just reads the cryptographic chip in your ID card via NFC and passes on the information to the verifying party. This information is signed by your government and they could verify it with the public key
Instead, they're trying to shoehorn your device into providing the same safety level and, in doing so, making it by design impossible for you to control your own device. Obviously if the sites trust a device that you control, you can make it tell them anything. The ideological part is that it's not your device anymore then and imo we should oppose that. The technical solution is to use the hardware security chip you already have with a reading mechanism that (nearly?) every smartphone already has and even works on any OS that can run a USB NFC reader. It could be an entirely open standard
I'm pretty sure all you need is the ability to login to a website and for that site to vouch for your age based on having examined your identification documents (or something like a network of PGP web-of-trust type notaries). I have a hunch that using a hardware token and biometrics is required to prevent fraud (FIDO and passkeys etc should work). The trick is preventing simulated tokens from existing/working which is where secure boot etc enter the picture.
Can you clarify what fraud you're thinking the "secure boot" (which I take to mean: being denied the access to control your own device) would prevent? Since the identity documents you already have, have this chip that works the same as your bank card, you really don't need a relaying party (your phone, your ISP, etc.) to be trusted for the receiving website to be able to verify the cryptographic signature on the data
So the scenario this is needed for, is where someone does a physical and technical attack on your phone just to extract the key from this app that says you're 18+. That would be why nobody can have access to their own data anymore
I'm sorry but that cure is definitely worse than the disease. This is not an attack you see outside of spy movies
Yubikeys go on your keychain. You're as likely to not notice losing it as you are your housekeys. Anyway the point is that if you're not willing to run a trusted phone, there are other very viable options... particularly for technical folks who tamper with phone software... and those who cares about the Google panopticon... that are extremely viable and should be acceptable to satisfy the stated intent of the regulation.
Yeah it’s sort of like all the apps that would refuse to run on a jailbroken iPhone.
Basically on such a system you can potentially manipulate the process. Here that would probably be to install the credentials of someone else on the device.
So they want a locked down OS environment where user does not have root privileges and software has to be verified (in this case by Google) to be installed.
You would need to release a kernel and OS that requires users who modify the attestation and hardware token components of it to provide their own signing key rather than your production EU-registered one, chained back to the HSM signature emitted by the phone’s HSM signed bootloader; and then you would simply let the app check that its secure boot attestations chain to a secure bootloader/image/OS triplet that’s on file with the EU. Mix in some tech spice for the EU to prohibit OS releases that are validly signed but whose specific instance of a signature is found to be exploitable to bypass age checks and you’re set. None of this would prevent users from modding their devices, any more than macOS prevents modifications today if you turn off the security protections; but once you turn off the security protections, it can no longer attest with Apple’s signature because your modifications don’t match the signature any longer, and so Apple Wallet is inaccessible.
None of this prohibits users from modifying their bootloader, kernel, or OS image; but any such modification would invalidate the secureboot signature and thus break attestation until the user registered their own signatures with the EU.
The EU currently only transacts with Google in this regard because, as far as I know, they are the only Android OS publisher (and perhaps the only Linux publisher?) that bothered to implement hardware-to-app attestation chaining live in production end-user devices in the decades since Secure Boot came onto the scene. All it takes to change that is an entity who has sufficient validity to convince them that outsourcing permitted-signature verification to Google is unethical, which it is.
It’s a safe bet that Steam Linux was already working on this in order to attest that the runtime environment is unmodified for VAC and other multiplayer-cheating prevention systems in games — and so once they publish all that, I expect we’ll find that they’ve petitioned their attested OS signature chain to the EU as satisfying age requirements for mature gaming.
The vendor lock-in here is that Apple and Google and, eventually, Valve, are both willing to put the weight of their business behind their claims to the EU that they do their best to protect the security of their environment from cheaters, with respect to the components required by the EU age verification app. The loophole one could drive a truck through that the EU has left open to break that lock-in in the future? Anyone can petition the EU to accept attestations from their own boot-kernel-OS chain signatures so long as they’re willing to accept the legal risks visited upon them if found to have knowingly permitted exploitation for age check bypasses, or neglected to respond in a timely and prudent manner when notified of such exploitability by researchers — and if the EU rejects their petition improperly, they’ll have to answer for that to their citizens.
All of this assumes that the device, a relaying party for your identity document, needs to be secure in the first place. We don't attest the OS of the router and your ISP before being allowed to use them to relay this information to pornhub. Why does your phone need to be under a third party's control just to relay information that the government already signed onto your NFC-enabled identity documents?
But even if you were to want user's phones to be roots of trust...
> as far as I know, they are the only Android OS publisher (and perhaps the only Linux publisher?) that bothered to implement hardware-to-app attestation chaining
> None of this prohibits users from modifying their bootloader, kernel, or OS image;
... unless they don't want to turn their device into a boat anchor that nothing else will talk to. It's not going to stop with age verification.
Counterproposal: fuck attestation, and fuck age verification. Individual users, not corporations, associations, or organizations, get to use any goddamned software they want any time they want for any purpose they want, and if you set up some system that can't deal with that, tough beans for you.
There’s no way to prove you aren’t MitM-proxying a reply from a device not paired to your phone in that scenario, because the kernel ‘says’ it’s USB to the app but a patched kernel can lie about that unless the kernel is attested-unmodified-secured — and anyways USB can itself be mitm’d at the phys layer without the kernel knowing at all.
You can enroll keys on trusted hardware and then use them on untrusted hardware. That's how smartcards work. Enrollment is secure (say performed by your employer) and (in theory) extracting the private key is impossible.
Smartcards also seem to have the ability to issue certificate requests. I think the keys inside the cards are signed by a manufacturer trust chain (I got a gemalto card to play with for signatures and places like IdenTrust were able to verify authentic cards, but I wasn't trying to fool anything so it may be possible... but they would only issue certain levels of keys for specific cards)
I'm not saying you are wrong (I don't know enough about the details) but it all was much more sophisticated than I had thought and the chips seem to be running some sort of attestation of the chip in the card. Basically, you can't MITM things if doing so requires getting a private key that only exists in the factory. That sort of thing.
Well you should understand that trusting media is not part of how modern encryption works. Having access to USB isn't any different from having access to a network switch or the airwaves. Things like yubikeys and smartcards are designed to work when using untrusted devices.
The question is how do you convince other people to trust your phone to store their secrets--not how do you yourself come to trust your own device to store your own secrets. And if you can't convince others your device is secure (i.e. "why the hell would I trust you and your phone to store my password?"), then just use something they can trust instead. I'm not saying EU is going to allow whatever, I'm just saying it's not a huge technical or usability problem to rely on something the EU should be able to trust (like a yubikey) if the EU can't trust your phone.
All valid points — however: the EU has two requirements not listed above it needs to be difficult to steal unnoticed, and it needs to minimize attempts to steal it at all.
They’re not concerned about a person handing their phone to someone else for a moment. They’re concerned about kids stealing age verification devices from people. Someone isn’t going to notice a missing yubikey until they check age next. Someone is going to miss their phone much more rapidly, be able to track it using stolen device features, and be able to report it stolen which incidentally remote kills HSM access. They can also enforce biometric checks and require a recertification after those change, which would make it nearly impossible — relative to shoulder surfing a PIN — for kids to make use of the parental device unit.
Even a fingerprint key isn’t going to meet these terms, and it’s going to have a weaker sensor that the kid will have hours or days or weeks to try and defeat using a fingerprinted glass and some glue. Locking it to biometrics stored in the phone prior to (re)certification makes it pointless for kids to try. A few still will, but word will spread.
I still personally think this is all kind of a hot mess of deferring parental authority to technology, but I’m not an EU citizen, nor a parent, so my opinion on the policy is irrelevant. I’m just here to raise awareness of why attestation is winning: technological superiority and unmatchable market fit, and an opposition that isn’t presenting coherent and most especially government-persuasive arguments to stop its use. Yubikeys are not a viable market fit in a world where tiny amoral thieves live among us — and whatever else children are to their parents, most of them have the moral integrity of a wet paper towel. Most wouldn’t think twice about lifting a yubikey, but they’ll hesitate strongly before stealing a parent’s phone, and it won’t even pay off doing so thanks to biometrics.
My mom can also do the identification on my phone and unlock it for me. There is fundamentally no way to prevent proxy issues if you let people do verification themselves
Intercepting the USB reader traffic to feed the computer a different card is about the most roundabout way of achieving that
> that bothered to implement hardware-to-app attestation chaining live in production end-user devices
This is why it's important that initiatives like Web Environment Integrity fail. Once the tools are in place, they will always be leveraged by the State.
> and so once they publish all that, I expect we’ll find that they’ve petitioned their attested OS signature chain to the EU as satisfying age requirements for mature gaming.
I hope that Valve pays no mind to this nonsense and continues to allow art to be accessible to anyone.
That ship sailed decades ago when Intel promoted Secure Boot as a defense against malicious modifications; it stops rootkits and it stops cheaters, what more could one ask for, etc. App attestation of this sort has been offered in certain enterprise/government Windows 10 SKUs since day one. Apple’s web attestation protocol has been live on all T2 devices for about as long as T2 has been out.
Governments have real and serious need for verifications that are backed by their force. They’re a government; they are wielding force upon citizens by doing this, knowingly and intentionally. That is a normal and widespread purpose of the State existing at all: to compel people to align with the goals of the State, whether members of the State like it or not, until such time as the State’s goals are changed by whatever means it permits or by its collapse.
If this pans out for them, as cryptographically it will but remains to be how vendors and implementations handle it at scale, then they can introduce voting from your phone — the previously-unattainable holy grail of modern democracy — precisely because it lets the government forcibly stop the cheating that device-to-app/web attestation solves. And they can do so without leaking your identity to election officials if they care to! Just visit a government booth once in a while to have your identity signature renewed (and any prior signatures issued to your identity revoked). That’s how digital wallet passports and ID cards work already today anyways, with their photo/video/NFC processes.
Western sfbay-style tech was founded on the libertarian principle that one should be able to tell the government to fuck off and deny taxation, representation, blah blah etc. in favor of one’s armed enclave that does what it feels like. It’s fine to desire that, but it’s proven too radical to be compatible with the needs of nation-states or the needs they enforce satisfactions for on behalf of their citizens. Attacking attestation won’t solve the problem of the “State”, and has led us to a point where Google can claim truthfully to a “State” that the Android forks ecosystem isn’t competent enough to be trusted, because they can’t be bother to do attestations.
> If this pans out for them, as cryptographically it will but remains to be how vendors and implementations handle it at scale, then they can introduce voting from your phone — the previously-unattainable holy grail of modern democracy — precisely because it lets the government forcibly stop the cheating that device-to-app/web attestation solves. And they can do so without leaking your identity to election officials if they care to! Just visit a government booth once in a while to have your identity signature renewed (and any prior signatures issued to your identity revoked). That’s how digital wallet passports and ID cards work already today anyways, with their photo/video/NFC processes.
we've banned all graphic depictions from the internet, required a verified name attached to every blog post, and made sure to confirm everyone's digital passport before letting them resolve a DNS query, but at least now I can vote from me phone instead of having to go outside. The future is bright!
Yeah, this future sucks, and we’ve had twenty years to push back and utterly failed to do so. I’ve tried for years to interest people in learning about attestation so they can curb it before it swings hard authoritarian, but no one wanted to listen b/c Linux is about having root and anything that challenges that belief is anathema to consider. Welcome to the party, the sky is falling just as it has been for years; someone else can be the harbinger for a while, I’m tired of watching people try the same old arguments that have failed for years.
Aha! Graphene, with the support of impacted EU citizens, has grounds to petition the EU for inclusion in their age verification app, then. I hope someone makes that happen! (I am not an EU citizen and so have no ability to help.)
I am not sure if I am more disturbed by the user journey they want to introduce for accessing websites or the fact that a private company (american, chinese, I don't care) has to become the gatekeeper to let me in.
The under educated, unthinking unwashed masses. Just look at the tea leak. The amount of people that do not care about freedom or privacy on the internet vastly outnumber those that do. And because they do democracy unmasks itself in the digital realm as the tyranny of the unthinking majority.
The lazy middle class who don't like to take the responsibility of actually contributing to their community and running their family.
ps: Had to add this post after the others identified the low class and the upper class as responsible for this ;). But depending on where you are, the low class might not be "the masses".
I'm getting pretty tired of the EU trying to shove internet-crippling regulations down my throat. This, along with ChatControl, is clearly a path towards totalitarian control.
Who are the politicians making these decisions? How did they get elected? Did anyone vote for Totalitarianism 2.0?
Politicians are all that stands between corporations and absolute corruption. It's why they're both their primary target and the ambition of greedy people.
> I'm getting pretty tired of the EU trying to shove internet-crippling regulations down my throat
And I'm getting tired of people pulling out pitchforks without reading anything. This is how democracies end up electing people like Trump. There are no regulations to require age verification here. The EU is simply giving guidelines for implementing harmonized age verification across the EU if any member states or companies that do business in the EU want to use it instead of making people scan ID cards like they currently do and making the receiver of said scans have to understand updates to the designs of the various ID cards used throughout the EU.
You know you're making a fallacious slippery slope argument here. Age verification is already a thing on the Internet, and South Korea and Texas already require age verification for those things. Providing a proof of concept for a way to do age verification without handing over your identity doesn't change public policy. The voters decide what needs age verification.
If you're concerned about totalitarianism, you should be more concerned that Texas required people to upload their IDs to access porn sites because that was the only method available.
Are they, though? The people don't elect the European Commission. The European Council selects candidates and the European Parliament can vote for them. The people in the European Parliament are often politicians who no one knows but sort of vote for because they're associated with their preferred party.
I don't recall any party campaigning on reducing internet freedoms.
Unless their governments start issuing Android devices to all of their citizens, I don't understand how they can require use of this app for anything official.
> Unless their governments start issuing Android devices to all of their citizens, I don't understand how they can require use of this app for anything official.
Not sure who you mean by "they" but you already cannot use a lot of governmental services unless you have an Android or iOS device (at least in Austria). At least in practice that is almost impossible.
> you already cannot use a lot of governmental services unless you have an Android or iOS device (at least in Austria).
That's terrible. They have official services that require an app and can't be used via a standard browser or even paper forms? What do elderly people without smartphones do?
I am in a similar situation, with very aggressive push for turning all banking and every government service into mobile applications only.
> What do elderly people without smartphones do?
They buy a smartphone and have their relatives set everything up for them. Not doing that isn't really an option because you can't even get your pension or planned (i.e. nonemergency) medical services anymore without going through the government mobile app.
If they don't have any relatives, they walk to the government building that used to solve these things for them using good old paper forms, and have officers there help them out. It's a completely braindead system that was envisioned by someone who has very little idea of how the common person lives.
Not that there are any channels to provide feedback, ironically enough. (Voting is a sham and has always been so here.)
They don't require the app for anything official. Uploading (partially redacted) scans of your ID like you would be obligated to today, or physically verifying your age for things like alcohol delivery, should also suffice.
> Uploading (partially redacted) scans of your ID like you would be obligated to today
Redacted, I wish...
To vote in the upcoming election, I was asked to upload an uncensored copy of an identity document to the website of the municipality of The Hague
To keep the domain I registered in 2014, the French TLD required me to send them the same thing by unencrypted email a few months ago. I tried sending a link to a PNG so it wouldn't linger in their inbox forever but they absolutely required it to be an attachment
To buy a prepaid card in Germany, I was required to show an uncensored identity document. I had put a tiny piece of tape tape over only the burgerservicenummer that the germans can't make use of anyway because it's the Dutch numbering system that's beholden only to specific authorities
There's scarcely anyone who appears to know what EU legislation says on identity numbers. The Dutch government themselves apparently don't
A while ago, when the topic of the EU digital ID was brought up, I said clearly that this was going to be shit-show and that the intent was going to use this as tool to muzzle the population.
It turns out I was right. This is the intent. First require digital ID to access content/post anything on social media, then make it impossible to use said ID outside of the walled garden of Android and Apple, then tie this digital identity to your real world ID and make sure it can be revoked at anytime by the powers that be.
Bonus point, make sure everything you say or do is stored for unlimited access by law enforcement to protect the democracy(TM) or protect the children(TM).
If that is not a slippery slope, then I don't know what it is.
I also pointed out that creating a database of everyone in the EU containing a lot of PII in terms of religious preferences, sexual preferences and so on is a the stupidest idea that anyone could have considering that this tool could be used by the next parties in power to hunt down political/religious opponents.
The problem isn't being handcuffed by Google or an American company, it's being handcuffed at all. Is it some kind of psychological coping skill to misdirect from the obvious problem (an age verification app that bans user software preferences)?
Who cares if it's Google or an American company. The point is you decided to let the E.U dictate what software you can run on your phone.
Unfortunately many more people than you might think are in full support of this type of thing. The UK in particular is a very nanny state and this is sold as protecting children. You're not against protecting children, are you?
It is a rhetorical appeal to emotion, which is used to override rational debate, discourage criticism, and create false dichotomies, e.g. "you're either with the children, or you're with criminals".
This "think of the children" rhetoric targets encryption, anonimity, decentralized platforms, and private communication channels like messaging apps, VPNs, Tor, etc. It is nasty. Keep in mind that it does not actually prevent child exploitation and grooming. Most of the pedophiles are on Discord and Roblox anyways.
In any case, there are ways to prove someone is over 18 without revealing identity, but that is not that goal, is it? There are cryptographic schemes just for that, such as zk-SNARK, etc. ZKPs in general.
> Keep in mind that it does not actually prevent child exploitation and grooming.
While true, I'd avoid making that argument since it implies these restrictions might be worth implementing if they actually did prevent child harm. There is no scenario in which it is acceptable for the government to mandate encryption backdoors, for example.
The whole Chat Control crap is bullshit no one asked for, and unfortunately many countries in the EU are in favor of it. There is a map somewhere that shows the countries that are against it, I cannot find it right now.
EU citizens voted for this. Unfortunately, EU citizens are too lazy to vote a lot of the times, and the ones that do vote are turning more and more right-wing authoritarian.
As much as the EU pretends there's some kind of united Europe, it covers different countries, with laws ranging from "sex work is just taxed work" to "all prostitution and porn is illegal". Even basic rights like gay marriage aren't consistent between member states.
However, everyone I've talked to about it said they don't care about it so they don't want to bother, which is probably what the people behind these laws are banking on.
I'm growing pretty tired of this rhetoric / rhetorical sleight of hand, but maybe this is a reasonable opportunity to discuss it:
- not all citizens of a jurisdiction are eligible for voting: in this case, cursory search suggests only 400M (88.8%) of 450M were eligible - seems a bit too high to me, but let's roll with it regardless
- not all who are eligible actually vote: voting in the EU parliamentary elections, which is what EU citizens can actually vote on, like most elsewhere, is not mandatory; it's a right, not a duty: turnout was 50.74%, and that is of the eligible population, so really just 45.1% (203M)
- most voting systems are mathematically unfair [0]: extensively researched, doesn't quite apply necessarily in this case though as per the next bit
- several key positions in the various bodies are elected indirectly: same here in the EU, at which point all bets are off
- laws, regulations, and policies are not voted for or against by citizens: same here in the EU too, nobody could have even possibly voted for this in the literal sense
It's a run of the mill representative system and I think it'd serve discussions a great deal if this was acknowledged properly. Surely it's agreeable at least that this wouldn't be such news if people were all just completely on board as the sentence "EU citizens voted for this." implies when read naively and literally.
I really don't see a point to this phrase other than inciting others. And before anyone brings it up, yes, this is common in US threads as well, yes, is often expressed by EU folks against US folks, but no, that does not make this better. Why dig ourselves into rhetorical holes unnecessarily? Being narratively justified to frame things this way doesn't mean one should (or must).
And "offering feedback" is not a vote nor a voting I'd say.
No, I fucking didn't vote for this, I hate everything about it. The worst part? Even if all of our MEPs voted against this BS, it would pass and be forced upon us anyway. All because we have given up our sovereignty to EU.
This collision course has been a long time brewing, though I'm not even sure why integrity checking is included in this. The data source for the age information is the governments, there's no need to trust the clientside per se, it's just a middleman.
One thing I find reassuring is the nature of pushback on display on the repo (only read the first few comments there, mind you). Really not what I expected phrasing and rhetoric wise (unlike here), honestly kind of restored a very very tiny and fragile bit of faith in humanity in me, it's very reserved and reasonable stuff.
"age verification app," is such a phony pretext. They know that android fragmentation and the lack of consistent verifiable hardware is what prevents govts from implementing a punitive digital ID that is sufficient to punish and fine people using western standards of evidence and legal defense.
these people are monsters. don't help them, and don't be complicit. working on digital ID tech, and even disclosing vulns in it is like helping Hollerith make faster and more efficient punch cards.
You can't use device verification in production anyways. (ATM)
This has no effect, is it even used in production anywhere? It seems to be part of eIDAS which is a good thing, most countries already have their own identity systems as is stated in the README. The three or for id apps I have seen all have some kind of device check that is sent to the ID provider, it is not usually accisible for ServiceProviders though. On those apps you either get no indication or just a "seems suspicious" score.
This does not make it possible to filter out people. And honestly considering the amount of shady phones people have I am not sure this will every work. Apple is sadly another issue, too many normals there.
It is nice that this is pointed out so we do not get a distopian future.
They use attribute based attestation which should be mostly anonymous. The long term goal was also to implement zero knowledge proofs which would make things like age verification fully anonymous, but because of technical reasons and development constraints that idea seems to have been postponed.
The reason you can't distribute a huge amount of proofs is that the app won't let you. To make sure the app won't let you, the app tries to verify that you're not running a modified app or a modified system environment. That's the remote attestation that "bans any android system not licensed by Google".
These tokens are signed and only usable for a limited amount of time so you can't just generate a million of them and sell them for others to use.
If the app can't rely on the system working as it should, it'll need to contain less privacy-friendly measures for limiting large scale token abuse.
For the proof to be traced back to your identity, you'd need to be tracked consistently across websites, possibly with the aid of the government itself. If ZKPs make it into the app, tracking you is basically impossible.
Of course, if you're authenticating with your full name and birth date, when opening a bank account for instance, you're not going to get the anonimity benefits. Still, you do get to see what party you've authenticated with and get a button in the app to request deletion or report suspicious behaviour if you think it was a scam.
The technical specification can be found here[1], with further details here[2].
Well, it's more like a framework, so not a ton of details. I've just glossed over it, but from what I can gather they have thought about it:
No personal data, especially no information from personal identification documents such as national ID card, is stored within an [Age Verification App Instance]. Only the Proof of Age attestation, specifically indicating "older than 18", is utilized for age verification purposes
Stored Verification(8b): [Relying Parties] may optionally store information derived from the Proof of Age attestation in the User's account, allowing the User to bypass repeated verification for future visits or purchases, streamlining the User experience. In this case, authentication methods such as WebAuthN should be utilised to ensure secure access while enabling the User to choose a pseudonym, preserving privacy. Risks in case of the device sharing should be considered.
Even if they can't be traced back to a name/photo identity, it would still be a privacy disaster if you could only make one proof per service.
If a user can only make one then they'll have to use that identity with that service forever. That's a nightmare for privacy. Sometimes people need another account, unknown to their employer/family/friends. People should be able to make multiple accounts without those being tied together through a common "age check" identifier. But, of course, there is no way to prevent those from being distributed.
At some level I believe that's the purpose behind some of this. If someone can only have one proof, then someone can only have one account to speak with. They'll be easier to monitor, easier to identify, easier to silence. That's why I think these types of laws and behaviors should be resisted and protested.
I've mentioned in a previous comment that it's telling that big tech isn't resisting these totally-just-coincidental ID laws coming from western countries. It supercharges their surveillance and tracking abilities, and widens their moats.
Also, porn is a smokescreen. The definition of "adult" content will rapidly expand, and these put the ID issuers in censorious a position of control over people and services. Nothing stops a government attestation server from rejecting a request because someone is blacklisted from "mass communication services" because they're a felon, protestor, LGBT activist, etc... or because a service has fallen out of favor.
The idea is, that you have a 'digital ID' on your phone, tied to your real identity, that will today be used to prove you're 18, but when the infrastructure exists, it will be used for other stuff too... like needing to attach your real name to any social media account (you already have an app that does that on your phone for the 18+ thing, so adding real name is easy to implement), and that will greatly affect freedom of speech.
This is the pr on it [0]. It was linked on hn at the time too [1]
For all the shit Google deservedly gets they seem to be genuinely trying to implement good and privacy preserving solutions to a lot of these problems.
The issue of course is that there's essentially no way to do all this stuff with software and hardware the user actually controls themselves, so you end up with hard requirements that you use big tech as gatekeepers.
This is the slippery slope that IMO eventually ends the open web.
If you take that outcome as inevitable, which at this point I basically do given all the forces lined up to restrict access to information, I suppose Google is about the best steward you could hope for.
I don't and I wish Google et al would take a god damned stand against it. All it takes is 2 or 3 big companies to just not play along with the destruction of the open internet (the very same responsible for their genesis and incredible success), and the bureaucrats will eventually relent. Unfortunately they've chosen the path of least resistance, which also is the path of regulatory capture to their sole benefit. Sad to see that win over the ideals of the early net.
I agree in principle but as time goes on I have found that the free and open internet as we know it already no longer exists in practise. Theres like 5 places to go on the internet these days - your social media platform of choice, your short form content platform of choice, youtube, perhaps an AI platform, and 1 misc place of your preference. And this loop of crap seems to demand more and more of your life.
I went on youtube in bed last night to watch a 10 minute video (that I knew I had to search for to find - it was a specific one), but the app opens to shorts and they're so damn stimulating that it was 30 minutes before I finally got to the vid I wanted. I started with pure agency and was immediately thrown off course. Say what you will about my discipline or habits, but imagine the affect this has on less... aware individuals such as children.
Walking around the world you see everyone buried in their phones.
There are aspects of this initiative that I totally welcome, if it has the result of some level of de-interneting. The argument is always "they do it to protect children first, then it comes for everyone". I hope they increase resistance for the end user. I agree its sad, but what we have currently is truly awful, and less of it is a good thing.
I understand that it may not have that effect and end up in the "worst of both worlds" situation. But I don't wan't google fighting any battles for me anymore. They might try on occasion to be respectful but their bottom line is to own my attention.
even if changes were pulled from that repo, they wouldn't make it into the downstream repo as that file has been near completely replaced, not that it is a change of anything more than a line of text in a readme
What "things" are going to depend on this Android-locked age check? What about Apple users? What about accessing it via a laptop or desktop (shock horror: running Linux!)?
My dad gets by in his "my dad" way of life without a mobile phone at all, I wonder how much longer this will be possible. I was about to rant about being forced to have a mobile if you want to participate in society, but then he uses a desktop for some of the services for which the rest of us use a mobile, so my rant falls down in that, for a while now, to participate in society you've needed either a computer or a mobile.
Hopefully computer-only can eke out some kind of base-adequate participation for a while longer.
You can also buy an Apple device but that was never your device to begin with so nothing is lost when the EU requires Apple to be the only party with the capability to modify what your device can run
iOS also be supported and will use Apple's remote attestation capabilities. But, as there are no real alternative ROMs for iOS devices, only Android users are really affected by this.
From a legal point of view, the app should be a reliable convenience feature and not replace traditional (physical) identity verification. How much your dad will be affected will depend on how shitty and lazy the services he uses are. If he doesn't use a phone or a computer, he probably won't notice the difference.
Funny how EU politicians complain about dependency on American tech and the next day do something like this.
It's all cheap talk anyway as they have 0 intention to make EU based alternatives possible but it's rarely in your face so much.
No evidence is given that they won't implement non-Google remote attestation solutions like https://attestation.app/about
Indeed, the bug links to another bug where the author says that it isn't restricted to Play Services remote attestation and recently followed up with a documentation update making that clear. https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-app-andro...
> No evidence is given that they won't implement non-Google remote attestation solutions like https://attestation.app/about
Unfortunate that it doesn't matter, because they're not going to accept anything that's not attested by some authority.
Attestation in itself is a bad thing, guaranteed to be horrifically abused in ways far, far worse than any problem it could possibly solve. You do not need to know what software I am running, period.
You agreed that your employer should be able to check that the devices you use to connect to its network are not rooted. You quibbled over the definition of "your device" against the HN guidelines. When you ask most people whose phone or laptop is on a table, they'll say it's theirs, not that it's Company X's device that they are using to do work for that company.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
> You agreed that your employer should be able to check that the devices you use to connect to its network are not rooted.
Okay I see the issue. No I do not agree with that. I'm saying if they want that guarantee then they can isolate the network. But if they don't isolate the network then it's all on them, they do not get to check all devices.
That's why my point is not just a quibble.
Also responding to the strongest interpretation sometimes means making that interpretation explicit, to make sure everyone is on the same page. In this case making the actual ownership clear. I'm not trying to dunk on you or whatever.
> But if they don't isolate the network then it's all on them, they do not get to check all devices.
This is a ridiculous point to think that I disagreed about. Of course they don't get to check that your TV and your washing machine have been rooted. I explicitly specified your devices connected to your employer's network. You're trying to interpret this in a way that doesn't make sense simply to find a point of disagreement where there is none.
Ha, now I feel like you're going out of your way to misinterpret me.
"the network" is the same network we've been talking about the entire conversation. Employer's network.
Obviously they can't control what I plug into a network they don't know about, I don't know why you think I was trying to argue that or how it's the strongest interpretation of my comment.
> "the network" is the same network we've been talking about the entire conversation. Employer's network.
That's the same network I'm talking about. I don't know why you think I'm referring to any other network. You are not allowed to connect untrusted devices to many employers' networks, and this works via remote attestation. They don't care if your TV is rooted as long as you don't connect it to their network, but if you do, they will want to make sure it isn't rooted.
> I don't know why you think I'm referring to any other network.
You started talking about my TV and my washing machine, so I thought you were accusing me of bringing in other networks to "find a point of disagreement".
Now I'm just confused why you brought up the idea of attaching them to my employer's network.
> You are not allowed to connect untrusted devices to many employers' networks, and this works via remote attestation. They don't care if your TV is rooted as long as you don't connect it to their network, but if you do, they will want to make sure it isn't rooted.
And that highlighted part is what I take issue with. They should not ask for that. Either allow my devices or ban them. They should never get to look at the attestation report for my devices (literal "my").
There's your misunderstanding. The way to allow them or ban them is via remote attestation. How else would they be able to do that? Once you understand that, you'll also understand why I brought up your washing machine.
>The way to allow them or ban them is via remote attestation. How else would they be able to do that?
The first check should be if it's their device. If the device has the correct key to show it's theirs, they could allow it right there. Or they can go further for extra security, to ask for remote attestation of their device.
If the device claims to be owned by anyone else, they should not ask for remote attestation. Why would they need it? They already have all the information they need to decide whether to allow or block. "My washing machine (unrooted)" and "claims to be my washing machine (rooted)" should be treated exactly the same by them. Allow both or ban both, depending on the purpose of the network.
It's good that there are strong reactions to dystopian work like this.
It's solving a problem that doesn't need to be solved using a solution that's fraught with risks.
The authors chose to spend their time helping governments censor information, removing choice from individuals, and the solution they choose to work on is a bad one. Any criticism they receive is well-deserved.
There are already age check requirements to do things like buy liquor online. Today, that requires uploading your ID, so the service provider gets a lot more information than just that you're above a certain age. The existence of this new way to prove your age without giving away a bunch of other information does not "[help] governments censor information" in any reasonable way.
What an absolute clown show - the EU fines Google and Apple for being monopolistic and abusing market power and then proceed to implement apps like these that can only be used on American operating systems.
I mean there's a perfectly rational possible explanation for this - if the fines are actually just an extra targeted tax on these companies (but it's politically inconvenient to just do it honestly by levying a tax), and they would therefore adjust the laws to make sure they could still fine them if they had already complied...
It may be that the people in charge in the EU don't really care about the market dominance as long as they can collect enough extra money from them...
Internet has become a commidity that needs to be reinvented with a focus in the real human interactions and the privacy.
How?, who?, Where? I'm afraid it is too late to find a group of people interested in creating a real network outside of the system. The best that i found was the LoRa communities but are useless for anyone submerged in the Tiktokian distopy.
I don't understand what device verification is even meant to do here. What's the threat model of a child who knows how to root their phone and defeat verification checks manually but doesn't know how to find an adult to create an account and give them the password?
The linked Reddit discussion is about the issue of attestation in the EU age verification application requiring a licensed version of Android to function properly.
The EU is not banning non licensed Android systems. This would make it hard for EU citizens to use those though, if they need that app.
I think this misses the forest for the trees. I could care less if the app requires a Google Android phone or non-jailbroken iPhone to work. I care that age verification exists in the first place, when it most definitely shouldn't. Arguing and ranting about how a huge privacy compromise functions misses the point that privacy is being compromised.
It's just odd to see them bringing up America when their own government created this. Not the US. How about fight the actual problem instead of making sure the problem works on more devices.
A lot of discussion, but one contradiction seems to have gone unnoticed; notably, the EU's DMA decision about Apple having to allow alternative app stores. Go figure again about these contradictory moves.
The first comment was hilarious: "so how does one report the EU for breaching GDPR" and it reminds me of a comment on r/androiddev where Google was requiring solo devs to have a verifiable phone number for support and the commenter said something like: "Meanwhile, Google itself do not have a support phone number for his Android devs!"
We shouldn't need Age Verification checks for adults in the first place.
Create a better, standardized, open-source parental control tool that is installed by default on all types of device that can connect to the web.
The internet aspect of the parental control should be a "Per Whitelist" system rather than Blacklisting. The parents should be the ones to decide which domains are Whitelisted for their kids, and government bodies could contribute with curated lists to help establish a base.
Yes, there would be some gray area sites like search engine image search, or social media sites like Twitter that can allow you to stumble into pornography, and that is why these devices that have the software turned ON, should send a token through the browser saying "Parental Control". It would be easier for websites to implement a blanket block of certain aspects of their site than expect them to implement whole ID checks systems and security to make sure that no leaks occur (look at the TEA app) like the UK is expecting everyone to do.
Also, I'm for teenagers (not little children) having access to pornography. I was once a teenager, every adult was, and we know that it's a natural thing to masturbate which includes the consumption of pornography for most in some way. Repressing their desires, their sexuality, and making this private aspect of their life difficult isn't the way. Yes, yes, there is nuance to it, (very hardcore/addiction/etc) but it should be up to the parents to decide with given tools if they trust their kid to consume such a thing.
As for the tool itself. Of course we have parental tools, but they can be pretty garbage, their all different, they're out of the way, and I understand that many people simply don't know how to operate them. That's why I believe that creating a standardized open-source project that multiple governments can directly contribute to and advertise for parents is the way, because at the end of the day, it should be up to the parents to decide these things, and for the government to facility that choice.
Obviously, besides the internet aspect, the tool should have all the bells and whistles that you'd expect from one, but that's not the topic.
EDIT: And yes, some children would find a way, just like they're doing now for the currently implemented ID checks. It's not lost of me that VPNs with free plans suddenly exploded in 4 digits % worth of downloads. A lot of those are tiny people who are smart enough. Or using an app like a game to trick Facial Recognition software.
> [...] free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. [...] Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master
Lol. People put way too much trust in governments.
If it's not unbelievably obvious, there's an entire class of people flying private jets to "world summits" where the transcripts aren't disclosed. What do you think is going on? Use your brain.
I don't know why people on here love the Government. They are probably advocating for a Government, but not this. A government that does its basic functions, without too much overreach, something like minarchism.
This is ridiculous but it's worth pointing out that if the EU would provide their own infrastructure for "age verification" it would be even more Dystopian. The problem is not really that the EU in this case would give Google and Apple monopolies that locks out all competition, the problem is the "age verification" itself. Nobody needs, nobody wants it, and it's the starting point for all kinds of browsing and chat control measures dictated by governments.
The GDPR data locality requirement is that personal data must remain in the European Economic Area (unless an exception applies.) It has no requirement that data remains local to each state.
That's easy for a company like Google to comply with. In fact the company I work for uses Google European data centers to comply with GDPR.
In the case of Android, genuine means:
While there is value to verify device security, this strongly ties the app to many Google properties and services, because those checks won't pass on an aftermarket Android OSThe issue is being raised here: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android...
As a resident of the aforementioned political climate, I find their concerns to be reasonable.There are a number of comments in that same thread that indicate a mandate to utilize Google services may run afoul of EU member nations' integrity and privacy laws.
"Device security checks" is the most horrifying aspect as it basically means "officially sanctioned hardware and software", and leads straight into the dystopia that Stallman warned us about in Right to Read.
There is some amusing irony in the EU relying on the US for furthering its own authoritarianism. It's unfortunate that freedom (in the classic rebellious, American sense) never became that popular in the EU, or for that matter, the UK.
> leads straight into the dystopia that Stallman warned us about
IMHO, the push for age verification is just a stepping stone towards requiring a mandatory ID for all social media posts made from EU. Given the current trends against freedom of speech, it's not unreasonable to think that by the end of the decade any site, including HN, might need to link usernames with their respective eIDs in case posts come from EU IP addresses.
> officially sanctioned hardware and software
Right now, if you want to run an alternative OS, it's already an uphill battle to use tons of member state services, as well as to do banking. Even if you have microG available, the situation is terrible. I imagine it's going to become harder. I cannot understand why the European Commission wants to reduce our reliance on FAANG services, and at the same time they make Google Play a de facto standard, reinforcing the mobile duopoly. In this context, free alternative mobile platforms, such as Sailfish, cannot flourish.
> I cannot understand why the European Commission wants to reduce our reliance on FAANG services, and at the same time they make Google Play a de facto standard
It seems to be different branches of the EU? This has been a recurring problem in EU tech legislation - the EU government bodies are sufficiently autonomous that the right hand seldom knows what the left is doing...
To quote Yes, Minister:
> Hacker: One of your officials pays farmers to produce surplus food, while on the same floor, the next office is paying them to destroy the surpluses.
> Maurice: That is not true!
> Hacker: No?
> Maurice: He is not in the next office, not even on the same floor!
They aren't autonomous at all though. All EU law comes from the Commission, which is a singular body run by a single appointed president, with everyone reporting directly to her. The Commission answers to nobody and the Parliament can't tell it what to do, just rubberstamp what it produces.
This is the best case scenario for coherency in law making. It's designed to be as undemocratic as possible, so there's no need to make compromises or engage in pork barrel politics to get stuff over the line. The incoherency of the EU's approach is just a consequence of the incoherent thinking coming from the top. The EU always has extremely powerful but very low competency presidents, always for some reason those who were failures at national politics.
> The Commission answers to nobody and the Parliament can't tell it what to do, just rubberstamp what it produces.
That's not true. First of all, amendments can be introduced by both the parliaments and council so it's not rubber-stamping. But more importantly they have the right to censure the commission (Article 17(8) TEU and in Article 234 TFEU) and thus force it to resign.
The Commission can ignore amendments from MEPs by simply withdrawing the legislation and trying again, and it does. In theory the Parliament can force the entire Commission to resign at once (not change course), but then it'll just be re-appointed by whatever secret process was used the last time around. The power is hardly useful which is why it's only been used once, IIRC.
In practice the EP doesn't matter. The MEPs rubberstamp everything because they aren't serious politicians with serious ideas. They can't be, because they can't change the law, which means they can't have party positions or campaign on policies. It's fake DDR style politics that pretends on the surface to be democracy, where there appear to be parties and politicians, but they can't actually do anything so the only people who bother to turn up are those who already agree with everything the government is doing and just want to get paid to cheerlead. The EU Parliament is like that: the death of ambition, full of apathetic losers who drift into politics without any real idea of why they're there, or people who are using it as a springboard to national parliaments where some power is still allowed to exist (only in specific areas the Commission hasn't yet taken control of).
So it's all a dummy process designed to look democratic enough to confuse people whilst actually turning Europe into a unified dictatorship.
And it's designed to confuse people. Don't take my word for it. Take the word of the EU's own former leaders who routinely boast about deceiving and manipulating the public:
When people ask politicians today “What will become of Europe?” or “Where is European integration heading?”, we usually give an evasive answer. “We don’t want a super state” that is generally the first thing we say. I must admit that I have in the past often resorted to this kind of thing myself. (Viviane Reding)
Europe's nations should be guided towards the super state without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation. (Jean Monnet)
We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided we continue step by step until there is no turning back. (Juncker)
Super democratic attitudes right there.
I sadly agree with what you wrote, but on this point
> The EU Parliament is like that: the death of ambition, full of apathetic losers who drift into politics without any real idea of why they're there
I have to disagree. There are many (or, "at least a few I know personally"? [1]) people who sit in the Parliament with a real intention of making good. Their power is simply null, though.
1. David Sassoli (deceased, ex president), Guy Verhofstadt (Renew), Patrick Breyer (Pirates), to name a few I follow.
I only know the name Verhofstadt but he's a hard-core federalist, no? Sure, people who define good as the EU taking everything over can genuinely view their "work" as doing good, but it's the sort of thing I meant by cheerleading. The Commission needs no encouragement and would be doing exactly the same things regardless of whether Verhofstadt existed or not.
Yeah, the actual power in the EU rests with the national governments (i.e. the Council). The Commission can propose laws, but they can't enact them (and for my money, the power to propose laws should go to the Parliament but that won't happen any time soon, unfortunately).
"right hand" pretty nicely fits. The EU/EVP is much more conservative/right wing then many of its citizens are prepared to accept. Its a pretty nice propaganda-machinery that made this possible. Ask a random EU citizen if they are aware that conservatives are leading the EU since 30 years... You'll be surprised.
The current push for more censorship is a left talking point though
Yeah right... That's why the left wing parties in the EP voted against and the conservatives / neoright parties voted in favour of censorship. -.-
> I cannot understand why the European Commission wants to reduce our reliance on FAANG services, and at the same time they make Google Play a de facto standard, reinforcing the mobile duopoly.
It's called bad faith, and it's an all too common problem with politicians and business types alike.
The problem is massive corruption and institutions deemed to fight it are corrupt themselves.
Von der Leyen and the rest of the Commission aren't politicians nor business types. They don't run for election, they're all appointees. And most of them have never run a business either.
Von der Leyen and the rest of executive branch of EU are appointed in a same way a lot of countries appoint their executive branch members — by a vote in legislative branch.
That's not how the EU works.
The EU Parliament was given a vote on von der Leyen. It was a ballot with a single name on it: hers. By the time it go to the rubberstamping stage the decision was already made. The MEPs couldn't propose other candidates for the vote, and the Parliament can't propose changes to the law either, so it's not the legislative branch of the EU. The legislative branch of the EU would be... the EU Commission. Which is also its executive.
The way von der Leyen was selected is a secret. Nobody knows how it happened. She didn't run in a democratic process of any kind, so she isn't a politician. If you ask EU fans they'll tell you the heads of state selected her. We have no evidence of this. That's the written process, but no records were produced of any such meeting, or a vote, or however it is that this decision was theoretically made. She could have been presented as a fait accompli by a single country, other countries could have been bribed, they could have been excluded entirely. We'd never know.
Nobody voted for Dick Schoof either, yet he is a prime minister of the Netherlands. That just how coalitions work -- a lot of trades behind closed doors and then a vote in a legislature. The bigger the chamber the more stuff happens before the closed doors or in a commettee.
>She didn't run in a democratic process of any kind, so she isn't a politician
The word you are aiming for is "аппаратчік" -- carreer party member. Which is a fair point, but I don't see it as something fundamentally wrong. I want an experience faceless bureaucrat to do the very valuable faceless bureaucratic thingy -- the technicalities, of which are many. I like, it's great.
> and the Parliament can't propose changes to the law either
They sure can and they sure do it. Commission gives a draft, the chamber votes on the first reading, then a committee in of the parliament can do whatever with the text, including changing "approve" to "reject" making it the opposite of what commission proposed. Which is then voted again by the parliament and again by the council ( which is basically an upper chamber ). I'm not sure whether the chamber can bring back voted down amendments or introduce their own during second or third hearing, as I didn't read the procedural rules, but I suspect it's all there.
If anything, the whole thing is more resembling the original US double chamber parliament than the current US, because the EU of now is as fragmented (or you can say federated) than US was when it originally formed.
von der Leyen is neither experienced nor faceless. She's famous throughout Europe for her gross incompetence, especially having led the German military to ruin. Given that she failed at running a single department in a single state she has no identifiable characteristics that make her qualified for her current role.
She is however notable for being a terrible negotiator and constantly being at the center of corruption scandals. Wikipedia has a sample.
But that is how the EU rolls.
There's no similarity to the US. Congress is the supreme power and originates all law. They might take suggested drafts from the executive branch, but outside of carve-outs where Congress lets the executive branch pass its own regulations, the civil service can only make suggestions for legislation. The EU is backwards: only the civil service can change the law, and the so-called Parliament is reduced to suggesting changes.
I applaud you for being someone who finally talks about European Union institutions with apt knowledge of them, unlike even most news providers.
The structure of the Union is grim. I wish it was different, but how to change it now? It would have to be the Commission itself that suddenly decides that most of its powers need to be delegated to the Parliament.
It can't be changed, the foundations of the EU are left-ideological from the start as observed by many of the people who set it up. The only way forward is for every country to exit.
In this case it seems more like incompetence mixed with classic Euro bureacracy. The suits don't know better and consumers are braindead so won't even notice
> "it's not unreasonable to think that by the end of the decade any site, including HN, might need to link usernames with their respective eIDs in case posts come from EU IP addresses."
A rule of thumb that works too often is "how is mainland China doing things?"[0], and assume the West will follow behind shortly.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/07/15/china-digita... ("Big Brother gets new powers in China with digital ID system")
(tl;dr: Mandatory digital ID, with central government attesting and holding personal data in escrow. The "privacy-preserving", "least-bad option" a sizeable portion of even HN itself advocates for).
> "This means that companies, like social media site Weibo or online shopping behemoth Alibaba, will no longer be able to see the personal information of their users with digital IDs — but Chinese authorities will be able to see the real identity behind online accounts across a range of sites."
Is it worse than requiring a phone number?
Oh well at least the Chinese aren't Christians.
Believe it or not, China has far and away the largest Christian population in the world. (I know, I know, culture, percent of the population, etc, this is just a fun fact that runs counter to intuition.)
It's already close to impossible. Banking apps and government apps are close to mandatory to function in today's society, yet they plain do not work on Lineage, even with microg, or they work but need ridiculous workarounds. Never mind other "soft mandatory" things like messaging apps or whatever.
I'm dedicated and I have a literal PhD in computer science, yet I'm fucking exhausted fighting this battle all the time. 0.1% chance someone has the capability to, and willingly goes through all this bother.
Then tfa is just a nail in the coffin.
Can't you have two phones: a Lineage phone for personal stuff and a Big Brother phone for banking and government and everything else uninstalled or disabled?
> I cannot understand why the European Commission wants to reduce our reliance on FAANG services, and at the same time they make Google Play a de facto standard
You'll be surprised, most of the time it's simple ignorance: the people making decisions don't know everything about everything. Hence democracy comes to rescue.
But the way the European Commission takes decisions is anti-democratic (secret draft documents, undisclosed lobbying, overlooking the role of the Parliament…)
VPN ban is coming next.
VPN ban coming now in the UK
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44722216
> In this context, free alternative mobile platforms, such as Sailfish, cannot flourish.
If you are a system that depends on people being constantly under the yoke of your jurisdictional powers, you do not want a strong, free, ecosystem. You want as little diversity as possible, ideally two so there is an illusion of choice.
>any site, including HN, might need to link usernames with their respective eIDs
I think, keybase already does it, and there are users here with signed proofs of identity.
I would honestly love that. No more paid trolls on social media, the democratic process has a chance to adapt to technology, we can avoid the fate of the US.
Companies are neither minors or adults. Account management for paid shills will be handled between customer support backend infra and social media API servers, not subject to any particular rules.
> Companies are neither minors or adults.
Chickens are neither mammals nor worms, what are you talking about.
People would just buy a ton of hacked accounts just like today.
Can’t have speed control on the highway, people would just exceed the limit anyway.
Come on brother let’s not give up before doing anything.
... and all the social media posts having been pre-approved by Minitrue. What a glorious world we shall live in.
This is no longer just rhetoric. Meanwhile, the EU’s polite, tea-drinking cousin, the UK has quietly deployed a “social media surveillance unit.” Not to fight trolls or bots, of course - but to ensure His Majesty’s Subjects think correctly in public. Doubleplusgood, wouldn’t you say? [1]
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/police-socia...
„monitoring social media for anti-immigrant posts” amounts to banning wrongthink? Get outta here dude.
Politicians who simultaneously increase immigration and stir up hatred against immigrants will inevitably cause a tragedy.
One does not have to be anti-immigrant to not be happy about immigration policies. It is known at this point that the Kremlin is actively helping migrants to come to Europe. If an enemy knows that this will be to the detriment of Europe, maybe Europeans themselves should also acknowledge that?
Yes but (risky absolute statement) criticizing the policies themselves, in isolation from the immigrants who are already here, never got anyone in trouble with the law.
I think the critique of the policies gets swept up and put in the bucket together with alt-right ideological idioms, thus coloring it immediately.
I think US republicans are going into panic mode because a lot of the people who get punished for this are right wing adjacent, not very bright people, and they misinterpret this as their equivalents in Europe somehow getting suppressed.
So they try the same tactics as they know from home, asserting their rights, conflating separate issues, slippery sloping etc. And they freak out when it doesn’t work.
The UK arrested around 12.5k people in 2023 over social media posts, according to the Times. Not all of them related to immigration at all (but I would wager: many are).
It is sufficient to 'cause distress' - against whom, or in what form, or what qualifies as 'distress' is deliberately kept vague to maximise persecution rates. Some cases saw a squad car with six Bobbies take the very average, middle-class parents of a teenage daughter to the precinct to question them on why their daughter has had strong opinions on the way her school's new head was chosen [1]. While - as so often - no-one was later sent to a court for sentencing, the chilling effects are there, and I'd say half a platoon of police officers descending on someone's front lawn is definitely "getting in trouble with the law".
[1] https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/police-s...
Money quote:
> More often than not, the police record these episodes as “non-crime hate incidents”, with over 13,200 recorded last year. What’s so extraordinary about the police’s zealous pursuit of these non-criminals is that the rate at which they’re catching actual criminals is falling. Fewer than seven in 100 crimes now lead to a charge or summons, down from 17 in 100 in 2015. In the year to September 2023, the total number of burglaries left unsolved stood at 213,814, a rise of 4 per cent on the previous year.
So ... police gets their numbers up persecuting people for wrong thought while they avoid having to deal with actual, real criminals which might fight back violently. And Whitehall is clapping to it.
Then there is the case of David Wootton - who is currently fighting against a verdict that declared him having a tasteless halloween costume in a social media post (dressing up as the Manhattan Area bomber, with an arab headscarf, an 'I love Ariana Grande' t-shirt, and a backpack that read 'boom') to be a count of 'hate crime'. He faces up to two years in prison over that. Deeply tasteless? Sure. A 'hate crime' worth of spending two years in prison over? Seriously?
Let's move away from the UK - to Germany, an actual EU state. Which reintroduced a lèse-majesté law that makes it more prosecutable - and carries harder sentencing - if you post something against a politician that they do not like. That law is used most happily especially by the Green Party, but they all are complicit. It led to early-morning Special Forces raids against the former flat of someone who called a politician '1 dick', and standard raid against someone who called a former minister of economics 'a doofus' in what could easily be understood as satirical use of a common brand name. Sometimes, quoting them with wrong interpunctation is reason for a raid, and sometimes just quoting them is enough. And the state prosecutors? Laugh on American TV about how they know they never get most of the cases through a proper court case, but 'the raid in itself is the punishment already' [2].
And, fun fact: Courts have decided that even stating the truth about a politician can qualify as a prosecutable insult ("Schmähkritik") if it is 'sufficient to negatively impact their future political work'. So better thing twice, and have an exit plan before you point out that Patrick O. Litican is a compulsive liar, with a list of deliberate lies told by Patrick in the past, and casting shadow over a bold claim he has just used to shoehorn another policy in.
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bMzFDpfDwc
These aren't aberrations. They're stress-tests of the system’s tolerance for dissent. And it’s failing - gloriously, publicly, and with a press release. Europe is on a dark, dark trajectory, and it needs to be monitored very closely when they keep increasing policing powers.
It’s funny that you can’t point to a single case that proves your point and be done with it (you still haven’t), and you need to frame it all in what looks like delirious ramblings.
There is a human trafficking business fuelled by huge amounts of public money given to NGOs and related, within Europe, by the hands of politicians that are lining their own pockets with this public money. And their political parties are silent about it... (maybe because they distribute part of it within the party contributions latter or who knows). We are talking about thousands of millions of euros annually.
Why are not the "journalists" in Europe investigating this? Je!
I mean, the Kremlin doesn't have such a wide area of influence over all the European borders; they only have influence over part of those borders, in a typical mob-like way (their way, their mob oligarchy). They could not be doing all what is happening alone without help from within Europe. It's all about public money and some politicians pockets within their respective countries - it is an inside job... , cut that money to those NGOs and related, process those corrupts, and see what will happen.
The german green party’s effort to phase out nuclear energy ended up being spearheaded by someone on Kremlins payroll. Spycraft and international politics is not about wearing trenchcoats after dark, it is about influencing, capturing and manipulating the correct people with the most leverage. It is also far easier to influence someone who is already corrupt - they already probably have compromat on them and they are already OK with doing something bad. Similarly, well natured people are just as susceptible to being influenced unless they are very diligent about refusing donations.
Because we all know that an instrument given to law enforcement, once installed, is never used for other things later. All the things we set up to combat terrorism or protect children turned out to be used for those exact use-cases.
The problem is the instrument in itself, and the message it sends - not the officially intended use.
Turns out that sending death threats is actually a crime.
If the UK was only arresting people for posting death threats, you might have a point.
That’s not what’s happening, and not the kind of speech suppression that people are worried about.
Some of it is less extreme, but there’s no suppression of normal critique of policy.
"normal" as defined by those in power over policy.
As defined by the social contract :)
Seems to me like you’re quibbling, because you can’t defend your claim by showing a single example.
> No more paid trolls on social media
If you didn't come up with a way to have paid trolls in such a system doesn't mean that there won't be any.
The logic is simple - making it harder for them to operate will diminish their impact and effectiveness.
Unless they are government backed trolls with fake ids issued ad-hoc by that government. That's one of the possibilities.
People already sell access to their Google accounts so buyers can run not-that-legal ad campaigns. Creating one extra step won't do much to solve problems as long as the incentive is big enough and budget is sufficient.
In Western Europe there are no records of government backed trolls.
You present it as a possibility when it isn’t one as long as we can avoid autocracy which the existing trolls are working towards.
Only until the next Reichstag fire, I suspect, because by then there won't be any more democracy.
Can you phrase your thought as a causal chain so that I don’t have to guess what you mean?
In the 1930s, the Dutch government conducted a census that included religion. The Netherlands, after all, had a comprehensive population registry system (Bevolkingsregister) established in the 19th century. This registry was centralized, continuously updated, and included religion, addresses, family connections, and occupations.
After the German occupation in 1940, the Nazis accessed and exploited the Dutch population registry, including religious affiliation.
About 75–80% of the ~140,000 Jews in the Netherlands were killed.
This is the highest percentage in Western Europe.
Compare that to France, which had a more fragmented administrative system, and less complete central records and 25% of Jews in France were deported and killed — a much lower percentage than the Netherlands.
As usual, when reaching the Godwin point, the idea is not for you to take it at face value, but to extrapolate to your situation.
The concentration of power and centralized people tracking are eventually always abused, and once your system becomes less free (which has historically eventually happened on a long enough timescale), you will pay the price for it.
In our case, having a full history of all opinions, interactions, locations, and behavior linked to full identity of people is what we are ultimately talking about here. It's already well on its way, but it will make it worse.
The more you concentrate power and feed data about people, the greater the potential damage.
And of course, it doesn't need to be a full-on dictatorship to get problems with those.
It's a spectrum of increasing problems you will get, the more you lean into it.
> In our case, having a full history of all opinions, interactions, locations, and behavior linked to full identity of people is what we are ultimately talking about here. It's already well on its way, but it will make it worse.
Well, not really. Age verification doesn't have to, and IMO should not, lead to a linked identity. Just a blind check "are you a real human older than X years old? Yes! OK". That way you get the benefits of age restrictions and real human validation, without any of the potential privacy ramifications.
But to be clear, most real people's online presence is under their own names (or linked trivially to their own names, like a cutesy turn on their name for an instagram handle that is linked to their Facebook account which has their full name). It's already possible, and done, to track your public social media presence and interactions. Places like HN and even Reddit are much more niche than that.
This implies you can control your name being linked to your social media profile based on whether or not you type it in?
That's not required though. Your friends have already given your name to them by allowing the app access to their contacts.
That's the whole point of this thread, the current setup makes a google account mandatory, with all the terrible consequences on private life that it has.
It should not.
This registry was centralized
Not to detract from the rest of your message, but it wasn't centralized; the data was collected and stored in each municipality separately. The only part that is centralized is the historical archive: after death, each person's info card is moved to the National Archives.
This system has never been centralized, even after digitization: birth records are still kept only in the town of birth, and when moving house your active records must be officially requested and the transfer manually authorized between municipal systems.
Thanks for this correction.
>This registry was centralized, continuously updated, and included religion, addresses, family connections, and occupations.
Sorry, but why would the Dutch government need to know all those details in the first place? Did Dutch citizens never ask that question back then? Nazis or no Nazis, that was an issue waiting to happen. I guess it wouldn't have mattered if they did, since the Netherlands was a kingdom and people didn't have much say into how the monarchy ran things.
To do governing properly you want to understand the impact your policies are having, and I general that means more data can give you better answers. In a world where the invasion had not happened yet it was not unreasonable to collect as much as we could and store it in threefold. Things are different now, once bitten twice shy.
Do Americans or Europeans ask any questions with regarding to why the Government wants to pass these anti-privacy laws, or how is it even supposed to reduce "child grooming", etc.?
Maybe the Dutch citizens did ask these questions you think they did not ask, but the Government won.
Your post highlights how shocked people who don't live in a database state can be when they encounter one. In the UK you can expect to be asked your ethnicity, sexuality, sex, gender, religion and a few other things every time you apply for a job or interact with the state.
Simply not true.
I was asked all of the above the last time I applied for a job, and the last time I was admitted to hospital.
In those days education and healthcare were provided by the church and the government gave each denomination money for it.
So that is why the government needed to know how many Catholics or Jews there were.
That's the whole idea about this thread: you don't want the power that be to know more than it should.
And the current legal setup mean you would have to own a google account, a terrible private life setup.
[flagged]
We're already there if you live in places like Germany or the UK. Go on social media and criticize some politicians in the UK/DE about their open borders policies being directly responsible for some of the terror attacks there, and there's a high chance police will knock on your door for "being a right supremacist" and for committing the "speech of hate". I think France, Italy are also following the same path. You know you don't have free speech anymore, when saying facts gets you in trouble.
And this is only the beginning. It will be more and more difficult to speak against the actions of your government the more unpopular the politicians become and the more people hate the results of their policies. And instead of changing course and following the wishes of the voters, politicians instead will clamp down on free speech.
>Go on social media and criticize some politicians in the UK/DE about their open borders policies being directly responsible for some of the terror attacks there, and there's a high chance police will knock on your door for "being a right supremacist" and for committing the "speech of hate".
In the UK that happened when a woman phrased her criticism of open border policies as a call for migrant hotels to be burned down.
This was controversial as many who wanted closed border policies (like Nigel Farage and supporters) thought that rallying crys to re-enact some kind of version of kristallnacht should count as protected political speech.
I was talking about something else: Nick Griffin and Mark Collett (2004–2006) and Ann Cryer (2003) who got dragged through the courts for "race hate" for speaking up against the Muslim grooming gangs, which the political establishment brushed off as racism and hate speech, until they couldn't cover it up anymore.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bradford/6135060....
Now it would be naive to assume the political establishment only stopped at one cover up and there's not more under the rug that haven't been yet uncovered.
Just like with the post office workers scandal, you realize the political establishment doesn't exist to protect you the taxpayer, it only exists to protect itself from the accountability of its citizens and will go to great length in censorship, suppression and legal battles to defend itself, since there's nothing for them to loose if they loose, as none of them are ever going to jail for their mistakes, but if they win, then their image stays clean and can stay in power for longer.
> Mr Griffin had described Islam as a "wicked, vicious faith"
I see, he was really helping his case here, sounds like a cultured and educated gentleman.
Ah yes, that totally nullifies my clients' rape charges your honor. Sure there's whiteness and DNA evidence, but he insulted their religion and since nobody ever gets away with insulting Christianity in this country, they get a free pass from the rapes as compensation for their trauma.
There’s nothing in your article about the rape so I’d have to trust you on that, but I can’t given how liberally you mix your own beliefs with sourced information.
You do you mate, I'm not here to convince you of anything, believe whatever you want, I don't care, since I'll keep doing what is best for me.
You mean France and Italy where the parties which blame open border policies are governing? Somehow the whole rightwing discourse looks to me based on scare tactics: it will be so bad, it's not yet bad but just wait and it will be! All fortune tellers in that wing indeed.
The National Rally is not governing in France neither is Reconquest. You might want to check your facts.
>You mean France and Italy where the parties which blame open border policies are governing?
Is Le Pen governing in France and I'm not aware of? Because I've never seen Macron do that.
And people are the ones blaming open borders, then some parties choose to capitalize on that (even if they ultimately do nothing), while some other parties choose to suppress that viewpoint as being right wing propaganda and that in reality there are no issue with open borders, that all the crime is imaginary, which is why they push for online censorship and anti-encryption laws, to make sure only their viewpoint becomes the only legally allowed one.
Let me underline again that with the "fortune teller". I don't take the absolute view on the internet freedom of speech, that hate speech should be allowed. As hate speech is not allowed on the playground (you get your parents called in) and not allowed on the street (you get slapped) it's not acceptable on the internet either. We can talk details, that the current implementation is faulty, and please come up with proposal how to make it better without running into the full censorship which nobody wants, but also not allowing campaigns based on straight out lying - campaigns all too pervasive nowadays (and yes in real life lying is penalized as well, so there). Or ok if you think lying and aggression on the internet should be permitted because dunno internet, at least be sincere with that and don't beat around the bush showing an imaginary boogieman.
>that hate speech should be allowed
You're moving the goalposts to hate speech. When saying uncomfortable negative facts about government's actions are considered "hate speech" then you're no longer living in a free country. You must realize that.
The whole hate speech can of worms is such a dangerous slippery slope since the government can just sweep all criticism of itself and its actions as "hate speech" whenever it feels like it, and just ban it, problem solved, no more criticism, all citizens are happy, just like in USSR.
"Hate speech" is too broad of an umbrella to ensure it will never be used in bad faith because it 100% will be and it is. Whichever political party will come to power next will 100% gonna weaponize the existing speech censorship rules implemented by previous regimes, in its own favor to further entrench their own power. History proves this yet people are oblivious an think the solution is even more speech censorship.
Like you correctly underlined, we are talking here about a slippery slope. Because all what you present is imaginary implications - in the realm of possibility, I agree, just still imaginary in this moment. Now, what could be done to avoid the slippery slope? Is the law really saying "hate speech" without any qualifications?
Nothing I said is imaginary. That's like saying Hitler's rise to power was imaginary or that the Holocaust was imaginary. If it were imaginary they won't be spending so much effort on censorship.
It's the classic subversion and propaganda stages of denial, the deeper you dive:
Nobody is suppressing the view that outsider migrants are the root of most evil in the west, just as nobody suppressed view that the outsider Jews are the root of most evil in the west in the 1930s. It's been a mainstream view in multiple mainstream media outlets for years.
> while some other parties choose to suppress that viewpoint as being right wing propaganda and that in reality there are no issue with open borders
To start with, there is no such thing as open borders (unless you mean Schengen?).
Second, saying someone is spouting nonsense isn't "suppression". Especially when the "suppressed" viewpoint is being proudly repeated almost daily on TV, radio and online on media sponsored by billionaires investing heavily into passing this message (like Bolloré).
Third, Le Pen isn't governing in France, but her party (reminder, she was banned from standing for office for corruption and stealing public money to enrich herself and her family, so it's no longer her), which has around 1/3 of the votes is crucial in maintaining the current ruling government. Without their support, the government has ~1/3 and fails a vote of no confidence immediately (the other 1/3 hates them both and would happily bring it all down in the hopes of new elections). So they are de facto exercising a lot of control.
Please link to sources where this has happend in Germany.
https://archive.is/I53tT
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/germany-online-hate-speech-pros...
https://extremism.gwu.edu/fighting-hate-speech-germany
https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/06/german-fined-e6000-for-vio...
https://www.dw.com/en/german-man-receives-fine-after-insulti...
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-greens-habeck-presses-charges-...
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/german-woman-fined-faceboo...
Yeah, none of these are actually about criticizing policies.
All of these are cases of targeting groups of people or individuals.
I guess some people just can’t grasp that distinction?
[flagged]
One example of someone going to jail for criticizing policy and no more walls of text, and naive understanding of oppressive regimes please.
Stefan Niehoff was prosecuted for a tweet that compared the policies towards COVID-unvaccinated people to how the Third Reich treated Jews. He also made comparisons to the Nazis with respect to how the German government is treating the AfD. These are both criticisms of government policy with respect to public health and handling of democratic opposition parties. The man was put through a criminal trial and then found guilty, being fined for his tweets.
He is not an exception. Twice in August 2022, the American playwright, satirist and longtime Berlin resident C.J. Hopkins tweeted cover art from his book on The Rise of the New Normal Reich. This art featured an image of a Covid-era medical mask with a barely-visible white swastika superimposed upon it. In his first tweet, Hopkins wrote that “Masks are symbols of ideological conformity. That’s all that they are, and that’s all they ever were. Stop pretending that they were ever anything else or get used to wearing them.” In his second tweet, Hopkins simply quoted Health Minister Karl Lauterbach’s notorious statement that “Masks always send a signal.”
For those tweets, Amazon Germany promptly banned Hopkins’s book, and eight months later the Berlin state prosecutor’s office informed Hopkins that he was under investigation, because they believed his tweets violated German criminal statutes against “the use of symbols of unconstititional and terrorist organisations.” In January of 2024, Hopkins was tried before the Tiergarten Berlin District Court and acquitted. In many countries that would be the end of it, but in Germany double jeopardy is not a thing. The prosecutor appealed, and Hopkins found himself on trial once again, this time before the Berlin Court of Appeals. The appellate court overturned his acquittal and found him guilty.
So these are two men who have been prosecuted for their criticism of policy, without groups being involved. But the more common pattern goes like this:
Activist: We must welcome infinity Muslim migrants.
Person: No we shouldn't. That would be bad.
Activist: Why do you say that?
Person: Because they commit crimes at a higher rate than we do and their culture is incompatible with ours.
Activist: That's hate speech and you are going to be fined/imprisoned for it.
When the left is obsessed with group-based identity politics, there's no difference between banning criticism of groups and banning criticism of left wing politics. Enforcing the former is simply a way to prevent anyone explaining or justifying their position, meaning they can't actually advocate for it. It's no difference to an outright ban on opposition.
Stefan Niehoff was fined 825 Euro for using banned Nazi symbols.
How am I supposed to treat what you’re writing seriously? After how you tried to spin it? :|
Ah, OK. So what you're saying is, it's not happening and it's good that it's happening?
He wasn’t fined for criticizing policy.
I’ll say this as many times as needed, no matter how many words you type in.
Germany doesn’t punish dissent. (Unlike the current US regime BTW)
I do believe you will say it endlessly, as you're clearly in denial about what's happening (lemme guess, are you German?).
Germany is months away from outright banning the AfD, the primary opposition party that has hundreds of MPs, on the basis that the SED um I mean the SPD hates their policies. That's what punishment of dissent looks like, what a regime looks like: bulk disenfranchising a quarter of the population because they object to left wing policy.
If they get those judges appointed it'll likely be lights out for German democracy. All the AfD MPs will disappear overnight, leaving the left wing parties with a majority. They will then launch a vote of no confidence in Merz and take over the government, at which point the already extremely harsh oppression of the left's enemies will be ramped up much further still. The right will be fully driven underground by many more prosecutions of the form you claim aren't about punishing dissent, and Germany will be fully converted to the DDR model in which there are theoretically competitive elections, but the only parties allowed to exist are all on the left.
I really hope you're not German, that you're just very stubborn instead. Because if Germany does get turned into a left wing dictatorship there's no limit to how crazy and dysfunctional life there will become. The USA will be paradise in comparison.
Am I understanding you correctly here - your idea of free speech is that people should be able to wear/use Nazi symbols proudly? That's what you mean when you say there's no free speech in Europe?
No you aren't understanding correctly, at all.
Both of those men used the Nazi symbol as a warning: "this policy seems bad in a totalitarian way, like what those very bad people did in the 1930s, so we shouldn't be doing that". They didn't wear these symbols, nor present them as a representation of their own beliefs, nor glorify them in any way. They used them as a compact representation of where they feared the slippery slope can lead.
Discussing history, learning from it and avoiding a repeat of it is a foundational justification for political speech. If Germans cannot point to their own past to warn about the present - and under the current German government they clearly can't because people who do keep getting prosecuted - then they cannot learn from it and might well repeat it.
All of this is obvious. The last two paragraphs were already very clear in my previous post. There was no way to interpret them the way you did, so I don't believe you are arguing in good faith. At his trial, CJ Hopkins pointed out that mainstream German media routinely printed the swastika on their front page in relation to the AfD, yet they weren't prosecuted under the same legal theory he was being prosecuted under. The symbols aren't really banned. The judgement, when finally read out, didn't make any mention of the defense arguments at all. It was a show trial and everyone knew it, including independent journalists:
https://www.velazquez.press/p/scandalous-verdict-us-author-c...
They did that knowing that Nazi symbols were banned in Germany. They did it on purpose to get in trouble with the law in order to conflate the two things: 1) using Nazi symbols, 2) criticizing government policy.
it's a classic motte and bailey approach, and I'm sure they're grateful to you for defending their demagoguery.
I already addressed your claim Nazi symbols are forbidden in the post you clearly didn't read (again).
It's darkly amusing that you guys have gone from "source?!" to "it's good that the provocative troublemakers are being punished" in the span of about 5 posts whilst you simultaneously flag kill FirmwareBurner. Nothing screams "we have free speech in Europe" like aggressive censoring of people who point out you don't.
Whatever dude. You can deny what's happening for a while, but one day you'll wake up and realize everyone around the world just sort of ambiently knows that Europe has become a totalitarian dictatorship.
> "we have free speech in Europe" like aggressive censoring of people who point out you don't.
That's a hilarious misunderstanding of free-speech. Were you home-schooled by any chance? Dropped on your head as an infant?
[flagged]
> next time your government flips on you with their totalitarian overreach
Pot calling kettle? You already have a fascist government on your hands.
Then skip all the articles talking about your First Amendment as if it’s somehow relevant :D
It’s hilarious how far you have to reach to get any criticism where I simply asked you for one, one single case of someone going to jail for criticizing policies and you just can’t provide it.
Instead endlessly moving goalposts and projection of your own understanding of how laws should work.
Btw the anti hate speech laws are there to prevent disasters like those from the Nazi time, and for a good reason. Speech has consequences.
> I simply asked you for one, one single case of someone going to jail for criticizing policies and you just can’t provide it.
Stop being a troll. I never said people went to jail for that. Read my comments again. I said people in Germany got in trouble with the law for that, which they did, and I posted proof.
Now you're unhappy you've been disproven so you're being a disingenuous bad faith commenter and moving the goalpost from getting in trouble with the law to going to jail, as if that makes Germany's censorship less worse ("Oh, I only got dragged through court by a politicians for calling him a dick on Facebook and only ended up with a 7k fine, at least I didn't got o jail for that, thank god, such a free country I live in").
>Btw the anti hate speech laws are there to prevent disasters like those from the Nazi time, and for a good reason. Speech has consequences.
Congrats, Germany today is doing exactly what the Nazis and the Stasi did: banning free speech to "prevent the evil guys from getting power". Do you see the irony in what you're advocating?
And FYI since you keep bringing back the Nazi argument for speech censorship, Hitler didn't get to power because Germany back then didn't have enough speech censorship, because it did and that's why people voted for Hitler since he capitalized on the citizens' frustration with the Weimar Republic's policies and they way they didn't listen to the peoples' grievances and instead responded with speech censorship to crush them .... just like Germany (and UK) are doing ...today.
Speech censorship doesn't make people's grievances and hate for the establishment politic parties go away, it only radicalizes them further guaranteeing the rise of political extremism. AFD already got nearly a third of the votes. In the future when they become a majority, how are you gonna speech censor over half the country? The only guarantee is when they get majority votes they will use all the "guns" against you, that the establishment used against them. History proves this.
So how many times do you have to repeat the same mistakes to re-learn the same lessons?
You can’t give even one example and instead you’re posting another wall of text.
It’s pretty clear what’s going on here. You can’t defend your position.
Germany doesn’t punish criticism of policy.
> or the UK. Go on social media and criticize some politicians in the UK/DE about their open borders policies being directly responsible for some of the terror attacks there,
Could you give any examples of this happening? I assume you aren't referring to the one who called for migrant hotels to be burned down with brown people inside in the middle of race riots?
This is an article that I came across a while ago that speaks to a number of instances in Germany and the UK of people arrested for speech that would be considered acceptable in the states.
Things like calling politicians idiots, giving the middle finger to someone, and insinuating government policy is ineffective.
https://thedispatch.com/article/europe-germany-britain-free-...
I was able to open that link through archive.org, and searched for "finger", but it wasn't found. I assume you made it all up?
Yeah, none of that is criticism of policies themselves, it’s all attacks on people or individuals.
"Attacks" with a middle finger?
Show me the story, and it it’s as portrayed (someone went to jail for flipping a politician off), I’ll change my mind.
Until then, it’s made up.
Not to mention that it’s irrelevant to the the original point about hate speech and migration but whatever, you managed to change the goalposts now defend the new ones :)
The OP referred to Germany. Never mind politicians, a quick search brought up a couple of cases where people faced serious penalties including driving bans for flipping off an unmanned speed camera. [1,2] Failure to pay the resulting four-figure fines would certainly have resulted in jail sentences.
I can't find any backing for their assertion that people have gone to jail for obscene gestures toward government entities in either Germany or the UK, but obviously we have already slipped a long way down that particular slope. Apathy doesn't seem like the smart option. It's hard to put it any better than you did yourself: "Here the wolf is clearly visible."
1: https://driving.ca/auto-news/entertainment/middle-finger-to-...
2: https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/germany-news/driver-gives...
It seems like you’re desperately reaching.
Yes but not the politicians but the police. Yes but not hate speech but criticism of policy. Yes but not criticism of policy but the middle finger. Yes but not to jail but a fine. Yes but…
Meanwhile in the US flipping the man off costs 175000 dollars: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna159185
It’s hilarious.
People like you are the death of freedom.
What does the freedom to spew hate anonymously get you? You just create a less free world for everyone else by doing that.
Freedom for me is the ability to live a good life, and be happy, not harass people.
Because what is right and wrong can be subjective, I could argue that if you said Strawberry is better than Kiwi, that's hate, and suddenly you find yourself on the wrong side of it.
Don't dare say anything with the remotest chance of being controversial or that could have a hint of upsetting someone, don't even think about expressing an opinion that someone might not agree with.
The problem in your ideal digital world isn't that the bad abuse the freedom they have now, it's that the bad will also abuse the lack of freedom everyone else will have then, and suddenly everyone with no ill intent is on the wrong side of the enforcement.
The comment you just replied to would probably find itself on the receiving end of it because of the wording and tone.
Sure, people are being put jail for saying kiwis are better than mangoes. This is an accurate description of what is going on.
>>kiwis are better than mangoes
With that exact sentence, you could be labeled a racist because I know the code you're using. What YOU really mean is that New Zealanders are better than South Asians.
See the problem?
I wouldn’t get labeled racist by anyone serious and I certainly wouldn’t get any trouble from the law. Try flagging my comment and see if it gets removed.
>I certainly wouldn’t get any trouble from the law. Try flagging my comment and see if it gets removed.
That makes no sense...at all.
The thing is the "I know the code you're using" could be entirely made up in the head of the judge/prosecutor with the person being accused of speaking in codes not even having the slightest clue about what the hell the judge/prosecutor is on about.
Exactly, or even let the press believe that the "ok" hand gesture is actually a secret "white power sign."
Proudly made up by Anonymous aka 4chan ;)
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/26/764728163/the-ok-hand-gesture...
It's exactly the kind of madness that's going on in the UK.
sounds like you live in a different reality
What is hate? Who gets to decide? What if someone decides that what you're saying is hate?
The society decides. We know that speech can have disastrous consequences.
We have laws that have been carefully written and refined to counteract that.
Simplified: Hate speech = attacking or demeaning a group for who they are (e.g. race, religion, gender).
I've been told that my rainbow flag lapel pin is anti-Christian hate. This opinion seems to be gaining in popularity. If society decides this is the case, which some elements of society are currently making a concerted effort to see through with dozens of bills across dozens of states, is it incumbent upon me to accept it?
Right now in Europe there are people arguing that it's fundamental to the nature of Islam that adherents hate anyone who is not Islamic. They can cite Quran saying some pretty horrendous stuff about non-believers, that they need to be killed in a holy war and things like that. Is it within the bounds of society to decide that being Islamic is ipso facto a hate crime?
"Hate speech" is an excuse to attack people that are not conforming with state/government opinion. It is basically the modern version of "someone has to think of the children". And it is played through conservative, family-value people, like you seem to be.
That’s just false. Hate speech is (simplifying) when you blame a group of people for everything that is bad in the world, and the only thing that group can do to appease you is to cease to exist.
You know like the Nazis and the Jews.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/hate-...
>>public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence toward a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation (= the fact of being gay, etc.)
Yeah that pretty much sums it up, thanks!
So hating on someone publicly for being an immigrant is hate speech but criticizing policy isn’t.
Godwin's law... But to stay a little more serious: I get your point of view. The question is, is it a good idea to give up anonymity for everyone to fight the nazis? Should we give up our freedom to fight terrorism?
I don’t see the connection with terrorism. What’s certain is that speech has consequences.
This isn't as good of an example as you think it is. There are crazy communists out there that routinely associate criticism of the existing banking institutions with antisemitism.
By this logic we are no longer allowed to reform banking no matter how flawed it is, even if the flaws of the banking system give rise to actual antisemitism due to unaddressed economic dysfunction. Dysfunction that the banking critics point out and which they claim has more to do with how those institutions are structured and what policies they have enacted than the people inhabiting or benefiting from them.
Dumber yet. There are even more extreme offshoots of communism where simply criticizing capitalism without being a communist means you are a fascist or nazi. It's pretty clear to me that those communists believe they have a monopoly on criticizing capitalism and if you gave them enough power, they'd enforce that monopoly on everyone.
Even dumber. The moment their communist utopia fails, they will start looking for "capitalist" scapegoats rather than fix their institutions according to the non-communist criticism and commit exactly the crimes they projected onto you, which you never had the intention of ever doing, because you actually are somewhat of a pacifist and genuinely believe that your policies and institutions are inclusive to all and work without the need for scapegoats or enforcement through violence.
> People like you are the death of freedom.
Define "freedom". Freedom to or freedom from?
See Timothy Snyder's recent book On Freedom:
> Freedom is the great American commitment, but as Snyder argues, we have lost sight of what it means—and this is leading us into crisis. Too many of us look at freedom as the absence of state power: We think we’re free if we can do and say as we please, and protect ourselves from government overreach. But true freedom isn’t so much freedom from as freedom to—the freedom to thrive, to take risks for futures we choose by working together. Freedom is the value that makes all other values possible.
* https://timothysnyder.org/on-freedom
Snyder is an historian specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust, who previously wrote an award-wining book on that area during the 1930/40s:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodlands
Some other recent books of his:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Unfreedom
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Tyranny
Good luck convincing America to go along with this, especially in the current political climate.
The EU doesn't have power beyond their jurisdiction, as much as they may pretend otherwise. Facebook and Google go along with what the EU wants because they make money there, and have physical properties located on the continent. YC does not.
EU doesn't need to convice anyone. They can just make it mandatory and block anyone that doesn't comply.
"a mandatory ID for all social media posts made from EU. Given the current trends against freedom of speech"
what?? how is this againt freedom of speech???, south korea implement this ages ago and there is nothing like that
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_South_K...
I wouldn't consider South Korea as having any meaningful freedom of speech; in fact they seem closer to China than the EU.
SK had this, and it appeared to have turned their entire WWW into 4chan with cult radicalisms. Their state of online speeches and its real world negative consequences are crazy. People on permanent records in real name never backs down because they more tangibly feel their mistakes as threats, and if you think about it, people who never backs down even if they are in wrong are effectively cultists. It's clear what these types of totalitarianism do and where this path ends. It's crazy EU don't get that.
lol. its echo chamber on internet
if you talk to people directly, no one said that
Every cultures has echo chambers, I'm talking about which one is the worst and which parts of laws are likely fueling it
There's not a trend against freedom of speech so much as existing laws outlawing certain categories of speech being applied to the internet. If you lie in a commercial context, that's fraud; if you lie in court, that's perjury; if you tell your buddies to go do crimes together, that's conspiracy to commit; if you tell someone to give you money or else, that's blackmail...
If you come from the perspective that there used to be freedom of speech and now there's all those pesky laws restricting what you can say, it looks like a slippery slope. If you realize that people have been required to check ID when selling material unsuitable for minors in physical stores since before the internet existed, it seems a bit more unlikely that ID requirements will expand to cover everything else.
The trouble with these analogies is that they ignore the nature of the internet.
If there is a law in one jurisdiction that says you have to be 21 to buy some product and a different jurisdiction sets it to 18, or has no age restriction at all, and someone who is underage in the first jurisdiction goes to the second jurisdiction to buy that thing, what happens? The seller sells it to them. This has always been a completely normal thing for people to do in border towns, or when people e.g. visit Amsterdam because of less restrictive drug laws.
The internet allows anyone to visit the site of a supplier located outside of their jurisdiction. That's completely normal an expected too. It also makes things like age verification laws for digital content pretty much entirely worthless, because most of the suppliers weren't in your jurisdiction to begin with and the ones outside of it are... outside of your jurisdiction.
Governments now want to pretend that it matters where the user is rather than where the site is, but that's a joke because there is no way for the site to even know that. If you try to require it then they'll either ignore you because they're actually entirely outside of your jurisdiction and you can't impose penalties on them for not complying, or treat IP addresses in your jurisdiction differently (possibly by banning them entirely) and then people there will just use a VPN.
Neither of these cause the law to be effective and ineffective laws are inefficient and embarrassing.
> Governments now want to pretend that it matters where the user is rather than where the site is
This is not a new thing either. Whenever something somehow touches multiple jurisdictions, it's generally safe to assume that laws from all of them apply. Countries can and do make laws that apply entirely extraterritorially. When that makes it difficult to do a thing while complying with all applicable laws, you either have to not do the thing or pick which jurisdictions' laws you want to break and deal with the consequences.
I don't think most lawmakers will consider the potential embarrassment from difficult-to-enforce laws much of a deterrent against outlawing what they want to outlaw. They're more likely to put additional requirements on third parties to assist with enforcement (e.g. VPN providers are an obvious candidate.)
> Whenever something somehow touches multiple jurisdictions, it's generally safe to assume that laws from all of them apply.
How do you suppose this is supposed to work on the internet? Is every globally-accessible social media site supposed to implement Saudi Arabia's blasphemy laws and China's censorship of Tienanmen?
> Countries can and do make laws that apply entirely extraterritorially. When that makes it difficult to do a thing while complying with all applicable laws, you either have to not do the thing or pick which jurisdictions' laws you want to break and deal with the consequences.
But that's the point. There will be services that actually are outside of any given jurisdiction and have no fear of penalties from it, and then those laws are pointless because they're unenforceable.
> I don't think most lawmakers will consider the potential embarrassment from difficult-to-enforce laws much of a deterrent against outlawing what they want to outlaw.
That's only because they have no shame. It's the government which is humiliated, not the politicians. Which is why the voters should learn to punish them for their vandalism of the public trust.
> They're more likely to put additional requirements on third parties to assist with enforcement (e.g. VPN providers are an obvious candidate.)
How is that supposed to work when the whole purpose of the VPN itself is to be in a different jurisdiction?
The typical go-to in these cases is to try to use the financial system, but that doesn't work in this case because there are plenty of foreign VPN services that will offer the service "for free" by installing a residential proxy on your machine or accept payment in cryptocurrency in an amount that a normal person could easily mine themselves. And then unsophisticated users do the former and sophisticated users do the latter and the only thing you get from banning payments to foreign VPN providers is the facilitation of DDoS botnets and increased and familiarity of your population with cryptocurrency.
> If you realize that people have been required to check ID when selling material unsuitable for minors in physical stores
Not a great example.
No physical store would bother to check the ID of anyone clearly not {too young or borderline}.
Digital ID requirements are such that age verification of some form is required for every single connection .. and to assume that a connection from {X} might well require another ID check an hour later as it might well be a different person at the same computer or another device altogether.
That's an expansion from {only check young looking people} to {check and possibly retain records for _everyone_}.
> No physical store would bother to check the ID of anyone clearly not {too young or borderline}.
Except where police cadets or paid informants go into stores to buy age-restricted goods. A convenience store near me got whacked with that recently, and now has a no-exceptions ID policy.
Check out zero trust proof standards
Edit: I'm not saying EU uses it but it could...
Let's assume I'm familiar with the theory, what pragmatic open verification exists for the implementation of this EU app?
Edit: the EU asserts the app is "privacy preserving" and "Additionally, work on the integration of zero-knowledge proofs is ongoing."
~ https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-mak...
It's not the assertions made that trouble me, it's the quality of any actual implementation and the scope for deliberate or accidental side leaking of knowledge that should be zero .. but likely (in a pragmatic view of a political world) is not.
If it's coordinated by the browser then it would be possible to see what requests are made and where
Absolutely, security is entire process that needs frequent sanity checks, by nature it's hard to get right in practice no matter how sound some central component is.
To be fair my main motivation for comment was the up thread comment about physical ID checks of the past being an indicator that not much would change with digital checks.
In the event of a physical store ID check system failure you have one owner at one location having access to just the ID's checked (perhaps blackmailing underage drinkers into dubious acts).
In the event of a digital ID check failure there's potential to leak all the ID's and access patterns of all users across the board thanks to the ease of digital storage and communications.
Well yes that is true. If provider is what ties together age and identity... If all the eggs are in one basket then hacking one provider hacks all. Having many providers and doing real security audits and requiring them to not keep logs and all that might help but not 100%...
And a shady government might sort out some shady deal or backdoor with providers. I don't think EU is that government though (I bet Russian is but ironically they don't care about this stuff they just install black boxes at all ISPs and monitor your traffic directly)
There is no "freedom of speech" in the US sense in the EU/UK. That's often a cause for misunderstanding between the two sides of the Pond.
There are many things that you are not allowed to write or say by law in EU countries simply because the legislator has decided that they are wrong opinions, and it is generally accepted that the State can and should implement such controls.
Note that lying is not a crime in general. Your examples are for very specific contexts.
That's a common misconception. The European Convention on Human Rights guarantees freedom of expression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R... and is legally binding in all member states. Sure, there are exceptions but in the USA too freedom of speech is not absolute either.
Moreover, in practice, there is more freedom of speech in most EU countries than in the USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-expression-ind...:
USA: 0.89 France: 0.96 Germany: 0.94 Czechia: 0.96 etc.
> there is more freedom of speech in most EU countries than in the USA
A quick look at Steam says otherwise. All the games that credit cards companies pressured to get removed from Steam, were already long gone in Germany. Because that's the level of government censorship that is completely normal in Germany.
The only reason why one might get the idea that Germany ain't so bad is because Germany doesn't do (much) Internet censorship, so we have access to the much less censored outside world. If German law would apply worldwide half the Internet would be wiped out.
Germany has a rich history, particularly in the gaming industry. Not the best example for "EU countries" since most of their censorship was blood and gore and anything related to Nazi symbolism, which was a plague of video games in the 1980s-2000s, since they were always the bad guys in video games, leading to heavy censorship in video games. In 2018, they lifted it significantly, and the list of censored or banned video games in Germany is relatively short.
Including things like "media bias" and other dubious criteria in freedom of speech rankings is obviously skewed.
Whatever the ECHR might say what I wrote in my previous comment is factual. In Europe "freedom of speech" comes with a long list of small print.
In fact, this is so embedded that the article of the ECHR you quote provides for restrictions and even states that they are "necessary": "subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society"." QED
The distinction is academical. As I wrote, freedom of speech is not absolute in the USA either, think copyright law or gag orders etc. And arguing about this day after Colbert's show is cancelled...
The internet will never run out of idiots arguing that there is no freedom in the EU and freedom of speech is a uniquely US thing. The German constitution guarantees Freedom of Speech? Doesn't matter. The US limits plenty of types of speech? Who cares.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_ex...
> Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, false statements of fact, and commercial speech such as advertising. Defamation that causes harm to reputation is a tort and also a category which is not protected as free speech.
> Under Title 18 Section 871 of the United States Code it is illegal to knowingly and willfully make "any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the president of the United States." This also applies to any "President-elect, Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of President, or Vice President-elect."[45] This law is distinct from other forms of true threats because the threatener does not need to have the actual capability to carry out the threat; thus, for example, a person in prison could be charged.
> The German constitution guarantees Freedom of Speech?
Article 5 of the Basic Law guarantees freedom of expression, freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by broadcast and film. It immediately restricts those freedoms with "limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons and in the right to personal honour." https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.h...
Many kinds of speech aren't covered by the enumerated freedoms in the first place, and "protection of young persons" is the basis for age-verification requirements.
Though given that the US constitution claims to guarantee freedom of speech while many things that people would ordinarily consider speech remain illegal, maybe "freedom of expression within limits" and "freedom of speech" is a distinction without difference in practice. But I think the former approach is more honest.
I am not a lawyer, but, including as in the US case the interpretations adopted by the constitutional courts, the "freedom of expression in spoken and written word and image" is considered to not enumerate a limited list of expressions but cover all forms of expression.
It is true that paragraph 2 allows limiting expression, but the point here is that generally it is not permissible to limit speech based on its content, but only due to other "general laws" that aim to do non-speech related things (including upholding other constitutional rights).
In the case of protection of honor, I find interesting the interpretation of the constitutional court that this does not limit speech if there are alternative non-demeaning ways to express your opinion. This to me seems the strongest divergence to the US concept of Freedom of Speech. If you can express the same content in a less demeaning way, the courts can force you to do so. Still: It is considered crucial by the constitutional court that general laws do not limit the freedom to criticize.
Overall the court has noted that the limits of freedom of expression need to be as small as possible, and that there always needs to be a balance of other (constitutional) rights being protected when there is such a limit placed. Laws can not arbitrarily restrict speech, and the special importance of the constitutional right to freedom of speech needs to be considered.
Paragraph 32: https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Entscheid...
The protections around speech are constructed differently than in the US, but overall seem to arrive at roughly similar results. It is also important to note that protection of speech has varied quite a lot over the 20th century in the US. From 1919 for 50 years, Supreme Court precedent was that advocating against the draft was illegal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States
"The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. ... The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree."
In this case the clear and present danger is that of "hindering the governments war effort". This was the status of Free Speech in the US at the time the German constitution was written.
So yeah, there are important differences, a ton of nuance, many similarities between German and US cases, etc... Which is why I can't really consider anything that boils down to "Well the US has free speech, unlike EU/Germany/...", without even hinting at the freedom of speech trade-offs that are made in both systems, as an argument made in good faith.
Well, the Internet will never run out who don't read because I can't see anyone arguing that there is no freedom in the EU. No-one is arguing there it is absolute in the US, either. I guess insults are easier than a thoughtful reply.
>There is no "freedom of speech" in the US sense in the EU/UK.
Is the first line in the chain post you reply to. Also, read the guidelines (rude comments or dumb comments).
"in the US sense" being the key word. Hence my previous comment about people not reading...
None of the replies I got address the point. They are at best beside it, at worst they are misrepresentations and bare insults (guidelines, indeed!) for no apparent reason. Is it because "EU good, Trump bad"? I have no idea.
The restrictions on "free speech" that European countries implement, and which are increasing, would be unthinkable in the US because of their understanding of "free speech" and the legal protections in place.
> The restrictions on "free speech" that European countries implement, and which are increasing, would be unthinkable in the US because of their understanding of "free speech" and the legal protections in place.
Concrete examples please.
Please also explain how examples differ fundamentally from limits on speech that have historically been and are currently imposed in the US.
>The restrictions on "free speech" that European countries implement, and which are increasing, would be unthinkable in the US
This is why you don't get a "serious" reply. You think too highly of US free speech, and it does not have a foot in reality, and you use "US good, Trump bad" crap when Trump is not even mentioned, it is more than you have a bias of "US good, EU bad".
>"in the US sense" being the key word
There is no difference; free speech is free speech. That is your core issue in the argument.
Yeah, what trump did, spreading lies, hate and falsely accusing wouldn't work in the EU.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of stupidity
> Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of stupidity
Freedom of stupidity has to be the most basic right in a free society. Imagine if stupidity wasn't allowed!
We learned from Nazi Germany in previous century. US seems, from the outside, not.
Racism against other groups, deportations, camps, ...
We haven’t learned anything. We’re already caught in a radicalization spiral between the far left and the far right, echoing 1930s Europe. AfD is currently the most popular party in Germany, France is stuck between the National Rally and the openly communist New Popular Front, and if you think they won’t gladly exploit existing restrictions on free speech once they take power, you’re in for a rude awakening.
You argue about the EU as if we were still living in 2005.
Regarding France, it is a big stretch to paint the National Rally as "far right" at this point. The label is mostly over-used to create tactical FUD against them.
Likewise I would not say that the New Popular Front is communist, either, although as a coalition it does include parties that are.
> Regarding France, it is a big stretch to paint the National Rally as "far right" at this point. The label is mostly over-used to create tactical FUD against them.
Their main talking points are against immigrants. They have extremely suspicious connections to the Kremlin (Russian bank loans that literally saved the party from bankruptcy, and resulting lack of condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine). They've been caught in corruption scandals. They are anti-EU (used to be for leaving the EU, but after the disaster of Brexit, toned it down to just renegotiating everything the EU is for).
There are traditionally right parties in France that are much more mellow than them. If LR and MODEM are right, what else would RN be other than far right? Yeah they're not as extreme as the lunatic born in Algeria who wants to expel anyone not born in France and who wants to ban non-French names, but they're still pretty extreme for the French political spectrum.
And yeah, the NFP aren't communist. Even though they have socialist and communist parties in their coalition, they're barely socialist.
None of what you mention or claim make them "far right".
"Euroscepticism" used to be quite significant in the "traditionally right" and Gaullist parties in France, like Thatcher was in the UK. And that was before the massive EU power grab of the recent years.
MODEM is centre (I mean it's Bayrou's party, so as centre as can be!). LR has effectively split with the 'right' now allied with RN and the 'left' allied with Macron. The LR now allied with the RN is not so different from Chirac's RPR when they won the general election in 1986. It it right, not far right but not centre right, either.
The original National Front (FN) was far right but it has shifted left and now RN is the de facto main party of the right. It is the largest party in Parliament and it is difficult to argue that 30-45% (depending on elections) of the French are "far right": They are not and the party isn't.
Actually, I would say that your comment illustrates was I mentioned in my previous comment. There has been, and still is, a rather insidious narrative in France and Europe that labels anyone against the current level of immigration and against the current EU trends as "far right" to shut them down. The only result is to make those parties get more and more votes as people's concerns are ignored.
> It is the largest party in Parliament and it difficult to argue that 30-45% (depending on elections) of the French are "far right": They are not.
Objectively, they are. And another 30% are for centre/centre-right/right.
> MODEM is centre (I mean it's Bayrou's party, so as centre as can be!
They are more and more leaning centre-right to right as can be seen by their policymaking (prioritising business over people and ecology, e.g. by refusing to even discuss reducing government aids/tax cuts towards businessess, but instead proposing to cut public holidays).
> There has been, and still is, a rather insidious narrative in France and Europe that labels anyone against the current level of immigration... as "far right" to shut them down
> The only result is to make those parties get more and more votes as people's concerns are ignored
It's funny, because the minister of the interior has been very strongly anti-immigration for quite some time now. And anti-immigration laws have been passed, with support for RN. How is that "ignoring people's concerns". And it's always funny how the people most voting for RN are either from disadvantaged post-industrial areas, where there are few migrants, or from rich posh areas, where there are few migrants (other than rich foreigners buying property). RN are just successfully blending the message and advertising migrants as the single big thing that will "solve" all issues, regardless of how factually incorrect that is. While stealing public money to enrich themselves.
> Objectively, they are.
Subjectively (and subjectively anything can be anything so...), but not objectively because, as said, there is nothing "far right" in their manifesto. Again, being anti mass migration and eurosceptic does not make a party far right.
> by refusing to even discuss reducing government aids...
I would argue that their refusal to really cut government spending in general makes them more left-leaning... So perhaps they are indeed centrists overall, then?
> It's funny, because the minister of the interior has been very strongly anti-immigration for quite some time now
Ah yes the nominally LR guy who's serving in Macron's government and who has objectively not done anything in practice (well he has no power to and has been in the job for less than a year...) although he is good at talking tough but that 'talk' is in fact mostly calling for existing laws to be enforced...
And so we get back on my previous claim that the narrative has been so skewed against any action on issues like immigration that he is described as "hardline"
> And it's always funny how the people most voting for RN ... where there are few migrants"
That's clearly not true since even the days of the FN. There are post-industrial areas that used to vote communist and switched to RN and there are areas with immigrants, historically the South East for instance. Now it is widespread, anyway: for instance in the 2024 general elections they came in first in the first round in 297 out of 577 (basically half) constituencies.
It's odd to see this refusal to face reality and to keep denying that immigration is an issue throughout Europe.
> I would argue that their refusal to really cut government spending in general makes them more left-leaning
That's a common misconception (that right leaning governments are somehow fiscally responsible. Some are, to a fault (austerity), but many are only paying lip service).
But in any case, the Bayrou government are trying to lower spending and raise revenue. Entirely with policies which are right-leaning, such as privatising government owned companies, and reducing the amount of public holidays, or lowering spending in the public sector. While the left leaning parties are crying to reduce government subsidies to businesses, which could be an easy budgetary win.
> Ah yes the nominally LR guy who's serving in Macron's government and who has objectively not done anything in practice (well he has no power to and has been in the job for less than a year...) although he is good at talking tough but that 'talk' is in fact mostly calling for existing laws to be enforced...
Minister of the Interior 2020-2024: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9rald_Darmanin?wprov=sfl...
New immigration law announced by him, stricter on illegal immigrants while also providing some ease of temporary migration for specific sectors: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loi_du_26_janvier_2024_pour_co...
This is a concrete law voted in to curb immigration and make it easier to expel illegal immigrants or abusers of the asylum system. Yet, to people like you, and far right politicians, nothing is being done! We're being overran! People in power are ignoring the provlem!
> switched to RN and there are areas with immigrants, historically the South East for instance
Like Nice, where the immigrants are rich Russians, Brits and Arabs.
> It's odd to see this refusal to face reality and to keep denying that immigration is an issue throughout Europe.
It's extremely odd seeing how people focus so narrowly on this issue, and somehow think it's existential and nobody is doing anything about it and it's going to ruin the country... And have been saying the same thing for decades. Yet many things are being done, and it's obviously not that existential of a threat if the country is still there... And it's the main topic discussed all the time in political debate! And regardless of any measures, far right politicians just don't shut up about it.
It's just an easy distraction and an easy thing to point to as the source of all evils that can easily be fixed. And that is the hallmark of a modern European far right party, pointing the finger at the EU and migrants for any and all issues. Regardless of substance (like the fact that without migration, France would have had negative population growth for decades, which would have made the already difficult to handle public budget significantly worse).
I don't know where you are from but you clearly never set foot in Nice..
No disrespect but a lot of what you write sounds like the archetypal "parisian bobo" who has little idea of life outside quartier latin.
I spent 10 days in Nice and the close suburbs in June, and have been there and in the area 5-6 different times over the past 10 years.
Nice attempt at invalidating my opinion, but you still haven't explained how a new law being passed to curb immigration is politicians ignoring "The Problem".
> I spent 10 days in Nice and the close suburbs in June
Considering that you claimed that in Nice "immigrants are rich Russians, Brits and Arabs", I must tell bluntly: Either this is not true or you didn't leave Le Negresco hotel.
Either way this perfectly illustrates my previous comment. Next time in Nice my humble suggestion is that you try to see the reality (Google "quartiers sensibles a Nice").
> you still haven't explained how a new law being passed to curb immigration
If you have lived in France long enough you would detect that this is the same as it always is: This is not a law to curb immigration and it won't curb immigration. This is a law for the show and to be able to claim that the government is tough on immigration. There are no "tough" measures against immigration.
"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."
[dead]
It may do so in some of their written papers, but in practice I risk going to prison if I dare say some things. Soon enough it will be illegal for me, the grandkid of a devout communist party member, to say that I agree with what my grandad believed in, it is already illegal to do that in the Czech Republic.
There is no freedom of speech in the "US sense" in the US either.
Just because a bunch of noisy people shout about freedom all day long doesn't mean they are not talking absolute garbage.
If there's an argument here, it's a mess. You first talk about speech. Commerce is barely speech--it's actually using the public market--and there is a legitimate opinion that applying civil rights to companies is already a corrupt abuse of our society. Perjury is strictly limited to one context existing since the dawn of time (courts), it is also very proceduralized what they can ask you, and even then there's a carveout for not incriminating yourself. Conspiracy and blackmail are only secondarily about speech. There's a criminal intent that you either made clear yourself or they have to prove.
The internet is like media (press) or communication by letters. Both extremely established in terms of guaranteeing freedom of speech and in the latter case, also secrecy. And the ID identification (that you then make your argument about) is only loosely related to free speech strictly. It's about being constantly searched and surveilled with a presumption of crime.
When Microsoft proposed such a scheme in the early 2000s under the name "Palladium", even the mainstream press decried it as a nightmare scenario. Google did pretty much the same thing in 2014 with Safetynet and there was barely a whimper. How did we lose our way?
Back with palladium the people that used computers were still mostly knowledgeable like us. These days everyone carries a phone and nobody really understands the impact. In fact many people in the EU are even against the opening of iOS because they feel comfortable in apple's walled garden. Many people consider privacy a lost battle (I often get the argument "why are you railing against this, you have no privacy anymore anyway"). And that's from intelligent people usually.
People often say things like this, but it's not supported by polling (or my own extensive anecdotal evidence) whatsoever. [1] For instance 81% believe the risks outweigh the benefits of corporate data collection, and 66% believe the same of government data collection.
64% would be uncomfortable with companies sharing their personal data with outside groups doing research that "might help them improve society", which is great because it shows people understand that such phrases aren't just about sitting around and singing kumbaya.
[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/11/15/americans-an...
What people say in polling is different from what they will actually do.
IMHO "would be uncomfortable" is not a strong opinion. "Oppose and actively seek to prevent" is a strong opinion. In my experience the majority just have a sense of learned helplessness.
I agree in general, but the person I was responding to was implying the equal but opposite in that claiming he "often" faced the argument of "why are you railing against this, you have no privacy anymore anyway."
People are usually quite interested to learn about ways to can work against the dystopia to some degree. For a specific example I've converted numerous of people to Brave users just by demoing the ad-block and privacy features. People who have never used ad-block are often in borderline disbelief. Not once has a person ever been like 'oh why bother.' That is just literally unbelievable.
I actually did have a relative refuse adblocking via DNS after I demonstrated it on their iPhone; it kept them from watching ads for free stuff in a game, and it's not easy to toggle on the iPhone.
That's one out of dozens though. Most people are thrilled by the improved experience.
> In fact many people in the EU are even against the opening of iOS
True, but I am not sure it is even that many people.
This whole narrative is strongly driven by Apple themselves, one of their strategies against regulations like the EU Digital Markets Act is to rally its userbase against the EU.
How did we lose our way?
They figured out that much of the population is easily manipulated and controlled by exploiting their desire for "safety and security" --- in stark contrast to that classic Franklin quote (yes, I know the context isn't the same, but the words are otherwise a perfect fit for the situation.) It's only a minority of the population; and I'd suspect a smaller minority in the EU than the US; which is willing to argue against it.
Next time you find yourself arguing for something or doing things a certain way, throw in an "it's better for security" or similar phrase with a plausible-sounding argument why, and see how easily it shuts down the opposition. In my experience, many won't even question it.
On a PC people are used to tinker around, the whole ecosystem is built around that assumption.
The smartphone was a closed ecosystem from the start, tinkering around was an uphill battle fought with custom ROMs that only few users dared to try (if the bootloader wasn't locked down to begin with). Adding more restrictions didn't have much impact on most users.
Palladium was just one issue. Now it's one of dozens.
Even activists can get exhausted
Politics and money.
fatigue.
same idea has been pushed since forever(you can include ACTA and other copyright protectionist movements like that as its originators too) over and over again.
People need to protest all the time and win, legislators can just keep pushing it over and over again.
What's even worse you get really smart people seeing noting wrong with this.. Meanwhile this reeks of same methods that were used in my country under communist regime.
> There is some amusing irony in the EU relying on the US for furthering its own authoritarianism.
I think you're trying too hard to post cynical remarks as if the were this major gotcha. Even though the bill is quite awful, Occam's razor is quick to point out this has all the hallmarks of an overzealous technocrat than authoritarianism. Try to think about it for a second:
- the goal of the legislation is to ensure adult content is not provided or actively pushed to children,
- adult content is pushed primarily by tech platforms,
- the strategy is to allow access to adult content only to users who prove they are adults,
- the strategy followed is to push an age verification system.
- technocrats know age verification systems can be circumvented if tampered with.
- technocrats proceed to add provisions that mitigate the risk of tampering age verification systems.
The detail you're glancing over is US's hegemony over social media and tech platforms. The world is dominated by three platforms: Microsoft's, Apple's, Google's. Even Samsung is not European. How do you expect to push a technical solution for an authorization platform without leveraging the systems that people use?
Also, the way the current US administration is pushing their blend of fascism onto the world is something I do not find funny. If anything, this would mean the American fascists are succeeding.
> How do you expect to push a technical solution for an authorization platform without leveraging the systems that people use?
Imagine a world in which there are ten thousand phone platforms, some of them are developed by communities rather than business entities, and anyone can easily create a new one. Can your system function in that world? If so, then do it that way. If not, then assume it shouldn't work and stop trying to build it.
> Imagine a world in which there are ten thousand phone platforms, some of them are developed by communities rather than business entities, and anyone can easily create a new one.
You'd be imagining a world that's very different from reality. Lawmakers have to operate in reality, though.
Most of the problems we face with computer technology are because of the dominance of a few megacorporations. Policies that increase their hegemony are making the problem worse, not better!
> You'd be imagining a world that's very different from reality.
If only there were some changes to the laws that could make the better version of the world the reality.
> Lawmakers have to operate in reality, though.
Someone should definitely inform the lawmakers of that.
> the goal of the legislation is to ensure adult content is not provided or actively pushed to children,
Yeah, you can stop here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children
It's completely unnecessary,there are plenty of parental control options and software for parents to install.
What will happen in reality is that videos and information is labelled adult content when in reality it isn't, e.g. videos of democratic protests. How do I know that? Because that's what's already happening.
> How do you expect to push a technical solution for an authorization platform without leveraging the systems that people use?
Hardware attestation is an Open standard in the Android world, and it doesn't require Google buttplug in the phone to function.
Details here: https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...
(I'm not discussing with your other points because at this point they're null and void)
> an overzealous technocrat than authoritarianism
Maybe an easy to manipulate technocrat with an authoritarian figure guiding them from behind.
> the goal of the legislation is to ensure adult content is not provided or actively pushed to children
It always starts with the children or terrorists. It's an easy way to sneak the idea in your head. You wouldn't want children to be harmed or terrorists to win, would you? Once you got used to the though, everything else follows.
Name something you want or like I can lazily turn it into a "think of the children" situation.
>or for that matter, the UK.
Hate to say it mate, UK is already one of the worst offenders.
In their own "internet bubble," with curated Google searches that only present a very "Commonwealth countries bias" in search results. After I worked in the UK for a couple of years, I noticed there is a strong bias toward the same sites (Government and UK companies, especially biased toward "facts"). Second, you leave the UK. You will never get it. Try a VPN outside of the UK and search for the same stuff, you will notice it right away.
The UK have used the "think about the children" excuse for different stuff they don't like (Remember the Porn pass Idea? Where you had to go down to your local Tesco to get a "wanker pass" from the cashier.)
Same thing, now just for EU, and they use the "protect the children" excuse, but they have now started to aim at video game companies and others to "verify" age for the sake of "protecting the children". It is horrifying that they want to ID children in the excuse of their "safety". In a couple of years, they will likely offer free in-game currency to trick users into giving away their personal information.
My phone is rooted and passes "Device security checks", even though it's not supposed to.
I don't know how it works technically, but clearly there's a way to fake it.
AFAIK there are still cracks available, although it's been getting more difficult over time.
This is another one of the reasons why I'm opposed to the current trend of "memory safety" that the megacorps are so enthusiastic about. When insecurity is freedom, and security means securing against the user's control, attacking insecurity will only close off paths to freedom.
> This is another one of the reasons why I'm opposed to the current trend of "memory safety"
So the argument is that those buffer overflows in iMessage used to target people (i.e. https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2021/12/a-deep-dive-i... used to target a Saudi activist) are actually good because a hacker might jailbreak a phone with it?
It's good if all my software on linux crashes with segfaults because it might let someone unlock a locked down linux device one day?
I don't feel particularly free if my device is pwned with ransomware
When the gun is pointed at you, you'd better hope it misfires.
There are two levels, one can be faked, one can not.
The strong integrity can be faked if you have the keys from a trusted phone that has a security flaw that allows key extraction. I think google bans these from time to time.
You can't have privacy-friendy age verification that is also compatible with tinkering.
The problem is relay services that supply positive age verification results to any interested user for a fee. With a non-privacy-preserving solution, those aren't a problem, law enforcement can just track whose credentials those services are using and shut them down.
I'm not a fan of the whole idea in general, but if we have to choose, I choose privacy over hackability.
But you can, and GrapheneOS shows exactly why. And there are developers who instead of choosing fake and flaved* Google "attestation", choose to conduct hardware attestation.
*Google claims phones not updated for the last 8 years are secure merely because they have privileged Google services. Tell you what: many of them are rooted, with Google play services blind to it, and still claiming phones are "verified".
It's no irony.
Well payed "transatlantic" lobbyists across all political parties of the EU at work.
They are self-serving and learnt to give a big F* about the citizens of the EU.
It's already happening for several apps such as banking apps, payment apps, government ID apps, etc.
Or, for that matter, the US. https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7891...
And people used to be ridiculed by claiming the EU is basically a Soviet Union with better looking face.
But slowly slowly it will turn into mass terror and deaths. The control freaks in power are taking our freedoms away inch by inch.
You don't even need to consider politics to acknowledge this is dangerous, wildly irresponsible of a government to tie internet access to a foreign corporate entity's control. The privacy concerns of not being able to use a device free from Google services, may only be second to the sovereignty issues it introduces.
Whoops, Google have delisted your government app from the Play Store, how quickly can you de-couple your citizens internet access from the corptocracy?
Guardians of minors are responsible for what they view, as well as what they drink or breathe. So they should make sure their devices are configured properly, same way they make sure there is no alcohol or tobacco intake.
Then we have systems like:
PICS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_...
POWDER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_for_Web_Description_R...
ASACP/RTA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Sites_Advocatin...
Proving we do not need a system prone to PII leaks, just collaboration between content providers and guardians, helped by OS & browser vendors.
But it seems restricting minors is a side effect, at best, of the on going theatre.
> As a resident of the aforementioned political climate, I find their concerns to be reasonable.
No. The lesson is that stuff like this is concerning what ever the "political climate".
Anyway, you mainly don't want the gov in your vicinity to snoop. Non-local OS:es is probably advantageous in that regard if you choose to run proprietary code...
>No. The lesson is that stuff like this is concerning what ever the "political climate".
We say this, but many also want to entrust all our PC games to one closed source launcher. Or have videos/TV all on one subscription service. There's definitely a spectrum of benevolent and greedy dictators people draw lines on.
> many also want to entrust all our PC games to one closed source launcher
I think that is far more that people like the other closed source launchers less, and each launcher potentially adds it's own stream of notifications and adverts to their system so there is a cost to having multiple active even if the PC resource cost is practically undetectable.
Furthermore if comparing game launches and related issues to political climates, I'd consider all the current closed source ones to be the same in those respects. Also we are not subject to several local political climates at any one time in that way (though we are when looking at a wider scale, of course).
> Or have videos/TV all on one subscription service
While there are other issues (each service tracking you etc.) this is more due to the fact that each service charges what we used to pay (in fact more, as in some cases prices have gone up by more than general inflation) for a single service that provided the same amount of content that they cared about. This doesn't really equate to trust on political climates (except where commercial greed is considered a political matter).
> I think that is far more that people like the other closed source launchers less
Why does one need a game launcher? Cannot we just like run games as we run any app? Having to use a launcher that by default requires internet connection, even if the game itself doesn’t, sounds like a very specific choice of how to do things. We don’t run any other kind of program like that.
I don't think Steam requires internet access past initial login. In any case, I'd much rather have our lord and saviour Gaben, between me and toxic corpo X than have to deal with the corpos directly when an issue arises. I'd also much rather give Gaben my coins since he essentially made gaming on Linux viable. Right as Microsoft decided to fuck around, our lord Gaben came to the rescue. It'll be sad when he one day retires, but hopefully he'll be able to find a decent successor.
I think that you need to set it to be able to launch online, but maybe I am wrong.
I have no issue with steam per se. It has actually kept on its path threw the years and it actually invests back into gaming with games and steam deck/proton. However, I find it hard to trust good intentions after many platforms with good intentions were at some point sold and enshittified. I would rather have DRM-free games that do not depend on a launcher that maybe after 10 or 20 years will not work the same.
Otherwise, steam is a great platform and a rare example of a platform that not only has not enshitified but invested back to the product they sell in ways that benefit users.
I don't think one excludes the other. I want DRM-free games, but I would also like a launcher like Steam, so I don't have to manage my library most of the time. For example, I have 1000+ games, of which I only care about, let's say, 50.
With a launcher, I can back up the 50 I care about and leave the storage of the rest to it. If they were to disappear without warning, I don't ~really~ care, but I still have easy access to them. Then the launcher can also take care of compatibility issues with old games automatically. Say a game is dependent on X, which was made in the Win XP times and no longer works, the launcher can find a modern fork/substitute and auto replace it, so that I don't have to fuck around with it myself.. There's value in it.
Then you get the platform itself with good guide integration, mod workshop integration, friends (game invites, sharing, etc), combined store...
It's kinda like what I believe GOG is trying to do, though I'm not very familiar with them since I just don't like how much their launcher pings (blows through my NextDNS usage limit in a week).
> this is more due to the fact that each service charges what we used to pay (in fact more, as in some cases prices have gone up by more than general inflation) for a single service that provided the same amount of content that they cared about.
That is because the introductory prices were not 1 to 1 to the business’ existing revenue streams from cable and satellite transmission fees. Especially considering that before, there was a very limited supply of content restricted by time slots, and now you are buying far, far more on demand content without advertising breaks. And without contracts with a cable or satellite company.
People are spoiled, and don’t appreciate how much easier and cheaper it is to watch or listen to most content than it was pre streaming services.
One only needs to look at market cap graphs of the various media companies to see that streaming isn’t the cash cow people think it is.
> That is because the introductory prices were not 1 to 1 to the business’ existing revenue streams from cable and satellite transmission fees.
Bad pricing descisions are a them problem, not a me problem. But it isn't just pricing of individual services that is the issue, it is the separation of content amonst many services which is the companies gauging out what they can with no care for how inconvenient it is for the audience, at least those who don't turn back to the high seas.
> without advertising breaks
Despite the increasing prices, and the need for multiple servies at those prices, the adverts are very much coming back. All the conveniences of streaming are being taken away and companies are surprised that we aren't happy paying for that…
> People are spoiled […] see that streaming isn’t the cash cow people think it is
If they are, then they were spoiled by the companies being deliberately misleading to get them hooked in the first place. My level of sympathy is limited by their level of honesty and “prey I don't change the deal further” attitude.
When the question is “but how did you expect us to make good business under those conditions?”, a perfectly valid answer is “you very much lead us to believe that you could”.
> When the question is “but how did you expect us to make good business under those conditions?”
There is no “make good” since there was no contract about long term expectations.
Even the media business’ leaders don’t know the future. Fewer eyeballs watching or listening to a specific piece of media means the cost has to be amortized over a smaller audience, meaning higher prices, or less quantity and quality of media.
Price volatility should be expected in a changing business environment, and the media business got rocked by increasing supply (Meta/ByteDance/video games/on demand historic catalogs/etc) in the last 20 years, as evidenced by the change in their market values.
It’s just business, so no one needs your sympathy, but it is also weird to see supposedly numerate people gripe about the effects of rapidly shifting supply and demand curves.
> but it is also weird to see supposedly numerate people gripe about the effects of rapidly shifting supply and demand curves
I suppose. But it is also weird to see supposedly numerate businesses repeatedly having the same trouble then blaming everyone else for it.
It is almost like they are deliberately running a long-term bait & switch everytime (see also another item coincidently on HN's front page today, Stop selling "unlimited", when you mean "until we change our minds").
GP's saying that having and embracing Steam client is technically wrong, as comfortable as it might feel to you.
This is genuinely a real issue. It seems that most people cannot forsee an issue down the road unless it just happens to personally affect them after it took place ( ideally immediately after ). Valve is a good example, because while it is providing good value for the service it provides, it will not stay like that forever, but the environment it did set up will. And it will hurt once MBAs divvy up that kingdom. Just sayin'
And obviously it is not just one arena, because it seems to be one glaring issue with human beings: they do not want to see the road ahead. And the ones they do are, at best, ignored.
Ye well I agree. I am guilty of using Steam to play some games on Linux with low effort. But as you note there is a spectrum.
the issue is that incentive structure is different from some of those that you've mentioned.
Steam makes the most money if it bridges interests of consumers and publishers together - they don't profit by screwing over the customer(either publishers or end users). Is depending on them a problem? yes, but least likely one. preferably you could move your digital licenses to any provider you want.
Meanwhile subscription services profit the most from enshittification, especially ones that offer 'free' access with ads, or different tiers.
and this current issue isn't even about dependence on google - that's bad in itself - but about gigantic governmental overreach and step towards killing anonymity online under guise of protecting the children.
It is even worse when you consider some EU countries already went after people when politicians got insulted online.
>Especially in the current political climate I hope I do not have to explain how undesirable and dangerous that is.
this is not the way to make a point that the other party will find persuasive.
What do you mean by 'the other party'? Many places have more than two parties.
I assumed that meant "the other side of the conversation", e.g. "all parties involved".
Yeah I'm glad I don't live in a two party state. The zero sum game politics that results in rips the country apart. You see this in the US and also in the UK (Brexit etc)
It's not better in countries with multiple parties where nearly everyone (every relevant party) wants authoritarianism in the name of "fighting hate speech".
It is all the same, under different names. Plus even in countries with multiple parties, it is usually only two parties that have a chance, but again, they usually (or always) have a similar (or the same) goals.
Not really, in Holland we usually have a coalition of at least 3 parties in government. No one party is ever big enough to have a majority. And yes they are quite different. This makes coalitions difficult to form and very unstable but I still far prefer it over a two-party system.
Here in Hungary we have many parties, but only two parties have the chance to win.
I assumed they meant Republicans/Trump, but it's a bit confusing because those parties aren't very popular in the EU:
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/06/11/confidence-in-...
whatever your political alignment, saying the situation in the US is problematic might sell pretty well in the EU.
Don't be obtuse to make a point, the OP specifically stated they were in the United States.
Quite an American attitude
(I wish non-Americans wouldn't spend all their time tripping over themselves to try to insult Americans. If you didn't feel so insecure about yourselves and resentful of the success of others, you wouldn't feel such a need to justify your existence.)
In this case, however, it's your poor English to blame. In English when you talk to another person, that other person can be called the other party. It's not an attitude, it's a very neutral term.
“We have both kinds of music: country _and_ western”
Why is it I can use my German national ID online without these Google requirements, but age verification suddenly requires dependency on Google?
Someone opened an issue about changing the wording https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-doc-archi...
So remote attestation?
Europeans are completely domesticated and servile to America, this is to be expected. Germans even let them spy on their government!
so what option is??? do you rely on third party store to do check??? I bet its more secure than google has verify it for you
So we wouldn't be real EU citizens, unless Google says so? Can we get rid of passports then? /s
I think Google login at the borders should be fine.
From the telegraph.co.uk: "Elite police unit to monitor online critics of migrants" and there are people worried about the "political climate" in the US lmao
The UK in the last 2 decades has been far more totalitarian than the US, even up to 2025. But the people in England seem to accept it and openly defend government encroachment even here on HN. While even smallest steps towards eroding rights in US have people there decry it, so it's far more controversial and newsworthy
But it's nice so many people care about the last few places where hard freedoms exist. The biggest risk is missing the forest for the trees and not seeing the local extensions of short term political comprise.
> Especially in the current political climate
I am forever thankful that Trump won the last election. If it were a Democrat party at the helm it would be practically impossible to have opposition to this, as most of the left would simply fall in line and cancel anyone daring to oppose the party. Look at how Obama strengthened the Patriot Act and carried out mass deportations with but a tiny grumble from the press.
Here is a list of every state and federal bill proposed in the United States in recent history (that I could find). Have a look at the letter beside the names of the sponsors. Then, after you've discovered that online surveillance bills are almost entirely written by republicans, go read about how your president is bankrolling ICE and their purchase of US citizen's air travel data.
Now go and find how much opposition there was to such laws when the Democrats were in power. Spoiler: it's negative. Whenever Democrats inherit a law like that from Republicans they expand its scope with giddy abandon as the media and their "vote blue no matter who" followers stand by and clap.
My thesis isn't that Democrats write those bills, my thesis is that there is never effective citizen resistance against government overreach when Democrats are in power. People can only be free when they are fighting the government and people only fight Republican governments, ergo we must vote Republican to keep the fight going. Both sides are our enemy, but one side enjoys a much larger cult following that will never attack it.
The war on the free internet is accelerating. Without real push-back to these dystopian laws and consequences for the people proposing and lobbying for them, you'll miss what will ultimately end up being a temporary anomaly of mostly unrestrained free flow of information. It's not an hypothetical scenario or something that will develop down the line, it's happening today, worldwide.
I heard from a friend last night that they were unable to see posts on X about current protests in their country because those were considered "adult" content which can now only be viewed after submitting to an ID check. Not porn, video of a protest.
You're 100% right that it's happening today.
It’s really important to remember in this context that “the purpose of a system is what it does.”
Do not think for a moment that ID verification primarily protects children and only incidentally enables authoritarian restrictions on speech. Do not think for a second that verification initiatives are designed without anticipating this outcome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
The phrase does not mean that you can pick any single effect of a system and claim that is its purpose, as your linked article does in its examples. (Ironically, a form of reducto as absurdum.) It is a heuristic, a pattern of thought to attempt to overcome the bias towards judging systems based on the intentions behind them instead of the outcomes they produce. The point is that when you choose a course of action, you are implicitly choosing its negative effects as well, and the choice should be judged on all its effects. You are making a cost / benefit analysis, and if that is not explicit, it can easily be wrong.
That's a typical "reductio absurdum"
The purpose of a system is not what it does.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/come-on-obviously-the-purpo...
I think you're taking it too literally. A more generous interpretation would be "what it does can be a better indicator of what the true hidden motive was for nefarious state programs".
I have to agree that this is problematic in the sense of ascribing malicious intent, but it is actually a useful concept when performing an honest/truthful analysis and trying to acquire new knowledge and perspectives so you can compare them. i.e. the analysis of what it ought to do versus what it actually does.
Given a software product, there are often marketers/advertisers telling you what use cases they envisioned for their product, but you as the customer actually know more about your core business and your own needs. Hence you choose the products not based on what the vendor claims about the product i.e. the intended/prescribed purpose, you care more about what the product can do for your business and that includes discovering ways to use the product that the vendor could have never imagined in the first place.
So the purpose of a hospital is to kill people?
Does your hospital kill more people than it saves? If so, you might be describing the 19th century Vienna General Hospital, which had two maternal wards: one staffed by trained physicians, suffering up to 30% mortality, the other by midwives, only experiencing 2~10% rates. The difference was so pronounced, local women desperately avoided the first ward, begging to give birth in the streets rather than be admitted there. Ignaz Semmelweis later attributed the disparity to doctors having performed autopsies before attending births without disinfecting their clothes, hands, or tools, dropping to only a few percent with disinfection.
Or if you limit your demographics, perhaps you might be thinking of the Tuskegee syphilis study, where treatment was intentionally withheld for a progressive, life-threatening disease without the consent of the patients, making its purpose to slowly kill the participants by its own admission?
Yes, if your hospital does seem to kill more people than most and there's no alternative explanation like accepting more severe cases, then its purpose might be inverse or orthogonal to its stated goal.
Hospitals save orders and orders of magnitude more people than they accidently kill.
Infant mortality for hospital babies is what, well under 1/1000? Infant mortality was 25% for the vast majority of human history.
Modern medicine is legitimately indistinguishable from magic.
> "the purpose of a system is what it does"
So then the purpose of the internet was to share cat pics? This quote is so wrong in every way.
> Do not think for a moment
I will decide what I think thank you. It's very ironic when arguments against "censorship" go this way.
Sadly the old guard of free speech and privacy activists on the internet has long gone, drowned by a sea of unprincipled populist reactionaries - if their team decided that the content is "problematic", then they are entirely justified in censoring and punishing the speakers for daring to speak it, and entirely justified in protecting everybody else from having to suffer the horror of reading/seeing/hearing it, and it matters not whether the mechanisms are legal or ethical because the ends justify the means.
>the old guard of free speech and privacy activists on the internet has long gone, drowned by a sea of unprincipled populist reactionaries
which is an unnecessary ideological divide if your concern is free speech and privacy; too bad the old guard of activists chose sides and alienated additional support for their cause.
> >the old guard of free speech and privacy activists on the internet has long gone, drowned by a sea of unprincipled populist reactionaries
> which is an unnecessary ideological divide if your concern is free speech and privacy;
What do you mean by this, an unnecessary ideological divide?
> too bad the old guard of activists chose sides and alienated additional support for their cause.
What sides did they choose and whose additional support did they alienate?
If the "rightie libertarians" from sibling is correct, then it actually describe the dynamic I have noticed.
It is free speech as long as you are politically right, no matter how far extreme right you are or what you are saying. But, if you are left or oppose the far right, then criticizing those is not free speech, but rather a restriction on it. Suddenly you should shut up, all sorts of additional rules apply to you. It is wrong to argue with far right, to say things that are uncomfortable for them or call them names, call them nazi even when it is clearly the case. But if you are just a little radical feminist, you are valid target for any amount of abuse which suddenly counts as free speech. Your leftist or feminist speech does not count as valid free speech.
Eventually, it started to look like "free speech" is tactically used expression to create an asymmetry and applies only to certain ideas. Or certain people ideas.
I don't understand what you're getting at.
You're saying some "dynamic" of people you have noticed do not really support free speech in some cases?
Lots of people don't support free speech. My original post bemoaned exactly that.
I am saying that "I support free speech" ended up associated with "I am pro far right, but do not want to openly admit so, but I will gladly accept suppression of left, progressives, liberals and anyone who criticizes right".
And that eventually we realized that "old school free speech groups" just wanted to shut up opposition to far right.
It ended up associated with the far right, by people on the left who are against free speech I suppose, yes.
> And that eventually we realized that "old school free speech groups" just wanted to shut up opposition to far right.
That's untrue.
It ended up associated with the far right, because poster child for "defending speech" was only and exclusively far right. Really.
It was never "I strongly disagree with an annoying progressive, but I will defend their right to say it". It was always "how dare you criticize far right or call someone far right, you are preventing their speech by opposing them".
> people on the left who are against free speech I suppose, yes.
Funny enough, far right and conservatives were openly against free speech again and again and again. Including in very practical ways. And we see that right now with Trump, Thiel, Musk, Vance and the rest.
People "on the right" nor self styled free speech advocates never minded that. There was never any fascist movement for freedom, the openly stated goal was always to remove the freedom. But if you are not one of them say so and mean it as a criticism, you are somehow supposedly preventing their free speech.
> It ended up associated with the far right, because poster child for "defending speech" was only and exclusively far right. Really.
It ended up being associated with the far right by far leftists. Really. Go outside internet bubbles and ask normal people on the street. People don't think free speech is "far right". Really.
> It was never "I strongly disagree with an annoying progressive, but I will defend their right to say it". It was always "how dare you criticize far right or call someone far right, you are preventing their speech by opposing them".
I've heard that a lot, so that's false.
> Funny enough, far right and conservatives were openly against free speech again and again and again. Including in very practical ways. And we see that right now with Trump, Thiel, Musk, Vance and the rest.
I'm not seeing where the humor is.
> People "on the right" nor self styled free speech advocates never minded that.
Also wrong, many free speech advocates have greatly minded conservative efforts to censor speech in the past.
> There was never any fascist movement for freedom,
No, but that appears to be a strawman of your own construction by equating free speech advocates with fascists.
I guess "The old guard of free speech" went to be rightie libertarians
As a group, those who bang the free speech and privacy drum be seen as being more to the right than 20 years ago, but I doubt it is significantly because individuals changed their other political opinions. More because some of the group dropped out as they have been silenced by fear or just changed their outlook on it as political landscape has changed. Also in some part because those remaining in the group are just viewed as being more to one side of the political spectrum than they used to be simply because of this view.
I parsed this entirety as a single noun cluster: "the old guard of free speech and privacy activists on the internet"
and to me that can be summed up as "the EFF", and the EFF is decidedly left whinge, and does not attract the support of others who are concerned about free speech.
free speech on the pre-web internet didn't really need a group, it was a given and generally accepted by all parties
But in that case, the EFF didn't go to be rightie libertarians. They if anything may have gone further left, it's just that they no longer champion free speech. Which is basically what I said, just applied to the group rather than individuals.
At least the old guard never spoke in riddles.
> Not porn, video of a protest
Not commenting on ID checks but depending on the protest, some images can be violent and definitely "adult".
I never understood why we go out of our way to "protect" children against seeing naked people, but real people in a pool of blood, nah, no problem. I think that people bloodily fighting each other for causes that I have a hard time understanding even as an adult may not be what we want children to be exposed to without control. Images of violence create a visceral reaction and I don't think it is how we should approach political problems, in the same way that porn may not be the best approach to sex, the same argument for why we don't let children access porn applies to political violence too.
The point I wanted to make is that whatever your opinion is on ID checks to access to adult content, "adult" doesn't and shouldn't just mean "porn".
Well that's kind of exactly my point, really.
Ostensibly these laws are to protect kids from porn, but that isn't really the case. They instantly expand to everything else "adult", and it's very easy to argue that talking about politics, or discussing evidence of war crimes or genocide, or apparently showing a real and current protest, are "adult" conversations.
And with laws like this, people, adults, everyone, lose the ability to participate in those conversations without doxxing themselves. Some of these things are difficult to discuss when you fear retribution.
It's not about the porn. It was never actually about the porn. The porn is just the difficult-to-defend-without-looking-like-a-pervert smokescreen. It's designed to curtail the free flow of information and expression in far more areas. The people behind these laws are liars.
We are approaching a time when most of that free flowing information is LLM generated propaganda and advertising. The average person can no longer go on the internet and trust any of the things they see or read, so what's the value of such information? I would prefer the free internet of the 90s and 00s, but we're losing it even without these laws.
> We are approaching a time when most of that free flowing information is LLM generated propaganda and advertising. The average person can no longer go on the internet and trust the things they see or read
The average person could never do that; critical evaluation was always needed (and it was needed for the material people encountered before the internet, too.) The only thing that is a change from the status quo ante in the first sentence is “LLM generated”.
Maybe, but it's not possible to critically evaluate everything you see and read. For sure most people don't, and probably no one does all the time. So if before 10% of information was lies and manipulation, most of the information was still good, or at least something that a real person thought was good. Now, or soon, anything you read or watch has a 99% chance of being generated by someone who wants to manipulate you, because those who want to manipulate have something to gain from it, and are willing to spend more money to do it than those who want to share the truth.
Actually I think with LLM, the average person is more likely to be critical of anything they see now than ever before, as they know that it could be AI generated. In my non IT circle, now even genuine content is being doubted as being AI generated.
This state is not going to last long because LLMs are getting better and the people who write prompts are getting better. Soon the vast majority of content on the net is going to be generated by LLMs to influence you in one way or another, be that politically or as a consumer, and the content is going to be indistinguishable from human writing. And you can be virtually certain that the groups and people with the lowest moral standards will use it the most to sway public opinion.
There's still messaging between groups of people who already know each other and can verify each others' online identities offline.
It's in the UK, EU and soon to the US.
The west is going to be less and less free.
I'm sorry I feel the chill writing this, but I hope the hackers keep the flame alive.
Hackers: keep giving the finger to regulators when they overreach. They don't get to make the future.
This reliance on hackers and other antisocial snowflakes in FOSS world is one of the reason we are where we are.
Political problems cannot be solved through technology or yet another forked FOSS project. They require political power, numbers and threat of violence to those in charge.
It's not a war.
The population (especially the youth) is anesthetized by social media, shorts, fear-inducing news, economic hopelessness, climate extremes..
In the meantime, everything is getting integrated - banks, tax systems, tech platforms. Now this age verification.. And of course, AI is being implemented everywhere so that no one can evade the big brother.
As it stands now, this Internet is no longer salvageable imo.
> Without real push-back to these dystopian laws and consequences for the people proposing and lobbying for them
If anything, I’m seeing more calls for internet regulation on HN and other tech places than in the past.
Every time something is shared about topics like kids spending too much time on phones or LLMs producing incorrect output, the comments attract a lot of demands for government regulation as the solution. Regulation is viewed as the way to push back on technological and social problems.
The closer regulations come to reality, the less popular they are. Regulation seems most attractive in the abstract, before people have to consider the unintended consequences.
The most common example I can think of is age verification: Every thread about smartphone addiction come with calls for strict age-based regulation all over the place.
Yet the calls for strict age-based internet regulation generally fail to realize that you can’t only do age verifications on kids and you can’t do it anonymously. The only way to do age verification is to verify everyone, and the only way to verify that the age verification matches the user is to remove the possibility of anonymity.
The calls for regulation always imagine it happening to other people and other companies. Few people demanding internet age verification for things like social media seem to realize that it would also apply to sites like HN. Nobody likes the idea of having to prove your identity for an age check to sign up for HN, they just want to imagine Facebook users going through that trouble because they don’t use Facebook and therefore it’s not a problem.
Engineers want some kind of regulation because they feel like computer systems, which they nominally control, are out of control, because of the business people's demands. They want the right to say no without having to have the consequences of saying no. But then when regulations come in, they're not about regulating business, they're about regulated interactions between people and business. And whereas the idealist sees a regulation as a chance to change things for the better, a regulator sees a regulation as a chance to preserve things as they were just before they became bad. (It takes a politician, not a regulator, to change things.)
They always start with "think of the children", but that's just the opening salvo. The wild west days of the internet are definitely behind us. We'll be lucky if we still have private personal computing in the future, or any semblance of free speech.
If we're to regain any ground here we need to adjust the messaging wrt terms like "wild west" - that's precisely the kind of terminology that scares the average voter into thinking the government needs to do something about this whole internet thing. We need to use patriotic and inspiring language, like "free" as in "free speech for the internet," or "safe and private" etc
[dead]
There wont be any consequences if you expect them to legislate against themselves, or handcuff themselves and throw themselves into a cage.
Let's stop beating around the bush. We all know this doesn't make any sense.
I'm not sure this old horror story still works. The things to be afraid of have changed too much and at a far larger scale than people then could comprehend.
The "temporary anomaly" is one of perception. It was individuals talking to individuals. In terms of volume the world has never had this much free flow of information, and its never been easier to transmit encrypted data within a group.
At the same time the problem with letting the internet be without government means it pushes digital crack to all children, and an oligarchy of (natural) monopolies tightly control certain powers through systems like "sign in with Google".
The options for companies to instead use a government backed digital identity seems like an obvious step forward if designed carefully enough.
That requires the right mindfullness of people's rights, eg the right story. I just don't think the war on the free-internet narrative from 30 years ago is up for it.
But the "digital crack" isn't what the government wants to restrict from children.
They want to stop children from accessing porn, which really isn't all that bad. Certainly it's not nearly as bad as wasting hours on perfectly legal social media and streaming sites
It's not accelerating, it's over. We lost.
We didn't quite yet. We're still here, pretty anonymous, I'm sure your real name is not deadbabe :) IRC still exists where you can just pick a nickname from thin air. And most of these things will stay, underground. It's the commercial mainstream that will bow to this, sadly.
Unfortunately, the expert in debugging Arduino electrical errors, or in numpy, or in evaluating what the burn pattern on your spark plugs means, or in identifying that strange object in your telescope, won't be on IRC. He'll be on Reddit, where you'll need a government-provided ID _and sanctioned device_ to participate. Or on Facebook, where you'll need a government-provided ID _and sanctioned device_ to participate. Or on whatever large, popular platform replaces them, where you'll need a government-provided ID _and sanctioned device_ to participate.
But rest assured, so long as you want to discuss privacy and nostalgia of the pre-invasionary internet, you'll find a knowledgeable expert on IRC.
There's lots of experts like that on Libera IRC. It's still a big hub for support of FOSS project.
So is Matrix which doesn't have the capability for this kind of checks (and is federated so you can add your own server without it).
Maybe there is an astronomy channel, maybe there isn't. The official page [1] requires longer to install the client to even know which channels exist. That's arguably worse than Reddit, which requires no software nor registration to know which communities exist.
[1] https://libera.chat/guides/findingchannels
What do you mean? The webchat client is linked right there in the second paragraph, doesn't require you to install anything and let's you connect and list channels as a guest without registering. It took me like 30 seconds to find out that there is indeed an astronomy channel.
It was not clear to me that was a web browser interface, because it listed system requirements - none of which were an actual web browser.
There are more free alternatives. We need to move to these platforms. We need the network effect here for sure.
In Germany, before I can send an anonymous message on HN, I have to send a picture of my passport to some government agency and have a video call with them, so that my phone is allowed to attach to the internet.
Could you elaborate? I lived in Germany for a while and I never had to send a picture to a government agency and have a video call with them to access the internet. Phone, laptop, and desktop.
Never heard anything like that from many people I know in Germany.
I feel like there is a huge chunk of context missing here.
Sure. The difference is probably that you had a contract assigned to your home address, so they had your identity and your banking coordinates already, no need to ask.
I'm referring to sim cards bought in a supermarket. Prepaid, no contract. The activation process, regardless of the brand (I've tried many!) involves those video calls.
Oh that sucks deeply. In Spain they have something like that too. But in Holland you can still buy one in the supermarket without registering anything (though you'll have to top up by cash every single time if you really don't want to be traced).
I think Ireland still doesn't require registration either.
That’s insane! Dystopian!
No you don't. You can get a prepaid SIM card.
Amusingly, one of the prepaid sim card that i got in an airport required as a first step that i install an app on my phone (with my previous sim since internet was needed) just so that the app could refuse to proceed because that sim was not German...
Most of the European countries require registering prepaid SIM cards for about 10 years now.
Can you in Germany? In Italy you can't.
I’ve literally never used IRC, wouldn’t know where to begin.
[dead]
The European union never ceases to amaze me. Whatever happened to becoming less dependent on American corporations?
They flip flop on this stuff at least once a month, and the most annoying part is that they always herald everything they do as some new epoch-defining initiative only to quietly forget about it and do the opposite a few months later.
If nation states are dogs, then EU is the chihuahua: loud, proud and extremely ineffective.
Ineffective? Extremely so? From open borders to open roaming to the various legislation that my tiny country would never be able to force corporations into if we didn't have it at the EU level. Heck, the currency. There's so many aspects I take for granted in life and don't even think about anymore. I can just pay anywhere without thinking or conversion fees. Must have been amazing for trade though it's nearly as old as I am so I don't know how things were before. How in the world you come to a worldview of the EU being extremely ineffective, I cannot imagine. Are you from the EU?
From open borders
Better check on that.
There was an article in the New York Times last week about how many E.U. countries have actually gone back to border checks. Most recently, Germany and Poland.
But border checks in the EU are a bit more relaxed. Sometimes they just wave you through - other times you just show your government id (which in many EU countries you are required to carry at all times) and they maybe check the car boot.
The border is still very much open.
Yeah, I'm not sure how to directly fight it yet (besides voting as I've always done) but I'm avoiding border queues on a weekly basis now. It's a shame, but for now you can still drive right through on a dozen other border points, just not the highway
France apparently also had this around their Olympics or soccer world cup or something. It's not unique and so far it has always been a fad, usually to please nationalist voters for a while
And it doesn't negate the broader point
Ineffective against the US corporations.
The European commission, the top of the EU's unelected and mostly unchecked bureaucracy, is currently suing its data protection office after it declared that its use of Microsoft 365 infringes data protection laws.
I mean, the EU wants to force browsers to recognize its own web certificates, while allowing Google to selectively deactivate your phone's capacity to conduct ID checks. It's the same with the "EU Cloud initiative", that at the end was full of non-EU companies.
The aim of the EU bureaucracy is not sovereignty, but extension of its power, nowadays called as "regulation". And when in place, it can't be removed, even if it's clearly self-harming.
Because of goomba fallacy.
The EU is not a hegemonic state, but rather an economic supranational organization. France/Germany tend to be primary proponents of increased EU strategic autonomy, while Poland/Czech/Baltic states are less supportive.
Similar to recent discussions of self-hosting, it's a tradeoff of autonomy/control vs efficiency.
> Because of goomba fallacy.
> The EU is not a hegemonic state, but rather an economic supranational organization. France/Germany tend to be primary proponents of increased EU strategic autonomy, while Poland/Czech/Baltic states are less supportive.
Well obviously, these states know how bad the Russians are since they were terrorised by them for decades. They'll be the first on the chopping block. And they know that Europe does not have much deterrent of its own right now so they're screwed without the US. Though this will come.
They are not so stupid to believe that this kind of dependency (the android one) is consequential in any way.
[flagged]
Stories of Russian war crimes personally experienced post-invasion told in my family
Sure, nobody is denying that. That does not contradict the argument (not mine) that perhaps people lived more secure lives under Soviet rule.
Note that I define "more secure" as in not living in fear of losing home and income. Not necessarily that their standard of living was as good as those in the West.
It depends: if you are part of the party and things are going good then yes. However, if you are from a group of people that you government has decided is trouble, then you tend to disappear in the night. Like my mother in law who says things where so safe when there was police on every corner in Spain during the dictatorship but my father in law was hiding "reds" under the floorboards as they where Jewish and being procecuted. One does not take away from the other, instead of criminals threatening you it's the government goons.
> Germany tend to be primary proponents of increased EU strategic autonomy
Germany isn't doing this as much anymore, because Germany Inc has become increasingly dependent on their investments within the US [0], especially after the triple whammy of the Biden-era IRA [1], the sanctions on Russia sparking a domestic energy crisis [2], and Chinese players outcompeting German industry in China [3].
This can be seen with Germany purchasing American weapons for Ukraine over French objections [4]
[0] - https://flow.db.com/more/macro-and-markets/us-german-trade-r...
[1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-14/german-go...
[2] - https://oec.world/en/blog/bavarias-dependency-on-russian-gas...
[3] - https://www.reuters.com/business/majority-german-firms-feel-...
[4] - https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-donald-trump-weapons-...
> They flip flop on this stuff at least once a month
Because in the background it's a French vs German vs Irish vs Czech vs $insert_eu_state business interests competing with each other.
Notice how it's almost always French legislators and businesses that mention "domestic EU tech" and not Polish, Czech, Romanian, Dutch, or even German policymakers or businesses?
That's why.
National interests always end up trumping the EU in it's current form. And for a large portion of the EU, American BigTech represents the majority of FDI (tech and overall).
Japanese and Korean automotive players did the same thing with the US in the 1980s-90s in order to ensure their interests remained aligned (though the Plaza Accords did play a role)
France has some history in being disappointed by the US, so it doesn't really surprise me that France is beating the independence drum the loudest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px9qhDGv300&t=150s.
(the entire video is interesting and informative, I've skipped it to the France-US specific part, up to about 11:02 where Australia is introduced as the US sycophant it is)
Whether it's logical or not, offences past, even those thought forgotten, are easily recalled when under similar pressures.
> Whether it's logical or not
From an American NatSec perspective, French strategic autonomy is viewed as a positive, as can be seen with Elbridge Colby's work (and similar work by Mastro and Doshi), and a lot of the initiatives led by the Biden admin, as this would allow burden sharing because the US is no longer in a position to manage a two continent war. France does our dirty work in the Sahel and can help in the Indo-Pac (as was seen with the US, France, and India jointly armtwisting the UK into ceding Diego Garcia to Marutius)
In Australia's case (and to the US's benefit), alignment with France makes sense and has been something that has come up in Australian NatSec for years.
New Caledonia is barely 800 miles off the coast of Australia and NZ, and both New Caledonia and French Polynesia have faced pressure due to China, especially after the recent violence in New Caledonia was linked to Azeri [5] disinfo networks on TikTok, along with decades of covert ops by China in New Caledonia [6][7]. France has also been an active defense partner with India and Indonesia - both of whom are increasingly cornerstones of Australian defense.
By every single standard, having an active "Indo-Pac" France is a net benefit for America+ strategy and Taiwan.
That said, French NatSec "strategic autonomy" does not have anything to do with French industry's alignment with marketing a "European first" tech story.
France has similar issues to the US with power politics (as can be seen with France, US, SK, and Israel sharing a similar CPI score), and the biggest booster and beneficiary for "European Tech" is Xavier Niel [0] (France's Mark Cuban or Elon Musk), who is on a first-name basis with Macron [1][2] and whose Father-in-Law (Bernard Arnault) has personally played a significant role in French power politics for years [3][4]. Arnault is also the reason why every country negotiating with the EU ALWAYS tariffs congac and champagne - Arnault's LVMH owns Hennessy and all the other congac producers, and the majority of champagne producers.
End of the day, this is just another inter-elite conflict between vested business interests like any other, but couched with the flag of nationalism.
Nothing wrong with that, but this is why you don't see alignment amongst EU member states - as each state is supporting their own vested business interests amidst a trade war. For example, there's a reason all of us American tech investors end up working with the same handful of politically aligned law firms in Czechia or ending up in the same IT Parks in Eastern Europe.
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-02-12/xavier...
[1] - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2024/12/22/emmanu...
[2] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-22/french-mi...
[3] - https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/insight-macro...
[4] - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2023/08/08/bernard...
[5] - https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/russia-azerbaijan-exploit-...
[6] - https://www.aspi.org.au/report/when-china-knocks-door-new-ca...
[7] - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2024/05/16/why-and-...
> From an American NatSec perspective, French strategic autonomy is viewed as a positive
Sometimes. And then, the outcome of that autonomy is that France makes a decision that doesn't please the US, and the US goes ape.
Why is Diego Garcia to Mauritius good for the USA?
It's easier for the US to manage the relationship with Marutius instead of with the UK [0] while buying favor from India and France [1].
It also aligns with Mastro, Doshi, and Colby's doctrine around the US retrenching in the Indo-Pac and the UK concentrating on the European continent [2] as the US increasingly cannot guarantee boots on the ground in Europe and Asia at the same time.
With the UK in the Indo-Pac, British supply chains would be stretched with marginal benefit for the US in an Asian theatre, but the same resources spent on BIOT could be better spent on British possessions in Cyprus, bases in the Middle East, and the North Atlantic.
[0] - https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/decolonise-die...
[1] - https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/uk-mauritius-chagos-deal-r...
[2] - https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2025/03/24/its-time-to-re...
One wonders how much of the French foreign policy is affected by an online influencer trolling campaign.
Pretty significantly actually.
For example, the violence in New Caledonia was instigated on TikTok by Azeri disinfo networks [0][1] due to French support of Armenia, which itself is due to French support for Greece+Cyprus against Turkiye, who is the primary patron for Azerbaijan.
Algeria has been doing something similar [2] due to French support of Morocco, and China's UFWD aligned groups have done something similar in the French Pacific [3]
Unless you're insisting I'm a troll or a bot, which I strongly disagree with. I've worked closely with EMEA (and especially French institutions and businesses) in my current career and previously when I worked in the policy space. I just kvetch on HN because it's not significantly on any radar yet and the anonymity is appreciated.
[0] - https://www.politico.eu/article/france-accuse-azerbaijan-fom...
[1] - https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/expressions/azerbaijans...
[2] - https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/the-roots-o...
[3] - https://www.aspi.org.au/report/when-china-knocks-door-new-ca...
I would push back on this. That is in large part French propaganda in service of French interests—manufacturing consent for continuing French imperialism over their maltreated colonies; and delegitimizing narratives that speak counter to that—delegitimizing the political voice of the people actually living there. Which they do flagrantly: the French mainland government has done wide-scale internet censorship in New Caledonia[0,1] to suppress anti-French-government speech—a human rights atrocity.
That's not to claim there's no foreign interference. I'm sure there's a large kernel of truth in that French claim. But hammering on that point is a form of dehumanization: it's to say people who disagree you, having been misled, no longer have the right to a voice, and are fair game to be silenced. That's atrocity. That's bad-faith rationalization by an actor pointing authoritarian weapons at their adversary, which they were intending to do anyway.
It's difficult to speak with nuance on this dilemma: that every political debate in existence, today, is saturated with bad-faith actors, allying with both sides. But people tend to view this through one lens, selectively amplifying the bad-faith on the other side—as if it entirely invalidates them, instantly wins the debate—while minimizing it on their own side. If you don't want your voice silenced because of what other people, who are not you, said—you should not advocate doing that to other people. If you don't to wake up one day with all your favored newspapers and media sites blocked by government order—you should not wish for that to happen to other people.
[0] https://www.politico.eu/article/french-tiktok-ban-new-caledo... ("French TikTok block in overseas territory sets ‘dangerous precedent,’ critics warn")
[1] https://www.euractiv.com/section/tech/news/french-court-void... ("A French court ruled today that last year's ban on TikTok in New Caledonia was illegal and disproportionately infringed rights and freedoms")
> I would push back on this. That is in large part French propaganda in service of French interests—manufacturing consent
Ilham Aliyev, the dictator of Azerbaijan, has publicly pledged to help French territories secure independence [0] and hosted separatists with full state honors on multiple occasions
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/azerbaijans-president-pledges-...
> That is in large part French propaganda in service of French interests—manufacturing consent for continuing French imperialism over their maltreated colonies; and delegitimizing narratives that speak counter to that—delegitimizing the political voice of the people actually living there
That could be true, if there weren't 3 referendums organised to give those people a voice in deciding their fate. They all failed, progressively more in favour of New Caledonia remaining part of France.
After the last one, and the announcement the end of the franchise restrictions to ensure that those referendums gave a fair chance to the pro-independence indigenous people, a targeted propaganda campaign stoked rioting. People were waving Azeri flags while rioting ffs!
> But hammering on that point is a form of dehumanization: it's to say people who disagree you, having been misled, no longer have the right to a voice, and are fair game to be silenced
It's the misleading group that was attempted to be silenced, not the people. The people in question had been given three referendums to give their voice, via official channels. Rioting because Azeris told them so isn't a legitimate way to voice concerns.
On one hand, there is a will from some people to be less dependent.
On the other hand, the EU bodies as well as national reps are besieged by lobbyists and diplomats, and without much backlash from constituents, it's very hard not to find someone that will do what you want. Just look at this former EC commissioner [1] working for Uber.
Flip-floping happens occasionally when the public catches up.
[1]: https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/opening-summary/en/181717
If nation states are dogs, then the EU is the parrot: loud, proud, and not a dog.
Trouble with your key strength being regulating is you need someone else to make stuff.
EU is a great chihuahua, authoritarian laws get passed, national politicians say that there's nothing they can do, but they benefit greatly from all the new posibilities of control over the internet.
I mean.. great for the politicians, not for an average european.
You need to put yourself in the EU governing people shoes for a minute. Their predecessors, who were from the WW2 and Silent generations, did not care about the free Internet because they relied on the large mainstream media consuming baby boomers. They had a direct line to them. But the boomers are between 60 and 80 and vanishing. The following generations are in panic mode.
So until recently the "free" Internet did not matter politically in the EU. Tech was used to trigger color revolutions abroad where the demographics were younger.
But now the unelected EU commission inherited that Internet things and are on the wrong side of it. Worst almost everybody in the EU speaks English and listen to Joe Rogan & co. And while the US Gov might be able to control the Joe Rogan type the EU does not.
So their only move is to crack down on the Internet and limit it with a Chinese firewall type system. But they obviously do not have the ability to do so without the capabilities of an US tech giant (remember their own systems are on Office 365, every phone is Android or Apple). And this would also be in the interest of the US because it would give them a solid control over the EU.
Remember the first goal of a system is to survive and I do not see another realistic path.
> almost everybody in the EU speaks English and listen to Joe Rogan & co.
Is this meant as a joke? It's not even remotely plausible.
A few decades ago, Europeans would usually learn another European language, often for economic migration purpose. But the "Internet generations" learned English early and ... on the Internet.
I only mentioned Joe Rogan because it is the most popular, but all the big american podcasts are very popular in Europe.
Also the lines between entertainment and politics have been blurred and Europeans follow much more what Trump says than let's say Ursula.
Also, why do you think the Macrons are suing Candace Owen? She is an niche podcaster with a show on Rumble (a platform which in a way blocked in France). Would Helmut Kohl have been threatened in his own country by what Alex Jones was saying in the 90s?
95% of Europeans are running American OSes today. Should age verification just wait 20 years for EurOS to be deployed?
what's the rush on age verification? why does it need to happen now and not in a decade after working on digital ID and battle testing that etc?
Because it's a conservative talking point. And they're appeasing them with all the extreme right parties popping up all over Europe
The role played in the US by grassroot conservative bigots have no equivalent in the EU.
The push for authoritarianism seems to come purely from above. My intuition, from personal anecdotes, is that after 30 years of widening gap between the haves and the have nots, the haves are increasingly terrified buy their own populations.
Unfortunately these bigots are also active in europe. Especially that org from Ashley Kutcher. They have several EU Commission members actively listening to them. This is where all the ChatControl idiocy comes from.
I agree there's ulterior motives too though.
This issue is beyond any political ideology. This is about having a grip over ordinary citizens so they wouldn't become a threat to any government.
That seems odd considering that the extreme right is the one using social media most to influence the voters with disinformation. I would expect the extreme right to be completely opposed to age controls on social media.
This isn't for all social media, just for NSFW content.
Some countries want this to block social media from kids: https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-paves-way-to-ban-social-m...
Porn is not such a big deal but social media flooded by Russian/Chinese/American propaganda is destabilizing our societies. The least we can do is try to keep our youth from losing their minds over it.
Age verification is not a conservative talking point in Europe. I live in Western Europe where conservatives simply do not exist and the government is trying to push an age verification solution too.
I live in Western Europe and conservatives were ruling the in my country until one of them blew up the government (over a typical topic that conservatives are obsessing over).
Apologies if it isn't, but since this is a new account only writing anti-EU comments so far, seems like troll army astro turfing. (I think it's worth calling that out, since we don't need HN poisoned by that stuff.)
How is this comment anti-EU?
Because they need to put a lid ASAP on internal discourse, so they are rushing any form of digital control.
People do not realise how dangerous the situation is. We are already in the kinetic phase of a world war with conflicts erupting everywhere, any major financial problem will trigger a chain reaction.
Just recently:
- A lot of people don't want to hear this but Trump just wiped the floor with Ursula with the new trade deal. It will collapse the EU economies even more.
- At few days earlier China humiliated the EU just by packing the official delegation in a bus with nobody to welcome them.
- And of course the EU inherited the Ukraine situation and is loosing a major war.
Once a major power find itself in this situation it get challenged from the inside. Individual countries will be tempted to elect Euro skeptic leaders and breakaway from the sinking ship by making deals with Russia, the US or China to save themselves.
The initial idea and force of the EU was "stronger together". But if a succession of strategic moves by its leadership make you weaker then the deal is off.
>It will collapse the EU economies even more.
Europe is going to have to swallow (probably choke) on the pill that the avg US worker works four hundred more hours a year than their German counterparts. Two hundred more than the average Frenchman.
If the EU is going to boost defense spending to cover a gap in the US funding of staving off the EU's bad neighbor, there is going to be pain. Either more working hours, less social programs, higher taxes, or some combination.
They'll probably reach for more draconian regulations to squeeze as much money from industry as possible, and likely kill it in the process. Then they will complain that they are beholden to foreign companies.
They could just choose not to depend on OS level verification tools
Why exactly do we need age verification, again? Other than the classic "But the children!" excuse of course.
Your question makes no sense. It’s like asking why do we need dog food if we ignore the existence of dogs.
Yes, and when that comes to pass, we should find something else it should wait another 20 years for.
Yes please. Never would be even better.
For those wondering what the purpose is: https://ageverification.dev/Technical%20Specification/archit...
https://ageverification.dev/Technical%20Specification/media/...
Essentially, the core user journey is a privacy preserving "over 18" check. I suppose this prevents under 18's from accessing porn, in the same way that most blocking technologies impose an expense on everyone but fail to block tech-savvy children.
Doesn't seem like it could ever stop someone with a bittorrent client, unless you have to attest you are over 18 to even use bittorrent.
If they could have stopped BitTorrent they would have long ago.
So no, this is totally ineffective. And it's not like there's actually a problem. There's no crisis of messed up kids or young adults. We all had access to porn in some form and we all turned out fine. I used to watch the late night pay tv which was just 'scrambled' by removing the sync signal. It was easy to put that back with some electronics chops. I saw my share of gangbangs and cumshots and I did not get messed up or get weird ideas. In fact I often get compliments I'm a sensitive and caring lover. I never do or push for the dirty porn tropes (unless she asks for them :)
So did most of my school friends. Also video tapes got passed on at school and later CDroms (when the writable DVD came I was already an adult). We all had plenty.
This is all to mitigate a "crisis" which doesn't actually exist.
I don't want to ban porn or anything but the problem has definitely become worse than when I was growing up. I have a zoomer roommate that had unfettered access to the Internet and has some trauma she's still working through. I think the intense age verification laws popping up are going to be a big net negative but I think something needs to he done. I just don't know what that is. Maybe educating parents and children?
Im also "almost zoomer" that had unfettered access to much more diverse internet that zoomers ever had. Videos of extreme violence, murders, porn, war, bullying, and all blends of those to a degrees would surprise most. That happened when I was 7+ years old.
Does seeing these things mean I am broken in some way? It for sure didnt make me agressive or violent, actually Id say that it had quite the opposite effect.
I dont buy the "we must protect children by denying them access to whatever I feel like to prevent trauma", in fact the opposite, I feel the denying of access creates trauma when the false world-view eventually gets shattered by truth. It wasnt problem when I was 8, because I didnt have a false view about the world. It didnt traumatize me, I was just learning ugly stuff about real world.
Now it seem the only publicly acceptable option is to shelter everyone (without their consent, and ideally awarness) until they 18, and then throw them into the world and watch them struggle as they try to reconsile their dream-like version of reality with real world.
> some trauma she's still working through
From watching porn?
The content easily available on the internet in the 00's is way far far far beyond what is available today.
Liveleak was an everyday video host and they had terrorist beheadings on the front page. Once the masses moved online and the power players consolidated everything into modern social media (reddit, facebook, youtube), it kinda sucked all the air out of the room and killed all the small sites, of which there was no shortage of "test the limits of free speech" content.
That being said, the modern incarnation of social media has probably caused far more youth mental destruction than rotten.com or faces of death.
> but I think something needs to he done
This is exactly the problem. You have no idea what you want and will thus cave to whatever direction the winds blow.
There's a difference between passing on video tapes and having a pocket machine with an unlimited amount of adult content. Just my opinion, but I think it's worrying kids can access it in basically a few clicks.
But I agree, forcing verification will not be effective enough, kids will find their way. The real solution is more education on this topic from younger age.
>Just my opinion, but I think it's worrying kids can access it in basically a few clicks.
This has been true for millions of kids (now adults) in the US since at least 1999.
Then don't give your kid a smartphone. Even with a safety argument - a regular cell phone does that. The smartphone is just not necessary at a young age.
It's a choice and it comes with consequences. Parents can step up if they so choose - the problem is they don't choose.
If even the exact parents a child don't care, why should I? They've decided it's okay, and it's their kid. I'm inclined to just agree with them and move on.
Some porn videos were shared via Bluetooth in my school. From my perception, things you get from real people makes you more likely to think it's something real you ought to know about and not just an internet thing. Seems much better to me that kids can discover it on their own terms and know it for what it is
Every six months or so I'm amused remember that Bluetooth used to be synonymous with file transfer, verbified even.
There is actually a crisis of messed up kids and young adults and access to porn is related to it, but in the opposite way. The thing that is messing up boys and girls is anti-male puritanism that condemns male sexuality as inherently degrading and evil.
As girls grow up and become women, they become disinterested in men, due to the perceived danger. When boys grow up they become avoidant men who are scared of approaching and asking out women, due to the perceived risk of ridicule, shaming and legal action. This prevents the formation of stable marriages, which then culminates in low birth rates.
True, consensuality is difficult to ensure if you're not good at reading the signs. Especially with autism. It is deeply important though. I frequent sexually tinted parties and we have security, safe zones and coloured armbands (though these don't replace explicit consent, just an interest to be asked for it in the first place).
I don't think it's specially a male issue to worry about this because some of my female friends mention being worried about this too. But because of the role models still prevalent even in progressive communities they don't have to do the approaching so much so it's less of a problem for them.
I also think this is a very specific autism/adhd thing. I see this mostly in neurodivergent friends. And avoidant attachment is more of an upbringing thing (physically or emotionally absent partners). It doesn't really have anything to do with porn.
I don't care about stable marriages or birth rates though. I'm happy to be polyamorous. A lot happier than before I knew it existed. Having a traditional family would be a prison for me and I've always felt that way. The religious community in particular advocates this as the only moral way but it isn't. In fact my poly friends are much nicer and considerate people than my religious friends.
The human population is way too big anyway. If we had half or a third of the population we'd have far less problems. Environmental pollution, housing, fighting over scarce resources leading to wars. I'm proud not contributing to this by not having kids.
> There's no crisis of messed up kids or young adults
This is objectively not true. Not to say that a porn ban combined with age restrictions would help, but it's just objectively not true.
* Rise of incels as a thing, and even violence committed by them
* Various loneliness epidemics
* Rise of movements such as the 4B in South Korea, where women flat out refuse traditional relationships with men
* the rises in STDs and teen pregnancies can probably be explained by other factors
* The rises in various diagnosis (ADHD, etc) and rates of sexual assault can probably be explained by just having more rigorous reporting and testing, as well as higher awareness, but the rise of specific types of sexual abuse (like a popular one, choking without consent, which can easily lead to brain damage) can be directly linked to its prevalence in porn
* significant differences in opinion on equality and general political leanings between boys and girls
That's not to say that porn is a problem, and removing it for <18 will magically make everything fine. But things are decidedly messed up for a lot of teens and young adults, and parts of that messed upness can be potentially inspired by porn, and "the manosphere". The second one is more important IMO.
The single biggest driver of the things you mention is the war on boyhood. It has nothing to do with porn or "the manosphere" and everything to do with the alienation of young men in effort to force equal outcomes.
I wish the left would just own up and take the L on this, and go back to race/gender/sexuality blind "everyone is awesome and everyone is equal" policy. Maybe we could start winning elections again.
Could you expand on what you mean by "war on boyhood"?
I'll defer to my fellow liberal men:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/wiki/missions...
I don’t see anything specifically about boyhood or childhood on that page or on the rest of that sub-Reddit’s wiki. Do you have a more precise link?
>but fail to block tech-savvy children.
If I were a kid, I could see myself downloading Opera GX and enabling the free VPN. It's probably not "tech-savvy" because the browser gets a lot of ad views on YouTube; it would be pretty obvious.
Or using a torrent. Or trading a fileshare with your friends. Or finding a box in the woods. Or finding dad's "tax returns" folder. Or getting on TOR. Or finding an open directory. Or asking AI to produce something.
Basically anything other than going to a legally compliant website and trying to attach your mom's passport to the age verification app and doing the challenge.
> Or finding dad's "tax returns" folder.
I would want to sit in on this audit.
Are you coming onto his dad?
I think social media does more damage than porn. We should just instead legislate that all social media has to shutdown and just let everyone watch porn and be done with it. Sure, you wind up with ED if you watch that stuff since you were a kid, but hey, if birth rates around the world are anything to go by, no one seems to really want to bring children into this world anymore anyway, so it's not as if that actually matters anymore.
I think I have become far too cynical.
The one good thing (in principle) about a service like this is that social media is much more centralized, so this kind of system could put seemingly-effective age restrictions on social media. For example, no under-14's, or under-14 requires a supervising guardian and has other guardrails.
But this still wouldn't stop determined kids from VPNing to another country to make their account, and wouldn't stop peer pressure on kids from bleeding to parents to help them.
What do you think will happen when the EU regulates the “centralized” social media companies? Kids will just flock to other services that don’t care about EU regulations or use a VPN.
We see something similar in the US with age verification for viewing porn in some states. Mainstream porn sites that I’m sure you have heard of that aren’t based in the US just ignore the laws and VPN sales skyrocket in those states.
Or you know the government could stay out of it and parents that wanted kids to stay off of social media could use the existing parental controls.
Be careful about telling parents to parent. For some reason people do not like being told that it is the parents' job, and not the Government's.
How does that work? I don’t have a kid but can imagine a ban on internet until they are 18 might not work.
I’m not suggesting a government ban. Android, iOS, Macs and Windows all have parental controls built in that allow parents to block access to websites, installing apps, etc.
[dead]
[dead]
Social media laws are actually being discussed, designed, and even implemented, targeting teenagers at the moment.
What classifies as social media? Is Reddit social media? Is Hacker News?
It seems reversed, that the default is legal eligibility, and that minors should need to prove their status. They're the ones who need policing, after all, not us.
For instance, it's not illegal for me to be served alcohol. If I'm not carded when being sold a drink, nothing illegal has taken place.
If the lawmakers are being cowards and not saying they want to round up and ID all the children from birth until they are eligible to participate in the adult world, that's their battle to fight and not our burden.
So they are doing this to block the children that are able to “hack” their phones, from watching porn.
Don’t know how to describe how insane this is
> Essentially, the core user journey is a privacy preserving "over 18" check.
You can not check the age without breaking the privacy, technically it is Not possible; this is like a religious faith exercise, not science.
What one read in the specification is, firstly you install an official software in your device, the device becomes identified "as you" the first time you verify your ID and receive your unique internet ID hash, linked to your personal data at the identifier platform.
In addition, your unique internet ID hash will become you, and each time a Non-porn-related platform ask for it, you will leave track of who are you -as internet ID- to the platform (finger printing), and also what you visit to the identifier platform.
Yeah, I said Non-porn-related platform, literally, because what we are reading here is about an Internet digital ID hash for each EU citizen,
Lets be clear, if it were to protect the children from porn, it would say "verify with the personal internet ID only for porn sites", in company with all the adjectives derived from porn, exclusively, with specificity, nothing more.
But what we are seeing here about this matter is deliberately open to interpretation, they say "platform that can be considered to be accessible to minors"... boom, What does this mean, News for adults? Criticise a corrupt government for adults? In my village this is called a back door trojan, because when they want they redact the directives, laws, with precision.
Anyway, I invite the reader to take a look to the Digital ID directive on its own,
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1183/ (2024)
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2022/2065/ (2022)
After this, they only have to define progressively, frog cooking time, and increase the affected Internet platforms with obligatory identification, and then we will think that the Great Chinese Firewall was a children game compared with this.
The "it's to protect the children" political tactic to break privacy is quite old. In addition we should remember the other EU law about breaking the encryptions.
My humble opinion.
PS: Ironically no more of two months ago I was saying that as I was European I have freedom and I didn't need a tooling for circumvent something like the Russian and Chinese censure. Oh my... If I were know this, I was absolutely blind about what someones try to cook.
I keep coming back to the actual solution being to keep kids off the internet period. If you are under 18, and online without some sort of adult supervision, we have failed you. Maybe that ship has sailed with so much coursework requiring online access, but I maintain that perhaps we should declare it lost at sea and try again.
Because the practical reality here is, like, porn is the big scary word, but the actual danger to kids is *other people.* Other addictions still exist. Removing one vice without solving the underlying systemic problem merely shifts the goalposts, and everyone is up in arms about what a slippery slope that is for good reason.
EDIT: Clarity here because I phrased that badly in a hurry: I'm in disfavor of internet access being a requirement for schoolwork, but I failed to set that context initially. If parents trust their kids enough with access, once they've reached a certain point of maturity, that's fine. I'm against technological age gates and I'm against removal of bad content from the net at large. Parents should decide when their kids are ready, and guide them appropriately.
I will leave my original remarks unedited so the remaining discussion is sensible. (Sorry!)
> I keep coming back to the actual solution being to keep kids off the internet period.
W T F ? ? ?
> Because the practical reality here is, like, porn is the big scary word, but the actual danger to kids is other people.
Bad news, Champ. Other people also exist off of the Internet. They always have. The world is not entirely safe. And that does not mean children shouldn't get to be part of the world.
The main problem here is panicky idiocy.
While there are absolutely issues with kids coming across things they shouldn’t, I’d argue an equally large issue is parents buying into the delusion that they can keep their children contained within a bubble of perfect innocence until adulthood.
That idea has never really been realistic short of keeping them isolated from society until 16-18 (which most would consider abuse), but it’s not even slightly possible today with how readily available information has become. It’s an inevitability that they will learn about the topics you’ve been avoiding and take on external influences you may not approve of.
Now to be clear, I’m not advocating for letting kids run wild on the internet with no guardrails, especially earlier on. Guardrails are important, but it’s even more important in my opinion to try to stay ahead of what they may encounter by talking with them about those things so when they eventually run across it, they’re not flying blind and might even seek your guidance about the incident since they know you’re not going to get angry about it. That’s much more likely to bring positive outcomes than if they ran into these things without parental support.
You know what helps? Proper sex ed around the age of 12-14. That's what we do in Holland. And why we had one of the lowest teenage pregnancy ratings. Unfortunately the conservatives are complaining about this more and more (the Lentekriebels program) because they mention that men can also love men. This porn filter is also from their corner.
Yeah, I'm nodding in agreement here for the most part. I didn't mean to suggest crazy helicopter parenting surveillance nonsense, just ... the idea that giving young minds the whole dang net and letting them loose without any guidance or oversight is kinda dangerous. Growing up we always had an adult in the computer lab, or the library, where most computer coursework was being taught. I had "the real internet" right there, but if I actually got into trouble, someone was bound to notice, and I could always ask for help.
The point I was actually trying to make is just this: if the parent's goal is to block content, then the simplest thing to do is to be there when the child is surfing the net. That shouldn't take crazy technological measures. At some point, most parents realize their kids are mature enough to handle things and back off, but the parent should be making that call for their own kid. I don't think the government should be doing it on their behalf. If the government believes the internet is dangerous for young minds, then it should focus on the thing it can control: educational curriculum, primarily. Trying to "fix the internet" is a fool's errand.
Couldn’t disagree more. I watched my first beheading video at 13, let alone porn. I still remember it, Nick Berg. I think I turned out ok. My online freedom was largely why I became who I am.
As for other people being the danger, there’s some truth to that for women. I have a daughter, so this will be a concern. But you know, she won’t die. Everyone goes through trauma. The key here is to make sure she feels comfortable enough to talk to me and to my wife before doing anything (too) stupid.
I snuck out of my parents’ house to go see a girl when I was 16. Took my dad’s station wagon. On the way, some car tried to pass me and ended up hitting a big truck on the side. Truck was fine, I was fine, that fella was not. He ended up on the side of the road. Me and trucker just kept going. I still think about that guy a lot, because obviously the correct thing to do would have been to call 911, but I was a dumb 16yo who was out past midnight to go see a girl.
Point is, if things went a little differently, I could have been the one who crashed, or even dead. But that doesn’t mean that the girl I was going to go see was somehow a threat to me. It means I was doing something dangerous.
Again, this is easy to say as a man. The threat model for women is different. But prohibiting minors from the internet without supervision is totally absurd, and I feel bad for any parent who helicopters their kids like that.
Ultimately your kid will grow up and have their own life. Do you want to be remembered as the parent who had them under lock and key in the name of safety, or as a parent who monitored from a distance and occasionally let them do stupid things so that they could learn from it? For me, the latter is far more preferable.
> Ultimately your kid will grow up and have their own life. Do you want to be remembered as the parent who had them under lock and key in the name of safety, or as a parent who monitored from a distance and occasionally let them do stupid things so that they could learn from it? For me, the latter is far more preferable.
You're trying to logically and emotionally appeal to people whose amygdala have been hijacked by a moral panic.
I agree with you, but good luck.
I'm kindof horrified that your immediate response is to defend a beheading video as something a 13 year old should watch. As a normal thing. What the actual hell. Like, the rest of your argument has some good points, but you led with something guaranteed to offend.
I was not clear enough, so I will try again. If parents do not want their kids to access "bad content", whatever that means to them, then they need to supervise the access. If parents are okay with their kids accessing bad content, then that choice is theirs to make. The internet itself should not be the gatekeeper here, neither should the government, but the parents do need to actually parent. I do not believe technology should be doing the parenting. And BECAUSE I believe this is a choice the PARENT should make, I also do not believe unfettered access to the internet should be a requirement for students. As long as that is a requirement, the parents aren't in control, and we get draconian laws trying to "fix the internet."
You have wildly misinterpreted my intent, and admittedly it is because my opening sentence was poorly phrased.
I largely agree with your second paragraph, but the solution isn’t necessarily to give parents control, but rather to stop draconian laws from passing.
As far as the beheading video, why be offended? Yes, I think teenagers will be naturally curious, and that gore videos will be on their watch list along with porn. It was true for most of my friends, and admitting this truth rather than running from it is how you deal with it. It’s not "defending" when it happens as a matter of course.
Again, you’re basically arguing for draconian powers not for the government but for the parents. To me, this is two sides of the same coin; whether the jailer is the government or the parent, when I was a teen both would have been the enemy. I personally don’t want my child to think of me as the enemy. Other parents can make different choices.
And yes, I think it was fine for me to watch that video when I was 13.
I wanted to leave a bit more context.
The reason I think it was fine to watch the video at 13 is because it was major news at the time. The Iraq war was just starting up, and I believe Nick Berg was one of the first troops taken prisoner and executed. I wanted to see for myself what other countries were doing to our soldiers.
As I got older, I realized it wasn’t so clear cut as good vs evil, and that we were often the evil ones. (Regardless of the reason, blowing up someone’s home with some of their family inside is evil, and there were civilian casualties in the Iraq war.) But at the time, it was a major formative life experience for me. It galvanized me into wanting to join the marines, which of course would have been a huge mistake. So you could argue that me watching the video was harmful in that sense, since it influenced me pretty heavily.
I take a different perspective. Freedom is about freedom to view something and decide for yourself how you feel about it. It’s easy to forget how mature you felt at 13. If at the time you tried to stop me from watching that video, I would have been furious, and said that you’re preventing me from seeing what’s really going on in the world.
Now, I personally think that that freedom also extrapolates to the rest of the evils viewable on the internet. I watched a lot of cartel videos, some war footage, and so on. You can argue that 13 is way too young, and maybe I’ll even agree once my daughter reaches that age. But if a kid is genuinely curious to see what reality is actually like, I personally find it a little repulsive that we as a society think it’s so awful, and that we say children should be babied for their own protection. If you tried that with me at 13, I’d have given you the finger and figured out a way around whatever security measures you put into place. In my opinion, the correct thing to do is for a kid to have a close connection with their parents, to tell them that they’re curious, and for the parents to explain the reasons why the kid might not want to see it. (This also forces you to explain why it’s so horrible. Surgical procedure videos are equally graphic, but we don’t call them horrible.) And if at the end of that process, your kid wants to watch those videos, be it porn or gore, you should seriously consider their request. Your options are to be supportive or for them to do it in secret. Thinking you’ll stop them is wishful at best.
Yes, it’s uncomfortable. I don’t personally know what I’ll do when Kess comes to me or her mom asking about that. But "forbid it in all circumstances" is in my opinion an extreme overreaction given what’s at stake. At worst, it will cause them some emotional trauma. It arguably did for me. It’s good to protect children from trauma. But if they genuinely want to go through it, who are we to stop them and say we know better? Let them figure it out.
We’re their parents. It’s easy to believe we do know better. And in most cases we probably do. But at the end of the day, by forbidding this content, you’re waging war on your child’s curiosity. I personally find that as horrifying as it probably felt hearing me say that there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s fine to disagree.
If this comes up the future, I’ll point back to this comment as my canonical response on the topic. If after reading it people still want to be offended, then okay. But I’m not trying to tell you how to raise your kid. I’m saying, you’re fighting a losing battle if you think you can stop them.
Just to add to the video you have watched: upon watching such videos, I made the realization that life is precious, and that I am happy with where I am, and it made me cherish life more. Sounds positive, right? Similarly, bad trips from psychedelics can be a highly rewarding experience, too.
I do not think that him stating what he has watched implies that he thinks one should watch this something, just that he did, which does not imply endorsement.
[dead]
Unfortunately this isn't the first time a government has banned Android devices which are not licensed by Google. GrapheneOS has a list of them[1]
[1] https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...
The Austrian ID App was also blocking GrapheneOS due to SafetyNet verification...
After a lot of angry emails towards the helpdesk, they at least changed it, so a failed check only shows a warning that you can accept.
For Authy I don’t even feel sorry. Proprietary TOTP. sorry for off-topic
So many people advocating for this in HN and elsewhere when it's so clearly a draconian slippery slope for invasive surveillance and choice restriction. After these things get implemented people pretend it was always like this.
We don't need the governments to mass surveil us to protect us. We need them to sort the economy and stop invading countries and being deferential to corporate interests instead of the people they represent.
It's such an obvious push that If you don't want to see it, it makes me think you're shielding yourself to avoid contending with the reality: These politicians and govs all around, including the countries you claim "work" are absolutely power hungry and beholden to interests other than yours and will push for as much total surveillance as they can, including as much curtailment of freedoms as they can.
Obviously that won't mean elites will actually face justice or crimes will actually be solved because more surveillance is not accompanied with more government transparency, quite the opposite and bigger and more powerful burocracies, with more authoritarianism, allow for easy hidden exceptions that you can't question.
It's nothing new. Corruption is common. It's just mediocre to see "hackers" pushing for it just because the government and corporations tell them to, because foreign country bad, bad social media influences kids, drugs, word-ism, etc.
At the time this comment was posted there was only one other comment in this entire thread.
You say “so many people are advocating for this in HN” but this thread was empty except for one other comment (which was also critical of this) at the time you posted your comment.
I think if you use critical thinking to read you may easily find I'm talking about my experience with reading comments in relation to imposing age verification for online access, which means digital ID for internet access.
HN and even the GitHub comments mostly start with the assumption that of course we should do this. Of course we should restrict social media to under 16/18s and either are in favor of ID to access the Internet or pretend it won't happen by consequence of this.
Now try to address what I said instead of poorly calling me out.
Linking to some comments in favour of this might help your case.
It's been a relatively common position to find, at least before the most recent hubbub around Steam, Itch.io, Britain, etc. For instance, while https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42071310 faced criticism, it also had lots of broadly supportive sentiment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42075518, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42077025, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42077421, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42074066, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42074776, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42073002, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42075043, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42076302, ...
Or at the very least, many here support the goal of keeping children and/or teenagers off of social media entirely, while disliking the means of ID verification. But it's not like there's any other obvious means.
> It's been a relatively common position to find, at least before the most recent hubbub around Steam, Itch.io, Britain, etc.
If you stretch the definition of "recent" to ~ 60d then you can also search for the pornhub/France thing. Quick google nets this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44210557. There are likely others, too... but I'm lazy :).
My case? What's YOUR case. Assert a position and provide proof in triplicate please.
Please tell me exactly what you think and I can nitpick it vaguely instead of putting forth mine. Heh.
In any case, just look at the comments under my comment. You'll see them.
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44705630 (this is good, we need this). - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44705597 (are you a conservative?! Anonymity should be reduced.)
Don't be disingenuous with your proof demands and tell us what you think and then we can discuss the merits of your argument.
> My case?
The case that "so many" people are advocating this on HN. Sounds like a significant percentage!
> What's YOUR case. Assert a position
Their case is that you should give evidence.
> and provide proof in triplicate please. Please tell me exactly what you think and I can nitpick it vaguely instead of putting forth mine. Heh.
"you should give evidence" doesn't need its own proof. And nitpicking such a simple idea would be a waste of everyone's time.
You're not the original poster of the question so why are you trolling?
"So many" means "so many". You're creating a straw man in bad faith.
What's your take on digital Age verification. Either provide useful commentary or stop trolling. Address the existence of the other comments I linked.
Giving you a clear answer to your questions is trolling?
It's just information. Data. Bytes. We need a proper George Orwell for the digital age.
The internet used to be a bastion of freedom. That era ended around 2005.
I don't think you are fully wrong, but the issue is your rhetoric is very much used by conservatives or "both sides are bad" which are just mask-on conservatives who end up voting the same way. And the problem with conservatives is not really the ideals and ideas, but the fact that they vote Republican (or whatever the equivalent party is in other countries), that all pretty much are the exact opposite of those ideals.
Age verification is already a thing IRL, there is no reason to not extend it online considering so much of our lives is digital. Overall I think anonymity should be reduced on the internet in general - a big reason of the world issues, especially in USA is that ideas can grow in forums where people under etherial identities can tell lie after lie without any repercussion.
How can you criticize those for voting Republican when you're advocating for the extremely authoritarian and dystopian position of banning anonymous discourse online?
Im criticizing voting Republicans because in practice, they are the ones that vote for people who are actually in the process of implementing authoritarian measures in real life. So when those people start talking about anything they deem as authoritarian or dystopian, its a moot conversation because they are the LEAST qualified to talk about those things.
> a big reason of the world issues, especially in USA is that ideas can grow in forums where people under etherial identities can tell lie after lie without any repercussion.
See, I wouldn't have as much of an issue if you were honest about this real intention, because of how on the nose it is to reasonable people.
The idea that I will have to upload 3D models of my face and ID, or get permission from Google, just to go online because you don't like the idea of someone else's kids using the internet is absurd.
Please stop using appeals to children in your quest to "stop ideas from growing".
You don't have to upload your face, you just have to have a stable online identity that can be tied to you.
In the same way that you have a stable IRL identity that is your actual body so when you go into public places, you can be identified later if need be.
Depends where it's being rolled out.
Similar systems are rolled out where I am, and they all involve proving you're the real living person that matches your ID, and not just someone who took another person's ID or knows their credentials, via live video of multiple angles of your face.
> Age verification is already a thing IRL, there is no reason to not extend it online considering so much of our lives is digital. Overall I think anonymity should be reduced on the internet in general - a big reason of the world issues, especially in USA is that ideas can grow in forums where people under etherial identities can tell lie after lie without any repercussion.
Ah yes. Anonymity is the only thing that enables dishonesty and of course it's the government's moral duty to regulate it.
Once anonymity is banned, the world will be honest and good and True and we'll all look back on the Bad times thinking how silly we all were.
The best part of minority report was the way everything constantly tracked identity through retinal scans; i can't wait for the future!
What is the most anonymous public website on the internet right now? And what kind of content does it have?
> Once anonymity is banned, the world will be honest and good and True and we'll all look back on the Bad times thinking how silly we all were.
It's a shame you don't read the North Korean press. Otherwise you'd know that the elimination of anonymity on the Internet led to exactly this
[dead]
Anonymity is banned to ban honesty.
> it's so clearly a draconian slippery slope for invasive surveillance and choice restriction
It's a privacy preserving over 18 check.
Is it a "slope"? Sure, you can imagine an extension to the system that is "worse".
Is it "slippery"? This thing isn't draconian enough to be effective. It will be a minor speedbump that prevents exactly zero determined under-18's from accessing anything that they'd want to. So then the question is, does the government react by trying something more draconian, or does it give up?
Things like this are a pain in the ass for GrapheneOS users. It's not great to get locked out of legitimate usage of things when using an OS that actually puts privacy first.
Do you really think this will stop there? Websites need to contact an attestation server and the EU can just ban verification for any website they don't like.
Asking my EU friends, why do you let yourselves be bamboozled by the US tech companies when you’re totally capable of doing it yourselves?
Seriously. You don’t need Google. You just need a plan and a will to execute.
It is amazing. All the US companies have to do is dangle a “free” solution and the EU will go for it, and then be all surprised pikachu at the terms they agreed to.
EU isn't at all capable of doing that because it's not a hegemonic state, it's just bunch of a countries coming together to coordinate on doing stuff.
My guess on what happened this time is, people were tasked to implement a way to verify age anonymously and this was the only feasible way to do it because of their constraints that don't allow them to do bigger stuff that China or USA will able to do through having the budget and enforcement power.
I don’t disagree, my argument is why continue? The scientific method is thrown out the window. Age verification, oh you need the cooperation of member nations of the EU, ok, wait, everyone has different systems, ok, new objective - standardize the systems so we can do age verification like we want.
I know politics isn’t logical but if you keep drilling down the root cause, eventually you’ll hit bedrock.
Because countries don’t want to give away more sovereignty?
EU needs to federalize but europeans are still too nationalistic for that to happen. Even Germany is too tiny to matter in the global stage but even small countries with population of a city in America will be like “we are special, we can take on USA and China because of our intrinsic characteristics. Even if we can’t we are definitely better than our neighbors”.
Regulation and lack of capital. Just read the report from Mario Draghi if you don't believe me.
We have EU regulations, those are much tighter than in US, on practically every front. Labor, finance, environment, data, AI, you name it, we have it regulated. And then you have the country level regulations on top. That's right, EU sets the floor, not the ceiling.
Suppose you have a start up in Poland, you have managed to get funding and you are offering services in your country. You want to do that in Germany? Get ready for complying with new set of regulations. And you better hope that individual German states don't have something extra on top of those.
All of those regulations have purpose, it is possible that they were designed by well meaning people and bring some benefit. But their compound effect is catastrophic. It is not that you can't push trough, you can, just look at Kiwi or Mikrotik. But it's an uphill battle and your competition from overseas has it so much easier, that they can end up outgrowing you, and eventually buying you out.
What’s the point of regulations when you’re being bent over by US Tech? You can’t say there’s regulations and then give it all to a monopoly…
> You can’t say there’s regulations and then give it all to a monopoly…
Why? These are very closely intersecting things. It is very convenient for government to regulate and force monopolies to do what the government needs. And vice versa, strong regulation allows monopolies to avoid the emergence of new competitors. Win-win.
A lot of this is legacy holdovers from the Biden era.
Both the US, the EU, and the rest of the OECD began the process of aligning digital services taxation and regulation [0][1] under the Biden admin, as it was also a fig leaf tossed at the EU by the US to prevent a potential trade war with the EU [2] due to the IRA and CHIPS act.
The US has now removed itself from this OECD initiative, and most other major markets have begun to as well either due to US pressure or their own self interest. It also played a role in reducing Biden/Harris' chances in 2024, as much of the Obama era tech coalition shifted support and donations to the Trump-Vance campaign due to their support for repealing and fighting against digital services taxes globally.
The US also removed it's gloves when negotiating with the EU this admin compared to previous admins, so dangling the threat of retaliatory measures is not well received and can elicite a quasi-hard power response.
[0] - https://www.eiu.com/n/the-oecd-global-tax-deal-still-hangs-i...
[1] - https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/sub-issues/reallocation-of-ta...
[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/06/business/dealbook/biden-c...
Where do you get from that we are capable of doing it ourselves? All EU-made software I've used was terrible, and the one that was a bit better than terrible was bought by a US company.
Where do you live? I live in Sweden and I have used a lot of not so bad software from Sweden. Maybe its just your country, but at least in Sweden the government can make software for its services that works well, better than what I've seen from the US government.
> and the one that was a bit better than terrible was bought by a US company
But here you say EU can make great software? Just that USA then buys it. So we should just ban USA from buying our great software companies, is that what you are saying?
Most closed source US software is garbage too. Some stuff, like Steam, is beloved anyway. But actually the program itself is terrible and slow even on decent computers.
Struggling to think of corporate produced software that doesn’t suck. iOS Safari is ok, I guess.
Sure but "almost all tech is bad but almost all non-bad tech is American" in effect means European software is seen as bad. (And as an American who's spent a lot of time in Europe, this has been my experience, personally.)
In America the least bad stuff eventually rises to the top. In Europe it feels like it's all just one shared pit.
> almost all non-bad tech is American
The reason is because Americans buy the other tech firms, so its not because they don't make non-bad tech its because USA just monopolizes it via very aggressive acquisitions.
At least in Norway, the user -facing state services are good. They used to suck, but are now good.
I can do most anything online, haven’t had to physically visit an gov office for years, outside voting and getting a new passport photo. And everything just works.
Edit: and before anyone points out that we’re not in EU, yes - but we’re in the EEA.
Because most politicians in most countries (even most dictatorships) feel that interfering with the free market is too radical. They feel it's fickle and too risky to upset.
Anyway, if a government tried to make a European smartphone design, it would be treated as any other government supply contract, resulting in a terrible design-by-committee. So in the end, all politicians are willing to do is wait around and say "someone should do something".
It's actually a little better than that. One thing they can do, and have done, is make funds available for individuals and small groups who want to have a go themselves. Notably NLnet funds a lot of projects. They're all small projects though so they're not really capable of displacing megacorps in the free market. Stuff like MNT hardware remains niche hacker stuff.
You need a pile of money first. And that works differently in the EU.
You have sovereignty of the EU and nations willing. Don’t say it will take money. Money is fake. You can do this.
Everyone’s ready. The only reason US is wealthy is those subscription fees and vendor lock in we have.
They will be sued by Google for illegal state aid.
who cares, money is fake (as stated above), pay the fines and move on with an EU OS
Cool, in what court? EU court? It would be the EU doing this. Want to do business in the EU, GDPR extends to giving us the keys as well if you’re going to valet park here. Or they can go kick rocks while smart engineers in member countries build a new android. After all, a lot has changed since someone decided to bolt Java onto a Linux kernel.
ICJ?
Riiiiight, and where are they at with Netanyahu, Israel, and the whole Gaza situation?
how does a pile of money work in the EU?
In the US due to various historical economic factors there's a lot more money going around. Basically the EU has to ship $100 of steel to America to get $100, while America can just print it. America has been printing money and giving it to the rich for a long time, resulting in the American rich having relatively huge piles of money and not enough to spend it on, resulting in highly speculative things getting funding, i.e. venture capital.
There isn't really venture capital like that in Europe. Your business has to bootstrap. There are big businesses that could fund big ideas but they are big because they do one thing well - a company like Airbus isn't going to branch out and build an AWS.
Investors want a realistic plan to make money, they will hardly fund anything without a clear strategy on how to make money.
The same way it does anywhere else.
Lack of capital. Fear of consequences.
Google rolls into town and wants to spend half a billion euro on a datacenter? Sure thing. They'll say that it'll boost the local economy while being built - by creating a couple of thousand jobs for the contractors that are going to build and maintain it, and then some onsite jobs for the next decade or two, creating a couple of hundred jobs for techs / engineers.
And as long as they keep playing ball with google, projects like that will pop up once in a while. If you're difficult, there's also a risk of the rich tech companies taking their business some other place.
With that said, I've recently noticed more voices for building our own stuff - as there's a real risk that US tech companies will simply comply if pushed enough, say, by a POTUS that's out for blood and wants to hurt certain foreign users. Ban/lock out certain users from gaining access to software, turn off their infrastructure, etc. who knows.
But, alas, there just isn't the same willingness to pour in capital on the important things. For private investors it doesn't make much sense, unless they have a bulletproof contract with domestic users willing buy their service - and using state funds isn't too popular, either.
Truth be told, any of the big tech businesses can undercut any competition, and probably build better and faster. If anything, it could be the case for tariffs - outsourcing critical infrastructure will leave you very exposed. If European countries all over the board started to abandon US tech companies, they'd cry to Trump, who in turn would probably start a trade-war.
Now replace Google with an EU company doing it in the EU for EU jobs and everything you described. It’s not like money only comes from the US.
You are right to be worried. US companies under this administration can’t be trusted to follow the law. Why should they, when our commander in chief isn’t and has a panel of judges who let him do whatever. Just the other day he suggested Obama be investigated for treason. So yeah, we’re toxic, and you all should seriously quarantine yourselves.
EU businesses are pretty conservative. They don't have the insane amounts of capital that arose in Silicon Valley as a result of the Bretton Woods system. There are companies that size, but they're all in, like, manufacturing, or coal mining. There's no EU company that both has a billion dollars and knows how to be AWS. There are companies with billions of dollars (euros) and there are different startup companies that probably could be AWS if they tried really hard, but never the twain shall meet.
> They don't have the insane amounts of capital that arose in Silicon Valley as a result of the Bretton Woods system.
Why would you say all personal finance advisors from Europ advise their clients to invest at least 50% in the US? The aggressive ones suggest 70-90%. 53% of The Norwegian sovereign fund is invested in the US, 24% in Europe and 23% the rest of the world. Their biggest investments are in Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Google, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, Broadcom, etc, as one would expect.
Why don't European investors move their investments from US index and into European companies and businesses? Norway alone has ~1 trillion Euros invested in the US. Surely they can move it to invest in European tech, no? that can make a couple of European AWSs.
Investors invest where the money is. The money is in the US. As a result of the factors I already stated.
The best way to get more euros over time appears to be to exchange them for US dollars, invest in US stock markets over time, and eventually exchange them back for euros. So rational investors will do that. It will work as long as the American regime doesn't collapse its currency due to overprinting, in which case all those euro investors will lose all their money.
An individual investor doesn't care about improving the economy of their country at all. They only care which investment will make the money today. And the investment market is just a collection of investors. Never make the mistake of thinking investment markets are rational economic planners - that's the fallacy of composition.
European governments may want to prevent this situation, but they're all pretty locked into the free-market regime, so there's not a huge amount they can do. They can't just give out free money, either, since there's a lot more state-backed financial crime and corruption over there, due to having enemy countries in close proximity.
It's largely a political issue. At this stage you can't create alternatives to Google and other U.S. tech giants without removing them from the market (so essentially the Chinese approach, which has allowed them to build their own massive tech giants). But that path is nearly impossible for the EU due to the risk of U.S. retaliation. The EU can't even implement a digital tax.
You also can't just say, "Here's a few hundred billion in public support to create alternatives to U.S. tech giants", because the U.S. would argue that it's unfair state aid and retaliate.
There isn't enough private capital in the EU with the risk tolerance required to take on such a challenge independently.
We also lack a reserve currency like the USD, so we can't print $2 trillion a year, much of which ultimately flows into the U.S. stock market and further boosts U.S. tech companies, making competition even harder.
EU markets are already fully penetrated by U.S. behemoths that can either withstand or acquire any privately funded competitor, thanks to their massive cash flows and valuations.
For all these reasons, the outlook isn't very promising.
>>There isn't enough private capital in the EU with the risk tolerance required to take on such a challenge independently.
That can be improved by making traditional investments (real estate, land) less attractive while making investments into businesses more attractive. You just need to change tax incentives by removing capital gain tax and introducing real estate/land value tax (or raising it). Removing red tape would help as well and then making the common market really common.
As it is there is very little incentive to invest in companies here.
> That can be improved by making traditional investments (real estate, land) less attractive while making investments into businesses more attractive. You just need to change tax incentives by removing capital gain tax and introducing real estate/land value tax (or raising it). Removing red tape would help as well and then making the common market really common.
That's unrealistic. Majority of people in the EU own property and/or land, and no one wants to pay even more taxes on it. In my EU country, the majority of politicians own more than two apartments. I don't see them working against their own interests.
Yes, it's unrealistic because the plan is for people who already own property or land to extract rent from productive class, especially young people.
That's why nothing every changes. Ever increasing taxes on productivity to benefit the real estate/land owners is how EU operates. No wonder we have fewer and fewer children and there isn't many people willing to found new businesses.
It's a death spiral which will end with the youth rebelling or going extinct. The latter being more probable looking at current fertility rates.
Russia can do it. Thinking EU can’t shows only how low the self esteem is. And it’s a very sad story. EU needs to wake up sooner rather than later.
I'd argue Europe is further in to their economic decline that the US, but both are in a downward trajectory
> And it’s a very sad story. EU needs to wake up sooner rather than later.
Indeed, it's a very sad story. I'm afraid the EU is in a coma, so waking up is not a given.
Russia can do it because they are a dictatorship. If they were a free-market democracy, I very much it would happen.
I think there are two aspects of it, one political - we didn't have democracies with strong leaders for quite some time, but I don't believe it's inherent to it.
Another is economical - with tech (absolute) free-market would for sure benefit the biggest player. I don't believe in absolute free-market economy anyway (and we don't have it), and I think EU (and other countries) should protect their (tech) businesses. For example EU can start with above mentioned service tax, Trump started with tariffs anyway.
Side note - Russia had very strong domestic tech for a long time, and one of the reasons I believe was the fact it's a big market mixed with different language. I don't think dictatorship played as big of a role.
Information warfare is real and can leverage all the learnings of the past. Algorithms designed to show you only specific content. One sided points of view. Nothing more than propaganda. Tools of information warfare. This is why you can’t just blindly go with whatever Big Tech proposal.
The EU has some of the brightest minds in the world. You can do this.
What outlook? What planet are we on? Why are we debating who makes better handcuffs? Do E.U citizens prefer their handcuffs be made in Europe? I'm so confused.
The only will you get from EU is to protect incumbents and the only plan is to make another centrally planned fund that distributes money to chosen entities. EU is very good at removing the carrot while wielding a big stick for would be entrepreneurs.
Because politicians are corrupt
Because national interests always end up trumping the EU in it's current form.
American companies like Google [0][1], Amazon [2][7], and Microsoft [3][4][5][6] have spent billions in FDI and hiring, thus building strong relationships with EU states like Ireland, Romania, Poland, Finland, Sweden, and others, but French and German competitors haven't (or don't exist depending on the service or SLA).
This means a significant portion of EU member states have an incentive to maintain the relationship, because the alternative means significant capital outflows. A Polish legislator doesn't have to answer to French voters, so they will incentivize the relationship with BigTech. Thus, these nations will lobby tooth and nail against destroying the relationship.
It's the same reason Hungary courts Chinese FDI [8] and enhancing the Sino-Chinese relationship as leverage against the EU pushing too hard [9].
[0] - https://www.gov.pl/web/primeminister/google-invests-billions...
[1] - https://www.gov.ie/ga/an-roinn-fiontar-turas%C3%B3ireachta-a...
[2] - https://www.aboutamazon.eu/news/job-creation-and-investment/...
[3] - https://centraleuropeantimes.com/microsoft-google-invest-big...
[4] - https://www.reuters.com/technology/nordics-efficient-energy-...
[5] - https://www.idaireland.com/latest-news/press-release/an-taoi...
[6] - https://www.government.se/articles/2024/06/prime-minister-to...
[7] - https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/industries/cloud-technology-emp...
[8] - https://hungarytoday.hu/hungary-seeks-to-stay-leading-europe...
[9] - https://theloop.ecpr.eu/hungary-and-the-future-of-europe/
Don't kid yourself, the US is going to war against anyone that tries to regulate big tech as we are seeing with the US government going against Brazil and the Pix payment system
No it doesn't work that way. That's a lot of political will for little monetary gain. Don't forget that countries in EU are still quite capitalist and many of the bigger companies have huge investments in the US. EU itself is a quite neoliberal org too. It has all sorts of forced privatization laws.
The post WWII doctrine of US that's applied in Europe is strengthening the bigger businesses. Those businesses use US tech since investing in an actual European tech sector is expensive. Especially after all the first players took critical positions.
The time to invest in that sector was in the 80s and 90s. Europe had a different relationship with the US and it was trying to encite small ex-Soviet states to join, so they can exploit the cheap labor. So nobody actually invested in local tech sector.
It is now an uphill battle that'll cost more than the original investment. Only countries with strong independence urge like France is willing to fight it. Most of the EU countries are not.
Ugh. There's just no winning with tech anymore.
I use GrapheneOS as a daily driver and I absolutely love it. It should be the default. There's already one app I use that must do something similar and absolutely just won't run on it, so I have an entirely separate phone running stock Android just for that one app. Still worth the hassle.
Glad I don't live in a place where all this madness is taking root, but still, the trend itself sucks.
By design, this app isn't mandatory. There should be an alternative way to do age verification. If you can't access a service because you can't run the app, the service fucked up.
Furthermore, there's nothing stopping the governments implementing these standards from permitting GrapheneOS' signature. It's one of the ROMs that actually has a reliable signature so unlike random images from XDA there's a case for it to be permitted. Google's integrity check isn't just a binary check, it's a combination of a hash and a pre-defined list of suggested acceptable hashes.
> By design, this app isn't mandatory. There should be an alternative way to do age verification. If you can't access a service because you can't run the app, the service fucked up.
So you complain to the service, they either ignore you or tell you to use the app, and then what? They are not breaking any law as far as I can tell.
And even if it was, class actions in Europe are close to inexistent, and it's not worth it for any one consumer to take the multinational running the service to court.
> there's nothing stopping the governments implementing these standards from permitting GrapheneOS' signature
incompetence and/or not caring
Alternatives to legal identification requirements being available isn't my experience. How do you even imagine that? Going to a local post office to show an ID anytime you want to open pornhub and your i_am_adult=token cookie has expired?
Using the e-government log in to said adult website?
What e-government website? If there were one, I should hope they'd be using it instead of GDPR-flouting third parties that I've seen so far
If you mean something like DigiD, that's only for government websites themselves. A lot of water will need to flow past parliament before they open that one up to pornhub
The only winning move is not to play the game. One has to have a phone these days but you don't have to do your computing on it (during personal time). Use a real computer instead.
> I would like to pay for goods and services online.
> Very well sir, which digital payment service would you like to use?
> It doesn't matter they all force me to use my phone.
It's pretty crazy. You can be authenticated on a website, and the website still asks you to use your phone to.. validate what you're doing on the pc.
This software doesn't run on a real computer. The point of the submission is that it only runs on a DRM device from two entrenched vendors
Why would you want to run a locked down a crippled version of linux when you can run the real thing?
And if there really are services that only are accessible through iphone/android applications, you probably should not support them.
Why indeed!
I would agree, but sadly that's not supported by this government verification software. If you want to use the internet, it sounds like this will become mandatory for many websites hosted in the EU that have content that needs to be locked away from kids under 13 or so. If you think we should oppose that, I'm right by your side
Great advice that I just can't take.
There are lots of them, you might want to complain to your competition authority.
https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...
It's not a tech issue, it's a regulation issue.
EU wants to push more control on the internet, today it's "think of the children" but when the infrastructure is rolled out, it'll be "real name verifiction" on social media, chat control, etc.
Whoever is pushing this in EU has to be removed before things will get better.
Luckily France is part of the EU. They seem to have better removal tools than the rest of us.
This has nothing to do with age verification, but everything to do with identifying users on various services. They can compell the providers of said services to give them access to how each, now identified, user is using the service. Since a lot of our lives are digital, this is a major transfer of power from the people to a select few.
A question I have is who voted for this? I sure didn't.
It's called representative democracy and it's been in crisis for some years now.
It's so indirect it's hard to even consider it a form of democracy.
I don't.
The European Commission is unelected. The European parliament can't choose which laws it wants to vote on. This is a simulacrum of democracy.
> They can compell the providers of said services to give them access to how each, now identified, user is using the service.
The whole point of this is that they can't, which is unlike the systems they had used before. The only information that the service provider receives is that an age check has passed.
Without getting into the ideological weeds too much, is there a solid technical reason for this? Like if this verification wasn’t in place, could I just alter the source code or binary to always return “yes I’m 18” (or whatever) and completely subvert the intent of this tool? If so, is there a straightforward way to prevent this without involving Google?
> if this verification wasn’t in place, could I just alter the source code or binary to always return “yes I’m 18” (or whatever) and completely subvert the intent of this tool?
Kinda, yes.
(slightly simplifying the mechanism here)
This seems to be based on the EU Wallet project, which is still work in progress. The EU wallet is based on OpenID (oidc4vci, oidc4vp). The wallet allows for selective disclosure of attributes. These attributes are signed by a issuing party (i.e. the government of a EU country). That way a RP (relying party) can verify that the data in the claim (e.g. this user is 18+) is valid.
However, this alone is not enough, because it could be a copy of that data. You can just query a wallet for that attribute, store it and replay it to some other website. This is obviously not wanted.
So the wallet also has a mechanism to bind the credential to a specific device. When issuing a credential the wallet provides a public key plus a proof of possession of the associated private key (e.g. a signature over an issuer-provided nonce) to the issuer. The issuer then includes that public key in the signed part of the credential. When the RP verifies the credential it also asks the wallet to sign part of the response using the private key associated with that public key. This is supposed to prove that the credential was sent by the device it was issued to.
Now this is where the draconian device requirements come in: the wallet is supposed to securely store the private key associated with the credential. For example in a Secure Enclave on the device. The big flaw here is that none of this binding stuff works if you can somehow get access to the private key, e.g. on a rooted phone if the wallet doesn't use a secure enclave or with a modified wallet app that doesn't use a secure enclave to store the private key. You could ask a friend who is 18+ to request the credential, copy it to your phone and use that to log in.
What if I refuse to buy a device with a secure enclave that I don't have access to? Am I now censored from a chunk of the internet?
Is the EU essentially foisting a someone-else-owns-your-keys regime onto their citizens?
The law designed this as a privacy-friendly and convenient alternative to traditional identity verification, and stipulates usage should be optional.
Without the wallet, you'll be forced to jump through the same hoops as you're doing right now. Depending on what EU country you live in, that can be anything between "no real difference" to "making an appointment to exchange stamps on documents".
Please point out where the age verification law says it's optional to verify someone's age
Or which hoops you mean we have to currently jump through to access 12/14/16/18+ sites
That’s not what they said. They said that when age verification is required, it is intended to be optional to use the EU digital wallet for that, and other ways are possible.
That's a fair point.
Of course, once upon a time JavaScript was optional, and now it feels like half the web won't work without it. Cookies were optional but now many sites don't even bother with a "Reject All" choice. Google Play was optional on Android, now banking apps don't work without it.
Tried to do KYC with an institution in North America lately? They used to allow diverse options - eg. physically present yourself, get a notary to attest, upload signed documents & ID - but now app-based applets which offer little to no visibility into just what data they're hoovering up from your phone and no way to manually review what you're sending before submission (...to outsourced or even offshore processors) have displaced most of those alternatives due to their convenience (especially to those who don't care about privacy) and cost competitiveness (to the service providers). Filling out customs declarations when traveling is going the same way (with longer, more customer-hostile terms of service and privacy policies than came attached to the old paper forms).
The option that's most convenient to the masses tends to become defacto, and push out the last bastions of safe alternatives relied on by nerds like me - who pay attention to this stuff and try to advocate for user agency, data sovereignty for users, and the means to maintain a healthy privacy and security posture.
I would love to see some kind of attestable flavour of Android that I as a user control the keys to (in my own case I'd even be willing to provide assurances backed up by insurance, a bond, my reputation, repudiation to some degree of vendor liability if things go wrong, etc) with tooling to help me achieve a high level of security in a low-friction manner.
> What if I refuse to buy a device with a secure enclave that I don't have access to? Am I now censored from a chunk of the internet?
The idea is that once you get used to that, you will get censored from all the internet.
> Is the EU essentially foisting a someone-else-owns-your-keys regime onto their citizens?
Not quite, it's the EU essentially foisting a don't-use-free-software regime onto their citizens
> You could ask a friend who is 18+ to request the credential, copy it to your phone
Oh no! Imagine you find a willing adult who does the verification on your phone. The whole system is moot!
Don't need "copy" here for that. They can just do the verification on your device without any technical tricks
> Don't need "copy" here for that. They can just do the verification on your device without any technical tricks
Yeah. that's where this system fails. It only stores a single attribute that you wouldn't mind putting on someone else's phone. In the full EU wallet the 'over 18' attribute is part of a larger set of credentials that is basically your entire digital ID. If you were to put that on someone else's phone they would be able to identify as you to numerous government and adjacent services. You'd be a fool to share that.
This whole scheme feels a bit rushed and not thought through.
Even if the private key is perfectly bound to the device and can't be copied, can't you still just ask a friend who is 18+ to scan the QR code on their device and verify age? I don't see what problem these device requirements solve exactly, unless the plan is to somehow criminalize verifying on behalf of other people
Wouldn't it make way more sense to just have the RP supply a nonce that gets signed by the IDP? Isn't this how oidc works already?
Wouldn't that potentially leak data to the IDP?
All it would leak is that an age verification request happened. The RP would request you/your browser to forward the request "hi can you pls verify if user with nonce 123456 is 18?" to your IDP of choice.
And then the IDP gives you "yes the user with nonce 123456 is 18" signed with its private key, which you forward to the RP.
The only data "leaked" would be which IDP you used to the RP, and that there was an 18+ verification request to the IDP. The IDP wouldn't need to know which RP they're signing the proof for.
This does allow proxying the requests, but honestly, how locked down does this need to be? It's far easier to just snatch your parent's drivers license or passport at that point.
> You can just query a wallet for that attribute, store it and replay it to some other website.
Uh, replay attacks are a solved problem in pretty much any industry standard challenge-response authentication, including OpenID. Am I missing something?
Doesn't this system have more privacy constraints? E.g. the website you're visiting shouldn't be able to learn anything about your identity beyond the attribute (above 18), and the identity provider shouldn't know anything about which website you're visiting.
It does seem like people tried very hard to make it privacy preserving.
You're missing the part where I describe the mechanism used to prevent replays, I'm just describing why it is necessary.
The tool could have a mode where it just reads the cryptographic chip in your ID card via NFC and passes on the information to the verifying party. This information is signed by your government and they could verify it with the public key
Instead, they're trying to shoehorn your device into providing the same safety level and, in doing so, making it by design impossible for you to control your own device. Obviously if the sites trust a device that you control, you can make it tell them anything. The ideological part is that it's not your device anymore then and imo we should oppose that. The technical solution is to use the hardware security chip you already have with a reading mechanism that (nearly?) every smartphone already has and even works on any OS that can run a USB NFC reader. It could be an entirely open standard
I'm pretty sure all you need is the ability to login to a website and for that site to vouch for your age based on having examined your identification documents (or something like a network of PGP web-of-trust type notaries). I have a hunch that using a hardware token and biometrics is required to prevent fraud (FIDO and passkeys etc should work). The trick is preventing simulated tokens from existing/working which is where secure boot etc enter the picture.
Can you clarify what fraud you're thinking the "secure boot" (which I take to mean: being denied the access to control your own device) would prevent? Since the identity documents you already have, have this chip that works the same as your bank card, you really don't need a relaying party (your phone, your ISP, etc.) to be trusted for the receiving website to be able to verify the cryptographic signature on the data
Fraud would be someone who is not you using your identity.
So the scenario this is needed for, is where someone does a physical and technical attack on your phone just to extract the key from this app that says you're 18+. That would be why nobody can have access to their own data anymore
I'm sorry but that cure is definitely worse than the disease. This is not an attack you see outside of spy movies
Yubikeys go on your keychain. You're as likely to not notice losing it as you are your housekeys. Anyway the point is that if you're not willing to run a trusted phone, there are other very viable options... particularly for technical folks who tamper with phone software... and those who cares about the Google panopticon... that are extremely viable and should be acceptable to satisfy the stated intent of the regulation.
Yeah it’s sort of like all the apps that would refuse to run on a jailbroken iPhone.
Basically on such a system you can potentially manipulate the process. Here that would probably be to install the credentials of someone else on the device.
So they want a locked down OS environment where user does not have root privileges and software has to be verified (in this case by Google) to be installed.
You would need to release a kernel and OS that requires users who modify the attestation and hardware token components of it to provide their own signing key rather than your production EU-registered one, chained back to the HSM signature emitted by the phone’s HSM signed bootloader; and then you would simply let the app check that its secure boot attestations chain to a secure bootloader/image/OS triplet that’s on file with the EU. Mix in some tech spice for the EU to prohibit OS releases that are validly signed but whose specific instance of a signature is found to be exploitable to bypass age checks and you’re set. None of this would prevent users from modding their devices, any more than macOS prevents modifications today if you turn off the security protections; but once you turn off the security protections, it can no longer attest with Apple’s signature because your modifications don’t match the signature any longer, and so Apple Wallet is inaccessible.
None of this prohibits users from modifying their bootloader, kernel, or OS image; but any such modification would invalidate the secureboot signature and thus break attestation until the user registered their own signatures with the EU.
The EU currently only transacts with Google in this regard because, as far as I know, they are the only Android OS publisher (and perhaps the only Linux publisher?) that bothered to implement hardware-to-app attestation chaining live in production end-user devices in the decades since Secure Boot came onto the scene. All it takes to change that is an entity who has sufficient validity to convince them that outsourcing permitted-signature verification to Google is unethical, which it is.
It’s a safe bet that Steam Linux was already working on this in order to attest that the runtime environment is unmodified for VAC and other multiplayer-cheating prevention systems in games — and so once they publish all that, I expect we’ll find that they’ve petitioned their attested OS signature chain to the EU as satisfying age requirements for mature gaming.
The vendor lock-in here is that Apple and Google and, eventually, Valve, are both willing to put the weight of their business behind their claims to the EU that they do their best to protect the security of their environment from cheaters, with respect to the components required by the EU age verification app. The loophole one could drive a truck through that the EU has left open to break that lock-in in the future? Anyone can petition the EU to accept attestations from their own boot-kernel-OS chain signatures so long as they’re willing to accept the legal risks visited upon them if found to have knowingly permitted exploitation for age check bypasses, or neglected to respond in a timely and prudent manner when notified of such exploitability by researchers — and if the EU rejects their petition improperly, they’ll have to answer for that to their citizens.
All of this assumes that the device, a relaying party for your identity document, needs to be secure in the first place. We don't attest the OS of the router and your ISP before being allowed to use them to relay this information to pornhub. Why does your phone need to be under a third party's control just to relay information that the government already signed onto your NFC-enabled identity documents?
But even if you were to want user's phones to be roots of trust...
> as far as I know, they are the only Android OS publisher (and perhaps the only Linux publisher?) that bothered to implement hardware-to-app attestation chaining
GrapheneOS does that. They guarantee this more than Google because Google allows devices with known vulnerabilities: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114864326550572663 (rest of the thread is worth reading, too)
Using Google Play's instead of Android's attestation framework means that nobody else ever could enter this market indeed, no matter how secure the OS
> None of this prohibits users from modifying their bootloader, kernel, or OS image;
... unless they don't want to turn their device into a boat anchor that nothing else will talk to. It's not going to stop with age verification.
Counterproposal: fuck attestation, and fuck age verification. Individual users, not corporations, associations, or organizations, get to use any goddamned software they want any time they want for any purpose they want, and if you set up some system that can't deal with that, tough beans for you.
Or just rely on a separate trusted hardware device (think: USB+NFC yubikey) when the device itself can't be trusted.
There’s no way to prove you aren’t MitM-proxying a reply from a device not paired to your phone in that scenario, because the kernel ‘says’ it’s USB to the app but a patched kernel can lie about that unless the kernel is attested-unmodified-secured — and anyways USB can itself be mitm’d at the phys layer without the kernel knowing at all.
You can enroll keys on trusted hardware and then use them on untrusted hardware. That's how smartcards work. Enrollment is secure (say performed by your employer) and (in theory) extracting the private key is impossible.
Smartcards also seem to have the ability to issue certificate requests. I think the keys inside the cards are signed by a manufacturer trust chain (I got a gemalto card to play with for signatures and places like IdenTrust were able to verify authentic cards, but I wasn't trying to fool anything so it may be possible... but they would only issue certain levels of keys for specific cards)
I'm not saying you are wrong (I don't know enough about the details) but it all was much more sophisticated than I had thought and the chips seem to be running some sort of attestation of the chip in the card. Basically, you can't MITM things if doing so requires getting a private key that only exists in the factory. That sort of thing.
I look forward to being wrong, certainly!
Well you should understand that trusting media is not part of how modern encryption works. Having access to USB isn't any different from having access to a network switch or the airwaves. Things like yubikeys and smartcards are designed to work when using untrusted devices.
The question is how do you convince other people to trust your phone to store their secrets--not how do you yourself come to trust your own device to store your own secrets. And if you can't convince others your device is secure (i.e. "why the hell would I trust you and your phone to store my password?"), then just use something they can trust instead. I'm not saying EU is going to allow whatever, I'm just saying it's not a huge technical or usability problem to rely on something the EU should be able to trust (like a yubikey) if the EU can't trust your phone.
All valid points — however: the EU has two requirements not listed above it needs to be difficult to steal unnoticed, and it needs to minimize attempts to steal it at all.
They’re not concerned about a person handing their phone to someone else for a moment. They’re concerned about kids stealing age verification devices from people. Someone isn’t going to notice a missing yubikey until they check age next. Someone is going to miss their phone much more rapidly, be able to track it using stolen device features, and be able to report it stolen which incidentally remote kills HSM access. They can also enforce biometric checks and require a recertification after those change, which would make it nearly impossible — relative to shoulder surfing a PIN — for kids to make use of the parental device unit.
Even a fingerprint key isn’t going to meet these terms, and it’s going to have a weaker sensor that the kid will have hours or days or weeks to try and defeat using a fingerprinted glass and some glue. Locking it to biometrics stored in the phone prior to (re)certification makes it pointless for kids to try. A few still will, but word will spread.
I still personally think this is all kind of a hot mess of deferring parental authority to technology, but I’m not an EU citizen, nor a parent, so my opinion on the policy is irrelevant. I’m just here to raise awareness of why attestation is winning: technological superiority and unmatchable market fit, and an opposition that isn’t presenting coherent and most especially government-persuasive arguments to stop its use. Yubikeys are not a viable market fit in a world where tiny amoral thieves live among us — and whatever else children are to their parents, most of them have the moral integrity of a wet paper towel. Most wouldn’t think twice about lifting a yubikey, but they’ll hesitate strongly before stealing a parent’s phone, and it won’t even pay off doing so thanks to biometrics.
My mom can also do the identification on my phone and unlock it for me. There is fundamentally no way to prevent proxy issues if you let people do verification themselves
Intercepting the USB reader traffic to feed the computer a different card is about the most roundabout way of achieving that
Unfortunately I don't think they will let you do that.
Is that a reference to HAL9000?
No
> that bothered to implement hardware-to-app attestation chaining live in production end-user devices
This is why it's important that initiatives like Web Environment Integrity fail. Once the tools are in place, they will always be leveraged by the State.
> and so once they publish all that, I expect we’ll find that they’ve petitioned their attested OS signature chain to the EU as satisfying age requirements for mature gaming.
I hope that Valve pays no mind to this nonsense and continues to allow art to be accessible to anyone.
That ship sailed decades ago when Intel promoted Secure Boot as a defense against malicious modifications; it stops rootkits and it stops cheaters, what more could one ask for, etc. App attestation of this sort has been offered in certain enterprise/government Windows 10 SKUs since day one. Apple’s web attestation protocol has been live on all T2 devices for about as long as T2 has been out.
Governments have real and serious need for verifications that are backed by their force. They’re a government; they are wielding force upon citizens by doing this, knowingly and intentionally. That is a normal and widespread purpose of the State existing at all: to compel people to align with the goals of the State, whether members of the State like it or not, until such time as the State’s goals are changed by whatever means it permits or by its collapse.
If this pans out for them, as cryptographically it will but remains to be how vendors and implementations handle it at scale, then they can introduce voting from your phone — the previously-unattainable holy grail of modern democracy — precisely because it lets the government forcibly stop the cheating that device-to-app/web attestation solves. And they can do so without leaking your identity to election officials if they care to! Just visit a government booth once in a while to have your identity signature renewed (and any prior signatures issued to your identity revoked). That’s how digital wallet passports and ID cards work already today anyways, with their photo/video/NFC processes.
Western sfbay-style tech was founded on the libertarian principle that one should be able to tell the government to fuck off and deny taxation, representation, blah blah etc. in favor of one’s armed enclave that does what it feels like. It’s fine to desire that, but it’s proven too radical to be compatible with the needs of nation-states or the needs they enforce satisfactions for on behalf of their citizens. Attacking attestation won’t solve the problem of the “State”, and has led us to a point where Google can claim truthfully to a “State” that the Android forks ecosystem isn’t competent enough to be trusted, because they can’t be bother to do attestations.
> If this pans out for them, as cryptographically it will but remains to be how vendors and implementations handle it at scale, then they can introduce voting from your phone — the previously-unattainable holy grail of modern democracy — precisely because it lets the government forcibly stop the cheating that device-to-app/web attestation solves. And they can do so without leaking your identity to election officials if they care to! Just visit a government booth once in a while to have your identity signature renewed (and any prior signatures issued to your identity revoked). That’s how digital wallet passports and ID cards work already today anyways, with their photo/video/NFC processes.
we've banned all graphic depictions from the internet, required a verified name attached to every blog post, and made sure to confirm everyone's digital passport before letting them resolve a DNS query, but at least now I can vote from me phone instead of having to go outside. The future is bright!
Yeah, this future sucks, and we’ve had twenty years to push back and utterly failed to do so. I’ve tried for years to interest people in learning about attestation so they can curb it before it swings hard authoritarian, but no one wanted to listen b/c Linux is about having root and anything that challenges that belief is anathema to consider. Welcome to the party, the sky is falling just as it has been for years; someone else can be the harbinger for a while, I’m tired of watching people try the same old arguments that have failed for years.
> the Android forks ecosystem isn’t competent enough to be trusted, because they can’t be bother to do attestations
GrapheneOS has optional attestation, either local (another device) or remote (their server) attestation.
Aha! Graphene, with the support of impacted EU citizens, has grounds to petition the EU for inclusion in their age verification app, then. I hope someone makes that happen! (I am not an EU citizen and so have no ability to help.)
I am not sure if I am more disturbed by the user journey they want to introduce for accessing websites or the fact that a private company (american, chinese, I don't care) has to become the gatekeeper to let me in.
Who the hell wants this Internet...?
> Who the hell wants this Internet...?
The under educated, unthinking unwashed masses. Just look at the tea leak. The amount of people that do not care about freedom or privacy on the internet vastly outnumber those that do. And because they do democracy unmasks itself in the digital realm as the tyranny of the unthinking majority.
Weep for the future.
The lazy middle class who don't like to take the responsibility of actually contributing to their community and running their family.
ps: Had to add this post after the others identified the low class and the upper class as responsible for this ;). But depending on where you are, the low class might not be "the masses".
Politicians and their buddies scared of having lost control of mass media.
> Who the hell wants this Internet...?
Scared rich people and bureaucrats
Well meaning nordic liberals? They have been pushing chat control, I assume this is their idea as well.
I'm getting pretty tired of the EU trying to shove internet-crippling regulations down my throat. This, along with ChatControl, is clearly a path towards totalitarian control.
Who are the politicians making these decisions? How did they get elected? Did anyone vote for Totalitarianism 2.0?
Politicians are all that stands between corporations and absolute corruption. It's why they're both their primary target and the ambition of greedy people.
> I'm getting pretty tired of the EU trying to shove internet-crippling regulations down my throat
And I'm getting tired of people pulling out pitchforks without reading anything. This is how democracies end up electing people like Trump. There are no regulations to require age verification here. The EU is simply giving guidelines for implementing harmonized age verification across the EU if any member states or companies that do business in the EU want to use it instead of making people scan ID cards like they currently do and making the receiver of said scans have to understand updates to the designs of the various ID cards used throughout the EU.
Oh come on. You know exactly where this is going. Porn and social media will require age verification before you can say "who voted for this?".
You know you're making a fallacious slippery slope argument here. Age verification is already a thing on the Internet, and South Korea and Texas already require age verification for those things. Providing a proof of concept for a way to do age verification without handing over your identity doesn't change public policy. The voters decide what needs age verification.
If you're concerned about totalitarianism, you should be more concerned that Texas required people to upload their IDs to access porn sites because that was the only method available.
Governments are reflection of their people, like it or not.
Are they, though? The people don't elect the European Commission. The European Council selects candidates and the European Parliament can vote for them. The people in the European Parliament are often politicians who no one knows but sort of vote for because they're associated with their preferred party.
I don't recall any party campaigning on reducing internet freedoms.
Lengthy GitHub issue about this: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android...
It really seems like tying this to Google violates some key principles of the EU market.
If you're wondering what regulatory capture looks like, this is it.
It's more likely to be laziness by the developers.
What kind of services will use this app?
Unless their governments start issuing Android devices to all of their citizens, I don't understand how they can require use of this app for anything official.
> Unless their governments start issuing Android devices to all of their citizens, I don't understand how they can require use of this app for anything official.
Not sure who you mean by "they" but you already cannot use a lot of governmental services unless you have an Android or iOS device (at least in Austria). At least in practice that is almost impossible.
In Austria you can use a web browser + FIDO key as an alternative. It works nicely. https://ida.gv.at/de/hilfe/hilfe-zu-ida/authentifizierungsfa...
By "they" I meant EU member state governments.
> you already cannot use a lot of governmental services unless you have an Android or iOS device (at least in Austria).
That's terrible. They have official services that require an app and can't be used via a standard browser or even paper forms? What do elderly people without smartphones do?
I am in a similar situation, with very aggressive push for turning all banking and every government service into mobile applications only.
> What do elderly people without smartphones do?
They buy a smartphone and have their relatives set everything up for them. Not doing that isn't really an option because you can't even get your pension or planned (i.e. nonemergency) medical services anymore without going through the government mobile app.
If they don't have any relatives, they walk to the government building that used to solve these things for them using good old paper forms, and have officers there help them out. It's a completely braindead system that was envisioned by someone who has very little idea of how the common person lives.
Not that there are any channels to provide feedback, ironically enough. (Voting is a sham and has always been so here.)
They don't require the app for anything official. Uploading (partially redacted) scans of your ID like you would be obligated to today, or physically verifying your age for things like alcohol delivery, should also suffice.
> Uploading (partially redacted) scans of your ID like you would be obligated to today
Redacted, I wish...
To vote in the upcoming election, I was asked to upload an uncensored copy of an identity document to the website of the municipality of The Hague
To keep the domain I registered in 2014, the French TLD required me to send them the same thing by unencrypted email a few months ago. I tried sending a link to a PNG so it wouldn't linger in their inbox forever but they absolutely required it to be an attachment
To buy a prepaid card in Germany, I was required to show an uncensored identity document. I had put a tiny piece of tape tape over only the burgerservicenummer that the germans can't make use of anyway because it's the Dutch numbering system that's beholden only to specific authorities
There's scarcely anyone who appears to know what EU legislation says on identity numbers. The Dutch government themselves apparently don't
They will support iOS and Android which covers 99.9% of the population.
What about the rest? Don't basic rights apply to them?
A while ago, when the topic of the EU digital ID was brought up, I said clearly that this was going to be shit-show and that the intent was going to use this as tool to muzzle the population.
It turns out I was right. This is the intent. First require digital ID to access content/post anything on social media, then make it impossible to use said ID outside of the walled garden of Android and Apple, then tie this digital identity to your real world ID and make sure it can be revoked at anytime by the powers that be.
Bonus point, make sure everything you say or do is stored for unlimited access by law enforcement to protect the democracy(TM) or protect the children(TM).
If that is not a slippery slope, then I don't know what it is.
I also pointed out that creating a database of everyone in the EU containing a lot of PII in terms of religious preferences, sexual preferences and so on is a the stupidest idea that anyone could have considering that this tool could be used by the next parties in power to hunt down political/religious opponents.
Nobody can say that they did not know.
A URL without requirement to login to Reddit:
https://old.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/1mau7yl/eu_age_ve...
The problem isn't being handcuffed by Google or an American company, it's being handcuffed at all. Is it some kind of psychological coping skill to misdirect from the obvious problem (an age verification app that bans user software preferences)?
Who cares if it's Google or an American company. The point is you decided to let the E.U dictate what software you can run on your phone.
It's absolutely abysmal that the EU and UK are implementing laws relating to age verification requirements.
Who voted for this? Who asked for this?
Unfortunately many more people than you might think are in full support of this type of thing. The UK in particular is a very nanny state and this is sold as protecting children. You're not against protecting children, are you?
It is a rhetorical appeal to emotion, which is used to override rational debate, discourage criticism, and create false dichotomies, e.g. "you're either with the children, or you're with criminals".
This "think of the children" rhetoric targets encryption, anonimity, decentralized platforms, and private communication channels like messaging apps, VPNs, Tor, etc. It is nasty. Keep in mind that it does not actually prevent child exploitation and grooming. Most of the pedophiles are on Discord and Roblox anyways.
In any case, there are ways to prove someone is over 18 without revealing identity, but that is not that goal, is it? There are cryptographic schemes just for that, such as zk-SNARK, etc. ZKPs in general.
> Keep in mind that it does not actually prevent child exploitation and grooming.
While true, I'd avoid making that argument since it implies these restrictions might be worth implementing if they actually did prevent child harm. There is no scenario in which it is acceptable for the government to mandate encryption backdoors, for example.
The whole Chat Control crap is bullshit no one asked for, and unfortunately many countries in the EU are in favor of it. There is a map somewhere that shows the countries that are against it, I cannot find it right now.
https://www.patrick-breyer.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/sig...
Yes, that, although I wish they made a distinction between abstain vs. opposed.
EU citizens voted for this. Unfortunately, EU citizens are too lazy to vote a lot of the times, and the ones that do vote are turning more and more right-wing authoritarian.
As much as the EU pretends there's some kind of united Europe, it covers different countries, with laws ranging from "sex work is just taxed work" to "all prostitution and porn is illegal". Even basic rights like gay marriage aren't consistent between member states.
Europeans were free to provide feedback to their representatives of course: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/display/E...
However, everyone I've talked to about it said they don't care about it so they don't want to bother, which is probably what the people behind these laws are banking on.
> EU citizens voted for this.
I'm growing pretty tired of this rhetoric / rhetorical sleight of hand, but maybe this is a reasonable opportunity to discuss it:
- not all citizens of a jurisdiction are eligible for voting: in this case, cursory search suggests only 400M (88.8%) of 450M were eligible - seems a bit too high to me, but let's roll with it regardless
- not all who are eligible actually vote: voting in the EU parliamentary elections, which is what EU citizens can actually vote on, like most elsewhere, is not mandatory; it's a right, not a duty: turnout was 50.74%, and that is of the eligible population, so really just 45.1% (203M)
- most voting systems are mathematically unfair [0]: extensively researched, doesn't quite apply necessarily in this case though as per the next bit
- several key positions in the various bodies are elected indirectly: same here in the EU, at which point all bets are off
- laws, regulations, and policies are not voted for or against by citizens: same here in the EU too, nobody could have even possibly voted for this in the literal sense
It's a run of the mill representative system and I think it'd serve discussions a great deal if this was acknowledged properly. Surely it's agreeable at least that this wouldn't be such news if people were all just completely on board as the sentence "EU citizens voted for this." implies when read naively and literally.
I really don't see a point to this phrase other than inciting others. And before anyone brings it up, yes, this is common in US threads as well, yes, is often expressed by EU folks against US folks, but no, that does not make this better. Why dig ourselves into rhetorical holes unnecessarily? Being narratively justified to frame things this way doesn't mean one should (or must).
And "offering feedback" is not a vote nor a voting I'd say.
[0] https://youtu.be/qf7ws2DF-zk
Let me add the part where politicians do not give a fig about their rhetoric from before the election as soon as they get into power.
No, I fucking didn't vote for this, I hate everything about it. The worst part? Even if all of our MEPs voted against this BS, it would pass and be forced upon us anyway. All because we have given up our sovereignty to EU.
[dead]
Followers of the far-left regime actually implementing authoritarian measures blame the opposition. A pathetic tale as old as time.
This collision course has been a long time brewing, though I'm not even sure why integrity checking is included in this. The data source for the age information is the governments, there's no need to trust the clientside per se, it's just a middleman.
One thing I find reassuring is the nature of pushback on display on the repo (only read the first few comments there, mind you). Really not what I expected phrasing and rhetoric wise (unlike here), honestly kind of restored a very very tiny and fragile bit of faith in humanity in me, it's very reserved and reasonable stuff.
"age verification app," is such a phony pretext. They know that android fragmentation and the lack of consistent verifiable hardware is what prevents govts from implementing a punitive digital ID that is sufficient to punish and fine people using western standards of evidence and legal defense.
these people are monsters. don't help them, and don't be complicit. working on digital ID tech, and even disclosing vulns in it is like helping Hollerith make faster and more efficient punch cards.
You can't use device verification in production anyways. (ATM)
This has no effect, is it even used in production anywhere? It seems to be part of eIDAS which is a good thing, most countries already have their own identity systems as is stated in the README. The three or for id apps I have seen all have some kind of device check that is sent to the ID provider, it is not usually accisible for ServiceProviders though. On those apps you either get no indication or just a "seems suspicious" score.
The one in Sweden has a "return risk option". https://developers.bankid.com/api-references/auth--sign/auth
This does not make it possible to filter out people. And honestly considering the amount of shady phones people have I am not sure this will every work. Apple is sadly another issue, too many normals there.
It is nice that this is pointed out so we do not get a distopian future.
Does anyone know how this is implemented?
If the proof can not be traced back to your identity, then what stops a person from creating large amounts of proofs and distributing them?
If the proof can be traced back to your identity, then... that would suck.
They use attribute based attestation which should be mostly anonymous. The long term goal was also to implement zero knowledge proofs which would make things like age verification fully anonymous, but because of technical reasons and development constraints that idea seems to have been postponed.
The reason you can't distribute a huge amount of proofs is that the app won't let you. To make sure the app won't let you, the app tries to verify that you're not running a modified app or a modified system environment. That's the remote attestation that "bans any android system not licensed by Google".
These tokens are signed and only usable for a limited amount of time so you can't just generate a million of them and sell them for others to use.
If the app can't rely on the system working as it should, it'll need to contain less privacy-friendly measures for limiting large scale token abuse.
For the proof to be traced back to your identity, you'd need to be tracked consistently across websites, possibly with the aid of the government itself. If ZKPs make it into the app, tracking you is basically impossible.
Of course, if you're authenticating with your full name and birth date, when opening a bank account for instance, you're not going to get the anonimity benefits. Still, you do get to see what party you've authenticated with and get a button in the app to request deletion or report suspicious behaviour if you think it was a scam.
The technical specification can be found here[1], with further details here[2].
Well, it's more like a framework, so not a ton of details. I've just glossed over it, but from what I can gather they have thought about it:
No personal data, especially no information from personal identification documents such as national ID card, is stored within an [Age Verification App Instance]. Only the Proof of Age attestation, specifically indicating "older than 18", is utilized for age verification purposes
Stored Verification(8b): [Relying Parties] may optionally store information derived from the Proof of Age attestation in the User's account, allowing the User to bypass repeated verification for future visits or purchases, streamlining the User experience. In this case, authentication methods such as WebAuthN should be utilised to ensure secure access while enabling the User to choose a pseudonym, preserving privacy. Risks in case of the device sharing should be considered.
[1]: https://ageverification.dev/Technical%20Specification/archit...
[2]: https://ageverification.dev/Technical%20Specification/annexe...
Even if they can't be traced back to a name/photo identity, it would still be a privacy disaster if you could only make one proof per service.
If a user can only make one then they'll have to use that identity with that service forever. That's a nightmare for privacy. Sometimes people need another account, unknown to their employer/family/friends. People should be able to make multiple accounts without those being tied together through a common "age check" identifier. But, of course, there is no way to prevent those from being distributed.
At some level I believe that's the purpose behind some of this. If someone can only have one proof, then someone can only have one account to speak with. They'll be easier to monitor, easier to identify, easier to silence. That's why I think these types of laws and behaviors should be resisted and protested.
I've mentioned in a previous comment that it's telling that big tech isn't resisting these totally-just-coincidental ID laws coming from western countries. It supercharges their surveillance and tracking abilities, and widens their moats.
Also, porn is a smokescreen. The definition of "adult" content will rapidly expand, and these put the ID issuers in censorious a position of control over people and services. Nothing stops a government attestation server from rejecting a request because someone is blacklisted from "mass communication services" because they're a felon, protestor, LGBT activist, etc... or because a service has fallen out of favor.
The idea is, that you have a 'digital ID' on your phone, tied to your real identity, that will today be used to prove you're 18, but when the infrastructure exists, it will be used for other stuff too... like needing to attach your real name to any social media account (you already have an app that does that on your phone for the 18+ thing, so adding real name is easy to implement), and that will greatly affect freedom of speech.
This is the pr on it [0]. It was linked on hn at the time too [1]
For all the shit Google deservedly gets they seem to be genuinely trying to implement good and privacy preserving solutions to a lot of these problems.
The issue of course is that there's essentially no way to do all this stuff with software and hardware the user actually controls themselves, so you end up with hard requirements that you use big tech as gatekeepers.
This is the slippery slope that IMO eventually ends the open web.
If you take that outcome as inevitable, which at this point I basically do given all the forces lined up to restrict access to information, I suppose Google is about the best steward you could hope for.
[0] https://blog.google/products/google-pay/google-wallet-age-id...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43863672
> If you take that outcome as inevitable,
I don't and I wish Google et al would take a god damned stand against it. All it takes is 2 or 3 big companies to just not play along with the destruction of the open internet (the very same responsible for their genesis and incredible success), and the bureaucrats will eventually relent. Unfortunately they've chosen the path of least resistance, which also is the path of regulatory capture to their sole benefit. Sad to see that win over the ideals of the early net.
I agree in principle but as time goes on I have found that the free and open internet as we know it already no longer exists in practise. Theres like 5 places to go on the internet these days - your social media platform of choice, your short form content platform of choice, youtube, perhaps an AI platform, and 1 misc place of your preference. And this loop of crap seems to demand more and more of your life.
I went on youtube in bed last night to watch a 10 minute video (that I knew I had to search for to find - it was a specific one), but the app opens to shorts and they're so damn stimulating that it was 30 minutes before I finally got to the vid I wanted. I started with pure agency and was immediately thrown off course. Say what you will about my discipline or habits, but imagine the affect this has on less... aware individuals such as children.
Walking around the world you see everyone buried in their phones.
There are aspects of this initiative that I totally welcome, if it has the result of some level of de-interneting. The argument is always "they do it to protect children first, then it comes for everyone". I hope they increase resistance for the end user. I agree its sad, but what we have currently is truly awful, and less of it is a good thing.
I understand that it may not have that effect and end up in the "worst of both worlds" situation. But I don't wan't google fighting any battles for me anymore. They might try on occasion to be respectful but their bottom line is to own my attention.
Play Integrity API requirement dropped: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-app-andro...
That is a different repo
That is the repo that this PoC is forked from.
even if changes were pulled from that repo, they wouldn't make it into the downstream repo as that file has been near completely replaced, not that it is a change of anything more than a line of text in a readme
With the vassalisation of the EU, this is yet another prof that the European Commission and some other countries follow what the US wants.
Bad deal all along.
What "things" are going to depend on this Android-locked age check? What about Apple users? What about accessing it via a laptop or desktop (shock horror: running Linux!)?
My dad gets by in his "my dad" way of life without a mobile phone at all, I wonder how much longer this will be possible. I was about to rant about being forced to have a mobile if you want to participate in society, but then he uses a desktop for some of the services for which the rest of us use a mobile, so my rant falls down in that, for a while now, to participate in society you've needed either a computer or a mobile.
Hopefully computer-only can eke out some kind of base-adequate participation for a while longer.
You can also buy an Apple device but that was never your device to begin with so nothing is lost when the EU requires Apple to be the only party with the capability to modify what your device can run
iOS also be supported and will use Apple's remote attestation capabilities. But, as there are no real alternative ROMs for iOS devices, only Android users are really affected by this.
From a legal point of view, the app should be a reliable convenience feature and not replace traditional (physical) identity verification. How much your dad will be affected will depend on how shitty and lazy the services he uses are. If he doesn't use a phone or a computer, he probably won't notice the difference.
Funny how EU politicians complain about dependency on American tech and the next day do something like this. It's all cheap talk anyway as they have 0 intention to make EU based alternatives possible but it's rarely in your face so much.
No evidence is given that they won't implement non-Google remote attestation solutions like https://attestation.app/about
Indeed, the bug links to another bug where the author says that it isn't restricted to Play Services remote attestation and recently followed up with a documentation update making that clear. https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-app-andro...
> No evidence is given that they won't implement non-Google remote attestation solutions like https://attestation.app/about
Unfortunate that it doesn't matter, because they're not going to accept anything that's not attested by some authority.
Attestation in itself is a bad thing, guaranteed to be horrifically abused in ways far, far worse than any problem it could possibly solve. You do not need to know what software I am running, period.
> You do not need to know what software I am running, period.
Your employer needs to know if your devices connected to its network have been rooted without your knowledge.
In any case, this is a completely different discussion from what OP alleged, which I hope we can all agree is completely false.
My employer needs to know if their devices have been rooted. My devices should be on guest wifi or not connected at all.
So you agree, in a needlessly antagonistic way.
I'm not trying to be antagonistic, I'm just trying to make it very clear that nobody else should have a say in my device.
And a check for rooting against my knowledge probably becomes a check for rooting at all very quickly.
You agreed that your employer should be able to check that the devices you use to connect to its network are not rooted. You quibbled over the definition of "your device" against the HN guidelines. When you ask most people whose phone or laptop is on a table, they'll say it's theirs, not that it's Company X's device that they are using to do work for that company.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
> You agreed that your employer should be able to check that the devices you use to connect to its network are not rooted.
Okay I see the issue. No I do not agree with that. I'm saying if they want that guarantee then they can isolate the network. But if they don't isolate the network then it's all on them, they do not get to check all devices.
That's why my point is not just a quibble.
Also responding to the strongest interpretation sometimes means making that interpretation explicit, to make sure everyone is on the same page. In this case making the actual ownership clear. I'm not trying to dunk on you or whatever.
> But if they don't isolate the network then it's all on them, they do not get to check all devices.
This is a ridiculous point to think that I disagreed about. Of course they don't get to check that your TV and your washing machine have been rooted. I explicitly specified your devices connected to your employer's network. You're trying to interpret this in a way that doesn't make sense simply to find a point of disagreement where there is none.
Ha, now I feel like you're going out of your way to misinterpret me.
"the network" is the same network we've been talking about the entire conversation. Employer's network.
Obviously they can't control what I plug into a network they don't know about, I don't know why you think I was trying to argue that or how it's the strongest interpretation of my comment.
> "the network" is the same network we've been talking about the entire conversation. Employer's network.
That's the same network I'm talking about. I don't know why you think I'm referring to any other network. You are not allowed to connect untrusted devices to many employers' networks, and this works via remote attestation. They don't care if your TV is rooted as long as you don't connect it to their network, but if you do, they will want to make sure it isn't rooted.
> I don't know why you think I'm referring to any other network.
You started talking about my TV and my washing machine, so I thought you were accusing me of bringing in other networks to "find a point of disagreement".
Now I'm just confused why you brought up the idea of attaching them to my employer's network.
> You are not allowed to connect untrusted devices to many employers' networks, and this works via remote attestation. They don't care if your TV is rooted as long as you don't connect it to their network, but if you do, they will want to make sure it isn't rooted.
And that highlighted part is what I take issue with. They should not ask for that. Either allow my devices or ban them. They should never get to look at the attestation report for my devices (literal "my").
> Either allow my devices or ban them
There's your misunderstanding. The way to allow them or ban them is via remote attestation. How else would they be able to do that? Once you understand that, you'll also understand why I brought up your washing machine.
>The way to allow them or ban them is via remote attestation. How else would they be able to do that?
The first check should be if it's their device. If the device has the correct key to show it's theirs, they could allow it right there. Or they can go further for extra security, to ask for remote attestation of their device.
If the device claims to be owned by anyone else, they should not ask for remote attestation. Why would they need it? They already have all the information they need to decide whether to allow or block. "My washing machine (unrooted)" and "claims to be my washing machine (rooted)" should be treated exactly the same by them. Allow both or ban both, depending on the purpose of the network.
No evidence is given they will.
You replied after I had updated the comment to provide said evidence.
Adding to what I said earlier, this isn't even an app that any EU member state will use. It's just a PoC, as it says in the README. https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android...
Unfortunately for the authors, the pitch forks are already out, and the mob is on the march. It's too bad that HN is contributing to it.
It's good that there are strong reactions to dystopian work like this.
It's solving a problem that doesn't need to be solved using a solution that's fraught with risks.
The authors chose to spend their time helping governments censor information, removing choice from individuals, and the solution they choose to work on is a bad one. Any criticism they receive is well-deserved.
There are already age check requirements to do things like buy liquor online. Today, that requires uploading your ID, so the service provider gets a lot more information than just that you're above a certain age. The existence of this new way to prove your age without giving away a bunch of other information does not "[help] governments censor information" in any reasonable way.
What an absolute clown show - the EU fines Google and Apple for being monopolistic and abusing market power and then proceed to implement apps like these that can only be used on American operating systems.
Seriously you can't make this stuff up.
Yeah, EU byrocrats love corporate overlords in real life
I mean there's a perfectly rational possible explanation for this - if the fines are actually just an extra targeted tax on these companies (but it's politically inconvenient to just do it honestly by levying a tax), and they would therefore adjust the laws to make sure they could still fine them if they had already complied...
It may be that the people in charge in the EU don't really care about the market dominance as long as they can collect enough extra money from them...
Sure, so much for freedom of choice and twisting people's arms. What is it their fucking leaders sing about being freedom loving and democratic?
I don't understand how the poster of the message goes from the disclaimer tet:
> The current release provides only basic functionality, with several key features to be introduced in future versions, including:
> - App and device verification based on Google Play Integrity API and Apple App Attestation
> - Additional issuance methods beyond the currently implemented eID based method.
> These planned features align with the requirements and methods described in the Age Verification Profile.
to the "In the case of Android, genuine means"...
I don't see the word "genuine" in the disclaimer. Is that a necessary part of using the "Google Play Integrity API" ?
(I'm genuinely asking, I feel like I'm missing some implicit context here.)
EU: "We need to decouple from the independence of the US". Many (local and national) entities proceed to ditch Microsoft for it.
Also the EU: Well if you don't have a Google or Apple account you are not getting age verified.
I never want to read about how the EU “cares about people’s privacy” unlike the evil US
Neither cares about privacy, to be honest.
Internet has become a commidity that needs to be reinvented with a focus in the real human interactions and the privacy.
How?, who?, Where? I'm afraid it is too late to find a group of people interested in creating a real network outside of the system. The best that i found was the LoRa communities but are useless for anyone submerged in the Tiktokian distopy.
I don't understand what device verification is even meant to do here. What's the threat model of a child who knows how to root their phone and defeat verification checks manually but doesn't know how to find an adult to create an account and give them the password?
It is to create an infrastructure for global surveillance and control of all citizens.
> EU age verification app to ban any Android system not licensed by Google
Oh, so now we know who is pushing for age verification. FAANG
They're pushing for anything that makes their services essential and indispensable for every citizen, and thereby locks all future competition out.
Europeans, fighting for European sovereignty, bowing down to Google and Microsoft
How sad is that, Europeans, you have fallen this low
The title of the submission is misleading.
The linked Reddit discussion is about the issue of attestation in the EU age verification application requiring a licensed version of Android to function properly.
The EU is not banning non licensed Android systems. This would make it hard for EU citizens to use those though, if they need that app.
Looks like someone just got a really cushy job at Google when they retire from leading this system.
I think this misses the forest for the trees. I could care less if the app requires a Google Android phone or non-jailbroken iPhone to work. I care that age verification exists in the first place, when it most definitely shouldn't. Arguing and ranting about how a huge privacy compromise functions misses the point that privacy is being compromised.
It's just odd to see them bringing up America when their own government created this. Not the US. How about fight the actual problem instead of making sure the problem works on more devices.
A lot of discussion, but one contradiction seems to have gone unnoticed; notably, the EU's DMA decision about Apple having to allow alternative app stores. Go figure again about these contradictory moves.
The first comment was hilarious: "so how does one report the EU for breaching GDPR" and it reminds me of a comment on r/androiddev where Google was requiring solo devs to have a verifiable phone number for support and the commenter said something like: "Meanwhile, Google itself do not have a support phone number for his Android devs!"
We shouldn't need Age Verification checks for adults in the first place.
Create a better, standardized, open-source parental control tool that is installed by default on all types of device that can connect to the web.
The internet aspect of the parental control should be a "Per Whitelist" system rather than Blacklisting. The parents should be the ones to decide which domains are Whitelisted for their kids, and government bodies could contribute with curated lists to help establish a base.
Yes, there would be some gray area sites like search engine image search, or social media sites like Twitter that can allow you to stumble into pornography, and that is why these devices that have the software turned ON, should send a token through the browser saying "Parental Control". It would be easier for websites to implement a blanket block of certain aspects of their site than expect them to implement whole ID checks systems and security to make sure that no leaks occur (look at the TEA app) like the UK is expecting everyone to do.
Also, I'm for teenagers (not little children) having access to pornography. I was once a teenager, every adult was, and we know that it's a natural thing to masturbate which includes the consumption of pornography for most in some way. Repressing their desires, their sexuality, and making this private aspect of their life difficult isn't the way. Yes, yes, there is nuance to it, (very hardcore/addiction/etc) but it should be up to the parents to decide with given tools if they trust their kid to consume such a thing.
As for the tool itself. Of course we have parental tools, but they can be pretty garbage, their all different, they're out of the way, and I understand that many people simply don't know how to operate them. That's why I believe that creating a standardized open-source project that multiple governments can directly contribute to and advertise for parents is the way, because at the end of the day, it should be up to the parents to decide these things, and for the government to facility that choice.
Obviously, besides the internet aspect, the tool should have all the bells and whistles that you'd expect from one, but that's not the topic.
EDIT: And yes, some children would find a way, just like they're doing now for the currently implemented ID checks. It's not lost of me that VPNs with free plans suddenly exploded in 4 digits % worth of downloads. A lot of those are tiny people who are smart enough. Or using an app like a game to trick Facial Recognition software.
> [...] free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. [...] Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master
Will this be the end of kyc companies like veriff, onfido, jumio, trulioo and whatever else is this crowded space in europe?
Will people sign up to banks and betting apps with their eu wallet digital identity?
Lol. People put way too much trust in governments.
If it's not unbelievably obvious, there's an entire class of people flying private jets to "world summits" where the transcripts aren't disclosed. What do you think is going on? Use your brain.
I don't know why people on here love the Government. They are probably advocating for a Government, but not this. A government that does its basic functions, without too much overreach, something like minarchism.
This is ridiculous but it's worth pointing out that if the EU would provide their own infrastructure for "age verification" it would be even more Dystopian. The problem is not really that the EU in this case would give Google and Apple monopolies that locks out all competition, the problem is the "age verification" itself. Nobody needs, nobody wants it, and it's the starting point for all kinds of browsing and chat control measures dictated by governments.
I wonder if this requirement stemming from the recently announced trade deal with the US.
It's not. You can look at the Git history, it was added two months ago: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android...
I know you can’t access the Internet but at least you can use USB-C. Europe LOL!
Any EU friends can tell me which politicians are behind this?
There is a correct cryptographic solution for information verification online:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43715884#43722778
All by design :)
Wow, kids are installing random operating systems from internet into their phones right?
I guess GDPR is on the way out, unless Google pinky promises to keep all processing/data local to each EU state?
What if the data stays on the phone?
The GDPR data locality requirement is that personal data must remain in the European Economic Area (unless an exception applies.) It has no requirement that data remains local to each state.
That's easy for a company like Google to comply with. In fact the company I work for uses Google European data centers to comply with GDPR.
At the end of the day someone could always grab this code, remove the verification step, and distribute that as a new app.
That "someone" doesn't understand how hardware backed platform attestation works.
The wikipedia page does a pretty good job at explaining it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing
Yes, they do. There's nothing in the spec this app implements that actually requires that step. The app just chooses to do it in this case.
Or rather is planning to. Right now it doesn't even have that integrity check, despite fully implementing the verification flow.
who do we contact for this mess?
[dead]