EU DABbing on minors.

So we shouldn't voice our discontent? Sorry but that doesn't make sense.

Come up and bring forward a better initative or don't discourage people to use the one already established.

This initiative is just a smokescreen; it actually pushes things down the slippery slope.

Citizens must not be forced to identify themselves to access lawful online content or services unless strictly necessary, proportionate and provided by law. The legislation should require anonymous or pseudonymous proof-of-age, data minimisation, selective disclosure

Define "necessary". Define "by law". The pushers for proof-of-age already say it's anonymous – but it can't be.

this is very confusingly written. the use of "voluntary" makes it sound basically ineffective, as it can be read like "no id necessary for places that don't need id"

Signed.

This is true, but VDL has pulled an enormous amount of power to herself (not to the Commission - to herself) and when it comes to these matters (the US trade 'deal' is another good example) she has a lot of influence even if she operates under a Council mandate. I am not sure how big her influence is in the Council, she's a member but without voting rights.

Most of our national leaders are letting us down again and again, indeed.

I strongly believe in the ideas and ideals in the EU, I just wish our leaders did as well.

The European Comission is not the only one to blame, since it has limited power on its own. The European Council (of which VDL is also a member) is in large part responsible for delegating the Comission to fulfill various duties such as negotiations with the US, as well as instructing the Comission on the expected results.

That said, any time the European Comission is assigned to any task or receives any power from the Council - it overwhelmingly acts in the best interests of the US, not the EU.

The main problem we're dealing with is that many EU states and institutions are filled with American assets. The system seems fine on paper, but everything goes to shit as soon as several heads of state/government are aligned with our enemies.

I'm not sure how many more ways VDL et al can find to sell us out to the US - every single time and neither to our benefit nor in good faith. Even strategically and politically this seems like an exceptionally bad move.

It's absurd how little control we have over our own data even while we have the legislation in place.

No EU

You are being stupid on purpose. The French government is actively fighting this with https://github.com/suitenumerique and I'm sure most European countries will follow.

Cops and secret services have been using custom de-googled Android phones for years, replacing Microsoft is another step.

So I guess, MS teams, Windows, Outlook doesn't do that at all.

Yes. LLMs bypass security due to needing an internet connection, and the user potentially inputting private information to a US application.

Does internet do that?

Do calculators exfiltrate private government information every time you make an addition? That would be huge.

Misleading headline

Stupid move. What next, ban calculators, next computers? May be internet?

Good.

we can just, like, not go.

Really smart indeed! If your algorithm recommends something, then you are automatically liable for that content. I like it. It would really change things!

i think there are privacy preserving ways of validating users as real humans but i doubt that will be the mechanism proposed

the mechanism to counter disinformation is equally tricky but we should definitely start trying

The problem with that is: https://www.techdirt.com/2019/11/20/masnicks-impossibility-theorem-content-moderation-scale-is-impossible-to-do-well/

My own idea, don't make it depend on platform size.

Make it depend on the existence of recommendation algorithms: anything recommended by an algorithm counts as speech by the platform.

If that were the law, any forum or wiki no matter who operates it isn't liable, but Facebook or TikTok would need to quickly turn off all options except "show me chronologically what the accounts I explicitly followed posted" (of course "most liked in the last 12 hours" or similar would also still be ok, but "this too might interest you based on your previous activity" wouldn't). That would also turn them into actually useful communication systems.

Social media have a very difficult problem to solve: the lack of consequences (due, in part, to anonymity) makes them a cesspool where people can be the absolute worse and rarely face any punishment for it.

They also have a bot problem that's also hard to solve.

We need to fight these issues and, while identifying the uses definitely helps, the loss of privacy is too big for it to be a good trade-off.

The solution is much simpler: start making these companies responsible of what happens in their grounds as soon as they grow under a certain threshold.

If your social network has more than, say, 1 million users, you are big enough to be held accountable for what happens there.

This way, you force the big ones to start worrying about what happens in their grounds while also leaving small communities (that usually lack the means to moderate 24/7 their places) untouched in the same way they are now.

Here is your verified ID: MPX5846-2. Use it responsibly!

If they hate privacy, why can't we have a look at their email accounts?