Can they just stop pretending these laws are not about eroding privacy and be honest for ounce.

EU’s new social media child protection state surveillance rules to require all social media accounts to produce state ID

FTFY

Eliminating online privacy has always been framed as "protecting children" and it's always been 100% about surveillance

Well if everyone's identity is stolen then I guess your identity will mean nothing.

This will just push the actual criminals further underground, while everyone else gets spied on. lose-lose.

Ironically, kids might still get around the new restriction by using a virtual private network (VPN) connection, which virtually positions the computer in another country, at the time of signing up.

This is just going to be one long pointless game of whackamole and as effective as Prohibition was in the US.

How else is Mrs. von der Leyen supposed to sue people that speak badly about EU politicians?

That stuff would 100% get leaked and ruin many lives. Hell it would ruin lives even if only authorized authorities have access to it because some perverted cops or politicians will abuse it to stalk women and children. They‘re already doing it but getting a live feed of someone’s online activity by typing in a single number makes it so much more convenient for bad actors. And it would also get leaked on top of it.

Great, this might actually kill centralized social media in a long run. Future generations will grow up on decentralized web because it will be the only one they can access.

Yeah, no.

Ursula von der Leyen, making the internet progressively worse year by year. Cookie banners, GDPR consent dialogs, and now ID verification. Please just retire and take up a different hobby, like knitting.

Honestly? State ID is better than the current solution which is giving Thiel-affiliated companies photo and other data.

Ideally I'd rather have a governments provided digital ID that's more secure and just gives the company limited metadata instead of full ID info provided from gov't to company. Put in rules requiring warrants or subpoenas for lookups.

EU being shitty as always.

Many half-assed ideas will never make a full-assed idea.

Between this and Wsocial, it is pretty clear that whoever is making IT decisions needs to be let go.

This is not Doctorow's enshittification; this is an attempt at domesticating users into thinking it is a normal thing to upload your ID to random cloud servers or hand over your biometric data to use WhatsApp??? This isn't protecting children. It is giving the social media giants permission to allow ads for things like gambling and line their pockets. If I worked in advertising, I'd be pretty happy.

And the anonymous internet gets another nail in the coffin. Endgame is every comment identifiable and legally (unlike state intelligence agencies) actionable against you, and the chilling effect that will have on free speech, communication, and organization.

Hail the rise of techno fascism, the entire internet will be facebook.

Can they not palm it off on the corpos to do for them? The states already have the identification apparatus, they should step up and provide age verification services. Meta and Steam do not need my photo ID, just that I'm over 18. If we can't have freedom, at least minimize the harm.

Do the EU citizens want this? Where's the democracy?

Stupid idea