The current draft would cover every kind of service that allows people to exchange information so that every DM you send on reddit, twitter, discord, steam, ... would be have to be scanned. Not even the most totalitarian governments on this planet have tried to implement something like this. Also it sounds extremely illusory that the people exchanging CSAM wouldn't simply switch to private services knowing their messages on public services are scanned.
"... As services which enable direct interpersonal and interactive exchange of information merely as a minor ancillary feature that is intrinsically linked to another service, such as chat and similar functions as part of gaming, image-sharing and video-hosting are equally at risk of misuse, they should also be covered by this Regulation. "
> Not even the most totalitarian governments on this planet have tried to implement something like this.
Arguably North Korea since their RedStar OS had a kernel module that scanned all files and text looking for keywords like 'torture'. And if you're being compared to one of the most brutal and isolated dictatorships on Earth, things are not good.
>Also it sounds extremely illusory that the people exchanging CSAM wouldn't simply switch to private services knowing their messages on public services are scanned.
The justification is obviously a lie anyway. If CSAM were such a huge concern, you wouldn't have member states where distributing CSAM is about as severe of a crime as theft, which is the case in Germany.
Surely the first step would be to have actual significant criminal charges for these crimes in all member states.
page 46. "... measures shall be ... targeted and proportionate in relation to that risk, taking into account, in particular, the seriousness of the risk as well as the provider’s financial and technological
capabilities and the number of users; ..."
.
.
It's a big framework to push the industry to have more "parental controls".
Everything is covered, but there the actual requirements make sense. See page 45.
It's still bad, because it's extremely tone-deaf (and playing with fire is bad), but it's written by and for policy idiots, who live in Word documents, and (un)fortunately rarely have contact with the outside world.
That's an interesting thread ... they claim they won't be compliant, which I applaud, but what will happen is that unwitting Signal users will end up being targeted by law enforcement. There are already precedents of people with "secure" phones or encrypted messaging apps being targeted, such as the Sky ECC case.
If Signal can’t be installed or updated via the App Store anyone, that’s already enough to exclude 99.9% of all users - no need to involve law enforcement.
They are not somehow bluffing or threatening this simply to try to change the law. It's a principled stance that they simply cannot provide E2E encrypted chat under such conditions. So either they break their protocol in which case their claimed offer would be a lie, or they leave.
Seems like the only choice they have, really. Also, by "leave EU" I'm pretty sure they mean not offer their app in the EU, so yes I think they expect their EU user base to be zero in this scenario.
To my knowledge, Signal makes a grand total of €0 in profit in Europe, or anywhere else for that matter, being a not-for-profit. It is not the purpose of a not-for-profit to grow exponentially. The Signal Foundation's mission is to ensure the continued existence of a secure messenger app. The people in charge of Signal take that mission very seriously, to their great credit.
There are already anti-circumvention mechanisms built into Signal to facilitate use in places like China and Iran, so they've shown no interest in compliance where that goes directly contrary to their mission. Should they be removed from the App Store in Europe, I imagine they'll work on making use of the EU's own push to open iOS up for alternative app stores / PWAs. (It's clear that the EU is unhappy with Apple's current take on compliance, so we can expect that to open up further.)
I think it would be feasible for Whatsapp, Telegram and Signal to form a coalition that pledges to withdraw from any country or market that tries to pull these shenanigans, such that the sum of them is big enough to play that game.
The hardest to convince would be Whatsapp, but I think that Zuckerberg is one of the few big tech CEOs that still has principles, at least sometimes. I think it could happen.
Thanks to hn crowd, who explained it's not super difficult (and not going to lie, summer $500 discount), a Google pixel phone, soon running GrapheneOS, is on it's way.
Can GrapheneOS prevent detection of somebody sideloading Signal?
Probably not but you still need to have someone to someone to communicate with even if you manage to install it. If you can't get it on the mainstream app stores it will just be a niche app for "privacy nerds" and drug dealers (in the EU at least..)
We learnt the value of free speech the hard way, and very slowly. Now we need to keep extending such notions to the rapidly increasing frontiers that new tech is exposing.
Hopefully with more tech-savvy generations gradually taking power, this will happen without too many painful lessons.
I think one of the main problems "free speech absolutist" have is that they chose such an awkward phrase to self-identify themselves. The word "absolutist" is so unambiguous that it implies that seemingly no one would qualify for it besides true loons which makes the whole idea easy to dismiss.
When you really get down to it, almost everyone supports some type of restriction on speech. This should be especially apparent when discussing legislation like this in which the goal is preventing the distribution of child porn. How can a "free speech absolutist" be okay with a government making certain images and videos illegal to share? Wouldn't a true absolutist fight for people's right to distribute child porn?
The ambiguity of "absolutist" ends up making any reasonable "free speech absolutist" debate the meaning of the word "speech". Suddenly things like child porn, defamation, threats, fraud, and/or the location of Elon Musk's private plane need to be debated as whether they qualify as "speech". The chosen phrase necessitates that the "absolutist" need to weaken the idea of "free speech" in order to seem reasonable. Which in turn makes people who are ostensibly pro-free speech start to question whether something like hate speech should even qualify for free speech protections.
So a "free speech absolutist" either needs to argue some truly extreme views like why child porn should be legal or they weaken the overall pro-free speech side of the whole debate.
Because frankly free speech absolutists got hijacked by people who have no intention of creating free speech (such as Musk). And frankly, many of the arguments are not meaningful to normal people or to those opposing it. You have to talk to your audience. And in this case it is recognizing that most of laws controlling speech has not been aimed at those universally hated like Nazis, but rather those who have little power, like minorities. People think there is a free lunch here, but it just doesn't exist.
So the free speech absolutist groups got infiltrated by those that wanted to dog whistle and (almost) never tailored arguments to those who were strongly opposed; and worse, those who need free speech the most.
The same often goes for encryption. And we have to deal with adversaries that are willing to straight up lie and promise things that sound nice and sound accurate (things that follow when using basic logic but don't if nuance is incorporated). There are no universal optimas, things with no downsides/costs. But most importantly we have to tailor arguments to audiences, not expect them to be just taken and understood like we do. The priors are different and their objective functions may be different as well. So often people will argue what they think is most important to fall of deaf ears because people don't consider that thing important (at least in context).
I didn't expect this much of a reaction and didn't have time to engage, as mentioned this is not my fight anymore, but I will try to be helpful.
Free speech absolutism is also known as 'Meiklejohnian absolutism' which pertains to the 1st amendment with a particular opposition to the liberal interpretation of 'clear and present danger'. Heather Lynn Mac Donald is prominent person who holds similar views on speech and she makes the case that calling for end of Israel is protected free speech since there is not a 'clear and present danger'. The people calling for that genocide are presently unable to carry it out. It's actually one of the things I agree with Claudine Gay about. The problem in Harvard's case is that it's selective free speech but that is a different issue.
The liberal interpretation of the 'clear and present danger' carve out for the 1st amendment is the reason why there is so much emphasis on tying speech to violence. This is why safe spaces must be created where views that could make things unsafe are not permitted. For example, misgendering people could cause them to commit suicide therefore you are in effect murdering people with your words. It's a total stretch of the 'clear and present danger' but it is done at such a scale that is has been effective.
The last thing I fought against was the removal of The Daily Stormer from the internet. I figured it set a bad precedent which was sure to be abused. Once services have signaled that they can be swayed then immense pressure would be brought to bear to sway them further. Another reason is that I think it's important to hear what people say instead of what some people say about what some other people say. I think the Taliban and ISIS should also have websites. I also figured it was very counter productive. If you're going to do it once, fine, but don't keep doing it. By first forcing the most extreme people out of mainstream and onto alternate sites the character of those sites will change to be more extreme. By subsequently forcing less extreme people out of mainstream these people have no where to go except for the already extreme sites where they will be outnumbered and they will see the existing extreme views as the new consensus. Slowly salami-slicing the mainstream fosters the creation of a large and very extreme population which is extremely counter productive. A similar effect can be seen in prison populations where many people who go to prison are forced to join dangerous gangs for their own protection and instead of becoming rehabilitated they become far more dangerous than when they went in.
I think cynical political operatives knew this and did this intentionally as part of the 'pied piper' strategy where the 'basket of deplorables' needs to both be large and unpalatable to the rest of the population in order for that group to be effectively disenfranchised. The problem is when that basket gets too big and is no longer able to be disenfranchised and instead elects the pied piper president. I think Q-anon is an soviet style 'Operation Trust' that basically sent a substantial portion of the population insane - intentionally. One would think that they would have learned their lesson the first time when Trump got elected, but having succeed the second time they're going to try for a third time. This whole process is immensely damaging. Even now the attempts to destroy Trump are counter productive and instead helping him.
My primary concern is for the health of the middle class and I worry about mass immigration undermining that. I say this as an immigrant with the understanding that I would be personally worse off were it not for immigration. I think those in the middle class have legitimate grievances and ignoring the issue of mass immigration and deriding those opposed to it as hateful bigoted stay at home xenophobes has lead to the success of populists parties. Attempts at disenfranchising those populists parties with coalitions has only delayed the now seemingly inevitable.
I'm vehemently against hate speech laws, they start out as hate speech modifiers and through that simple existence now require the courts to establish thoughts through invasions of privacy. I think this rises to the level of thought crime in effect and is of course very Orwellian. Once the notion of hate speech crimes has been established it was just a matter of time before legislation makes it official, if not at the federal level then at the state level. I think the new 'anti-Zionism is antisemitism' conflation in combination with 'antisemitism is hate speech' in effect now makes criticism of Israel illegal, it'll be interesting to see how that is enforced as it's such a ridiculous notion. Predictably the left is now on the receiving end of the very policies there were instrumental in establishing. They have been hoisted by their own petard.
The attempt to stamp out 'hate' makes as much sense as the Soviet attempts in their creation of the 'New Soviet man' free from 'greed'. There are already proposals to stop companies from being 'greedy' though legislation.
I find it rather interesting that Popper's paradox espouses the idea that one must be 'intolerant of the things that threaten tolerance' sounds really similar to George Lincoln Rockwell's philosophy of 'you must hate the things that threaten what you love.' In both cases giving people license to do what they wanted to do anyway.
For me the battle is over, limited to posts like this, my focus these days is to avoid the crushing of the middle class by being as economically far away from the middle class as possible.
Honest question: why would a free speech absolutist start a discussion here, on this site? I have a feeling that plenty of rules here [0] wouldn't be accepted by such a crowd.
> This is why the roles of the major players in society (government, monopolies) need to be circumscribed ... We need some sort of human right for digital privacy to make this sort of thing illegal
The entities that need to be circumscribed need to enforce a law that circumscribes themselves? Those incentives do not seem to align to form a stable structure.
The only way is to have a broad-based idea among the people about exactly what is allowed for a government and a big business.
There's a strong and widespread expectation among many that it's morally imperative for them to be able to elect their own government. So any moves by the government to limit this will be met by fierce resistance.
If a similar idea existed about privacy, these sneaky moves wouldn't be feasible and would leave a bad taste in the mouths even of the perpetrators.
Unfortunately, many among us are of the "But I've got nothing to hide" persuasion.
That's why you need to always ensure authority rests with individuals, or the ability to secure against unjust authority.
The second your only recourse against authority is to politely ask it not to do something bad to you (maybe, for instance, on a piece of paper with multiple choice questions), you have no real autonomy.
> We need some sort of human right for digital privacy to make this sort of thing illegal.
This already exists in the EU, the EU charter of Fundamental Rights https://fra.europa.eu/en/eu-charter/article/7-respect-privat.... states "Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications", however it seems to have been ignored.
" Maybe checks and balances would work as a system, but the EU has neither " This is just wrong. There are courts (on EU level and national level), the council and the parlament.
What about letting people to learn about privacy in digital world in first place? Regulations take individual responsibility and create feeling of something is solved by government. But no one knows what exactly, how is it done and most important... Why.
Tell that to the people cheering the EU "sticking it" to the megacorporations like Apple. Not that those policies were bad on their own but we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking that the bureaucrats in Brussels ever cared about anything else than exerting their power and control over anything they can touch...
The administrative budget of the EU should be cut by 3-4x times and the money should be spent on something more useful because clearly they are out of control and have nothing better to do. While we're at turning Belgium into something like DC and disenfranchising their government/people living there wouldn't be the worst idea since they clearly have been co-opted into propagating this nonsense.
EU is, and always was, a compensation job for failed national politicians at their respective national levels. It's the trade horse for allowing your party buddies to take over the government jobs.
EU politicians should keep their over inflated salaries, and stick to what they are good at. Meeting with Google and Microsoft lobbyists at the best Brussels luxury restaurants.
EU was established to provide mutual economic and military security in Europe on a federal model following WW2, and it's done very well in that aim. Of course it's not perfect, but shallow takes like the one above provide nothing of value.
> established to provide mutual economic and military security in Europe
Yes and it was/is very successful at that. The overpaid and incompetent bureaucracy in Brussels seems to be mostly tangential if not detrimental to that.
Also to be fair your take is also very shallow and provides little value.
> shallow takes like the one above provide nothing of value.
The previous Portuguese PM António Costa, who had to resign amid a corruption inquiry...Has just been announced today for an EU role that will triplicate his previous annual salary as Portuguese prime minister
"...Costa's appetite for a top European position has been an open secret for years. In March 2022, amid speculation Costa was angling for a Brussels job, Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa warned him that he would call an election if he were to leave his post early..."
It is a graft and of the worst kind, and naive takes like yours is what led to scenarios like Brexit. It's a jobs for the boys organization and you are not part of the club.
At least far as it comes to privacy Apple and even FB, MS and Google to an extent share the same interests as their users, unlike the EU bureaucrats who just seem to be salty because they are unable to exert control over society and justify their existence (they might pass some decent policies while they are it that's just mostly a coincident..).
If Chat Control goes ahead long-term that will outweigh any benefits DMA might have.
DMA, like any other regulation that preceded it, was severely lobbied down. It happened in spite of EU. There is too great of a democratic consensus for it to be completely ignored. Do not get this wrong.
First: nothing against a polemic comment against politicians but in this case, the proposal is coming from the council, which is made of national politicians and this news was written by a EU politician (Patrick Breyer of the Pirate Party Germany), so maybe a bit misplaced.
No they should be kept accountable for their actions and the money they waste. Currently there is no mechanism for that, but i m sure hordes of them would quit if we made one
I already kicked up a shit here in NL together with a few other well connected people (with success) but it's a little frustrating that there's little more to do other than hope that nerds in other EU countries can make a difference.
Call your representatives and try to get into contact with the key civil servants involved. Then explain the problem to them. Just an honest argument. I mean a lot of us have kids and want to protect them. Totally agree with the concept.
Only this isn't something which can be solved by technical measures without abandoning "Liberté, égalité, fraternité". This is something for China/Russia/Iran/North Korea/England, not France.
For any regulation or directive to pass, it needs to pass both the Parliament and the Council. Passing the Council means it needs unanimous approval from every member country. I don't see what "blocking majority" the article refers to, one country should be enough. Unless they mean stop it even before it reaches a Council vote, in which case that might be true.
Perhaps the German pirate party should have sticked to focusing on privacy and digital rights instead of becoming a second Green party with a far left bend.
Really his snide at the right gaining traction in his post shows that he still doesn't get it.
I think the government is more reasonable than the private corporations. As an example, I got suspended by Facebook yesterday with nobody to contact. All my friends from school, relatives, and former coworkers are gone - with most of them I was connected only via Facebook. All my messages in Facebook Messenger groups have been deleted! Everything that I ever posted, shared, or reacted to - gone! With no recourse - all at the mercy of some 20-year-old reviewer. Yeah, the government sucks, but private corporations suck much more! At least I can complain to the government and talk to real people!
I know there are alternatives to Facebook - I've pitched all of them to my friends, but people my age are still only on Facebook.
It's time for humanity to move on, to social/messaging platforms not controlled by (for-profit) entities. Or ideally by themselves. Have you seen https://lurk-lang.org? Now it's even possible for anyone to provably compute a specific algorithm on your encrypted data!
The proposal leaked a few weeks ago[1] is extremely vague on this matter and does not clarify how providers should detect CSAM "prior to transmission". Is anyone aware of any sort of scanning technology that can be implemented purely on the client side? Note that the leaked text says that it should be able to detect known and new abuse material.
In the "think of the children" scenario the parents are incentivized to consent to some filter. (So they or someone(!!!) gets an alert if the boogeyman is talking to their kids, asking them to send nudes, or sending dick pics.)
See recital 13 on top of page 7 for the definition.
And see 17 on bottom of page 8 for this:
"To allow for innovation and ensure proportionality and technological neutrality, no exhaustive list of the compulsory mitigation measures should be established"
and
(page 46) "... measures shall be ... targeted and proportionate in relation to that risk, taking into account, in particular, the seriousness of the risk as well as the provider’s financial and technological capabilities and the number of users; ..."
This is a framework. It seems to be coming from overly-anxious law nerds who can't stop thinking of the children. (And yes, this usually makes them a problem, because they're nigh unreasonable.)
It seem to be set up as a DIY thing for providers. And, again, for parents it makes sense, let your kids surf on the marked-safe-for-kids part of the Internet. (And nowadays kids really spend most of their time on (in!) certain apps, not in a web browser.)
The ugly part is that there are fines to compel the providers to adjust their risk metrics. (page 104, page 110 mentions max 6% of global turnover)
This clearly seems to be a softish push to assign a cost to internet ecosystems for online child sexual abuse.
On page 45 there are some requirements.
The provider needs to think about risks (but guidelines will come from authorities anyway), have some appropriate budget to actually work on this it the context of its own service, and then if it looks like there are problems it should spend money on remediation. (Ie. spend on content moderation, work with other providers in the industry, have a team and provide UX to notify that team, and allow users to limit what they share with others based on age.)
Readit News
"... As services which enable direct interpersonal and interactive exchange of information merely as a minor ancillary feature that is intrinsically linked to another service, such as chat and similar functions as part of gaming, image-sharing and video-hosting are equally at risk of misuse, they should also be covered by this Regulation. "
https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2024/05/2024-05-28_Cou...
Arguably North Korea since their RedStar OS had a kernel module that scanned all files and text looking for keywords like 'torture'. And if you're being compared to one of the most brutal and isolated dictatorships on Earth, things are not good.
The justification is obviously a lie anyway. If CSAM were such a huge concern, you wouldn't have member states where distributing CSAM is about as severe of a crime as theft, which is the case in Germany.
Surely the first step would be to have actual significant criminal charges for these crimes in all member states.
self hosted chats included? ;)
.
.
It's a big framework to push the industry to have more "parental controls".
Everything is covered, but there the actual requirements make sense. See page 45.
It's still bad, because it's extremely tone-deaf (and playing with fire is bad), but it's written by and for policy idiots, who live in Word documents, and (un)fortunately rarely have contact with the outside world.
Dead Comment
https://mastodon.world/@Mer__edith/112535616774247450
Seems like a good thing. If nothing else works at least that might bring some attention to this nonsense..
They'll just be blocked from the app store for EU users and their user base in the EU will drop to near zero within a year.
They are not somehow bluffing or threatening this simply to try to change the law. It's a principled stance that they simply cannot provide E2E encrypted chat under such conditions. So either they break their protocol in which case their claimed offer would be a lie, or they leave.
Seems like the only choice they have, really. Also, by "leave EU" I'm pretty sure they mean not offer their app in the EU, so yes I think they expect their EU user base to be zero in this scenario.
There are already anti-circumvention mechanisms built into Signal to facilitate use in places like China and Iran, so they've shown no interest in compliance where that goes directly contrary to their mission. Should they be removed from the App Store in Europe, I imagine they'll work on making use of the EU's own push to open iOS up for alternative app stores / PWAs. (It's clear that the EU is unhappy with Apple's current take on compliance, so we can expect that to open up further.)
The hardest to convince would be Whatsapp, but I think that Zuckerberg is one of the few big tech CEOs that still has principles, at least sometimes. I think it could happen.
Hint: I'm taking Simons' role in this: They won't drop to zero.
Can GrapheneOS prevent detection of somebody sideloading Signal?
Large organizations will always try to grow in size and power.
We need some sort of human right for digital privacy to make this sort of thing illegal.
Hopefully with more tech-savvy generations gradually taking power, this will happen without too many painful lessons.
I think one of the main problems "free speech absolutist" have is that they chose such an awkward phrase to self-identify themselves. The word "absolutist" is so unambiguous that it implies that seemingly no one would qualify for it besides true loons which makes the whole idea easy to dismiss.
When you really get down to it, almost everyone supports some type of restriction on speech. This should be especially apparent when discussing legislation like this in which the goal is preventing the distribution of child porn. How can a "free speech absolutist" be okay with a government making certain images and videos illegal to share? Wouldn't a true absolutist fight for people's right to distribute child porn?
The ambiguity of "absolutist" ends up making any reasonable "free speech absolutist" debate the meaning of the word "speech". Suddenly things like child porn, defamation, threats, fraud, and/or the location of Elon Musk's private plane need to be debated as whether they qualify as "speech". The chosen phrase necessitates that the "absolutist" need to weaken the idea of "free speech" in order to seem reasonable. Which in turn makes people who are ostensibly pro-free speech start to question whether something like hate speech should even qualify for free speech protections.
So a "free speech absolutist" either needs to argue some truly extreme views like why child porn should be legal or they weaken the overall pro-free speech side of the whole debate.
So the free speech absolutist groups got infiltrated by those that wanted to dog whistle and (almost) never tailored arguments to those who were strongly opposed; and worse, those who need free speech the most.
The same often goes for encryption. And we have to deal with adversaries that are willing to straight up lie and promise things that sound nice and sound accurate (things that follow when using basic logic but don't if nuance is incorporated). There are no universal optimas, things with no downsides/costs. But most importantly we have to tailor arguments to audiences, not expect them to be just taken and understood like we do. The priors are different and their objective functions may be different as well. So often people will argue what they think is most important to fall of deaf ears because people don't consider that thing important (at least in context).
How about just political opinions? How quickly we forgot "free speech zones." This is the government actually limiting public speech in the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone
BTW, I am not for this regulation in any way. I just don't see the connection to hate speech.
Free speech absolutism is also known as 'Meiklejohnian absolutism' which pertains to the 1st amendment with a particular opposition to the liberal interpretation of 'clear and present danger'. Heather Lynn Mac Donald is prominent person who holds similar views on speech and she makes the case that calling for end of Israel is protected free speech since there is not a 'clear and present danger'. The people calling for that genocide are presently unable to carry it out. It's actually one of the things I agree with Claudine Gay about. The problem in Harvard's case is that it's selective free speech but that is a different issue.
The liberal interpretation of the 'clear and present danger' carve out for the 1st amendment is the reason why there is so much emphasis on tying speech to violence. This is why safe spaces must be created where views that could make things unsafe are not permitted. For example, misgendering people could cause them to commit suicide therefore you are in effect murdering people with your words. It's a total stretch of the 'clear and present danger' but it is done at such a scale that is has been effective.
The last thing I fought against was the removal of The Daily Stormer from the internet. I figured it set a bad precedent which was sure to be abused. Once services have signaled that they can be swayed then immense pressure would be brought to bear to sway them further. Another reason is that I think it's important to hear what people say instead of what some people say about what some other people say. I think the Taliban and ISIS should also have websites. I also figured it was very counter productive. If you're going to do it once, fine, but don't keep doing it. By first forcing the most extreme people out of mainstream and onto alternate sites the character of those sites will change to be more extreme. By subsequently forcing less extreme people out of mainstream these people have no where to go except for the already extreme sites where they will be outnumbered and they will see the existing extreme views as the new consensus. Slowly salami-slicing the mainstream fosters the creation of a large and very extreme population which is extremely counter productive. A similar effect can be seen in prison populations where many people who go to prison are forced to join dangerous gangs for their own protection and instead of becoming rehabilitated they become far more dangerous than when they went in.
I think cynical political operatives knew this and did this intentionally as part of the 'pied piper' strategy where the 'basket of deplorables' needs to both be large and unpalatable to the rest of the population in order for that group to be effectively disenfranchised. The problem is when that basket gets too big and is no longer able to be disenfranchised and instead elects the pied piper president. I think Q-anon is an soviet style 'Operation Trust' that basically sent a substantial portion of the population insane - intentionally. One would think that they would have learned their lesson the first time when Trump got elected, but having succeed the second time they're going to try for a third time. This whole process is immensely damaging. Even now the attempts to destroy Trump are counter productive and instead helping him.
My primary concern is for the health of the middle class and I worry about mass immigration undermining that. I say this as an immigrant with the understanding that I would be personally worse off were it not for immigration. I think those in the middle class have legitimate grievances and ignoring the issue of mass immigration and deriding those opposed to it as hateful bigoted stay at home xenophobes has lead to the success of populists parties. Attempts at disenfranchising those populists parties with coalitions has only delayed the now seemingly inevitable.
I'm vehemently against hate speech laws, they start out as hate speech modifiers and through that simple existence now require the courts to establish thoughts through invasions of privacy. I think this rises to the level of thought crime in effect and is of course very Orwellian. Once the notion of hate speech crimes has been established it was just a matter of time before legislation makes it official, if not at the federal level then at the state level. I think the new 'anti-Zionism is antisemitism' conflation in combination with 'antisemitism is hate speech' in effect now makes criticism of Israel illegal, it'll be interesting to see how that is enforced as it's such a ridiculous notion. Predictably the left is now on the receiving end of the very policies there were instrumental in establishing. They have been hoisted by their own petard.
The attempt to stamp out 'hate' makes as much sense as the Soviet attempts in their creation of the 'New Soviet man' free from 'greed'. There are already proposals to stop companies from being 'greedy' though legislation.
I find it rather interesting that Popper's paradox espouses the idea that one must be 'intolerant of the things that threaten tolerance' sounds really similar to George Lincoln Rockwell's philosophy of 'you must hate the things that threaten what you love.' In both cases giving people license to do what they wanted to do anyway.
For me the battle is over, limited to posts like this, my focus these days is to avoid the crushing of the middle class by being as economically far away from the middle class as possible.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The entities that need to be circumscribed need to enforce a law that circumscribes themselves? Those incentives do not seem to align to form a stable structure.
There's a strong and widespread expectation among many that it's morally imperative for them to be able to elect their own government. So any moves by the government to limit this will be met by fierce resistance.
If a similar idea existed about privacy, these sneaky moves wouldn't be feasible and would leave a bad taste in the mouths even of the perpetrators. Unfortunately, many among us are of the "But I've got nothing to hide" persuasion.
The second your only recourse against authority is to politely ask it not to do something bad to you (maybe, for instance, on a piece of paper with multiple choice questions), you have no real autonomy.
WalMart is the largest private spender in the world at around ~$400B per year. The US Federal Government alone spends >$400B per month...
That doesn't even include state and local governments which basically doubles that.
This already exists in the EU, the EU charter of Fundamental Rights https://fra.europa.eu/en/eu-charter/article/7-respect-privat.... states "Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications", however it seems to have been ignored.
That's how you get another level of super-government, i.e. one more tyrant in the chain
Historically the circle breaks only with revolution and violence .
Maybe checks and balances would work as a system, but the EU has neither
This sort of rhetoric is dangerous.
> Maybe checks and balances would work as a system
It does seem to be working well in America.
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Dead Comment
The administrative budget of the EU should be cut by 3-4x times and the money should be spent on something more useful because clearly they are out of control and have nothing better to do. While we're at turning Belgium into something like DC and disenfranchising their government/people living there wouldn't be the worst idea since they clearly have been co-opted into propagating this nonsense.
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EU politicians should keep their over inflated salaries, and stick to what they are good at. Meeting with Google and Microsoft lobbyists at the best Brussels luxury restaurants.
Yes and it was/is very successful at that. The overpaid and incompetent bureaucracy in Brussels seems to be mostly tangential if not detrimental to that.
Also to be fair your take is also very shallow and provides little value.
Wasn't that NATO (aka mostly the US)?
The previous Portuguese PM António Costa, who had to resign amid a corruption inquiry...Has just been announced today for an EU role that will triplicate his previous annual salary as Portuguese prime minister
"Portuguese PM António Costa resigns amid corruption probe" - https://www.politico.eu/article/portugal-prime-minister-anto....
"Portugal's Antonio Costa expected to be next head of European Council" - https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/portugals-antonio-costa...
"...Costa's appetite for a top European position has been an open secret for years. In March 2022, amid speculation Costa was angling for a Brussels job, Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa warned him that he would call an election if he were to leave his post early..."
It is a graft and of the worst kind, and naive takes like yours is what led to scenarios like Brexit. It's a jobs for the boys organization and you are not part of the club.
The EU's mutual defense clause is an empty shell
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Are you talking about the same EU that just passed the DMA? That must have been some really nasty food poisoning then!
If Chat Control goes ahead long-term that will outweigh any benefits DMA might have.
No they should be kept accountable for their actions and the money they waste. Currently there is no mechanism for that, but i m sure hordes of them would quit if we made one
Only this isn't something which can be solved by technical measures without abandoning "Liberté, égalité, fraternité". This is something for China/Russia/Iran/North Korea/England, not France.
I sent something I composed myself, but this template looks good if you need inspiration.
https://nextcloud.pp-eu.eu/index.php/s/cwyRic7cC5zcfHk?dir=u...
It's really disappointing that Sweden are behind this as they have some extremely talented people only they aren't being listened to.
It's going to be awful not having Patrick Breyer reporting these activities.
Really his snide at the right gaining traction in his post shows that he still doesn't get it.
I know there are alternatives to Facebook - I've pitched all of them to my friends, but people my age are still only on Facebook.
[1] https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2024/05/2024-05-28_Cou...
Apple: Their CSAM detection system that was lambasted not too long ago[0]
[0] https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Expanded_Protections_...
The Apple system was pretty much the best way this could be done short of having a 100% reliable "AI" system on-device detecting bad stuff.
In the "think of the children" scenario the parents are incentivized to consent to some filter. (So they or someone(!!!) gets an alert if the boogeyman is talking to their kids, asking them to send nudes, or sending dick pics.)
See recital 13 on top of page 7 for the definition.
And see 17 on bottom of page 8 for this:
"To allow for innovation and ensure proportionality and technological neutrality, no exhaustive list of the compulsory mitigation measures should be established"
and
(page 46) "... measures shall be ... targeted and proportionate in relation to that risk, taking into account, in particular, the seriousness of the risk as well as the provider’s financial and technological capabilities and the number of users; ..."
This is a framework. It seems to be coming from overly-anxious law nerds who can't stop thinking of the children. (And yes, this usually makes them a problem, because they're nigh unreasonable.)
It seem to be set up as a DIY thing for providers. And, again, for parents it makes sense, let your kids surf on the marked-safe-for-kids part of the Internet. (And nowadays kids really spend most of their time on (in!) certain apps, not in a web browser.)
The ugly part is that there are fines to compel the providers to adjust their risk metrics. (page 104, page 110 mentions max 6% of global turnover)
This clearly seems to be a softish push to assign a cost to internet ecosystems for online child sexual abuse.
On page 45 there are some requirements.
The provider needs to think about risks (but guidelines will come from authorities anyway), have some appropriate budget to actually work on this it the context of its own service, and then if it looks like there are problems it should spend money on remediation. (Ie. spend on content moderation, work with other providers in the industry, have a team and provide UX to notify that team, and allow users to limit what they share with others based on age.)
A pretty common example in my circle is parents taking pictures of baby rashes/pimples/blisters etc to send to family doctor or doctor friends.
It sounds like a situation where every parent with a toddler will end up on some list.