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EU to greenlight Chat Control tomorrow

patrick-breyer.de

41–50 of 360 posts

Re: EU to greenlight Chat Control tomorrow

#41
post #34

> Only Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria and Poland are relatively clear that they will not support the proposal, but this is not sufficient for a “blocking minority”. Ahem what? Last I checked any EU country can veto anything on its own. > Belgian EU Council presidency It's Council of the EU, not EU Council, that's the heads of state who don't have any legislative role. But the Council only does inter-co…

> Ahem what? Last I checked any EU country can veto anything on its own. Only on certain topics, which have been narrowed down over time. For most areas (including something like chat control), it comes down to Qualified Majority Voting, which needs at least 55% of countries representing at least 65% of EU population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_the_Council_of_the_E...

Hmm if they are passing this as a "treaty" of some sort then the head of state Council might still need to confirm it even if it passes. At least I hope so.

Feels like they did this shit deliberately though, as it would never pass the Parliament for sure.

Re: EU to greenlight Chat Control tomorrow

#43
post #4

This is why the roles of the major players in society (government, monopolies) need to be circumscribed. 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.

> We need some sort of human right for digital privacy to make this sort of thing illegal.

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

Re: EU to greenlight Chat Control tomorrow

#44
post #4

This is why the roles of the major players in society (government, monopolies) need to be circumscribed. 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.

Free speech absolutists like myself got run over culturally with hate speech laws so for anyone continuing on the fight I wish you the best of luck.

Anti-hate speech got you? What were you trying to say exactly? One can go on X right now and spew any hate speech that one wants.

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.

Re: EU to greenlight Chat Control tomorrow

#45
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 feasibl…

> 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. That's not really true as far as it comes to the EU though? The EU parliament has always been a joke with limited power (both because of structural reasons and because most of it's members are clueless and extremely easy to i…

In the same vein, EU does not have an idea of sanctity of free speech. Various forms of censorship exist in various EU members, all for apparently good causes.

Re: EU to greenlight Chat Control tomorrow

#46
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it’s now opt-in. But if you don’t opt in, you can no longer send photos or videos.

That seems so arbitrary, where does ascii art fall?

Probably under the umbrella of "you're not going to transmit anything meaningful with an extremely limited amount of horizontal space due to the automatic formatting of chat bubbles"

Re: EU to greenlight Chat Control tomorrow

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech absolutists like myself got run over culturally with hate speech laws so for anyone continuing on the fight I wish you the best of luck.

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.

> We learnt the value of free speech the hard way, and very slowly

Did we though? Unfortunately outside the US and a handful of other places free speech doesn't seem to be valued that much, often it's even viewed as a threat (and I'm not talking about authoritarian regimes). It's a double-edged sword to be fair, enabling misinformation and chaos.

Re: EU to greenlight Chat Control tomorrow

#49
post #2

Already was somewhat degraded by the EU parliament: https://proton.me/blog/eu-parliament-chat-control

Sure it’s now opt-in. But if you don’t opt in, you can no longer send photos or videos.

EU Poetry Party

Welcome all ye bards!

Re: EU to greenlight Chat Control tomorrow

#50

Signal Foundation has already said they would leave the EU if Chat Control goes ahead. https://mastodon.world/@Mer__edith/112535616774247450

Signal isn't big enough to play that game. 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.

In the spirit of Erlich/Simons, if you define zero relative to current users, what % do you think will depart, and what does "zero" look like.

Hint: I'm taking Simons' role in this: They won't drop to zero.

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