71–80 of 467 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These dimwits (and I don't just mean those in EU) seriously want to stop adolescents from watching porn, and are ready to mess with internet infrastructure for that. That's a depressing manifestation of aging society
Practically all the ills we suffer currently are depressing manifestations of an aging society. That, and the lack of real issues to solve.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>In the reality of democracy, where politicians are corporate puppets who cloak surveillance laws in "think of the children" to rally support from the masses Conspiratorial gibberish
Are you seriously blind? Do you genuinely believe politicians don't legislate in ways that benefit corporations over individuals? Or do you genuinely believe the sudden worldwide push across dozens of countries to surveil all internet access, prevent VPN usage, and lock down devices at the OS level is the result of an organic, grassroots desire to protect children no matter the cost?
If you could link a piece of legislation that has little support among voters, but was passed due to corporate money, I would be interested.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Practically all the ills we suffer currently are depressing manifestations of an aging society. That, and the lack of real issues to solve.
If only we were all privileged enough to believe that the problems in the world today weren't real.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a benevolent dictatorship, sure, go for a zero-knowledge proof verification as your solution. In the reality of democracy, where politicians are corporate puppets who cloak surveillance laws in "think of the children" to rally support from the masses I do not (completely) agree with this. This seems like the very typical US-centric view of politics. A lot of members of the European Parliament are not corporate pup…
> We do not have to convince the population. We have to convince regulators and if it becomes necessary the EU/national-level courts that handle human rights violations. Without the population on your side, it's some insignificant minority's words vs. corporation's power determining where the lines get drawn by regulators. The people can put a leash on politicians who cave too hard to corporations by voting them out…
It isn't, it's not enshrined in law, de facto does a lot of work here. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure such a requirement will not hold up in court either. Besides that, the developers of the reference app have stated that national apps do not have to require strong integrity from Google Play Integrity. It seems like they took the standard platform path either because they did not have time the time or knowledge to do anything else.
At any rate, I'm optimistic that it won't require passing strong integrity in my country. Age verification will be added to our national ID app (DigiD), which does not require passing strong integrity, even if it is used for more security-critical applications than age attestation.
People pointed that out quite a while ago already. Age sniffing is a joint attack on the freedoms of people, which explains why these lobbyists also try to abolish VPNs. Their vision for the world wide web is one of authorization. Ultimately they will fail, but a few get rich here in the process.
I think all the identity verification schemes should start with the beneficial owners of companies. Governments have been lobbied to allow complete anonymity for the wealthy that own businesses doing questionable things while regular people are going to have to show id to buy food.
As someone who lives in a jurisdiction which does require such disclosure: it is a significant inconvenience for small businesses, and no benefit to the general public.
This title seems misleading. The EP paper appears to be highlighting the existence of a debate regarding VPN. Relevant quote: "Some argue that this is a loophole in the legislation that needs closing and call for age verification to be required for VPNs as well. In response, some VPN providers argue that they do not share information with third parties and state that their services are not intended for use by childre…
> Of course I'm not saying the EU won't regulate VPNs
The word choice is quite revealing. You write "regulate VPNs". To me this is not "regulation" at all - it is restriction or factually forbidding it. It is newspeak language here if we dampen it via nicer-sounding words. It also distracts from the main question: why the sudden attack by EU lobbyists against VPNs?
How come tax loopholes aren't as scrutinized? Mandatory age verification online is a blight imho. It should be outlawed.
I agree, age verification on the web should 100% banned. Parents should learn how to be parents; the government shouldn't force companies to do parenting instead.
Regulate the poison first, not the access to it. All this age verification nonsense is an admission that some platforms knowingly harm their users. And instead of fixing the issue by cracking down on the proverbial crack, governments make everybody's life worse.
I remain hopeful that one day, humans will regard the online advertising companies with the same scorn we do the tobacco industry and may they be ashamed and disgusted at our inaction.
Ugh. Here we go again. Europe’s politicians just cannot stop with wanting to control everyone and everything. It’s as if bureaucracy is the actual goal. Privacy and anonymity should be protected by law. Not violated by law.
Age restrictions + VPN bans + encryption restrictions + client-side monitoring + restricting general purpose computing.. It's just rapid descent into digital fascism set up by people who have no ability to see how the dots will end up connecting.
I think they absolutely have the ability to see it, it's part of the value proposition for them.
Beyond that I fully believe there are intelligence agencies, advertising agencies, military interests, IP control interests etc that are all working very diligently and in more targeted ways to each achieve their goals better by pushing for specific measures and helping to amplify moral panics to build the necessary political capital.