EU Parliamentary Research Service calls VPNs "a loophole that needs closing"

I think fundamentally we disagree on 1 principle, that "better" is the enemy of "good". This leads to choosing which tradeoffs to accept. And we are on the same side, to be clear. I want privacy. I also see what you mention, I just frame it differently.

Android being locked down is the worst case scenario: private companies makes rules, an update is pushed, no platform for discourse. It's also the standard business practice when you let companies implement solutions to "privacy problems": put some privacy preserving lipstick on a fredeom restricting measure.... Specifically: we (google et al) need to verify apps so that we don't let them to do bad things to you, like stealing your data and ... sell it in the very same predatory data ecosystem that we have built and that we sustain for profit.

On the other hand, the EU sees that a law has been mocked on the internet since day zero (you must be of legal age to watch porn), in due time (30 years?) this has an impact on society, and shit needs to happen because yes, this is how laws work sometimes: they limit freedoms. They have learnt from GDPR that delegating the implementation of laws to businesses is bad: they defang it and/or twist it so that the concrete result fits business needs rather than the principles established by law (as per above example: gdpr, ads). So, the EU finds its own tech solution, puts down privacy as a core value, ships down a EU wallet and says "this is the reference implementation".

I like this! It's not "perfect", but i prefer this 1000 times over "let Google verify my age".

It seems to me that the EU has done an excellent job: now that society (including actors in bad faith) is saying "we need to protect the kids", we can say yeah ok, here is the good way to do it. They actually thought about this years ago.

Now THIS SPECIFIC document is .... ok!!! Because it is NOT to be read in isolation, but within the context (my framing) of EU actually giving me laws and tools protecting me. Over decades. And I have seen plenty of attempts at breaking those, and plenty of EU votes bouncing back those attemps.

Overall, there are 2 possibilities (aka tradeoffs on better vs good) when freedoms are attacked. One (yours, as a understand it) is to say "this (VPNs, e2e, ...) is outside of the Overton window, just bringing this up is unacceptable/fascist". You have good reason to defend this approach, and it's ALSO thanks to you and other activists (hope this does not mischaracterize you) denouncing and rallying around these issues, shouting "fascists", that we got them revoked.

The other one (mine? maybe?) is to craft a response that exposes the faults at play, naming and shaming business interests trying to hijack age verification to provide them with business advantages (example in this case: internet in Spain "stops working" when there's a La Liga game, etc, I'm sure you know what i'm talking about).

The willingness to rebuke these attacks in debates can be a slippery slope (opening the window). And yet, in present times politicians wear "being shouted 'fascist' at" as a badge of honour and they manage to translate that into votes. There is a correlation that I see between "good" (argumentative discussing to convince) and "better" ("this is just not going to happen and we should not even discuss this because we have no room for fascism here"). Both are valid, going back to the beginnning we disagree on which to employ in this specific case.

All the above is about "framing", meaning a meta-answer over discourse. Also, let me be clear that I am not seeing you, or activists in general, as "mob shouting" by conflating that with lack of critical thinking, or ability to expose that. I have recognized that your position has value, but let me be clear on that :D

Now to tech details.

Locking down network is impossible as long as decentralization is possible. You ban VPNs? People start using TOR. They don't know and care, but in order to watch porn or sports, now they have better privacy protection across many other dimensions. To gain usage, interfaces becomes simpler. VPNs went from being a business tool to being a consumer tool precisely because companies started enforcing arbitrary rules. In order to get there you need to be easy to use, which makes their usage explodes, etc. Constraints, scarcity, or urgent needs drive innovation, so i don not see autoritative pushes vs tech-for-freedom as a zero sum game (probably an even better description of why we disagree?). Since businesses belong to the fabric of society, sometimes business rules goes into laws. And sometimes whatever a government thinks is ok goes down there, principles be damned. And yes occasionaly you get the guy that needs to go to jail, Prometheus-style. Clearly, Zimmermann. Arguably, Snowden. Provocatively, Kim DotCom. So yes, banning VPNs is bad, but isn't it true that we have this problem because everyone can just flip on a VPN at any given moment? Is this not a manifestation of a right that we have "acquired", in some sense?

In this context the EU has done, and is still doing the "good" thing: the EU wallet has not been assigned a budget and shipped over for development to Accenture or Oracle or any other private business. It has been given to open source researchers, and it leverages lessons learnt while building decentralized solutions. While "everyone" was busy scamming users with ICOs, the EU has taken an interest on Zero Knowledge Proofs. And EU bureaucrats have talked to nerds to understand if there is a way to have age verification and preserve privacy and make all the things that me (and you want). Because, EU has been a global pioneer in elevating data protection to constitutional/human-rights status. Data protection worldwide, in the past decades, rests on me and you worrying and "fighting between each others", but mostly on the EU listening to us and being a global pioneer in elevating data privacy to constitutional/human-rights status, via Article 8.

To flip you statement: the outcome of this is not the worst case of a single measure - the outcome in many cases will be the combination of measures taken by most forward looking governments across the globe that each protect certain freedoms.

sorry for the wall of text, i hope it was worth your time

An authoritarian government needs excuses too. China even claims to be a democratic country. North Korea even has the word Democratic in its name. "Protecting children" is a common excuse China uses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_erotic_very_violent is a famous example of them trying to justify internet censorship under the name of "protecting children".

Again, you’re talking about things in a Boolean state.

Our kids have access to social media, but we also know what they have access to because we check their phones periodically.

This is a far better approach than an “all or nothing” approach because we are giving the kids the freedom to learn how to use these tools maturely. But without removing any safety nets for if/when our kids (or any other kids in their social circles) fail to use such tools responsibly.

That’s called “parenting”.

Censoring access to tools, either via government regulations or over zealous parenting, doesn’t teach children anything. Whereas allowing kids to learn to use the tools but being around to support and help them grow when mistakes are made, is precisely what responsible parents should be doing.

And that’s the same approach you should take with learning anything as a child. You give them guidance and allow them to make mistakes but be there to support them. Kids don’t learn to ride a bike from telling them “bikes are dangerous” then suddenly when they’re 16 handing them a bike and telling them to ride it to colleague. So why are you treating social media like that?

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They should just mandate 1 spouse should stay at home (working remotely or not working) or you must hire a full-time nanny. I'm only half joking. If your kid has enough unsupervised time to be watching porn on a regular basis, wtf is going on?