EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors • Hacker News Board

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#131

Post by sunaookami » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:45 PM UTC

Sharlin wrote: post #87

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is going to further increase anti-EU sentiment. Rightfully so. Except for no-roaming-charges within EU, most people can't name one good regulation that came from EU and couldn't be handled individually by their own country in the last few decades. The latest example is 3eur customs tax per every item bought from china, even if it's a 1eur phone case (1eur + 3eur customs + 22% vat on both.... what's the added v…

> even if it's a 1eur phone case (1eur + 3eur customs + That's the fucking point for fuck's sake! Pardon my language, but the entire point of the tariff is to stop people from buying masses of trivial things from the other side of the world, with all the externalities that it entails. This tariff tries to cover at least some fraction of said externalities. People on HN should not be this clueless about basic economy.…

When Trump introduced tariffs everyone screamed but now the EU does EXACTLY the same and suddenly it's okay.

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#132

Post by constantius » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:45 PM UTC

hhh wrote: post #102

ttoinou wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an open secret the european union has nothing to do with the will of the people

plenty of people desire something like this, and 'saving the children' is their genuine intent and desire. Humanity is willing to shoot itself in the foot again and again, there's no need for it to be some shadowy cabal.

Plenty of people do want more surveillance, but that's not why EU politicians are doing this. Seeking to implement surveillance across an entire continent cannot be explained by "the will of the people". Danes might want surveillance for their children, but I can't imagine them lobbying their EU representatives to also protect the children in France as well.

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#133

Post by sensanaty » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:45 PM UTC

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #34

basisword wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European here. I like the cookie law. It's made it clear to people how much we're being tracked and I can choose to opt out. The implementation could of course be better but the real issue is the scummy web devs choosing to make it as annoying as possible instead of taking the more sensible decision to not have 150 trackers on every page. >> I see a lot of pro-EU content on this site when they're terrible on both tec…

99% of the people just click accept and go through. This could be solved on the client side, by requiring all devices with browsers sold in EU to have separate cookie jars per domain and by default those cookies would be deleted on window/tab close. If you wanted to stay logged in to a site, you'd click a button next to the url bar that says "keep cookies for this domain", and be done.

Cookies have literally nothing to do with GDPR or the ePrivacy directive. It is mentioned I think twice total in both documents as an example of how user data is persisted and tracked across domains, but ultimately the mechanism is irrelevant.

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#134

Post by wqaatwt » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:46 PM UTC

9dev wrote: post #64

m4nu3l wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. A short-term view of the world, progress and technology. All my devices supported USB-C before the EU regulation. But if I wanted to buy a device with a new type of connector, I should have been able to. This is how the USB-C came to be and how any new standard in hardware happens. New technologies are made and just sold, and if they are proven to be superior to others in the m…

> All my devices supported USB-C before the EU regulation. I don't have this particular problem so it doesn't exist! It did exist for huge amounts of people. At the time, many manufacturers had proprietary plugs and would still have them if it weren't for this decision. > The USB-C standard is not the best standard that can exist from now to the end of the universe Which is why the law can be simply amended as soon a…

> simply amended as soon as such a standard emerges

That statement just makes no sense. How can a new standard emerge when legally there is no option to validate its actually superior in the market?

> figures out something better

That’s not how it works. Most innovation does not occur in committees but through trial and error.

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#135

Post by theshrike79 » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:46 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #58

The global push to kill privacy makes me sad. Feels like I grew up in a golden age and subsequent generations won't care because they never knew a different world

I grew up when everyone was saying "don't post your face, name or address on the internet" - and that's what I've done. There are a total of maybe 3-6 pictures of me on the internet and my real name isn't attached to most of my brainfarts online.

It's not that I hide it like a secret agent, I just don't shove my face and name next to every opinion I have.

But the younger generations... They grew up with Snapchat which means Snap Streaks, which again means posting your face with every message. Next was Facebook, real names everywhere. Then came "personal branding", again face and name plastered everywhere.

And now governments want to lock in the real name + face + identity combo for everyone with laws. Fuck that.

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#136

Post by Gareth321 » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:46 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #41

elric wrote: post #8

This is going to further increase anti-EU sentiment. This is unacceptable behaviour, but no politician is ever going to experience any negative consequences over this because they're so very far removed from the democratic process.

Still, this is mostly pushed by particular countries (e.g. Denmark), the commission and aggressively pursued by lobbyist. The most democratic body in the EU (the EP) has so far always rejected Chat Control. Without the EU, this would have been introduced in some member countries much earlier (see also UK).

I can speak for the sentiment in Denmark: most people are unaware of this legislation. A vocal minority of us (who are a little too online) have been trying to educate people, but I think it feels too esoteric. We had a poll last year which asked, "the ability to detect child abuse is more important than the right to online privacy." 65% of people said yes, 33% said both are equally important, and only 2% said online privacy is more important. The discussion for normal people is often couched in the language of "think of the children." Unfortunately, that appears to be highly effective with the Danes.

To be honest, I'm beginning to suspect most people don't care all that much about privacy if you promise them safety.

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#137

Post by sph » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:46 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #44

sph wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to enter into conspiracy territory, but it seems that there's a big insistence from whomever is behind pushing for this to pass at any cost. First it was Denmark, now the EU parliament president, a Maltese. What's for certain is that those that stand to benefit massively are governments and politicians themselves. And no, it's certainly not that bullshit astroturfed story that has been going around, of M…

How would members of the EP benefit from Chat Control?

They would be exempt, along with military and intelligence personnel. So they can enact mass surveillance, stop any form of dissent before it has a chance to grow, while themselves remaining above the law.

https://europeanpirates.eu/chatcontrol-eu-ministers-want-to-...

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#138

Post by blain » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:47 PM UTC

peterspath wrote: post #15

Just 4 countries are against: Czech Republic, Italy, Netherlands, and Poland. https://fightchatcontrol.eu/

Does governments have any say in this? If not then most MEPs of mentioned countries are too in favor of Chat Control. This is what it says when you click on one of the 4 countries.

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#139

Post by GTP » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:47 PM UTC

m4nu3l wrote: post #68

9dev wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All my devices supported USB-C before the EU regulation. I don't have this particular problem so it doesn't exist! It did exist for huge amounts of people. At the time, many manufacturers had proprietary plugs and would still have them if it weren't for this decision. > The USB-C standard is not the best standard that can exist from now to the end of the universe Which is why the law can be simply amended as soon a…

> I don't have this particular problem, so it doesn't exist! No, what I said is that you could find devices with USB-C in all the categories that are now regulated. This means it was pretty easy to find devices like that if you really valued USB-C. Of course, if you wanted an iPhone but you liked USB-C, you would have had a problem. A problem that is much less worse than blocking progress. > Which is why the law can…

You might have a point. But, at the same time, AFAIK the only manufacturer that complained about USB-C (and, coincidentally, making the exact same argument as you're making) was Apple. And they definitely weren't interested in making the lightning connector an industry standard. Quite the opposite.

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#140

Post by sensanaty » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:47 PM UTC

microgpt wrote: post #11

basisword wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European here. I like the cookie law. It's made it clear to people how much we're being tracked and I can choose to opt out. The implementation could of course be better but the real issue is the scummy web devs choosing to make it as annoying as possible instead of taking the more sensible decision to not have 150 trackers on every page. >> I see a lot of pro-EU content on this site when they're terrible on both tec…

Website operators hate these cookies popups because they make their website more annoying and make me more likely to press the back button and click on a different website. As it should be. This incentivizes them to stop tracking me.

The solution to that one is pretty simple, simply don't collect information you don't need, and you can avoid the banner altogether! Github manages to not have banners, it's not because of magic.