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

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#111

Post by gherkinnn » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:34 PM UTC

cyanydeez wrote: post #82

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

alright, but the important query is: this isn't happening in a vacuum, there's a lot of various forces. Lets say the primary force we need to prevent is russian influence campaigns that back and push far right nationalists who will destabilize democracy. Is that a sufficient reason for controls? It's always curious what people think about the actual content that's typically pushing these things.

Rubbish. Fighting fascism by implementing totalitarian tools is a ludicrous idea.

Start with dismantling the means by which the information cancer spreads. No more targeted ads, no more data harvesting. Increase privacy.

Everybody knows about the influence of Russian bots on the net and yet precisely fuck all is being done about it.

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#112

Post by Gareth321 » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:34 PM UTC

cyanydeez wrote: post #82

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

alright, but the important query is: this isn't happening in a vacuum, there's a lot of various forces. Lets say the primary force we need to prevent is russian influence campaigns that back and push far right nationalists who will destabilize democracy. Is that a sufficient reason for controls? It's always curious what people think about the actual content that's typically pushing these things.

The answer to lies is generally sunshine, not censorship. There are just too many examples of censorship eventually being misused by those in power. The power to censor Russia right now might appear appealing to those in charge, but they need to remember, pro-Russian factions may be voted into power in the future, and they will use this power to suppress information they don't like. Once the precedent is created, it's too late to cry about censorship when it's your "side" which gets censored. No one will care.

To point: I don't accept the premise that the governments gets to decide which information I should be allowed to consume.

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#113

Post by GTP » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:34 PM UTC

vikaveri wrote: post #53

olejorgenb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And either 80% of banners are not respecting the law, or the law managed to omit mandating making it as easy to reject as accept... Rejecting usually require you to enter into settings and sometimes click "reject" for every individual partner(!)

That was the case in the beginning, for a while. Now I rarely see even ones where I have to click Settings and Reject all, usually it's just Accept all and Accept only essential. No dark patterns just two equally visible buttons. Often also just "We use only essential cookies" and OK button because they don't have 1138 partners they want to sell your data to

And in the latter case, they could even not put any banner at all and still be compliant. The GDPR requires consent only for tracking.

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#114

Post by u8080 » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:35 PM UTC

cyanydeez wrote: post #82

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

alright, but the important query is: this isn't happening in a vacuum, there's a lot of various forces. Lets say the primary force we need to prevent is russian influence campaigns that back and push far right nationalists who will destabilize democracy. Is that a sufficient reason for controls? It's always curious what people think about the actual content that's typically pushing these things.

>who will destabilize democracy

Let's just ban those politicians, ban and censor "bad" media and platforms, and surveil all citizens to protect us from those pesky authoritarians!

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#115

Post by varispeed » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:36 PM UTC

aquir wrote: post #40

What's to point of all this? Everyone will use Signal or some other E2E encrypted messenger, this is just bone tossing. Useless politicans spending time on useless things.

In every authoritarian regime people spent considerable amount of time on workarounds. Underground press, parallel education etc. this is just another iteration of Stasi like regime, just with a nicer suit and better PR.

In reality this should have been rejected wholesale and people proposing this barred from any public sector jobs, or even arrested for terrorist attack attempt (Chat Control fulfils definition of terrorism).

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#116

Post by wqaatwt » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:36 PM UTC

tmtvl wrote: post #98

blfr wrote: post #2

First, why does the EU leadership refuse to learn from falling behind the US economically and technologically, most starkly with AI recently, and their failures in regulating the Internet, most annoyingly the cookie law? And why aren't you, the EU citizen, more annoyed by it? I see a lot of pro-EU content on this site when they're terrible on both tech and entrepreneurship. Second, what's up with Denmmark pushing for…

> And why aren't you, the EU citizen, more annoyed by it? Because the USA tends to privilege corporations over people whereas in the EU it's more balanced (still pretty biased towards corps, though), and I am a people, not a corporations. Take, for example, the 'cookie law': I much prefer being annoyed by the cookie pop-up over websites shoving a ton of unnecessary and unwanted cookies onto my computer without permis…

And because you are grateful for the cookie policies you don’t mind rewarding them with unlimited access all your private communication? I don’t really follow this argument..

> would you say has done the best job in regulating the Internet

So again.. how do these basic/superficial (or even if they are extremely effective and useful, that doesn’t really change anything) regulations justify mass surveillance?

> false news

For what its worth in no way has the EU been effective in doing anything about this (I’m not sure they even tried doing anything that directly addressed it?)

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#117

Post by Xelbair » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:36 PM UTC

cyanydeez wrote: post #82

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

alright, but the important query is: this isn't happening in a vacuum, there's a lot of various forces. Lets say the primary force we need to prevent is russian influence campaigns that back and push far right nationalists who will destabilize democracy. Is that a sufficient reason for controls? It's always curious what people think about the actual content that's typically pushing these things.

>Lets say the primary force we need to prevent is russian influence campaigns that back and push far right nationalists who will destabilize democracy. Is that a sufficient reason for controls?

No. Because if you solve underlying tensions in society the so called russian propaganda has nothing to take hold on.

Also who and under what rules will decide which propaganda is allowed? is American propaganda fine? Chinese? Japanese? UAE?

Not only this creates dissident, and suppresses voices critical of current government. but also gives extraordinary power on level of soviet union to current government.

You might trust current EU to not abuse it, but it might take a single elections, or single term for un-elected(!) officials in EC for attidute to change.

Just like in US - a lot of powers were granted but suddenly there's a person willing to abuse them.

For that to be even considered in EU we would need a lot more check and balances - especially for European Comission and Council.

Another issue is - is EU a trade union or federation? if former - this is outside of EU's responsiblities and powers. if later - look at point above.

If you really wanted to solve this problem you would go after advertisers and data collection companies, and regulate them.

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#118

Post by gherkinnn » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:36 PM UTC

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #45

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.

> 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…

What have the Romans ever done for us?

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#119

Post by Chu4eeno » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:37 PM UTC

rockinghigh wrote: post #37

nxm wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The US is also falling behind Chinese manufacturing. They had to ban Chinese cars because legacy American automakers couldn't compete.

China just recently had to ban their own companies from selling cars below cost.

It's not a clear win for China, their car companies are struggling.

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#120

Post by spacebanana7 » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 4:37 PM UTC

gib444 wrote: post #18

blfr wrote: post #2

First, why does the EU leadership refuse to learn from falling behind the US economically and technologically, most starkly with AI recently, and their failures in regulating the Internet, most annoyingly the cookie law? And why aren't you, the EU citizen, more annoyed by it? I see a lot of pro-EU content on this site when they're terrible on both tech and entrepreneurship. Second, what's up with Denmmark pushing for…

Why does any country or bloc need to learn lessons about "falling behind" the US? Why is that the yard stick? I certainly don't spend all day dreaming of F150s, McMansions, the psychopaths leading silicon valley, 9 lane highways, US style PE, and world-class fascist politicians such as Trump Dear lord

A couple of decades ago both France and Britain had higher per capita GDP than the US. Now they are significantly behind.

Similarly top European companies used to rival American companies in profitability, power and valuation. There’s not really an equivalent of FAANG/ NVIDIA in Europe, just ASML and LVMH.