The end of anonymity online basically means an end to the internet era itself. We will effectively be rewinding time to the 1980s, when the only news sources were controlled by oligopolies, and dissident voices were simply not given a platform. That might be fine in a world where every country is on-board, but now that the internet exists, countries with anonymous free speech will come out ahead. Here's a darker thou…
Fight Chat Control
311–320 of 528 posts
Re: Fight Chat Control
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
I personally support age verification for porn. However, age verification for almost anything else, e.g. Reddit, is a terrible idea.
There's porn on reddit though
(In practice, sections 80 and 81 in the Online Safety Act carve out exemptions for “search” and “user-to-user” sites. For the former, presumably the exemption is because the actual porn is served from machines other than Google’s.)
Re: Fight Chat Control
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
I personally support age verification for porn. However, age verification for almost anything else, e.g. Reddit, is a terrible idea.
Idk age restricting Instagram, TikTok etc. might be good for teenagers mental health.
Unfortunately we have among sex and other things still the mentality of 1900, except that today most 18 year old already lost their virginity, and he can't watch porn? Well...
Re: Fight Chat Control
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
The country is predominantly Catholic. So both prudish views on sexual content, but also wanting to pretend sexual abuse by priests in their religion, and their religion protecting those priests, isn't the problem - nope, it's the interwebs creating child abusers. That is coupled with racist fear of terrorist attacks being committed by the African and middle eastern immigrant populations. Sure are a lot of white elep…
As a French person, let me tell you you are wrong. French people mostly don't give a shit about religion and do not have any prudish views. We have many nudists beaches and women are regularly topless on the beach. Talking about sex if accepted in society and between friends and family. So it's not about that at all. What most French people are though is little children that need to be guided and protected by the sta…
Along with taking more than half of the citizens' income (on average), which dramatically restrains any agency that an individual would usually get from being self-sufficient financially. The snake eats its tail.
Re: Fight Chat Control
#315This alone tells me which way I should weigh in on this law. They know what they're doing.
Re: Fight Chat Control
#316A little context here since this website is highly misleading: - EU Council holds more power in Europe than EU Parliament - EU Council is pushing this regulation - this website misrepresents the positions of most members of EU Parliament - it shows "Supports" despite most of them being "Unknown" Overall, while people should be encouraged to contact their MEPs, I suspect many are already very informed on this & strong…
IMO this kind of pedantry detracts from the message. We know that the EC is pushing it, but the EC does not represent the people, that's the job of MEPs. Thus a list of MEPs from countries, colour coded by whether or not the country is known to support the position. And optionally a marker for their personal opinion if known.
The European Council is the heads of each member state. They are literally the people elected by each nation state domestically. If they don't represent the people, then that means national democracy is broken (which I agree with in cases like the UK) but I'm making a more general point.
Re: Fight Chat Control
#317I'm French and every idiot supports it, even the so-called left. There is nothing I can do except donate money every month to GrapheneOS ( https://grapheneos.org/donate ). Democracy is dead for me.
In my experience the left wants this just as much, if not more than the right.
Right-wing politics is starting to show up again in Europe, this is true, but the left / left-of-center has been in power for a long time and need (at least in their view) to remain in power.
These kinds of laws allow the powerful group to gain more control and remain in power, it took no time at all for the UK version of this law to block videos of heavy-handed policing [0].
The low power group usually doesn't support controls on speech, as they know it will make their rise to power harder. Once power shifts these views inevitably switch.
This has led to the belief, at least in the west, that the right censor and the left are the guardians of free speech - because it was true and people want to believe the world hasn't changed (nobody like to admit that they've become the bad guys).
This also leads people make this mistake of believing that politics is a line. It's not, it's a horseshoe.
In the middle is the vast majority of people that just want to be left alone, and want to leave others alone. At both edges there are loud, politically active, sociopaths that want power and control to protect and deify their own in-group, while, criminalizing and demonizing the out-group.
It's why, when looking at history, the right-wing fascists and the left-wing communists, seem to want totally opposite things, but end up with very similar policies and outcomes (illegal political parties, proscribed groups, concentration camps and genocide).
[0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14945805/Online-Saf...
Re: Fight Chat Control
#318The end of anonymity online basically means an end to the internet era itself. We will effectively be rewinding time to the 1980s, when the only news sources were controlled by oligopolies, and dissident voices were simply not given a platform. That might be fine in a world where every country is on-board, but now that the internet exists, countries with anonymous free speech will come out ahead. Here's a darker thou…
In no way do I support this surveillance society, or legislation, but I just wanted to make a casual point. I'm from a country where the internet first came through universities, and I was privileged to be there at the time. Those early days when it was just university students (and other staff) communicating over IRC were, nostalgically, wonderful. And everyone knew who everyone on IRC actually was in real life. Sure, there were the usual flame wars and some trolls, but it felt personal and, just good.
I'd love to go back to those internet days - bit of course I'm aware that is an elitist attitude, because I was part of the "in group" at the time.
Re: Fight Chat Control
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is correct. But the larger point is that even 1 minute of jail time for such "crimes" is unacceptable.
That larger point deserves its own thread. My newest pet peeve is someone jumping into the middle of a conversation with the equivalent of "I don't care about what you're talking about. What I want to talk about is more important". Oh look, now you've got me doing it to you. Drat.
Re: Fight Chat Control
#320Please also fight mandatory age verification with prison sentences. The European Parliament has already voted in favor of a law that mandates age verification for pornography with a one year prison sentence. It was included as a last minute amendment into this bill [1]. See "Amendment 186". It has been completely missed by news organizations and even interest groups. The full accepted article reads: "Disseminating po…
I personally support age verification for porn. However, age verification for almost anything else, e.g. Reddit, is a terrible idea.
I definitely would prefer my children to watch porn than get bullied - or worse - on social media.
There's also the fact that I vaguely trust Facebook or Reddit to do a credit card-based age check or whatever. No way I'm giving any of my details to porn sites.
Stupid dumb law.