Man this is fucking exhausting. The treadmill of these policies.
EU lemmings, who or what groups are promoting these? It feels like every time one gets defeated another crops up and that it's relentless. Is this an astroturfed or organic campaign?
I would be very surprised to learn there is an organic demand for this shit. Sure there are some lazy parents who might want this without understanding the wider ramifications, but for the most part it is mix of authoritarian politicians and corporate lobbyism doing the work.
Any legitimate political demand would not be made again, and again, and again, and again... Even after it gets voted down repeatedly. There are undemocratic forces at work for sure.
Sure but there have to be organizations behind these policies. Someone is proposing this stuff again and again. This is mirrored by corporate lobbying in the US, where grassroots movements can resist it, but corporate lobbying almost always wins out in the end, because its sustained by industry. So we can resist a policy a few times, but if the same bad ideas keep re-emerging, eventually one gets through.
Oh i agree, it is utterly farcical that they can even do this against the will of the people. A rejected proposal should not be able to be submitted again after some minor cosmetic changes.
Its well documented at this point that Meta is funding these campaigns.
It's tech giants in general trying to monopolize the Internet through regulatory capture. They're the only ones who can afford to implement the age verification methods demanded. Laws like this effectively turn the Internet into cable TV.
Imagine failing so hard to create a metaverse, blowing literal billions of dollars and a large chunk of their entire net worth, and still having a ton of money leftover to push this shitty idea for almost a year at a global scale.
There's broad support for stopping predatory behavior by corporations that are targetting kids (and adults, but mostly kids). This is mostly the same stuff people have been complaining about for a decade or so at this point. Loot boxes, gacha mechanics, ad infested (and therefore stuffed with spyware for "marketing"), complicated multilayered digital currencies, battle passes, daily login rewards, etc. Basically all the well known dark patterns.
However rather than addressing the bad behavior directly, politicians either through malice or incompetence (likely at the behest of corporate lobbyists) keep putting forth these ID laws that just make things worse instead of actually solving the problem people have been complaining about.
These politicians know full well what they're doing. At least they should and there's no excuse. But they know.
I'd assume many do, although some are likely just entirely out of their depth and are just listening to what the lobbyists are telling them.
oh there's broad support for this shit.
I'm fed up with this shit. My parents educated me on the internet and the potential of seeing things you don't want to see. They knew there was no change to 100% block or monitor what we did and instead made sure that they were always there if we did see something disturbing.
Now I'm at the frontier age of getting kids and I just know that my kids will be just as smart in circumventing this kind of bs as I was (school monitoring web traffic ain't working with a vpn) and I will gladly teach them about the internet. Hell, I'll even take them back to when the internet of old and show what kind of crap we had to deal with.
Solutions like these are like a bandaid. You're not solving the problems. And even that is a utopian thought, but they ought to focus on the people that make the web unsafe, not the kids
It is never about the kids.
I hate when people validate the core idea of needing to protect children through age verification. Timmy lying about being over 18 to look at some boobs is not a problem that needs to be resolved. It's like requiring everyone to wear body cameras specifically to prevent store clerks from being rude to you.
You say that about Timmy, but what about Sally who is drawing very detailed furry porn? Or Jack with his questionable anime notepad.
Just some real examples I remember from school. You can't even outlaw the pen to stop it, the rock layers around us were chalk. Quite often saw kids use it to draw on paths.
I think it's important to point out that is yet again the EPP, this one being led by Henna Virkunnen.
As was the undemocratic vote that was pushed through by Roberta Metsola
The most effective way for all of us to stop these relentless attacks on the internet and our privacy, is to stop them getting elected in the first place.
EPP representation in each country.
Use the internet for something useful -
#STOP THE EPP
I knew Feijóo was behind all this!
Of course Forza Italia is with EPP, In Italy we'll never get rid of them :/
It is unclear which servers are covered. The draft adopts the definition of a social network from the Digital Markets Act. Its Recital 11 clarifies that it concerns “information society services,” which EU law defines as services generally provided for remuneration. Whether a private, non-commercial hobby server falls under this depends on the legal classification of the specific offering. The statement that every instance without exception is covered is therefore an overstatement.
Funny when the article itself contradicts the breathless clickbait headline.
That said, perhaps this will apply and cause problems. Or perhaps not.
Fuckers don't understand the internet
Oh they do. Not in the way we use it. But China&Russia gave them the handbook.
If it applies to mastodon it also applies to IMAP right? I wonder his exactly they see email protocol being updated to check how old is the recipient and i bet all those spammers will NOT send their unwanted content to my child inbox.
Maybe we just protect everyone and then we don't need age verification?
The way it's imposed on the fediverse is bad, but I like this part:
The Blueprint is open source and uses zero-knowledge proofs: cryptographic methods that prove a statement like “over 15” without revealing the underlying data. Each member state must provide at least one such solution free of charge to its citizens.
How often can I probe it? If I can establish you are over 15 but under 17... I know you are 16 (squeeze theorem or something)
It's not clear but it seems like the service is restricted to the same age ranges it asks anyone, so it couldn't do that as effectively. Although it could just use when the user passes from one category from another to get their age, at least if the account was created when the user was >18, but that seems unavoidable.
I feel all of this is to prepare for future legal enforcement of approved internet use. AI is destroying the internet we know and value because rich people want more power, as they do with everything they touch.
And lead to state intranets only accessible by thin clients tied to your ID.
Which is the end of the internet and a dissolution back into multiple closed networks, cutting us off from each other.
Website wants to open my DRM software? Fuck off.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
