Post

@EUCommission

Agree that protecting children online is important. The way to do that is absolutely not to track all citizens in all online interactions. On the contrary, permitting profit-motivated private 3rd parties to do this incentivises precisely the kinds of surveillance capitalism driven algorithmic content delivery that is shown to demolish the mental health of all who come into contact with it, not just children.

Anonymity online (making surveillance illegal) and education, protects.

@EUCommission Age verification is IMO discrimination and ageism and grossly tramples the basic human and constitutional fundamental right to freedom of expression and seriously impinges upon the ability to socialize. I think it's an authoritarian attempt to prevent people from rightfully and freely organizing and exchanging ideas.

#discrimination #ageism #ageverification #humanright #freedomofexpression #youth #children #freedom #righttoassembly #organizing

@EUCommission

THIS IS NOT ABOUT PROTECTING CHILDREN AND YOU KNOW THIS IS NOT ABOUT PROTECTING CHILDREN.

THIS IS ABOUT DESTROYING THE CONCEPT OF PERSONAL PRIVACY.

THIS IS ABOUT CREATING A PERMANENT SURVEILLANCE STATE WHICH TREATS EVERYONE AS A CRIMINAL BY DEFAULT.

@EUCommission If I go to the doctor with a broken arm and they ask if I want my arm to be healthy and safe, I say yes. But if they ask if I want a heart transplant to heal my arm, I'd say no because a heart transplant is a very high risk last resort measure and it doesn't even have any provable relation with healing broken arms.

The existence of these valid concerns does not legitimize surveillance laws.

@EUCommission have you tried asking people if they are also tired of how many times the "think of the children" excuse has been used to push for other shit that hasn't done anything to protect children at all, and instead made things worse for them?

@EUCommission oh yeah lets protect children with "chat control" hell yeah

@EUCommission Age verification does the exact opposite of protecting children

@EUCommission

Absolutely! Protecting children, whether it be online or offline should be one of the, if not the highest priority of the EU. Neither age verification nor chat control do that though.
They don't prevent children from accessing things they aren't supposed to access and doesn't prevent bad people from hurting children. Both will find a way.
"If privacy is outlawed only outlaws will have privacy"
- Phil Zimmermann

@EUCommission Stop acting as parents to my children. The EU really doesn’t need to restrict the civil rights of all Europeans in an attempt to raise and protect my children. I can manage on my own. The only thing that would be useful is for big tech companies to be held genuinely accountable for the rubbish they share. Oh, and for the EU to stop burying its head in the sand and start imposing fines on big tech companies where they’re due.

@EUCommission Educate parents rather than legislating rights away.

@EUCommission 👎🏼 for age verification (= identification of everyone..)

Regulate (Big Tech/) companies, not innocent people.

@EUCommission yes but let us be very and I mean very clear about this, chat control and not verification is not the right forward. That is blatant infringement of privacy of every European citizen.

@EUCommission

No one is buying your bullshit.

The problem is not anonymity. The problem is the failure of big tech to moderate their platforms.

Stop fucking blaming me. I don't own a global platform.

Fuck off. You can't have my ID.

@EUCommission So we ruin it for everyone, just cause some parents are to imcompetent to raise their children? Maybe keeping children away from the internet, till they're old enough to know that it's not a safe space.

@EUCommission Parents are responsible for their children's safety, not capitalist companies. So hands off my children!

#chatControl #EUcorruption #surveillance #privacy #humanRights #freedom

@EUCommission the only way to enforce age verification of minors is through total internet supervision of everybody. And it won't help with any of the problems on the internet, because facilitating and effectively rewarding terrible behaviour optimises the revenue of the main players.

If you want a better internet, step one is to ban behaviour-based profiling for advertising, with no "consent" loophole. It makes surveillance ("tracking cookies") immediately illegal (no "legitimate interest" excuse, GDPR does the rest). That trashes the direct "more bullying and hate leads to greater revenue" connection, which immediately removes the incentive to put active effort into more vicious online spaces. This applies to Google, Meta, X, Reddit, etc.

Note that the "consent is not an excuse" part is critical. "Ask me later" just means that people are worn down into clicking "yes" eventually, just to get it out of the way, you know yourself the dark patterns, you know yourself the cookie consent forms, where "none of them" is tedious and must be repeated on every visit, but "yes please" is simple and eternal. Try changing that decision later.

Ban the surveillance. Yes, it's many companies' entire business model. That's too bad for them, should have tried being socially positive. Yes, many services will have to start some sort of subscription or pay per use model instead of being fake-free. That's OK, they'll also be disincentivised to enshittify.

It'd make the internet better for everyone, including children, who could continue to find and create so many positive communities online, instead of being blanket-banned.

@EUCommission nobody asked me...

@EUCommission Bitte nicht durch Identitätsverletzung („Altersverifikation“).

@EUCommission The message from Europeans has been clear, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again that we do not want the end of privacy, we do not want chat control, we do not want surveillance, we do not want American corporations processing our personal information and we do want you to actually hit them with the fines you are supposed to be hitting them with instead of again and again going soft on them. Can we have that, Ms. Leyen‽

@EUCommission

You cuntsuckers love to hide behind children. Because who would dare speak out against them?! Who would dare risk making themselves out to be in favor of child abuse?

But the reality is that continually you use children as a shield to justify sweeping reductions of fundamental rights. More and more, you justify exclusionary politics for the sake of control and gubernatorial stability—NOT safety. Not the safety of the people, that is. Not the safety of the people who really matter, but the safety of an oppressive status quo which is destroying not only human autonomy, but the planet itself.

Eat shit.

@EUCommission Guys, you are *so close* to actually getting it.

(Hint: It is not "age verification" - aka. total digital surveillance.)

@EUCommission yes, but there is always a but. It cannot be at the expense of adult users sacrificing their privacy. I am not responsible for other people's children. Leave taking care of children's digital safety to parents.

@EUCommission age verification will not make a safer internet, not for children and not for adults.
But how about making an internet where kids aren't bombarded with advertising? 🧐

@EUCommission Dear EU, this morning my email address was handled via dark web to some spammers, who tried to book a hotel in Saarbrucken, and two sex scammers tried to scam me with two emails from an unsecured microslop online system.

There is no protection against nonsense like this. No ID verification would have stopped that. There are so many bad actors stealing our data and abusing trusted systems. Stop collecting IDs from lawful citizens. Do up cybersecurity.

@EUCommission I like that you think the answer to an potentially less than 100% safe padded cell environment is to create the most unsafe possible environment. Good job! 👍

@EUCommission you shouldn't be asking people to use tifu themselves, make companies comply, not users.

@EUCommission

So, are you actually holding tech platforms accountable?

Or doing "age verification", forcibly identifying every user so you can conduct surveillance on those who don't agree with the government, and putting everyone's I.D.s online to be data-leaked?

@EUCommission

Never gets old.

🖌 John Jonik

#cartoons #humor #vinhetas

@EUCommission so spying on everybody it is and handing over our privacy to the tech bro's who are at fault in the first place for making it less safe. We do not have to ask if you lit are stupid but rather how much

@EUCommission Hey, why not give all the evil companies doing wrong, and all the advertisers, everyone's ID forever and pretend we're not giving them the biggest gift they've ever had.

I wonder how many people organizing this are on the take from the companies that will profit most from this criminal assault on privacy?

@EUCommission no need to add my comment to share what I think about it. I think you guys know that this is NOT a solution, nor is it close to being anything like a "solution"

@EUCommission The social media areas should be exactly the same as the social areas in our towns and cities and general life. They should be (as far as possible) free from those who would cause harm to others, who cause offense or intimidation or violence toward other members of that society. It is up to the Tech companies to provide these safe spaces for all by policing their social areas and removing all those who exhibit criminal and anti-social behaviour no matter who they are.

@EUCommission by providing a method to verify that a person is an adult, you are implicitly also adding a method for bad actors to verify that someone is underage, and someone they can take advantage of. The only safe solution is for sites to know less about their visitors, not more.

@EUCommission very high. Good.
You've made quite a few laws ensuring child safety.
Let's consider a law successful if children are safe.
Have the unsuccessful tries been revoked and the incompetent supporters been removed?
No - you definitely should. Child safety is important. But I consider abusing children for mass surveillance as child abuse.

@EUCommission All is good but age verification systems are not the solution.

@EUCommission Avete toccato un tasto che qui, sul fediverso, non dovevate toccare.

@EUCommission You could dismantle the whole attention economy by making it impossible to offer their services for free by making their customers the product. Just by regulation, without any tech.

If for-profit social media would not be free, most kids would have no access. In fact, most adults would stop wasting their life there too. It would solve not only child safety but make the life of everyone better. Without the need for age verification and building a surveillance state.

@EUCommission I think the original post is better if the word "children" is replaced with "everybody".

There's no need to have a better separate internet for kids so they will get a nasty surprise when they grow 18. Let's have it nicer for all, including children, shall we?

@EUCommission Learned children can improve their own protection, isn't?

@EUCommission
Parents are responsible. Not companies.
Also, digital safety doesn't allow for mass surveillance (called age verification)

@EUCommission

Then maybe address it the right way, you write the following:

the negative impact of social media on their mental health (93%),
cyberbullying and online harassment (92%)

These two are addressed if you go after the real problem, Big tech and their algorithms, not restrict citizens rights by making us send more information to them.

assuring mechanisms to restrict age in appropriate content (92%).

This is plain and simple parenting, all my children have iPhones, none of them have social media because I speak to them about the issues and set boundaries, now none of them want it.

@EUCommission
In case you hadn't noticed, age verification is a trojan horse. Please make the perpetrators pay instead of EU citizens.

https://edri.org/our-work/why-age-verification-misses-the-mark-and-puts-everyone-at-risk/

@EUCommission I'd be glad if children would be protected offline.

Despite a duty of protection, schools often don't protect children from continued bullying.

@EUCommission
As an adult, I also want to feel safe and protected from harmful content, cyberbullying, and addictive online designs.

@EUCommission and you immediatly ban them from internet to sell your "age verification" surveillance tool for palantir.

Traitor

@EUCommission children are massively protected when providers are clean. Data mining, addictive design, fake information, hallucinated answers and trends created by generative IA. Start from there. Do not sugarcoat the seriousness of this topic by bringing a wrong solution such as age verification, please.

@EUCommission i think this is bullshite