Comment by Arch-TK
10 days ago
It's absolutely abysmal that the EU and UK are implementing laws relating to age verification requirements.
Who voted for this? Who asked for this?
10 days ago
It's absolutely abysmal that the EU and UK are implementing laws relating to age verification requirements.
Who voted for this? Who asked for this?
Unfortunately many more people than you might think are in full support of this type of thing. The UK in particular is a very nanny state and this is sold as protecting children. You're not against protecting children, are you?
It is a rhetorical appeal to emotion, which is used to override rational debate, discourage criticism, and create false dichotomies, e.g. "you're either with the children, or you're with criminals".
This "think of the children" rhetoric targets encryption, anonimity, decentralized platforms, and private communication channels like messaging apps, VPNs, Tor, etc. It is nasty. Keep in mind that it does not actually prevent child exploitation and grooming. Most of the pedophiles are on Discord and Roblox anyways.
In any case, there are ways to prove someone is over 18 without revealing identity, but that is not that goal, is it? There are cryptographic schemes just for that, such as zk-SNARK, etc. ZKPs in general.
> Keep in mind that it does not actually prevent child exploitation and grooming.
While true, I'd avoid making that argument since it implies these restrictions might be worth implementing if they actually did prevent child harm. There is no scenario in which it is acceptable for the government to mandate encryption backdoors, for example.
The whole Chat Control crap is bullshit no one asked for, and unfortunately many countries in the EU are in favor of it. There is a map somewhere that shows the countries that are against it, I cannot find it right now.
https://www.patrick-breyer.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/sig...
Yes, that, although I wish they made a distinction between abstain vs. opposed.
1 reply →
EU citizens voted for this. Unfortunately, EU citizens are too lazy to vote a lot of the times, and the ones that do vote are turning more and more right-wing authoritarian.
As much as the EU pretends there's some kind of united Europe, it covers different countries, with laws ranging from "sex work is just taxed work" to "all prostitution and porn is illegal". Even basic rights like gay marriage aren't consistent between member states.
Europeans were free to provide feedback to their representatives of course: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/display/E...
However, everyone I've talked to about it said they don't care about it so they don't want to bother, which is probably what the people behind these laws are banking on.
> EU citizens voted for this.
I'm growing pretty tired of this rhetoric / rhetorical sleight of hand, but maybe this is a reasonable opportunity to discuss it:
- not all citizens of a jurisdiction are eligible for voting: in this case, cursory search suggests only 400M (88.8%) of 450M were eligible - seems a bit too high to me, but let's roll with it regardless
- not all who are eligible actually vote: voting in the EU parliamentary elections, which is what EU citizens can actually vote on, like most elsewhere, is not mandatory; it's a right, not a duty: turnout was 50.74%, and that is of the eligible population, so really just 45.1% (203M)
- most voting systems are mathematically unfair [0]: extensively researched, doesn't quite apply necessarily in this case though as per the next bit
- several key positions in the various bodies are elected indirectly: same here in the EU, at which point all bets are off
- laws, regulations, and policies are not voted for or against by citizens: same here in the EU too, nobody could have even possibly voted for this in the literal sense
It's a run of the mill representative system and I think it'd serve discussions a great deal if this was acknowledged properly. Surely it's agreeable at least that this wouldn't be such news if people were all just completely on board as the sentence "EU citizens voted for this." implies when read naively and literally.
I really don't see a point to this phrase other than inciting others. And before anyone brings it up, yes, this is common in US threads as well, yes, is often expressed by EU folks against US folks, but no, that does not make this better. Why dig ourselves into rhetorical holes unnecessarily? Being narratively justified to frame things this way doesn't mean one should (or must).
And "offering feedback" is not a vote nor a voting I'd say.
[0] https://youtu.be/qf7ws2DF-zk
Let me add the part where politicians do not give a fig about their rhetoric from before the election as soon as they get into power.
No, I fucking didn't vote for this, I hate everything about it. The worst part? Even if all of our MEPs voted against this BS, it would pass and be forced upon us anyway. All because we have given up our sovereignty to EU.
[dead]
Followers of the far-left regime actually implementing authoritarian measures blame the opposition. A pathetic tale as old as time.