Comment by nextos
10 days ago
> leads straight into the dystopia that Stallman warned us about
IMHO, the push for age verification is just a stepping stone towards requiring a mandatory ID for all social media posts made from EU. Given the current trends against freedom of speech, it's not unreasonable to think that by the end of the decade any site, including HN, might need to link usernames with their respective eIDs in case posts come from EU IP addresses.
> officially sanctioned hardware and software
Right now, if you want to run an alternative OS, it's already an uphill battle to use tons of member state services, as well as to do banking. Even if you have microG available, the situation is terrible. I imagine it's going to become harder. I cannot understand why the European Commission wants to reduce our reliance on FAANG services, and at the same time they make Google Play a de facto standard, reinforcing the mobile duopoly. In this context, free alternative mobile platforms, such as Sailfish, cannot flourish.
> I cannot understand why the European Commission wants to reduce our reliance on FAANG services, and at the same time they make Google Play a de facto standard
It seems to be different branches of the EU? This has been a recurring problem in EU tech legislation - the EU government bodies are sufficiently autonomous that the right hand seldom knows what the left is doing...
To quote Yes, Minister:
> Hacker: One of your officials pays farmers to produce surplus food, while on the same floor, the next office is paying them to destroy the surpluses.
> Maurice: That is not true!
> Hacker: No?
> Maurice: He is not in the next office, not even on the same floor!
They aren't autonomous at all though. All EU law comes from the Commission, which is a singular body run by a single appointed president, with everyone reporting directly to her. The Commission answers to nobody and the Parliament can't tell it what to do, just rubberstamp what it produces.
This is the best case scenario for coherency in law making. It's designed to be as undemocratic as possible, so there's no need to make compromises or engage in pork barrel politics to get stuff over the line. The incoherency of the EU's approach is just a consequence of the incoherent thinking coming from the top. The EU always has extremely powerful but very low competency presidents, always for some reason those who were failures at national politics.
> The Commission answers to nobody and the Parliament can't tell it what to do, just rubberstamp what it produces.
That's not true. First of all, amendments can be introduced by both the parliaments and council so it's not rubber-stamping. But more importantly they have the right to censure the commission (Article 17(8) TEU and in Article 234 TFEU) and thus force it to resign.
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"right hand" pretty nicely fits. The EU/EVP is much more conservative/right wing then many of its citizens are prepared to accept. Its a pretty nice propaganda-machinery that made this possible. Ask a random EU citizen if they are aware that conservatives are leading the EU since 30 years... You'll be surprised.
The current push for more censorship is a left talking point though
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> I cannot understand why the European Commission wants to reduce our reliance on FAANG services, and at the same time they make Google Play a de facto standard, reinforcing the mobile duopoly.
It's called bad faith, and it's an all too common problem with politicians and business types alike.
The problem is massive corruption and institutions deemed to fight it are corrupt themselves.
Von der Leyen and the rest of the Commission aren't politicians nor business types. They don't run for election, they're all appointees. And most of them have never run a business either.
Von der Leyen and the rest of executive branch of EU are appointed in a same way a lot of countries appoint their executive branch members — by a vote in legislative branch.
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In this case it seems more like incompetence mixed with classic Euro bureacracy. The suits don't know better and consumers are braindead so won't even notice
> "it's not unreasonable to think that by the end of the decade any site, including HN, might need to link usernames with their respective eIDs in case posts come from EU IP addresses."
A rule of thumb that works too often is "how is mainland China doing things?"[0], and assume the West will follow behind shortly.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/07/15/china-digita... ("Big Brother gets new powers in China with digital ID system")
(tl;dr: Mandatory digital ID, with central government attesting and holding personal data in escrow. The "privacy-preserving", "least-bad option" a sizeable portion of even HN itself advocates for).
> "This means that companies, like social media site Weibo or online shopping behemoth Alibaba, will no longer be able to see the personal information of their users with digital IDs — but Chinese authorities will be able to see the real identity behind online accounts across a range of sites."
Oh well at least the Chinese aren't Christians.
Believe it or not, China has far and away the largest Christian population in the world. (I know, I know, culture, percent of the population, etc, this is just a fun fact that runs counter to intuition.)
Is it worse than requiring a phone number?
It's already close to impossible. Banking apps and government apps are close to mandatory to function in today's society, yet they plain do not work on Lineage, even with microg, or they work but need ridiculous workarounds. Never mind other "soft mandatory" things like messaging apps or whatever.
I'm dedicated and I have a literal PhD in computer science, yet I'm fucking exhausted fighting this battle all the time. 0.1% chance someone has the capability to, and willingly goes through all this bother.
Then tfa is just a nail in the coffin.
Can't you have two phones: a Lineage phone for personal stuff and a Big Brother phone for banking and government and everything else uninstalled or disabled?
VPN ban is coming next.
VPN ban coming now in the UK
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44722216
> In this context, free alternative mobile platforms, such as Sailfish, cannot flourish.
If you are a system that depends on people being constantly under the yoke of your jurisdictional powers, you do not want a strong, free, ecosystem. You want as little diversity as possible, ideally two so there is an illusion of choice.
> I cannot understand why the European Commission wants to reduce our reliance on FAANG services, and at the same time they make Google Play a de facto standard
You'll be surprised, most of the time it's simple ignorance: the people making decisions don't know everything about everything. Hence democracy comes to rescue.
But the way the European Commission takes decisions is anti-democratic (secret draft documents, undisclosed lobbying, overlooking the role of the Parliament…)
>any site, including HN, might need to link usernames with their respective eIDs
I think, keybase already does it, and there are users here with signed proofs of identity.
I would honestly love that. No more paid trolls on social media, the democratic process has a chance to adapt to technology, we can avoid the fate of the US.
Companies are neither minors or adults. Account management for paid shills will be handled between customer support backend infra and social media API servers, not subject to any particular rules.
> Companies are neither minors or adults.
Chickens are neither mammals nor worms, what are you talking about.
... and all the social media posts having been pre-approved by Minitrue. What a glorious world we shall live in.
This is no longer just rhetoric. Meanwhile, the EU’s polite, tea-drinking cousin, the UK has quietly deployed a “social media surveillance unit.” Not to fight trolls or bots, of course - but to ensure His Majesty’s Subjects think correctly in public. Doubleplusgood, wouldn’t you say? [1]
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/police-socia...
„monitoring social media for anti-immigrant posts” amounts to banning wrongthink? Get outta here dude.
Politicians who simultaneously increase immigration and stir up hatred against immigrants will inevitably cause a tragedy.
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Turns out that sending death threats is actually a crime.
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People would just buy a ton of hacked accounts just like today.
Can’t have speed control on the highway, people would just exceed the limit anyway.
Come on brother let’s not give up before doing anything.
> No more paid trolls on social media
If you didn't come up with a way to have paid trolls in such a system doesn't mean that there won't be any.
The logic is simple - making it harder for them to operate will diminish their impact and effectiveness.
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Only until the next Reichstag fire, I suspect, because by then there won't be any more democracy.
Can you phrase your thought as a causal chain so that I don’t have to guess what you mean?
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We're already there if you live in places like Germany or the UK. Go on social media and criticize some politicians in the UK/DE about their open borders policies being directly responsible for some of the terror attacks there, and there's a high chance police will knock on your door for "being a right supremacist" and for committing the "speech of hate". I think France, Italy are also following the same path. You know you don't have free speech anymore, when saying facts gets you in trouble.
And this is only the beginning. It will be more and more difficult to speak against the actions of your government the more unpopular the politicians become and the more people hate the results of their policies. And instead of changing course and following the wishes of the voters, politicians instead will clamp down on free speech.
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People like you are the death of freedom.
What does the freedom to spew hate anonymously get you? You just create a less free world for everyone else by doing that.
Freedom for me is the ability to live a good life, and be happy, not harass people.
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> People like you are the death of freedom.
Define "freedom". Freedom to or freedom from?
See Timothy Snyder's recent book On Freedom:
> Freedom is the great American commitment, but as Snyder argues, we have lost sight of what it means—and this is leading us into crisis. Too many of us look at freedom as the absence of state power: We think we’re free if we can do and say as we please, and protect ourselves from government overreach. But true freedom isn’t so much freedom from as freedom to—the freedom to thrive, to take risks for futures we choose by working together. Freedom is the value that makes all other values possible.
* https://timothysnyder.org/on-freedom
Snyder is an historian specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust, who previously wrote an award-wining book on that area during the 1930/40s:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodlands
Some other recent books of his:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Unfreedom
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Tyranny
Good luck convincing America to go along with this, especially in the current political climate.
The EU doesn't have power beyond their jurisdiction, as much as they may pretend otherwise. Facebook and Google go along with what the EU wants because they make money there, and have physical properties located on the continent. YC does not.
EU doesn't need to convice anyone. They can just make it mandatory and block anyone that doesn't comply.
"a mandatory ID for all social media posts made from EU. Given the current trends against freedom of speech"
what?? how is this againt freedom of speech???, south korea implement this ages ago and there is nothing like that
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_South_K...
I wouldn't consider South Korea as having any meaningful freedom of speech; in fact they seem closer to China than the EU.
SK had this, and it appeared to have turned their entire WWW into 4chan with cult radicalisms. Their state of online speeches and its real world negative consequences are crazy. People on permanent records in real name never backs down because they more tangibly feel their mistakes as threats, and if you think about it, people who never backs down even if they are in wrong are effectively cultists. It's clear what these types of totalitarianism do and where this path ends. It's crazy EU don't get that.
lol. its echo chamber on internet
if you talk to people directly, no one said that
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There's not a trend against freedom of speech so much as existing laws outlawing certain categories of speech being applied to the internet. If you lie in a commercial context, that's fraud; if you lie in court, that's perjury; if you tell your buddies to go do crimes together, that's conspiracy to commit; if you tell someone to give you money or else, that's blackmail...
If you come from the perspective that there used to be freedom of speech and now there's all those pesky laws restricting what you can say, it looks like a slippery slope. If you realize that people have been required to check ID when selling material unsuitable for minors in physical stores since before the internet existed, it seems a bit more unlikely that ID requirements will expand to cover everything else.
The trouble with these analogies is that they ignore the nature of the internet.
If there is a law in one jurisdiction that says you have to be 21 to buy some product and a different jurisdiction sets it to 18, or has no age restriction at all, and someone who is underage in the first jurisdiction goes to the second jurisdiction to buy that thing, what happens? The seller sells it to them. This has always been a completely normal thing for people to do in border towns, or when people e.g. visit Amsterdam because of less restrictive drug laws.
The internet allows anyone to visit the site of a supplier located outside of their jurisdiction. That's completely normal an expected too. It also makes things like age verification laws for digital content pretty much entirely worthless, because most of the suppliers weren't in your jurisdiction to begin with and the ones outside of it are... outside of your jurisdiction.
Governments now want to pretend that it matters where the user is rather than where the site is, but that's a joke because there is no way for the site to even know that. If you try to require it then they'll either ignore you because they're actually entirely outside of your jurisdiction and you can't impose penalties on them for not complying, or treat IP addresses in your jurisdiction differently (possibly by banning them entirely) and then people there will just use a VPN.
Neither of these cause the law to be effective and ineffective laws are inefficient and embarrassing.
> Governments now want to pretend that it matters where the user is rather than where the site is
This is not a new thing either. Whenever something somehow touches multiple jurisdictions, it's generally safe to assume that laws from all of them apply. Countries can and do make laws that apply entirely extraterritorially. When that makes it difficult to do a thing while complying with all applicable laws, you either have to not do the thing or pick which jurisdictions' laws you want to break and deal with the consequences.
I don't think most lawmakers will consider the potential embarrassment from difficult-to-enforce laws much of a deterrent against outlawing what they want to outlaw. They're more likely to put additional requirements on third parties to assist with enforcement (e.g. VPN providers are an obvious candidate.)
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> If you realize that people have been required to check ID when selling material unsuitable for minors in physical stores
Not a great example.
No physical store would bother to check the ID of anyone clearly not {too young or borderline}.
Digital ID requirements are such that age verification of some form is required for every single connection .. and to assume that a connection from {X} might well require another ID check an hour later as it might well be a different person at the same computer or another device altogether.
That's an expansion from {only check young looking people} to {check and possibly retain records for _everyone_}.
> No physical store would bother to check the ID of anyone clearly not {too young or borderline}.
Except where police cadets or paid informants go into stores to buy age-restricted goods. A convenience store near me got whacked with that recently, and now has a no-exceptions ID policy.
Check out zero trust proof standards
Edit: I'm not saying EU uses it but it could...
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There is no "freedom of speech" in the US sense in the EU/UK. That's often a cause for misunderstanding between the two sides of the Pond.
There are many things that you are not allowed to write or say by law in EU countries simply because the legislator has decided that they are wrong opinions, and it is generally accepted that the State can and should implement such controls.
Note that lying is not a crime in general. Your examples are for very specific contexts.
That's a common misconception. The European Convention on Human Rights guarantees freedom of expression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R... and is legally binding in all member states. Sure, there are exceptions but in the USA too freedom of speech is not absolute either.
Moreover, in practice, there is more freedom of speech in most EU countries than in the USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-expression-ind...:
USA: 0.89 France: 0.96 Germany: 0.94 Czechia: 0.96 etc.
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There is no freedom of speech in the "US sense" in the US either.
Just because a bunch of noisy people shout about freedom all day long doesn't mean they are not talking absolute garbage.
If there's an argument here, it's a mess. You first talk about speech. Commerce is barely speech--it's actually using the public market--and there is a legitimate opinion that applying civil rights to companies is already a corrupt abuse of our society. Perjury is strictly limited to one context existing since the dawn of time (courts), it is also very proceduralized what they can ask you, and even then there's a carveout for not incriminating yourself. Conspiracy and blackmail are only secondarily about speech. There's a criminal intent that you either made clear yourself or they have to prove.
The internet is like media (press) or communication by letters. Both extremely established in terms of guaranteeing freedom of speech and in the latter case, also secrecy. And the ID identification (that you then make your argument about) is only loosely related to free speech strictly. It's about being constantly searched and surveilled with a presumption of crime.