Comment by sebastiennight
21 days ago
So what are our options (eg for EU citizens) for lobbying in terms of legislation or directly to Google to show disagreement with this?
It looks like many in this thread are against, but I don't see suggestions for action?
I like your take, we see too many easy-to-write outrage articles on here these days, and rarely do we see a discussion or concrete list of actions that can be taken. eg. send a physical letter to this address, or boycot this or that service for 24hrs on such a date etc.
Personally I de-googled last year, but those numbers never get counted by the bean-counters, so it is not much of a protest.
In this case I dont think much can be done via legislation, since the governments work less and less for-the-people. This is just the next logical step on the KYC road, but for developers, GitHub is heading the same way, along with EU chat controls, UK age controls, Digital Euro, and the rest.
The EU right-to-privacy may as well be torched, and freedoms that were hard won, will continue to be surrendered for an easier swipe of a gadget.
On another thread someone opened my mind on this with a reminder that "the EU" is actually a large continent of many countries, each containing very large amounts of points of view and parties, and just because one set is clamoring for Chat Control does not mean that all the other folks who launched GDPR are gone.
We need to lobby for choice at every stage. You must be able to choose which network, which phone, which OS, which app stores, which apps.
I'm wondering the same thing in the US. Aside from writing Google and complaining, and purchasing a phone with a different OS (GrapheneOS or PureOS, for example), I'm not sure what else to do.
The issue with that 2nd solution is, "purchasing a phone with GrapheneOS" only registers from Google's perspective as "we just sold an additional Pixel, so we're doing good right now"
buy second hand
Personally, I fear addressing this issue to Google is wasted effort, since they "only" try to establish what Apple already has in place. Both mega-corps being in the U. S. (plus Trump threatening all countries that try to regulate U. S. technology yesterday) makes any appeal somewhat void.
That means, we have to do it ourselves. The first thing we can do is write to our MEPs. All of them. Thankfully, x775 has made a website in protest to the EU chat control law that makes find your MEPS E-mail addresses really easy, so maybe we can just take advantage of their work and use it to frame our own request. The relevant HN post is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44858504
Could this be a way forward???
Honest answer? You need to lobby your national left-wing, pro-privacy parties to start being openly anti-immigration so that they can actually stop shrinking every year.
I'm sure this will be a massively unpopular one, but it doesn't change that this is the reality you're facing. Go look across the makeup of the EU parliament over the last 20 years and how it has shifted. Check the main reason people have voted this way. Then go look at how the EU parties vote.
"But it shouldn't be this way!" Then enjoy your further slide into authoritarianism.
We're sliding into a whole other topic here, but I can't help but wonder whether any of the pro- and anti- immigration debate will have mattered, looking back 20 years from now when half a billion people will have been forced to move due to climate change.
Of course it won't have mattered. Doesn't mean that's not the reality we're facing right now.