Arguably North Korea since their RedStar OS had a kernel module that scanned all files and text looking for keywords like 'torture'. And if you're being compared to one of the most brutal and isolated dictatorships on Earth, things are not good.

The justification is obviously a lie anyway. If CSAM were such a huge concern, you wouldn't have member states where distributing CSAM is about as severe of a crime as theft, which is the case in Germany.

Surely the first step would be to have actual significant criminal charges for these crimes in all member states.

self hosted chats included? ;)

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It's a big framework to push the industry to have more "parental controls".

Everything is covered, but there the actual requirements make sense. See page 45.

It's still bad, because it's extremely tone-deaf (and playing with fire is bad), but it's written by and for policy idiots, who live in Word documents, and (un)fortunately rarely have contact with the outside world.

Really his snide at the right gaining traction in his post shows that he still doesn't get it.

So regular folks would get scanned, but the bank's private messaging service isn't included. Just like the child pornographer's private messaging service won't be included either.

https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2024/05/2024-05-28_Cou...

for more details on this thing see page 45 and 46

in general this is a framework to

- have big players to spend money, have a team that for this, and have effective "parental controls" (have more age-appropriatedness controls, more tagging options for users/content, etc)

- have an EU center that works on the technological part of the problem

Only on certain topics, which have been narrowed down over time. For most areas (including something like chat control), it comes down to Qualified Majority Voting, which needs at least 55% of countries representing at least 65% of EU population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_the_Council_of_the_E...

Other matters, notably foreign policy, require unanimity.

Seems like a good thing. If nothing else works at least that might bring some attention to this nonsense..

They are not somehow bluffing or threatening this simply to try to change the law. It's a principled stance that they simply cannot provide E2E encrypted chat under such conditions. So either they break their protocol in which case their claimed offer would be a lie, or they leave.

Seems like the only choice they have, really. Also, by "leave EU" I'm pretty sure they mean not offer their app in the EU, so yes I think they expect their EU user base to be zero in this scenario.

There are already anti-circumvention mechanisms built into Signal to facilitate use in places like China and Iran, so they've shown no interest in compliance where that goes directly contrary to their mission. Should they be removed from the App Store in Europe, I imagine they'll work on making use of the EU's own push to open iOS up for alternative app stores / PWAs. (It's clear that the EU is unhappy with Apple's current take on compliance, so we can expect that to open up further.)

The hardest to convince would be Whatsapp, but I think that Zuckerberg is one of the few big tech CEOs that still has principles, at least sometimes. I think it could happen.

Hint: I'm taking Simons' role in this: They won't drop to zero.

Hopefully with more tech-savvy generations gradually taking power, this will happen without too many painful lessons.

I think one of the main problems "free speech absolutist" have is that they chose such an awkward phrase to self-identify themselves. The word "absolutist" is so unambiguous that it implies that seemingly no one would qualify for it besides true loons which makes the whole idea easy to dismiss.

When you really get down to it, almost everyone supports some type of restriction on speech. This should be especially apparent when discussing legislation like this in which the goal is preventing the distribution of child porn. How can a "free speech absolutist" be okay with a government making certain images and videos illegal to share? Wouldn't a true absolutist fight for people's right to distribute child porn?

The ambiguity of "absolutist" ends up making any reasonable "free speech absolutist" debate the meaning of the word "speech". Suddenly things like child porn, defamation, threats, fraud, and/or the location of Elon Musk's private plane need to be debated as whether they qualify as "speech". The chosen phrase necessitates that the "absolutist" need to weaken the idea of "free speech" in order to seem reasonable. Which in turn makes people who are ostensibly pro-free speech start to question whether something like hate speech should even qualify for free speech protections.

So a "free speech absolutist" either needs to argue some truly extreme views like why child porn should be legal or they weaken the overall pro-free speech side of the whole debate.

So the free speech absolutist groups got infiltrated by those that wanted to dog whistle and (almost) never tailored arguments to those who were strongly opposed; and worse, those who need free speech the most.

The same often goes for encryption. And we have to deal with adversaries that are willing to straight up lie and promise things that sound nice and sound accurate (things that follow when using basic logic but don't if nuance is incorporated). There are no universal optimas, things with no downsides/costs. But most importantly we have to tailor arguments to audiences, not expect them to be just taken and understood like we do. The priors are different and their objective functions may be different as well. So often people will argue what they think is most important to fall of deaf ears because people don't consider that thing important (at least in context).

How about just political opinions? How quickly we forgot "free speech zones." This is the government actually limiting public speech in the USA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone

BTW, I am not for this regulation in any way. I just don't see the connection to hate speech.

Free speech absolutism is also known as 'Meiklejohnian absolutism' which pertains to the 1st amendment with a particular opposition to the liberal interpretation of 'clear and present danger'. Heather Lynn Mac Donald is prominent person who holds similar views on speech and she makes the case that calling for end of Israel is protected free speech since there is not a 'clear and present danger'. The people calling for that genocide are presently unable to carry it out. It's actually one of the things I agree with Claudine Gay about. The problem in Harvard's case is that it's selective free speech but that is a different issue.

The liberal interpretation of the 'clear and present danger' carve out for the 1st amendment is the reason why there is so much emphasis on tying speech to violence. This is why safe spaces must be created where views that could make things unsafe are not permitted. For example, misgendering people could cause them to commit suicide therefore you are in effect murdering people with your words. It's a total stretch of the 'clear and present danger' but it is done at such a scale that is has been effective.

The last thing I fought against was the removal of The Daily Stormer from the internet. I figured it set a bad precedent which was sure to be abused. Once services have signaled that they can be swayed then immense pressure would be brought to bear to sway them further. Another reason is that I think it's important to hear what people say instead of what some people say about what some other people say. I think the Taliban and ISIS should also have websites. I also figured it was very counter productive. If you're going to do it once, fine, but don't keep doing it. By first forcing the most extreme people out of mainstream and onto alternate sites the character of those sites will change to be more extreme. By subsequently forcing less extreme people out of mainstream these people have no where to go except for the already extreme sites where they will be outnumbered and they will see the existing extreme views as the new consensus. Slowly salami-slicing the mainstream fosters the creation of a large and very extreme population which is extremely counter productive. A similar effect can be seen in prison populations where many people who go to prison are forced to join dangerous gangs for their own protection and instead of becoming rehabilitated they become far more dangerous than when they went in.

I think cynical political operatives knew this and did this intentionally as part of the 'pied piper' strategy where the 'basket of deplorables' needs to both be large and unpalatable to the rest of the population in order for that group to be effectively disenfranchised. The problem is when that basket gets too big and is no longer able to be disenfranchised and instead elects the pied piper president. I think Q-anon is an soviet style 'Operation Trust' that basically sent a substantial portion of the population insane - intentionally. One would think that they would have learned their lesson the first time when Trump got elected, but having succeed the second time they're going to try for a third time. This whole process is immensely damaging. Even now the attempts to destroy Trump are counter productive and instead helping him.

My primary concern is for the health of the middle class and I worry about mass immigration undermining that. I say this as an immigrant with the understanding that I would be personally worse off were it not for immigration. I think those in the middle class have legitimate grievances and ignoring the issue of mass immigration and deriding those opposed to it as hateful bigoted stay at home xenophobes has lead to the success of populists parties. Attempts at disenfranchising those populists parties with coalitions has only delayed the now seemingly inevitable.

I'm vehemently against hate speech laws, they start out as hate speech modifiers and through that simple existence now require the courts to establish thoughts through invasions of privacy. I think this rises to the level of thought crime in effect and is of course very Orwellian. Once the notion of hate speech crimes has been established it was just a matter of time before legislation makes it official, if not at the federal level then at the state level. I think the new 'anti-Zionism is antisemitism' conflation in combination with 'antisemitism is hate speech' in effect now makes criticism of Israel illegal, it'll be interesting to see how that is enforced as it's such a ridiculous notion. Predictably the left is now on the receiving end of the very policies there were instrumental in establishing. They have been hoisted by their own petard.

The attempt to stamp out 'hate' makes as much sense as the Soviet attempts in their creation of the 'New Soviet man' free from 'greed'. There are already proposals to stop companies from being 'greedy' though legislation.

I find it rather interesting that Popper's paradox espouses the idea that one must be 'intolerant of the things that threaten tolerance' sounds really similar to George Lincoln Rockwell's philosophy of 'you must hate the things that threaten what you love.' In both cases giving people license to do what they wanted to do anyway.

For me the battle is over, limited to posts like this, my focus these days is to avoid the crushing of the middle class by being as economically far away from the middle class as possible.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

There's a strong and widespread expectation among many that it's morally imperative for them to be able to elect their own government. So any moves by the government to limit this will be met by fierce resistance.

If a similar idea existed about privacy, these sneaky moves wouldn't be feasible and would leave a bad taste in the mouths even of the perpetrators. Unfortunately, many among us are of the "But I've got nothing to hide" persuasion.

The second your only recourse against authority is to politely ask it not to do something bad to you (maybe, for instance, on a piece of paper with multiple choice questions), you have no real autonomy.

WalMart is the largest private spender in the world at around ~$400B per year. The US Federal Government alone spends >$400B per month...

That doesn't even include state and local governments which basically doubles that.

This sort of rhetoric is dangerous.

> Maybe checks and balances would work as a system

It does seem to be working well in America.

Yes and it was/is very successful at that. The overpaid and incompetent bureaucracy in Brussels seems to be mostly tangential if not detrimental to that.

Also to be fair your take is also very shallow and provides little value.

Wasn't that NATO (aka mostly the US)?

The previous Portuguese PM António Costa, who had to resign amid a corruption inquiry...Has just been announced today for an EU role that will triplicate his previous annual salary as Portuguese prime minister

"Portuguese PM António Costa resigns amid corruption probe" - https://www.politico.eu/article/portugal-prime-minister-anto....

"Portugal's Antonio Costa expected to be next head of European Council" - https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/portugals-antonio-costa...

"...Costa's appetite for a top European position has been an open secret for years. In March 2022, amid speculation Costa was angling for a Brussels job, Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa warned him that he would call an election if he were to leave his post early..."

It is a graft and of the worst kind, and naive takes like yours is what led to scenarios like Brexit. It's a jobs for the boys organization and you are not part of the club.

The EU's mutual defense clause is an empty shell

If Chat Control goes ahead long-term that will outweigh any benefits DMA might have.

The Apple system was pretty much the best way this could be done short of having a 100% reliable "AI" system on-device detecting bad stuff.

A pretty common example in my circle is parents taking pictures of baby rashes/pimples/blisters etc to send to family doctor or doctor friends.

It sounds like a situation where every parent with a toddler will end up on some list.

> Only non-commercial services that are not ad-funded, such as many open source software, are out of scope

> How do you even ensure a client is actually self-reporting?

This is an interesting technical question whether or not it's covered by the actual proposal. How do you ensure that Messenger for instance is

1. actually doing the reporting, and not someone simply bypassing the app to keep sending e2ee chats without them being client-side scanned. That would most likely be against ToS and accounts would maybe get banned if doing so

2. prevent against spam reporting, where someone could basically DoS the reporting service with false positives

> If a photo are flagged, will it appear in a GDPR access request?

There are a bunch of dispositions in the draft concerning personal data protection (ctrl+f personal data to find the relevant articles). It also states pretty much everywhere that processing should be done in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2016/679, more commonly known as GDPR.

[0] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/

What really bugs me though, is this:

> Having regard to the availability of technologies that can be used to meet the requirements of this Regulation whilst still allowing for end-to-end encryption, nothing in this Regulation should be interpreted as prohibiting, requiring to disable, or making end-to-end encryption impossible. Providers should remain free to offer services using end-to-end encryption and should not be obliged by this Regulation to decrypt data or create access to end-to-end encrypted data

I believe this was added as a request from France, which didn't want E2EE to be undermined by this proposal. However, the provider would need to "create access to end-to-end encrypted data" to report it to the EU Centre. Although the following article states that E2EE can still be used if you don't send images, videos and URLs, so I guess that's the compromise?

It's difficult to explain why this is wrong because the very premise that ideas are even in competition in the manner you're suggesting just isn't true. There isn't some arena where scribes record victories and losses. And even on the individual level it doesn't work, that someone when presented with the truth will change their opinion. People won't even change their opinion even when it stands to benefit them personally.

I think folks get this idea of "marketplace of ideas" in their head and assume that "fitness" for an idea correlates with correctness. That better ideas spread and survive. No — entertaining ideas, ideas that conform to our existing biases, ideas that we were conditioned to think, ideas that get repeated over and over by someone with a big enough megaphone, ideas that sound plausibly correct, ideas that make people feel clever for thinking them, ideas that fit a particular narrative you believe, propaganda that is spread far and wide.

Being right has never and will never be enough. No one, not you, not me, not anyone is immune to taking on bad ideas. It took 40 years of the entire god damn western world organizing itself around a single message to get a critical mass people to believe that homosexuals were regular people and it still hasn't fully worked. Women have the rights we do because of the feminist movement in the 1970s. Slavery was abolished in 1865 and folks still think black people are inferior.

You're taking on the fallacy that progress just happens and isn't the result of a fuckton of work and sacrifice by people who consciously made it happen and who are out in the fields weeding constantly.

"When your crops are so bad you need to use herbicides to kill weeds lest they immediately take over your farm, it's time to change your crops."

I guess the analysis about Nazis in the Weimarer Republik are far more complex than a matter of free speech. It tells a lot that I never heard historians seriously discussing it in this context.