Stop Killing the Internet: No Digital ID and No Age Verification(citizens-initiative.europa.eu) |
Stop Killing the Internet: No Digital ID and No Age Verification(citizens-initiative.europa.eu) |
One of my (probably dumb) ideas is:
- Create a legal presence in a country that does not require being dystopian, has better more relaxed business laws, less regulation, lower taxes, move most of the corporate side of the business there. Take the tax revenue with you. It does not have to be all at once. Make the move a slow boil so they don't see it until it's too late.
Which countries, provinces, regions, states have the least regulation, least dystopian behavior and the least taxes? There has to be a incentive for business leaders and board members to move things around. Bonus if the saved money pays for a Gulfstream G650 ER or two.
"Stop killing the internet" unfortunately means nothing at all to the layman, they will still be using it pretty much exactly as they were before, and governments will just claim "See, internet is still working".
And these authoritarian politicians will destroy the internet with these actions. Maybe they will even change society as we know it, and not for the better.
The problem is thinking such initiatives will achieve anything in a bureaucratic system devoid of honest debate and actual democracy.
These citizen's initiatives must at least be tried but simultaneously we must create a new internet forever out of politician reach.
I think it's time that "please let 1800 analytics firms monitor your every browsing habit in exchange for this content" was seen in the same light as "please let 1800 private foreign espionage and propaganda agencies spy on you".
Not sure how I feel about that, sounds kind of problematic in retrospect. Especially since there's no mechanism for triggering EU-wide referendums to help this AFAIK.
[0] population of the EU: 452 million, unique signatures required: 1 million
"No age verification" is even deader-on-arrival. Parents are literally screaming at politicians to protect "the children" (as always), but pretty much everything that has been tried so far to silence those screams has failed (remember PICS, the Platform for Internet Content Selection: that was the last serious contender, and it has been dead for, like, 20 years). Again: demand a way to implement this securely and anonymously, don't take an untenable abolitionist stance or resort to hand-waving in the vague general direction of "parental responsibility": that has been tried, and it's not working anymore.
And, please, stop vilifying the EU in these matters. The UK left the EU, ostensibly so they could make "more sensible laws" in, specifically, respects like these, and they're now leading the assault on basic freedoms with even more fervor. And no, that's not just big-bad-Starmer's fault: it's a preview of what you have to argue against and propose a compromise for instead.
You could make same exact argument regarding kids health, alcohol abuse, nicotine abuse, all types of addictions, age of consent, and so on.
You can't just have all the safeguards dropped because you think you're doing a good job. Or, even worse, you have no kids and it's your virtues merely projecting.
They're children. They have the internet access you give them. This isn't some unsolveable problem that needs government intervention, my parents were setting up filters so long ago that they're grandparents now.
Ah, OK, so you admit a problem exists. That's step one...
> We call on the European Commission to propose legislation ensuring that digital identity and age-assurance systems used to access online services in the Union remain voluntary, privacy-preserving and non-discriminatory. Citizens must not be forced to identify themselves to access lawful online content or services unless strictly necessary, proportionate and provided by law. The legislation should require anonymous or pseudonymous proof-of-age, data minimisation, selective disclosure, open-source implementation, independent security audits, prohibition of cross-service tracking by relying parties, and equivalent alternatives for citizens who do not use a digital wallet.
It would be nice to have some good standard that is less invasive.
Specifically, the requirement to provide non-digital alternatives as well as control over relying parties (i.e. consumers of the 'digital ID' and/or 'age verification' APIs) makes all of this a non-starter.
I mean: non-digital alternatives to digital IDs? I guess that means that nobody should be forced to get a digital ID for access to essential government(-ish) services (like banking), and that's a valid point, but in the context of "stop killing the Internet" just obfuscates things.
And control over RPs beyond GDPR is just pushing it, again, quite on purpose.
Every power you grant the government is another knife they'll eventually stab you in the back with. Maybe you like your current government, but what about the next one, and the one after that?
Instead, just use the tools you already have access to. I was not opposed when California mandated that applications add parental controls, that's fine. If parents want to restrict their children's internet access, there's a continium there ranging from "prudent parenting" to "child abuse", but that can be worked out on a case-by-case basis. I am, however, rabidly against the state requiring you to dox yourself every time you log into a website, because inconceivably lazy parents can't figure out how to use the parental tools that they already have.
From both someone involved in raising kids as well as someone who knows a lot of teachers: none of the involved parties want that. Schools are at best for teaching, but never for raising.
Don't let kids have an internet-connected phone, the same way they can't have a bottle of wine.
If they really need such device make sure that device is locked to a small list of app/contacts possible.
There's no need to lock down the rest of the internet because the responsible person of such kid can't tolerate their complaints. It is a parenting issue.
Unless your point was that we should legally ban kids from handling phones, which I think is too extreme.
"It takes a village to raise a child." Except these same parents who won't take care of their kids are also the very first who go all "How dare you speak to my child like that! I'm going to have you fired!"