It's not self-contradictory at all. Proponents of Chat Control want to be able to spy on their own citizens, and have the technological wiggle room to expand their powers to collect data in the future. At the same time, they generally don't want customers to be abused by large companies that strong-arm them into increasingly lopsided contracts by moving in unison and using the average person's technical illiteracy against them. For people like us, these two things are related because we don't want every bit of our data collected, examined and studied for either tracking or profit - but for them, companies and governments operate on entirely different levels of rights and expectations.

Also, the EU isn't even remotely like "a country".

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theandrewbailey an hour ago | parent [-]

> Also, the EU isn't even remotely like "a country".

The EU has a currency, parliament, elections, laws, presidents, courts, treaties, and is thinking about forming an army. That sounds an awful lot like a country to me.

	▲	tavavex 31 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Many multi-national organizations and alliances have some of these aspects, does that make them into countries too? In practice, being a country isn't just about filling out some checklist. The EU neither claims to be a country, nor does any country on Earth see it as a single sovereign state. It has democratic and political processes that are similar to a country's, but its sway over member states is limited. Also, its members aren't forced to stay in the EU, unlike the individual regions that are part of your country. And if you truly, unironically believe that the EU is a single country, what do you think of its member states? By extension of this argument, is Spain not a country? Or is Poland a country that's contained within another country, being equal and unequal in status at the same time?