Ar they, though? The established longterm consensus is pretty reasonable in the EU, it’s not self evident that things have been going in the right direction on the whole in recent years.

I don't want to enter into conspiracy territory, but it seems that there's a big insistence from whomever is behind pushing for this to pass at any cost. First it was Denmark, now the EU parliament president, a Maltese. What's for certain is that those that stand to benefit massively are governments and politicians themselves.

And no, it's certainly not that bullshit astroturfed story that has been going around, of Meta behind this concerted effort across the Western world because they're too lazy to validate one's age.

I'm completely serious here; the former minister of law was beaten as a child and it informs his whole world view.

As the crisis has worsened across Europe, Denmark started unbelievably intrusive AI-enabled mass surveillance of welfare recipients (almost 15% of the population), dangerous infrastructure which could be applied to the population as a whole. And I’d argue that fears over migrant-driven crime are what allowed Denmark’s politicians to push for Chat Control in the first place.

What is funny is that it has been pushed by the social democrats. See also what Labour have been doing in UK.

Whatever we call centre-left today we would have placed much further to right a couple decades ago. At this point even the US Democrats are more progressive than our EU "liberal" parties.

If Chat Control gets through, it means the Parliament approved it, which means the EU people voted for politicians that supported the idea. If the EU got dismantled, the same politicians would be elected (they won once why not twice) and do it again at the local level. (though, maybe not in every country)

Yes, definitely. Just as an example, my country wouldn't have a lot of consumer protection laws we now have thanks to the EU. As a concrete example, there used to be a single phone service provider acting as a monopolist and we had the highest phone bills in the EU. When this started to change, it still wasn't possible to keep the same phone number when switching providers, which is a huge thing for businesses and freelancers. The EU forced our government to change this. And I'm not even talking about all the financial help that we got from the EU. Which, admittedly, was used poorly by my politicians. But this isn't the EU's fault, it's their fault.

> Would you still believe this if Chat Control got though?

Chat Control is being pushed by member states. The people who keep saving you are the MEPs (elected EU MPs).

You would most likely already have chat control if you were not in the EU. All governments around the world are pushing for this.

That was the case in the beginning, for a while. Now I rarely see even ones where I have to click Settings and Reject all, usually it's just Accept all and Accept only essential. No dark patterns just two equally visible buttons. Often also just "We use only essential cookies" and OK button because they don't have 1138 partners they want to sell your data to

Remember that scandal about that subcontractor for Apple which installed suicide nets after thirteen workers died and another five attempted suicide by jumping off buildings? But no, corporations good, government bad. At least when it comes to government I get to vote. Even better: I'm Belgian, I HAVE to vote, it's not just a right, it's a civic duty. What, when it comes to corporations I can 'vote with my wallet'? I'm sure Apple, whose profits exceed those of some developed countries, will surely change their ways if I boycott them over stuff like the Uyghur slave shops.

Also:

> I’d rather have that instead of govt monitoring of all communications.

False dilemma, you can have neither. But sure, EU bad because you're not allowed to deny the Holocaust or call for the extermination of Jews/Muslims/the gays/...

> And because you are grateful for the cookie policies you don’t mind rewarding them with unlimited access all your private communication?

No. Where do you even come up with this stuff?

> So again.. how do these basic/superficial (or even if they are extremely effective and useful, that doesn’t really change anything) regulations justify mass surveillance?

Answering a question with a question only works if the question used as answer is a simpler way of getting the answer to the original question.

> For what its worth in no way has the EU been effective in doing anything about [fake news]

Okay, so which country/state/union/whatever has been effective in doing anything about it? Because according to the post I responded to there is someone way better at regulating the Internet than the EU is, so I'm wondering who it is.

Didn't we just have a round of people being fired and arrested in the US for saying mean things about Charlie Kirk?

This gets brought up a lot, and I’m not sure how to explain it. But inconsequential complete free speech is not the top issue for some people. People have different priorities.

as long as your mean memes aren't against the POTUS ;)

And at least people are not shot in the streets by the police for protesting...

Europe is over all far more democratic and safer then USA. Including people actually being safer when they speak.

> free speech

Democracy only works well when the populace is properly informed and it's much easier for someone to tell a lie than for someone else to disprove that lie. Think of the Alex Jones Sandy Hook hoax conspiracy hypothesis.

A group of protesters got 50 years in jail for daring to exercise their constitutional duty against ICE illegally detaining citizens. Meanwhile the J6 thugs all got pardonned by the literal pedophile in office, and not a single Epstein victim got any justice.

Right now people in the US are being designated as terrorist for being against the government.

Why then do they make the most annoying, user-hostile dark pattern cookie banners they can come up with? No, website operators hate that they have to either stop spamming thousands of tracker scripts or put up a banner.

They found out that they can offload blame on the EU instead and so have chosen to make the web as annoying as possible.

The solution to that one is pretty simple, simply don't collect information you don't need, and you can avoid the banner altogether! Github manages to not have banners, it's not because of magic.

There is no obligation to put a banner of you don't sell your users' data to third parties. The law is very clear that your don't need it for period technical cookies, so it's really always and every time solely about tracking and advertisement money.

Cookies have literally nothing to do with GDPR or the ePrivacy directive. It is mentioned I think twice total in both documents as an example of how user data is persisted and tracked across domains, but ultimately the mechanism is irrelevant.

We also have representatives. We call it semi-direct democratic system. There is no such thing as a „true democracy“, it’s a set of principles

The problem with the EU is that there are many levels of abstraction, and the more links in a chain the more susceptible to corruption it is.

This becomes immediately obvious when you vote for a party who fails to fulfill, or even go against their policies. Then for the EU there’s an additional level of abstraction for the commission. At this level, the voter is far removed from their initial vote and are completely powerless.

There are too many levels of indirection. At least in some countries you can vote on a person representing your town/area. This is one level of indirection less and allows people who aren't just chosen party members to win and then they have incentives to help the region.

In "standard" party democracy there is just nothing that can be done. Calling it democracy as in rule of the people is a disgrace.

The US is also falling behind Chinese manufacturing. They had to ban Chinese cars because legacy American automakers couldn't compete.

do you have an original talking point somewhere in this drivel that doesn't sound like it's written by a 15 year old edgelord?

This is exactly what I'm talking about. A short-term view of the world, progress and technology.

All my devices supported USB-C before the EU regulation. But if I wanted to buy a device with a new type of connector, I should have been able to. This is how the USB-C came to be and how any new standard in hardware happens. New technologies are made and just sold, and if they are proven to be superior to others in the market, they often become standards.

The USB-C standard is not the best standard that can exist from now to the end of the universe, but if this discovery process is blocked, we will be stuck with it forever, which, of course, will also constrain the design and engineering of devices in other ways.

It's the same fundamental flawed thought process that has made the EU reliant on the US for a lot of services.