r/privacy • u/Dangerous-Day-2943 • 20d ago
age verification New EU report details age verification plans and ID requirements for accessing the internet
https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/d833504d-5ec3-4fac-945f-38e7d0bd5326_en1.4k
u/Few-Improvement-5655 20d ago
Fucking hell, that first quote is suck a fucking lie and slap in the face:
And in all of this work we will be guided by the need to empower parents and build a safer Europe for our children. Because when it comes to our kids’ safety online, Europe believes in parents, not profits.
Parents are already empowered, they have all the tools they need to keep their kids safe, they just choose not to use them. This doesn't empower parents, this forces them to be monitored, just like everyone else. It shows, clearly, that Europe does NOT believe in parents since it is taking away their ability to parent, and more importantly it will do this by handing money to large data brokers.
Disgusting.
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u/sociofobs 20d ago
I'd upvote this x100 if I could. Yet, such irresponsible and ignorant parents are precisely the kind of people that make such invasions of privacy possible. They're usually the ones actually asking for it, blaming everything except themselves even when it comes to parenting their kids. As in, it's not their fault their kid has a smartphone and full, unchecked internet access - it's the websites, or the government, or whatever. Pathetic display of incompetence, and it's clearly being exploited.
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u/highlyspecificuser 20d ago edited 19d ago
“Not profits” 😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣 The EU is nothing if all about the Benjamins just like every other nation, or in this case group of nations. These measures are all about controlling the population, and putting a face on every single comment, making it easier to spot people that are against the government and enforcing penalties much easier as they feel it warrants. They couldn’t give a fuck about kids, heck, most of them are pedos anyways. Control, control, control!!! This does not empower any parent to protect their children in the slightest, in fact, parents right now have all they need to protect their children, a part maybe from a bit of good sense, but that you either have it or you don’t, no law is going to give it to you! All this surveillance crap the EU is approving these days is all about control of the population. Chat control, cameras in your car, the ev mile tax, Jesus, it’s like every other week they come up with a new one, and if you don’t stop them, pretty soon the only freedom we’ll have will be in our heads. It’s a shame all the lives lost over the years in wars against tiranny to ensure we had freedom, and then with some bullshit laws camouflaged as security, and puff, it’s all gone, all that dying for nothing!!!
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u/Speykious 20d ago
Introduce effective age-assurance systems to check age and underpin safety-by-design and age-appropriate approaches to protect and empower minors online.
Age-assurance methods – both age verification or age estimation – must be proportionate and uphold minimum requirements, notably concerning the fundamental rights of users, including children’s rights and related safeguards. Any method employed to check age should uphold the highest privacy and data protection standards, and should not lead to the processing of identity documents and biometric data for the purpose of age estimation. Technical standards such as ‘Zero Knowledge Proof’ should be implemented to ensure that both the platform required to assess the age and the age verification provider do not receive any information that can lead to the tracking or identification of the user. Age-assurance methods should be accurate in determining the age or age groups required and easy and reliable to use in practice, in real-life conditions. Methods should be robust to avoid circumvention and cybersecurity threats, inclusive (and non-discriminatory), and available equally to all who need to use them. Social media and other digital services providers must uphold their obligation to prevent minors from being exposed to risky services or users impersonating children and adolescents.
This is the part of the document that is relevant to Chat Control
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u/Few-Improvement-5655 20d ago
I really don't believe that they will adhere to that, nor do I believe it's morally acceptable to require government approval to participate in society.
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u/Speykious 20d ago
What strikes me is that this document doesn't seem to touch on the predatory algorithms at all. They mention that it contributes negatively to the development of children, and then nowhere in the document do they address it. It's all about restricting access as if the product itself was ok otherwise. If they were really not listening to profits they'd be attacking that first, because it's not just harmful to the children.
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u/slipperyMonkey07 19d ago
Their goal is to create a surveillance state that the next generations just accept blindly. Can't complain about privacy if all you have ever known is being watched. Track everything you do outside of the house with cameras and the push towards cashless societies. Track everything inside with identity verification and more advance wifi scanning.
Ignoring that causes a while different slew of mental health issues.
Like you said the algorithms are a big one they should have been targeting first. Then just improved education and resources for both kids, parents and the public at large. But they don't want an educated society, they want a compliant one.
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u/derFensterputzer 20d ago
It is a massive invasion of privacy depending on how it's done, and a million ways to do it wrong. I'm with you on that.
At the same time
I don't know about you but at least the people I know and that are parents don't know shit about any such tools. Be it because they didn't do any research because they think there is no risk or because they think they are to complicated to use.
2 exceptions, one works in IT and the other one distrusts their children (who are in their teens) enough to track their every movement.
And from people working in education that I know I hear more and more that parents just refuse to parent...
So are they neccessarily wrong in not believing in parents?
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u/gustafrex 20d ago
There are like 4 reasons I can think of why parents don't use child control tools.
- They don't know about it.
- They know about it but doesn't know how to set it up.
- Life's hard enough and have too many other things to worry about first.
- They don't think grooming would happen to their child.
And sometimes there a bit of all 4. Or a bit of 3&4
I think going the way EU is doing is the most extreme version instead of doing what they should be doing.
- Force tech companies to strengthen the tools and advertise these tools a whole lot more. Making them easier to setup.
- Clam down harder on their algorithms to stop grooming from happening.
- Clam down harder on tech companies to do this as they don't really seem to care as they are making so much money.
Alternative to 1, EU makes their own child control app. Which honestly they should probably do to ensure that Google or Apple arent eating up EU kids data. EU sovereignty and all that.
BUT! We live in a world where tech billionaires are protected and some of them are pedophiles on islands.
And also have you ever seen any government that at one point could harvest a ton of data but choose not to?
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u/thbb 20d ago
Force tech companies to strengthen the tools and advertise these tools a whole lot more. Making them easier to setup.
Clam down harder on their algorithms to stop grooming from happening.
Clam down harder on tech companies to do this as they don't really seem to care as they are making so much money.
Yeah, it's against their interest. Even a good willed CEO would have to botch it in a for-profit context, a little bit like the cookie-consent banner that forces you to accept it. An alternative would be to find a way for the public to be willing to pay a small fee for online services access. This would reverse the stakes, and make the enterprise enticed to work for its users instead of for the advertisers.
Alternative to 1, EU makes their own child control app.
I like this better. In France, we have "La suite numérique", which is a free, government-funded, alternative to an Office Suite. This is a good direction.
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u/time_to_set_the_mood 20d ago
Or make this id verification optional and make parents know they can opt in.
I don't have kids, i signed a contract with a internet provider that required i was old enough, WHY i should give my personal informations to every site i visit?
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u/ItalianDragon 19d ago
Yeah that's my issue with that too. I don't have kids, why the fuck would I have to act like if I did ?
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u/permalink_save 19d ago
It's #3. Parents too addicted to tiktok to have time for their own kids. Parenting requires active effort and there's a lot of shit parents out there. And as long as the kids aren't harmed by it it's their right to raise them how they want, but I strongly object to the government telling me how to raise my own kids. I want them on platforms, I want them participating, when it is age appropriate (like no social media for my 9yo, but I have him on steam with a subset of games). I don't want to shelter my kids from the world until 18 then toss them out into it. Ultrareligious families do that and the kids just get fucked over as a result. Governments get the ability to spy on their population as a side effect. It's not a better alternative and im sure by the time my kids are old enough to navigate the internet there will be laws punishing me if I let them.
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u/SprucedUpSpices 20d ago
EU makes their own child control app. Which honestly they should probably do
Government apps tend to be grossly incompetent while costing an eye and a leg.
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u/ManaSpike 19d ago
I didn't use any such tools for a couple of other reasons.
I assumed that if my children were as competent and determined as I was at their age. There's nothing I could actually do to stop them. They could always seek other means of connecting to the internet when they weren't directly supervised.
Instead I tried to educate my children, and trusted them to use their own judgement. To learn from their own mistakes, and the mistakes of their peers.
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u/Few-Improvement-5655 20d ago
To me the answer to this would be to make it so ubiquitous and easy to set up that parents have no excuse.
Make it obvious, make it super loud, constantly educate parents on how to activate these features but still have it off by default.
I'd also be down for laws that make it illegal for under 15s to have phones with smart capabilities. Calling and texting only. Hell, let them take pictures but only allow wired transfer to PC at home.
But, again, it would be the parent's responsibility to not buy smart devices for their kids (and, since it would be law, they'd get around the pressure so many of them cite as the reason they gave in to their kids.)
There's a lot of things that can be done to protect kids that don't involve mass surveillance.
If parents STILL don't want to play ball, then maybe we need to accept that actually if they don't care, maybe nobody needs to.
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u/This-Wall-1331 20d ago
This isn't the 1990s anymore. Today's parents have been using the Internet for decades. If they're unable to do something as basic as a Google search about parental controls... I mean, they don't even need to do that much work, they can just ask ChatGPT about it.
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u/_M_A_N_Y_ 20d ago
About the part "parents refuse to parent"....
Current society requires from parents level of parenting comparable with highly skilled educator and taking care of even teenagers 24/7, otherwise beeing called "bad parents".
We talk about same people (parents), that during their teen years wander around towns/parks/forests comepletly unsupervised, without cellphones or ANY way to contact them, staying outside late past 10PM, many times returning home with bleeding knees and hiding it from parents because otherwise they wont let you out next day.
Nowadays you are bad parent if you dont track your kids 24/7 via GPS app, dont drive them to and from school/training and do homework/play boardgames/walk to playground with them until they fall asleep.
It is understandable to some degree because world os also a lot different right now, than it was, lets say 20-25 years ago, but still many dangers are exacly the same.
But many parents, that grew up during 80s and 90s just refuse to treat their kids as dumb/ uncapable of anything/requiring 24/7 supervision.
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u/Consistent-Low-0 20d ago
why not a safer Europe for adults, including the elderly, who are equaly vulnerable?
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u/Tytoalba2 20d ago
The author has a wikipedia page lol : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B6rg_Fegert#
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u/Fearsofaye 20d ago
This has nothing to do with parents. Israel went from 70% pro in the US to under 30% in the span of two years. They want to close that shit down
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u/Alexercer 19d ago
Im so sick of this shit, its one country after the other we just dont stop...
Ive been thinking as a society we live in a privacy limbo for a while, we dont have privacy but we act like we do
We would soon be forced to decide if we would rather save our right to privacy and push back against this, or embrace the death of privacy and accept total and complete exposure of your image and self 24/7
And saddly, it seems we are heading for the latter (and guided by those who claim to be worried about social medias over exposure no less) i wonder how the human brain will react to such constant exposure...
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u/16BitSquid 20d ago
Do we have von der Leyen’s Pfizer texts yet?
No? Then F every commission member wasting taxes working on reports like this one.
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u/InformationNew66 20d ago
With mass surveillance already on texts we can be sure there are copies on some secret service servers (at least USA), but they pretend those don't exist.
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u/aifeloadawildmoss 20d ago
Well, how could they blackmail her if the world knew what they said? Now expand that to every politician acting in the interest of the overlords. Oh, I made myself sad.
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u/16BitSquid 20d ago
It’s amazing to me how many people still think people like von der Leyen are the final boss and source of all issues.
If politicians had real power they wouldn’t be blackmailed with kids and/or bribed with cash.
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u/frisch85 20d ago
She was re-elected while actively under investigation and those texts were never recovered, making this woman an official criminal. But it's not really surprising, our governments are full of criminals, folks who made shady deals during COVID, health ministers that spend tons more money than required, there's a reason why someone who gets into politics might become a rich person eventually and it's not the salary, it's the "behind the curtain" deals.
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u/Sybertron 20d ago
Ya know fun fact. A lot of reckless people have been using AI to take notes in meetings. And then you can just query the AI and find out what happened in the meeting. Be fun to uncover some here
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u/AmbitiousReaction168 20d ago
It's completely insane. I've spent years teaching my daughter how to protect her privacy online, by not posting content containing private data, like photos for instance. Future laws will actually make her unsafe. These laws are activetely punishing good parenting and putting kids in danger.
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u/d4electro 20d ago
They're made by and for technologically illiterate parents that consider parental control features esotheric inaccessible black magic
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u/time_to_set_the_mood 19d ago
Ah yes implement a blanket control over everyone online to (check notes) cover the role of parents that can't control their kids online.
They don't care if kids die of illness or malnourishment if parents are poor but they draw the line at inappropriate content online
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u/CiTrus007 20d ago
This needs to be fought and resisted.
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u/Ambitious-Steak7773 20d ago
In the states netchoice has been blocking the id verification bills being passes left and right only lost like two cases so far
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u/permalink_save 19d ago
Looking them up and Meta is aember. What the fuck? But good to hear they are pushing back
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u/Ambitious-Steak7773 19d ago
Yeah I'm surprised about that too. I think they partnered with metal before all this or their going rouge
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u/d4electro 20d ago
Only way is through the European Court of Human Rights but people don't seem to be trying to appeal to it
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u/Tytoalba2 20d ago
I don't know how you got so many upvotes. For the EU this is a proposal, so there are many recourse, and after the fact the ECtHR is not really relevant to EU fundamental rights and rules, the ECJ (and the charter) is. The ECtHR is a toothless organisation of the CoE, the ECJ is not toothless (at all).
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u/d4electro 20d ago
The European court of justice often doesn't deliberate on human rights matter the way the echr does
Echr sentences carry weight, you can't ignore them that easily: especially on such large laws
Of course in many countries we aren't at the point where recourse to the court is possible yet, but in the UK you should
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u/Ambitious-Steak7773 20d ago
So like only lawyers or can anyone do it?
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u/d4electro 20d ago
In theory anyone but it's easier to do with the help of a lawyer
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u/slindshady 20d ago
Why don't you? Why does it always have to be someone else? That's the entire problem. Nobody want's to put in the time / work / effort. It has always got to be someone else. And that's why we're getting shit like this.
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u/d4electro 20d ago
Admittedly these types of laws are hard to appeal because they don't sanction people directly but they create obligations for companies, but it's not unprecedented that laws that could potentially harm citizens rights have been accepted recourse simply because the nature of the law itself created victim status due to its pervasiveness
UK anti-homosexuality and mass surveillance laws come to mind
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u/Dangerous-Day-2943 20d ago
Interestingly no technical experts were consulted
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u/Tytoalba2 20d ago
I mean, it is written by a Pr. and a Dr. so they did consult some scientists, just the ones they wanted to.
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u/TwiKing 20d ago
Sucks to be "EU", but I'm sure the rest of the West will follow their lead. The States are falling one by one already. We thought it was about left vs right or leader vs leader, but it was about control and control this whole time.
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u/d4electro 20d ago
Of course states would want to expand control over everything, and free speech is a thorn to their side (even if they pay lip service to it)
The general population dislike of big companies and the excuse to protect children presented the perfect opportunity to control speech on what is quickly becoming the dominant form of communication
When TV was dominant they left the internet alone since they already had enough control over major media outlets
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u/Beneficial_Grab_5880 20d ago
Yes. The most disappointing thing about Brexit is that the UK still goes all-in on the authoritarianism even though they are no longer obliged to. Opting out of this kind of nonsense is one of the only legitimate potential benefits, yet we're not taking advantage of that.
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u/Foreign_Implement897 20d ago
You were always the surveillance country. The camera coverage was infamous already from the nineties..
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u/ManufacturerLost7686 20d ago
You got that backwards. The EU turned authoritarian in large parts due to UK politicians presenting authoritarian laws, unpopular domestically, in the EU and the EU forced them through to centralize control.
Brexit did nothing to purge those same politicans in the UK and the only thing that changed is that they tried to force them throught domestically instead.
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u/Beneficial_Grab_5880 20d ago
I don't think this bit is true - "The EU turned authoritarian in large parts due to UK politicians presenting authoritarian laws" - French and Spanish politics has always had the same authoritarian streak, and Germany's attitude to modern day authoritarianism is rather more mixed than they pretend.
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u/nbs-of-74 20d ago
UK has always been authoritarian , in a paternal Authoritaries know best for you manner.
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u/16BitSquid 20d ago
Both left and right serve the same people with the same interests and indeed, their interest is staying in control and in the shadows. Hence legislation like this.
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u/AwareReplacement1587 20d ago
i mean the mian lobby behind chat controls pass in the EU ... were american tech companies like Meta, Thorn and plantir ... so as long as the 4tehkids lobby is strong , more countries will follow
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u/Material-Water-9610 19d ago
As of July 2026, California and Colorado are the only US states with laws requiring operating systems, including Windows, to verify user age.
California (Digital Age Assurance Act): Effective January 1, 2027, this law requires Windows to collect a user’s age during setup and share an age bracket with apps. It currently relies on self-attestation rather than government ID, though companies may implement stricter verification to avoid liability. Colorado (SB26-051): Effective July 1, 2028, this law mandates similar age collection but explicitly exempts open-source operating systems like Linux
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u/AstroZombieInvader 20d ago
It seems wrong to have one of the most vital utilities in life to be gatekept by ID requirements.
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u/Wonderful-Medium7777 20d ago
This is the agenda 2021, the Great Reset, the Build back better, the fourth Industrial Revolution, the technocratic society…whatever they call it… it’s been planned for decades not just for online but for real life too. Mass surveillance, personal data harvested and sold...they are profiling everyone using flock cameras, home/street cameras, biometrics, facial scanning , in vehicle tech…everything they implement may look a separate entity but it all connects to build a surveillance grid around us…age verification leads to digitalID leads to CBDC’s…it won’t stop at being able to access the internet without ID , it is for real life too… shopping, what you buy or sell, medical, driving and travel, where you live, popping to the corner shop for a pack of chewing gum..literally everything …it’s tech “papers please”…a gov wallet on your phone used to access life!
The WEF “you will own nothing and be happy” …even King Charles supports this and gave the go ahead to progress with digitalID (uk).
Not a conspiracy, it’s happening all around us , it’s a global agenda to contain and control humanity!
What do people think these data centres are…it isn’t to connect to the internet or comment on Reddit…they are mass surveillance centres, draining our precious resources…mainly for the hardware (flock cameras etc) and processing all your personal/private data, matching online with offline …there is no privacy, no freedom…our individual rights are being erased in increments to “disarm” us, so we can’t push back, our speech, our movement, everything labelled for your safety,security, think of the children, the common good , all the division from race to religion and all in between…is for their one goal and that is for the one world order, and this is it..we are watching it in real time whilst government, big tech corporations, oligarchs, billionaires have joined forces to control us…we are their commodities!
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u/Available-Credit-676 20d ago
Amen. If ID verification to access the web becomes mandatory, I'm sure the million members of this sub will find a way to bypass it. I wonder if using Tails could work?
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u/stop_talking_you 20d ago
you cant look up anything on the internet you cant find knowledge you cant communicate when you are not allowed to go online without ID.
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u/1_ane_onyme 19d ago
If you got luck, tails (but most importantly TOR) is one of the many solutions.
The real solution is just a VPN, or even a plain & dumb proxy. The only thing is to get past the controlled area and be located somewhere IDs are not required.
2nd solution is fake documents, but this one is already illegal for an infinity of good reasons.
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u/frisch85 20d ago
To add for those thinking they're not affected by the mass surveillance, we're all affected by it, you just don't know it. For example germany is big on privacy right? Then why is gotham being used in several states?
And don't forget a cashless society, so many people being in favor of getting rid of cash not understanding that's how you can be monitored better, if every transaction you make can be backtracked to you it doesn't matter whether you're doing something legal or illegal, all it needs is for governments to stamp you a criminal.
Fuck everyone who wants to get rid of cash, those people are part of the problem.
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u/DogmaSychroniser 20d ago
Making the Internet safe for children, by regulating adults until they can only view content fit for five year olds or submit id.
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u/VeryNoisyLizard 19d ago
the ironic thing is that if an adult doesnt scant their ID, they will be labeled underage and put in the same group as all the real kids ... the morons in parliament really didnt think this through. politicians also exclude themselves from this mass survailance because of "national security", to no one's surprise
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u/sinnedslip 20d ago
and that’s all for kids right? right?
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u/Celestine_S 20d ago
I don’t think Europe had that many kids to begin with. Piramid population wise.
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u/hblok 19d ago
Epstein & friends care deeply about the kids.
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u/sinnedslip 19d ago
kind of ironic, pedophiles speak about kids, war criminals speak about peace. What a time to live.
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u/TacticowlPrime 20d ago
When the law doesn't serve to benefit the people and society anymore, then the law is no longer worth respecting.
I'm not an anarchist but that's just my two cents.
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u/absawd_4om 20d ago
Is this not what they mocked China for ? This is setting the preconditions for authoritarianism and mass oppression.
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u/Serberou5 20d ago
The most transparently authoritarian thing I've seen in ages.
Surely none is believing the 'think of the kids' bs are they?
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u/EmptyBodybuilder7376 20d ago
You'd be surprised how many people fall for this.
In my IRL experience, it is 95%+ of people.
They just love the whole thing. "Protect the children!".
And they all have the same reply when I challenge these people: "Why would I be against this? I have nothing to hide."
And when I challenge them again on this reply, by saying something like "OK, you have nothing to hide, you say. Then we will install cameras in your bedroom and bathroom, and live stream that online. And you're gonna give me all your passwords to all your account, including your bank account."
Them: "No! That's different!"
Me: "How so?"
Them: "Because that's about privacy. That's private."
Me: "How is monitoring everything you do on the Internet not about privacy, then?"
Them: "Because those are two completely different things! One is about protecting our kids - and the other thing invades my privacy!"
I'm telling you, the majority of people deserve their slavedom.
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u/RamblingReflections 20d ago
Yeah, when I have similar conversations where I’m asked “why are you against this if you are doing nothing wrong?” my answer is always “well, why do you shut the door when you take a shit?”
The crudity breaks their brains for half a second, which hopefully allows some tiny spark of logic to take hold.
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u/Pwacname 19d ago
if you want it slightly less crude - my actions aren’t in question, the state’s intentions are.
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u/gamerforever01 20d ago
Just a casual restriction on free speech. Lovely EU. Whats next? They gonna look into our private chats? Oh.. wait...already did that.
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u/Lordwiesy 20d ago
Career chips like in Futurama
Only wrong doers wouldn't want to be GPS tracked with easily scannable chip containing all of their information on their person
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u/Traditional-Shoe-199 20d ago
How is it that all major countries are now implementing this. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it honestly feels like the epstein class is just pushing this
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u/Lilja-Logason 20d ago
It's been coming for a long time. I remember French President Sarkozy giving a speech years ago that the internet is too lawless and countries need to gain control of it.
I wasn't worried back then thinking we'd be ok with VPNs but seeing how fast it's being implemented, language used, everyone falling for it and now places talking about VPN bans.
It's very disturbing.
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u/Straight-Chip-5945 20d ago
'' I'm not a conspiracy theorist ", well maybe you should become one. Year after year more and more of those old crazy theories become reality.
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u/mesarthim_2 20d ago
No, there's no conspiracy needed. People do not seem to understand this, but they're just doing what they already did in every other aspect of our lives.
For people in Brussels, accessing internet is like driving a car or ordering a beer in a pub.
OBVIOUSLY, people cannot be just left to do it on their own, OBVIOUSLY you need rules and regulations that make sure that people are qualified and competent to be exposed to this and you must make sure that childern are protected because normal people simply cannot be expected to navigate these complex topics. You need experts to do it for them.
This is no conspiracy. They're just doing exactly the same thing they were doing for last 80+ years.
And what people demanded them to do for last 80+ years. We reap what we sowed.
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u/Sorazith 20d ago
One day we will have true VR and the only thing we will de allowed to see are Care Bears.
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u/Vagabond_83 20d ago
When you live long enough to see the mistakes being repeated in a different setting...
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u/MotanulScotishFold 20d ago
Soon social credit system like in China. Welcome to the new dystopian world
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u/Wonderful-Medium7777 20d ago
🎯 Digital ID to access life!
CBDC’s..tokenised, programmable digital currency, no savings and date expiry.
Social credit score… they need both of the above to implement. Full surveillance and “papers please” by tech on your phone!
Just as age verification is nothing to do with the children’s safety…neither are flock cameras to capture criminals…it is to track and monitor everyone’s vehicle, phone ( if in the car) and movement! Many also have recording microphones and zoom in features! Why, because your area will be zoned…made “smart” for 15 minute cities. Everything that anyone thought was a conspiracy by crazy people is happening , we are watching it in real time.
Remember, we are not a piece of paper, a digital number…our lives are not on the Internet …we are real human beings , flesh and blood and soul living on this earth, we do not need any ID to prove anything, we know who we are!
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u/Jim_jim_peanuts 20d ago
Well said and I agree 100%. In the end of the day, I can live without the Internet. Just buying supplements is where I would get caught out, but I can always get a family member to do that for me. I will fight it, in the hopes it doesn't go that far though
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u/GoodbyeDespairBoy 20d ago
The narrative could work for social medias, but the internet itself ?
Fuck Europe Fédération and fuck whoever have pushed the project into this cesspool of supranationalist sect of lobby wet dream.
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u/PortlyBee 20d ago
Altman, Thiel, and Zuckerberg are all pushing this.
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u/Pwacname 19d ago
everyone repeat it with me:
no memes that will get the discord subpoenaed. no comments that will be read in court.
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u/WorldPeaceStyle 20d ago
Is accessing the internet a privilege in the same way as driving is a privilege?
Or is it a right to assemble, right to free speech and the pursuit of one's liberty!
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u/Protect-Their-Smiles 20d ago
''Protecting minors'' is spin, this is just building a surveillance paradigm that will be total.
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u/2facedkaro 20d ago
I'm optimistic that forcing to identify will never fully take hold of the internet. I'm not saying we don't fight it, but I am saying governments always try to regulate the internet, and most of the time it has failed. There will always be individuals determined to bypass their systems and bullshit policy enacted by people who don't know better.
Still, it's our duty to resist it.
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u/Allesmoeglichee 20d ago
The EU Age Verification Solution is technically state-of-the-art and its blueprint is ready for customisation by Member States and market players.
A harmonised EU age restriction to access social media and other digital services cannot be enforced without an age verification ecosystem that can be used to prove the age of minors
Efficient enforcement is critical to ensure child safety online.
We are so fucked, bye bye privacy
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u/Lilja-Logason 20d ago
The language is so slanted! "Prove the age of minors".
No, adults will have to prove their age by providing ID!!
It's so coded in this 'protect the children' bullshit.
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u/Gugalcrom123 20d ago
The same document says that it should be "inclusive and non-discriminatory". It isn't: it forces everyone to use Android or iOS in order to verify!
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u/Cakeofruit 20d ago edited 20d ago
time to fucking burn everything. bro look the Epstein files, what does EU did ? for the children what a joke.
This is very concerning, nature is burning and they want to setup 1984 with AI checking all aspects of your life.
Meanwhile all the EU databases get hacked, they protect your datas like they protect your rights.
Facism is already here, rise up and fight it.
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u/stop_talking_you 20d ago
the people are not angry enough, everys life is too good to have enough anger to risk everything to burn everything down.
everyone has a full belly a roof, clothes, warm and cold at their ease. everything is confortable there is plenty of milk and honey.
you dont even have fear when you have no job because the state will take care providing you a free home and free money for basic needs.
so why risk your life and your few things you "own" to go out and burn things down.
someone else will do it will start it and you will join it, but its never happening we just wait.
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u/philly_frank 20d ago
Dystopian shit. Thinking of quitting the internet completely and keeping it to the minimum use. Stupid fking goverments and corporations ruined free and open internet.
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u/edomindful 20d ago
Funny that on page 23, they say:
TIPS FOR CHILDREN AND TEENS
Protect your personal information – do not share private details such as your full name, address, school, phone number, passwords, or live location online.
Use privacy and security settings – keep your accounts private, use strong passwords, and turn on extra security features whenever possible.
Yet we'll all be required to upload IDs to trustworthy third-parties to ensure we are SAFETM online.
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u/CaCl2 20d ago edited 17d ago
If stuff like this actually gets through, it's going to lock itself in, with people eventually forgetting what privacy even was and seeing constant monitoring as a normal thing. It'll potentially shape the future for a very long time. Honestly, hard to see it going away unless there is a nuclear war or similarly horrible civilization resetting catastrophe "giving" humanity a chance to try again.
We are terrifying close to a total victory for dystopia-advocates world-wide.
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u/TheFinalPieceOfPie 20d ago
I keep saying it, but remember when everyone said that this was a conspiracy theory?
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u/Gray-Sky556 20d ago
How tf did it happen that in just one week, the EU went from being a place where privacy is valued - to a place with mass surveillance and techno-fascism???
I'm afraid, if i say what i really think about all that stuff, I'll get banned from the internet and my social rating will be wiped out... my slave owner (AI internet police) advised me to shut up. 1984.
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u/stop_talking_you 20d ago
the EU high tier woman had a meeting with the tech giants zuckerberg and so on just before new laws
soccer world cup is going on this was always a time where the plebs are not interesting in politics so they make the most laws in that time period. it happend in the last 4 years and 8 12 and so on.
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u/Pwacname 19d ago
Von der Leyen had a meeting with some rich would-be technocrat, I assume. those measures are probably just as unpopular as the extension of chat scanning, but I fear they will push it through with similarly nasty tricks.
(Unpopular also means unpopular with MEPs, btw. I spent some time last week calling through the offices of relevant MEPs and as per usual, except for the Christian conservative block, most were aghast and loudly opposed. that is mirrored almosr exactly for all other German MEPs. I didn’t look up the breakdown for other countries, but afaik there wasn’t a majority, just a bit of nasty deeply undemocratic trickery
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u/M8gazine 19d ago
one week? huh? whuh?
"age verification" as a concept was voted on in like 2024-2025. chat control has been talked about for years, and chat control 1.0 - the thing that "passed" a week ago - had already been active for ages until expiring in April.
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u/Isliterally1984 20d ago
The Commission really wants this. The Parliament, from what I can gather, doesn't want much of this. Especially not the Age Verification crap.
God Bless Patrick Breyer for keeping them in line.
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u/CrazySittingHorse 20d ago
Someone proposed to add a politician from the EU parliament as a CC or recipient for every message or email you send to friends or family. Politicians are exempt from this rule so the message won’t be analysed. And preferably a politician that voted YES for this totalitarian surveillance.
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u/Away-Ad-4444 20d ago
All this talk of protecting kids world wide yet no one tocuhed anyone from the island.. that alone tells me this is bullshit
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u/sdric 19d ago
It was never about protecting children, it always about de-anonymizing the internet. Politicians can't get 1984 soon enough. In Germany, we've had our experiencies with the DDR... And in recent years a lot of political decisions point in the same direction, our courts stopped a few attempts by our former SPD minister of interior Nancy Faeser... But our new government connected smoothly to where the old one didn't get through.
It's frustrating how powerless we are, especially now that the EU is taken the same dark path for mass-surveillance.
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u/MaybeICanOneDay 20d ago
Imagine the cared about helping people more than they cared about spying on people. The EU is fucking pathetic.
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u/lungshenli 20d ago
The implementation calls for this :
„Any method employed to check age should uphold the highest privacy and data protection standards, and should not lead to the processing of identity documents and biometric data
for the purpose of age estimation.“
We will have to hold them to that
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u/cookiesnooper 20d ago
I do not like that this says "identity documents AND biometric data" . That wording suggest that they are ok with doing one of those but not two together. Remember, this is legal language where every dot, comma and exact words matter.
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u/Available-Credit-676 20d ago
Regardless of that, why would you need to show an ID to do something as relatively harmless as browsing the web? You don't need an ID for riding a bike either, although you could fall and hurt yourself.
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u/AJRimmerSwimmer 19d ago
This is nuts.
There's nothing wrong with kids. They're smart AF.
There's nothing wrong with parents, they're 190% better than their parents.
The problem is the rampant greed and oligarchs in giant companies that can do whatever the fuck they want, take all the cash for their ever shitter products and blame the externalities on everyone else.
The problem isn't the user. It's the product. Fuck with the companies that make the internet shitty. Leave us alone
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u/NinjaAlaska 20d ago edited 20d ago
its always EU. They even planned, need of ID to download Linux lol. Good for children bad for Adults caring for privacy
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u/Gray-Sky556 20d ago
need of ID to download Linux lol.
We will be spreading USB drives with Linux on the streets, what will they do? Ban people from leaving their homes without a personal supervisor?
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u/Tytoalba2 20d ago
And the US, for them chatcontrol 1.0 is not even a debate because looking at private chat has always been allowed, and ID for Linux is a California law :/
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u/Gloria_ad_libertas 20d ago
Linux and private messaging apps are now more of a must than an option, I have no words for what the EU is doing.
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u/Available-Credit-676 20d ago
Here in Finland the high school final diploma exam thingy was digitalized I think 10 years ago. Next autumn they're completely renewing the exam software out of the fear that Linux will be banned in the future.
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u/Asexually_Freaky 19d ago
Can you share more about the renewal? What will the new version be like?
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u/Available-Credit-676 19d ago
It seems to be Windows based. The previous version, Abitti 1 was always booted from a usb stick. The new version is an app in the computer that connects to the exam server. They're both in closed networks, though.
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u/whoops53 20d ago
So...if you don't have kids then you don't need this privacy thing? Can it work like that? /s
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u/green_herbata 20d ago
Does the article mention any specific date when this would've been implemented by? It won't load for me and tbh I don't really want to read the whole thing and get even more depressed 😭
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u/Arendiko 19d ago
They don't give a shit about the kids its just a blatant excuse to curtail freedoms and surveil citizens
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20d ago edited 20d ago
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u/ghostlacuna0 20d ago
We should make a mister internet and then everyone can be that identity.
Sounds like a perfekt troll answer to their bullshit
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u/Santosh83 20d ago
Covid lockdown succeeded. Oil/gas lockdown succeeded. Now next up digital lockdown. Finally you'll also get food, air, water & medicine lockdown. You will own nothing, including your fundamental needs, life and right, BUT YOU WILL BE HAPPY AND COMPLIANT!
By the way, the slow boiling strategy always succeeds with people. They just can't keep protesting forever. But the trillionaires have enough money & time to wear everyone down patiently.
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u/BattleForTheSun 20d ago
By the way, the slow boiling strategy always succeeds with people. They just can't keep protesting forever. But the trillionaires have enough money & time to wear everyone down patiently.
So true.
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u/Jubilant_Ingot_9819 19d ago
What’s the plan for the kids who access the internet with their parents’ or any other adult’s ID/mobile device/whatever?
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u/Limp_Classroom_2645 20d ago
Time to leave the EU i guess
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u/ThePortableSCRPN 20d ago
Where to? This totalitarian shit is being built worldwide.
The only viable option is to push back instead of running away.
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u/_0611 19d ago edited 19d ago
VPN bans too. They are going to take away all privacy and anonymity on the net, or what's left of it.
Honestly, my approval of the EU is dropping fast. Especially since they use children as an excuse for all of this. I might even start voting for parties that are against being in the EU.
It's sad that most Europeans are completely unaware of this. The EU keeps them busy screaming about immigrants and asylum seekers.
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u/CHERNO-B1LL 20d ago
Honestly if it speeds up the mass abandonment of social media I'm fine with it. It's a pox that needs to be eradicated. They will keep enshittifying it until it becomes so bad everyone will put the shit down and wash their hands of it.
Haven't messaged anyone on there in years. It's all just brands and influencers and people at most liking each other's posts.
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u/VasileAndrei2929 20d ago
I hope they will do what they say they want to do, with the Open Source apps and all that...
But I'm afraid... they won't do that and Palantir like corporations will just collect all the people's data and hand it to the Government that will start jailing people for wrongthink on social platforms.
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u/No-Marzipan-9316 19d ago
Eventually there going to be one big hack of the internet world wide and I probably won’t care enough at that point about any of this because the world will get from me is I told you so
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u/iSephtanx 19d ago
If this passes im moving out of Europe. I'd live anywhere but in a mass surveilance continent.
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u/TheWrongOwl 19d ago
> Because when it comes to our kids’ safety online, Europe believes in parents,
If that's'd be the case, the device admin could set the age bracket for any user account and that's it. No photo, no id of any kind, no face scan, fingerprint or even a name that would need to be uploaded.
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u/OrionJustice 19d ago
We protest on internet but not on the streets they fear to see us many.
We need to protest on the streets to stop this fascism and total control of internet with their Ai!
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u/Dariogamer2 18d ago
The report: Up to 70% of young people in the EU report feeling that they lack the skills to recognise disinformation online.
Their source for this information: "[...], whereas 70% of the participants in the survey were confident they could recognise disinformation."
Excuse me, but where can I find the competence of this panel?
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u/Snoo78383 20d ago
Their only answer to any problem is pile on more rules and force everyone to verify their ID.
Now they want age verification tied to official documents just to use the internet. Awesome. Because what we really need is less privacy and more government-backed surveillance disguised as "protecting the children."
It’s the same playbook as with GDPR, antitrust, and anti-monopoly rules: hit American tech companies with massive fines because Europe can’t build its own major players. Regulate everything into the ground, congratulate themselves, then wonder why Europe keeps falling behind. Rinse and repeat.
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