The only thing I’m slghtly concerned about is proposition #2. I hope that gets struck down due to its censorship potential.
IE. No ChatGPT for toddlers
I, as an Australian, have been saying all along that the social media ban should focus on the addictive and problematic features of social media, rather than a blanket ban. Hell there was a good quote I saw recently on Bluesky by Lance MacDonald:
“People saying “kids will find a way around this” have no idea what “this” is. When it comes to YouTube, there’s nothing for them to find a way around. The government is forcing all kids to have raw unfiltered access to YouTube. The only thing they’re removing is parental controls.”
The EU is at least acknowledging the harmful elements. Here’s hoping they go “ban on the harmful features of social media without age verification”. Then again if the Google Play Store can serve as a middleman on that front then Google will get their wish of being an internet gatekeeper and these features will be enabled by default even for adults (which it shouldn’t be).
…pull to refresh?
When you scroll up at the top of the page and it reloads the feed
But how is that an addictive practice?
I think what’s implied here is the types of feeds which give a completely new content page when you “refresh”, so it’s not a regular “refresh-as-in-show-me-content-that-got-posted-since-last-access”, but an algorithm driven “refresh-as-in-replace” mechanism to increase engagement by continuing to provide stimulating content.
All of this sounds great, but I can’t help thinking of it as bait in the chat control/identity verification trap
Oh, it’ll be age verification. What do you think how the social media sites will determine if someone is 16+?
And from a technical point of view it might be possible to do this without blasting your identity everywhere on the internet, but we all know that we’ll have to give our identity to every site we want to use.
I’m not willing to sacrifice our democracy and the health of our children (I’ve got four, ages 4-18, I see the impact amongst them and their friends) on the altar of tech giants’ profit.
We hold press accountable. We ourselves are held to account for what we say IRL. Why does all that look different on social media just so Zuckerberg and Musk can line their pockets and enable platforms for non-democratic actors to involve themselves in our democracies?
It’s now official US policy to undermine European unity and support right wing nationalists.
I say bring those US tech giants to heel. We don’t have to turn into another America here, by making the same mistakes.
If Musk is against it, I’m almost always for it.
This is the definition of reactionary and I would ask you to think things through more calmly. There isn’t a binary between allowing tech corps that kind of control and mandating it at a government level. There are many ways to hold these corporations accountable and mitigate the harm they cause. I strongly believe that adopting their data mining tactics is not the answer.
I’m super calm about this. This is based on rational analysis and technical knowledge about how the framework for this can work.
I wish to clip the wing feathers of every single US tech giant spewing their right wing, authoritarian bullshit straight into the eyeballs of every democratic citizen in Europe. I wish to do it calmly, and I am convinced it can be done.
There is 100% a route to verifying identity without privacy invasion. EU’s framework mandates ZKPs and the trial states are building it accordingly. No one will know who is verifying, where they verify, when or what they verify. The site itself will simply know “this is a legit person”.
I’m giving you an upvote, of course, because I believe in rational debate even if we disagree.
I want the exact same things you’re wishing for so vividly and poetically, but could not disagree more with your binary “us vs them” nationalism or the methods you’re proposing. I trust the proposed certifying authorities exactly as much as the current techlords and think the same infrastructure with different leadership will still have essentially the same consequences. Plenty of the harmful bullshit these platforms push isn’t just authoritarian (do you see the irony of advocating for a certifying authority here yet?) but profit or just plain ego driven. Any central authority will have an agenda of some kind, and at best be corruptible. Rather than establishing a framework for institutions to verify the identity of individuals and monitor their activity in the name of safety, I believe the solution involves facilitating and protecting their unmediated, unmonitored access to one another
In the EU framework, the certifying authorities are the same that issue your passport, your driving license; the state. I fail to see the issue with allowing them to issue another proof of who I am.
The risk is tracking. The way the EU mandates this framework is built requires zero knowledge built into the system. Then you can definitely say “they lie”, but if you believe your government would lie about this, then you already believe they would lie about all the other million ways they could track you, if it wasn’t illegal for them to do so. You’re really not giving up anything you haven’t already given up when the national state was formed as a concept. And in this case we gain a lot, namely keeping profit and “engagement” out of having a conversation online. Eventually you have to trust someone - I’d prefer my democratically elected government (but I acknowledge that I live in places where I have that luxury).
Still can’t say I agree, but would like to thank you for the insight into your position and wish you luck out there
… Other randomized gaming features
This is a little worrying what it means, as all games rely on randomized things to some degree. Some are just bare necessity (shuffling deck before game of solitaire), some are reasonable game design (boss has 5% chance of dropping a nice piece of gear) and then there’s loot boxes
Not every game relies on randomized things, thats simply untrue, but yes there are levels of it
If #2 means bans for Tiktok, X, Truth Social and all the other crap, I’d be all for it. But I get your concern
The companionship chatbots regulation too, there are so many gems in this resolution and it’s good to see that knowledge of these problems is reaching where it needs to. Now we just need the EU to move from a reactive, fighting fires mode of operation to gaining initiative and proactively finding ways of using this tech for good.
