cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/51986229

🇪🇺 Seeing Ursula Leyen¹ praised all day for her State of the European Union speech is upsetting to me.

🇨🇦 While closer ties to Canada sound great, it also included her brand-new digital ID verification² law, the so called "EU Kids Act"!

➕ It goes one step further than Social Media, covering video-sharing platforms, AI chatbots, AI companions, online games, software app stores and operating systems³

Europeans should fight this surveillance state law tooth and nail! #STOPEUKIDSACT

¹not sure why we still accept people using nobiliary particles such as "von der" 🤢

²or rebranded "age verification"

³ https://www.euractiv.com/news/gamers-will-have-to-prove-their-age-under-eu-kids-act/
https://www.euractiv.com/news/exclusive-von-der-leyen-to-fine-tech-companies-under-kids-act-text/

We sadly have to make the dark web and so called "hidden" Internet's the norm.

Oh boy. I'm not going to verify my age fucking ever, no matter the compromises. Fuck them.

I'm afraid we could eventually see an internet where it's required, just to get ISP service. And on top of that, essential services only available online.

IDK if it'll get that far. But we're headed toward it. KYC for the internet and everything on it. Every possible action tied back to a "trusted device".

At that point just pirate your internet

I've found documents, which alongside all the flowery language of protecting the children, states in section 2.3 that providers are obliged to perform age verification upon account creation, relying on "the age verification tool" (which I assume is the EU Digital Identity Wallet).

So if these hypocrites could just pause patting themselves on the back, and for once, explain that the default experience, for at least large online platforms, is one that is also considered "appropriate" for children of all ages; and therefore extremely limiting for adults. Well, unless you just integrate your government issued ID into a wallet, that (at least locally) creates links between it and your accounts (you might want to keep anonymous).

There's also a lot of decent points that are being made, but which could easily be viewed separate from the identity-gating of the "open" internet. An age-bracket, based on a local, self-reported, password-protected 'date of birth' field, would be more than sufficient, but instead the EU chooses to fundamentally distrusts its citizens, while asking for unreasonable levels of trust in return. And similar to Google's reCAPTCHA, I don't even have, nor have desires to have, an iOS or Android smartphone that supports the application.

I hope Linux gets a pass like in California

Then offline we go, it can be done

The ISP already knows who you are. If they are going to detect and block VPN and anonymizing networks then you're living in the Fourth Reich. You know what to do then.

You are using an open source social network that allows you to run your own federated node. EU is fascist enough to ban such networks.