this post was submitted on 03 May 2026
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Von der Leyen keeps pushing for Chat Control. Plus the age verification app they want to release. The EU is already following the US
Yeah, I noticed.
I have zero hope of the EU comission not being complete total crooks sacrificing Europe to serve corporate America.
My hope is on the EU Parliament and on national governments, not the unelected "jobs for the boys" naturally rotten part of the EU "management".
Estonia has this system for a decade already btw and uses block chain to make it transparant and for integrity, and the verification app will be zero-knowledge proof, and is open-source. Literally the best two specs you want for privacy... The only thing I would want is a decentralized system where you can get verified by showing your ID to your local municipal services, not uploading it.
But the chat control has to go away asap fr
maybe a compromis for chat control would be a decentralized database of photo hashes that are scanned by the chat control app where only trusted organizations for childrens safety can add hashes to, supported by block chain so we have full transparency of who adds what... wdyt of this?
This way there is no single point of control. Blockchain provides full transparency because every addition of a hash is recorded as a transaction that anyone can verify, showing who added it and when, and since the blockchain is immutable, hashes can't be secretly altered or deleted. Digital signatures prove which trusted org added each hash.
Sounds like shit
😂😂 Care to explain why?
Oh, there are so many iffy things there.
For starters:
Next, how exactly is being in the blockchain something that helps guarantee anonymity in an age verification access control system? The whole point of the blockchain is to guaranteed non-deniability, the exact opposite. At best it stinks of "we've thrown a bunch of techno-fads into this proposal to make it appealing to ignorant techno-fans".
Then, there are a TON of ways of de-anonimizing data if the thing isn't perfectly done, especially when it gets crossed with other data. Is there a group of independent experts analysing each and every version of the protocol and the app to make sure it's not just directly anonymous but also resilient to de-anonimization?
Next, even assuming the whole thing is perfect and has been checked and confirmed by independent experts, how do you guarantee that once the infrastructure is in place the whole age-gating software isn't just made closed source and covertly of changed to turn it into a full-blown civil society surveillance system?
Also, who gets to chose which sites are locked behind age-gates and which are not. Is the list open? Can it be appealed? How easy it is the appeals process? Is there Court supervision of the whole process or is it some people in a closed room with no Judicial oversight choosing what gets put behind that lock and what doesn't.
Beyond that, it's the responsibility of parents to watch over and control what their children are doing, not everybody else. The whole focus should be on giving parents the tools for that (for example, with a standard protocol for sites to inform browsers and home firewalls that they're serving adult content, thus allowing parents to block it internally without the information of who is watching what ever leaving their home network), not mandated government software supposedly controlling the access of the whole fucking civil society to arbitrary web-sites and who knows what else.
Last but not least, it's literally the smallest impact and easiest to achieve option to have the websites push out standard markers for "adult content" to browsers and home firewalls so that parents can restrict their children's access, not putting locks on every such site AND having age identification on any and all means of accessing those websites on every single piece of networked computing hardware that anybody in Estonia might use to access such websites.
The entire thing is far too heavy and affects way too many devices and too much software to be the "best solution" for the problem of protecting children from adult content, but it sure is the best solution for the objective of having government access control software in every single computing device used in Estonia.
I meant the blockchain for the chatcontrol app, not for the age verification app btw, and you make good points for sure.
I mean it's open-source and we have privacy watch-dogs so yes? and maybe they will create a group for it, like Germany
For chat control app: blockchain where only recognized child safety organizations can add photo-hashes For age verification app: it's zero knowledge proof, so you get a white card without any private data? so how can that turn into full blown surveillance system? The only thing I don't like is uploading my ID online to the app, let me get verified by showing my ID to municipal services without uploading it, would be good ig
Child safety organizations? Independent organizations with clear criteria or something? But yeah good questions idk
Then you must make sure the parents aren't tech-illiterate and invest in educating parents for parental controls etc but truth, good point... Child-safe should be the standard in new devices and browsers if those parents stay being tech illiterates.
Yeah agreed that this is the best solution but how do you make sure those websites apply for such a marker? Use AI to scan them lol And its still the best solution, together with focussing on education parents as well as children and to educate parents on parental control and screen time, and let them sort it out locally, instead of enforcing age verification deffo agreed on that
Thank you for your service, kind lemmy-goer