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WhatsApp, Telegram and everyone else should pull out of EU in protest of Chat Control. Then EU will be forced to make its own chat app, UX will be terrible, and

by andai 1y ago

WhatsApp, Telegram and everyone else should pull out of EU in protest of Chat Control. Then EU will be forced to make its own chat app, UX will be terrible, and citizens will finally feel enough pain to contact their representatives ;)

IlikeKitties 1y ago
People who write this stuff still don't understand that big tech IS THE ENEMY. They are quite happy to implement this, even up into the OS Level. It's called Regulatory capture. Now your legal Moat to a true European Alternative has become even bigger.
- abtinf 1y ago
  Even if, for the sake of argument, we grant the premise “big tech IS THE ENEMY”, it does not necessarily follow that the vast mass surveillance national security apparatus is our friend.
  - IlikeKitties 1y ago
    I would never argue that and i hope that doesn't follow from my comment. To be absolutely clear: Any service that doesn't actively work for your privacy against any outside actor to the fullest extend of the law and technical possibility is to be considered an enemy of freedom.
  - cwillu 1y ago
    It's the same coin.
  - josephg 1y ago
    Personally I hate both surveillance systems. I hate the American big tech surveillance system - under which companies like imgur sell the personal data of its users to anyone who comes knocking. And I hate the European chat control proposal, where the government wants to take that data by force. Privacy is a human right.
lawlessone 1y ago
>Then EU will be forced to make its own chat app When did the US government make a chat app? Signal?
drnick1 1y ago
This 100%. There would be a lot more pushback in the EU against this nonsense if, overnight, EU users found the majority of their apps no longer work.
psychoslave 1y ago
I did contacted them. All of them who didn't yet have a referenced public position on fight chat control for France. By phone. Only two responded with a clear alignment. Good that I did it by phone, because apparently for some of them getting several thousand emails per day can only mean they are victim of a spam attack. Not only they don't represent anything but there own little interests, but they won't even have the decency to express clearly what they are standing for. Even lip service is not assured anymore.
- xenophonf 1y ago
  > getting several thousand emails per day can only mean they are victim of a spam attack I think of calling my representative as being like proof of work. It takes a modicum of effort to look up their phone number, compose some spiel, and make the call, compared to delivering spam by the truckload.
- lores 1y ago
  Was it a Green and a Nazi?
  - psychoslave 1y ago
    I don’t have my spreadsheet at hand, but obviously no one overtly pretend to be a Nazi among MEP. I’m not aware of the arcanes, but it seems to me that it’s part of their obligations, and some MEPs were actually already sanctioned over this. https://www.politico.eu/article/european-parliament-meps-suspended-for-making-nazi-gestures/ https://www.politico.eu/article/european-parliament-meps-sus... https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20250331IPR27544/opening-31-march-3-april-plenary-session https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20250331IP...
downrightmike 1y ago
> Sending message... > Sending to your local police dept... OK > Sending to intended recipient... Failed
- bapak 1y ago
  > This phone is now locked > Please open the door
ben_w 1y ago
Chat apps were already so oversupplied as to be free even before AI could vibe code them. Or, indeed, before the US relented on export bans for remotely adequate HTTPS implementations. In other words: What pain?
- jobs_throwaway 1y ago
  Good luck with that!
  - ben_w 1y ago
    Do I detect some sarcasm in that response? If so, why? The Internet is literally just a communications protocol, adding a chat system on top of that it is not difficult. Nor even was it when Skype and IRC were made (by Europeans). SMS (also European) was slightly harder to invent because that's not on the internet.
    - DeepSeaTortoise 1y ago
      The technical aspects of the software aren't the problem. Convincing enough people to adopt your app before you're getting a great deal on a 20sqft studio apartment is.
      - ben_w 1y ago
        Yes, and? This is a response to a hypothetical where every single existing (or possibly just US) chat provider leaves the EU, and I'm saying the claim that this will cause any degree of pain whatsoever to the EU population is ridiculous because the replacements are far too trivial to not immediately replace the US apps.
        sjw987 1y ago
        I fully support your argument and can't understand why people in this thread assume the EU doesn't have millions of programmers who can bash out a chat app, one of which would rise above the others and get a critical mass of users. Sometimes I think it would be good for Meta, X, Google etc. to lose market share in the EU and UK. It's ridiculous that we're beholden to one country for so much software, and they're all being actively enshitified anyway.
blibble 1y ago
signal is open source, so they'll just download the source, build it, add a backdoor and push it to the app store same as that weird official USgov version hosted by israel
- missedthecue 1y ago
  Sometimes I wonder who builds this stuff. I appreciate at the end of the day that everyone has bills, but I feel like I'd rather apply for public housing before I work on that. They're not even getting rich, just a wagie. I have never met someone in the tech industry that was ideologically anti-privacy. It's always the lawyers and politicians. But someone builds it.
  - blibble 1y ago
    > Sometimes I wonder who builds this stuff. the "secure" chat app supplied by some rando israeli company to the US government? have a guess
    - missedthecue 1y ago
      Talking more in reference to EU initiatives
- LordDragonfang 1y ago
  Signal is AGPL licensed, so they would have to publish whatever crude hack they insert in order to install that back door. (not the keys, of course, but if they're this incompetent about tech legislation, I don't trust their QA competence to be top notch)
paganel 1y ago
> feel enough pain to contact their representatives It doesn't work like that because the European "Parliament" is a joke. For starters, they can't initiate anything, they can only approve or reject (of course that it's almost always approve) stuff that is being passed to them from higher up, most of the times from the European Commission, if I'm not mistaken. Ah, they can pass/generate "resolutions", which are basically empty words put on a piece of paper. Second, the people there don't "represent" anyone, at most they represent the political parties that have put them on the lists that got them into the European Parliament, but that's it.
- lawlessone 1y ago
  >Second, the people there don't "represent" anyone, I think that's largely down to people not taking EU elections as seriously as national elections. The ones elected by my country are always largely the most doldrum people from the main parties that aren't charismatic enough to win in national elections (The b-squad basically) ... and a handful of the kind of people that think windfarms generate wind and that we need to leave NATO.. even though we haven't joined NATO. The kind of people you vote to send to the EU so that you don't have to see them. There was an election in 2024 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_European_Parliament_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_European_Parliament_elect... For people unfamiliar with it https://elections.europa.eu/en/ https://elections.europa.eu/en/ The parliament is elected by people in each country, those elected them elect the commission. So a form of indirect elections.
  - paganel 1y ago
    > I think that's largely down to people not taking EU elections as seriously as national elections. No, they don't represent anyone because we, the European people, are voting based on lists, we do not select our own "representatives" by name and surname. This "contact your representative" trope is an American thingie, which, like many American thingies, has no place outside of its original context.
bluecalm 1y ago
We (in most EU countries) don't have representatives. Parties have representatives. To be listed on a ballot you need to be with good standings with your party and get chosen by them. Then various method ensure that you can't be elected if you are not a member of a party (anyone from a party below 5% is not getting in for example). This means officials only care about what their party leaders tell them to do, not what voters think because voters matter very little to them. That's why American "contact your representatives" does very little here - they are not your representatives, they are representatives of party leaders.
Kenji 1y ago
[dead]
mrtksn 1y ago
> Then EU will be forced to make its own chat app, UX will be terrible, Why? EU can just tell an LLM to build an alternative app, they can just tell it to make it user friendly and make no mistakes. That's the primary use case of Trillions of dollars of investment in GPUs and electricity to power them. JK(or am I?), a protest will be a boon for EU, which is growing Anti-American each and every day. The EU alternatives don't exist not because Europeans can't code but because EU market is open to US companies and there's no reason for duplicate effort as winner takes it all thanks to network effects. EU capital just invests in USA based companies that operate in EU. It's much easier, lower taxes lower worker protection standards etc. Also, US has much more capital to burn to corner the markets, they also just go ahead and buy anything European i.e. Skype. and not risk competition.
- harvey9 1y ago
  If you think that's a lot of electricity, you're going to be amazed how much they can spend on bureaucracy before they even start building anything.
  - mrtksn 1y ago
    Electricity bureaucracy, whatever doesn't matter. Huge money is invested into making programmers obsolete and they are claiming that it already happens. If the tech is real, Europeans can just tell it to make them all these apps that American companies may choose to deprive EU to teach them a lesson. If the AI tech is real then Europeans get their apps no need for American companies anymore. If the tech isn't real then the chat app makers(in Europe that's all Meta, WhatsApp + Messenger. Apple is a no go due to low market share) lose half of their revenue to teach Europeans a lesson. Europeans them switch to Signal, Telegram(Popular all over the place) or Viber(this one popular in Eastern Europe). If they all decide to boycott, there you have opportunity to hit a 400M market. Let's say Europeans can make AAA games but can't code a chat app, give visa to US developers that were laid off for the last many years to come over. Maybe it's politically unpopular? Maybe they are not the best? That's fine, EU is an open market - anyone who is interested in making billions can just make a chat app and take over the EU market. Indians, Chinese, Turks, Africans, Americans that earn less than billions of dollars. It's a huge opportunity. Instantly. Meta made $38.4 billion USD revenue in EU last year. It's very unlikely that no one will be interested in taking that. US companies aren't doing charity to EU, it's always their second largest revenue stream after USA.
bee_rider 1y ago
This article is about an existing UK law and Imgur, an image hosting site (although, it does have some social features).
FinnKuhn 1y ago
Why are we talking about the EU in this thread? I don't see how draconian UK laws relate to a proposed chat control law in the EU that hasn't even been drafted and would likely not survive a judicial challenge if it were to be approved.
- lokar 1y ago
  This is not about the EU, and it's also not about chat control, or encryption. The only connection I see is "I don't like UK Internet policy"
- bapak 1y ago
  Well, it relates in that the UK also hates encryption and is extremely likely to get their own Chat Control anytime this decade.
  - FinnKuhn 1y ago
    The same could be said for the US as well though looking at the EARN IT Act that is reintroduced every couple of years just like Chat Control in the EU with both having failed multiple times so far.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - rightbyte 1y ago
    The UK allready has its own Chat Control-ish though in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023
dyauspitr 1y ago
I might be the only one that’s in support of chat control. I would like the internet to be so walled off that it becomes boring and maybe it will stop all the brainrot.
p0w3n3d 1y ago
> Then EU will be forced to make its own chat app We'll make our own Chat App! With blackjack! And...
basisword 1y ago
This is nothing to do with Chat Control or the EU.
sjw987 1y ago
Why would the UX be terrible necessarily? If the EU or companies within did make a chat app and it got widespread appeal, it would just be exactly the same as WhatsApp. WhatsApp isn't special in any way whatsoever, besides having a critical mass of users.

by andai 1y ago

IlikeKitties 1y ago

People who write this stuff still don't understand that big tech IS THE ENEMY. They are quite happy to implement this, even up into the OS Level. It's called Regulatory capture. Now your legal Moat to a true European Alternative has become even bigger.

abtinf 1y ago
Even if, for the sake of argument, we grant the premise “big tech IS THE ENEMY”, it does not necessarily follow that the vast mass surveillance national security apparatus is our friend.
- IlikeKitties 1y ago
  I would never argue that and i hope that doesn't follow from my comment. To be absolutely clear: Any service that doesn't actively work for your privacy against any outside actor to the fullest extend of the law and technical possibility is to be considered an enemy of freedom.
- cwillu 1y ago
  It's the same coin.
- josephg 1y ago
  Personally I hate both surveillance systems. I hate the American big tech surveillance system - under which companies like imgur sell the personal data of its users to anyone who comes knocking. And I hate the European chat control proposal, where the government wants to take that data by force. Privacy is a human right.

lawlessone 1y ago

>Then EU will be forced to make its own chat app When did the US government make a chat app? Signal?

drnick1 1y ago

This 100%. There would be a lot more pushback in the EU against this nonsense if, overnight, EU users found the majority of their apps no longer work.

psychoslave 1y ago

I did contacted them. All of them who didn't yet have a referenced public position on fight chat control for France. By phone. Only two responded with a clear alignment. Good that I did it by phone, because apparently for some of them getting several thousand emails per day can only mean they are victim of a spam attack. Not only they don't represent anything but there own little interests, but they won't even have the decency to express clearly what they are standing for. Even lip service is not assured anymore.

xenophonf 1y ago
> getting several thousand emails per day can only mean they are victim of a spam attack I think of calling my representative as being like proof of work. It takes a modicum of effort to look up their phone number, compose some spiel, and make the call, compared to delivering spam by the truckload.
lores 1y ago
Was it a Green and a Nazi?
- psychoslave 1y ago
  I don’t have my spreadsheet at hand, but obviously no one overtly pretend to be a Nazi among MEP. I’m not aware of the arcanes, but it seems to me that it’s part of their obligations, and some MEPs were actually already sanctioned over this. https://www.politico.eu/article/european-parliament-meps-suspended-for-making-nazi-gestures/ https://www.politico.eu/article/european-parliament-meps-sus... https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20250331IPR27544/opening-31-march-3-april-plenary-session https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20250331IP...

downrightmike 1y ago

> Sending message... > Sending to your local police dept... OK > Sending to intended recipient... Failed

bapak 1y ago
> This phone is now locked > Please open the door

ben_w 1y ago

Chat apps were already so oversupplied as to be free even before AI could vibe code them. Or, indeed, before the US relented on export bans for remotely adequate HTTPS implementations. In other words: What pain?

jobs_throwaway 1y ago
Good luck with that!
- ben_w 1y ago
  Do I detect some sarcasm in that response? If so, why? The Internet is literally just a communications protocol, adding a chat system on top of that it is not difficult. Nor even was it when Skype and IRC were made (by Europeans). SMS (also European) was slightly harder to invent because that's not on the internet.
  - DeepSeaTortoise 1y ago
    The technical aspects of the software aren't the problem. Convincing enough people to adopt your app before you're getting a great deal on a 20sqft studio apartment is.
    - ben_w 1y ago
      Yes, and? This is a response to a hypothetical where every single existing (or possibly just US) chat provider leaves the EU, and I'm saying the claim that this will cause any degree of pain whatsoever to the EU population is ridiculous because the replacements are far too trivial to not immediately replace the US apps.
      - sjw987 1y ago
        I fully support your argument and can't understand why people in this thread assume the EU doesn't have millions of programmers who can bash out a chat app, one of which would rise above the others and get a critical mass of users. Sometimes I think it would be good for Meta, X, Google etc. to lose market share in the EU and UK. It's ridiculous that we're beholden to one country for so much software, and they're all being actively enshitified anyway.

blibble 1y ago

signal is open source, so they'll just download the source, build it, add a backdoor and push it to the app store same as that weird official USgov version hosted by israel

missedthecue 1y ago
Sometimes I wonder who builds this stuff. I appreciate at the end of the day that everyone has bills, but I feel like I'd rather apply for public housing before I work on that. They're not even getting rich, just a wagie. I have never met someone in the tech industry that was ideologically anti-privacy. It's always the lawyers and politicians. But someone builds it.
- blibble 1y ago
  > Sometimes I wonder who builds this stuff. the "secure" chat app supplied by some rando israeli company to the US government? have a guess
  - missedthecue 1y ago
    Talking more in reference to EU initiatives
LordDragonfang 1y ago
Signal is AGPL licensed, so they would have to publish whatever crude hack they insert in order to install that back door. (not the keys, of course, but if they're this incompetent about tech legislation, I don't trust their QA competence to be top notch)

paganel 1y ago

> feel enough pain to contact their representatives It doesn't work like that because the European "Parliament" is a joke. For starters, they can't initiate anything, they can only approve or reject (of course that it's almost always approve) stuff that is being passed to them from higher up, most of the times from the European Commission, if I'm not mistaken. Ah, they can pass/generate "resolutions", which are basically empty words put on a piece of paper. Second, the people there don't "represent" anyone, at most they represent the political parties that have put them on the lists that got them into the European Parliament, but that's it.

lawlessone 1y ago
>Second, the people there don't "represent" anyone, I think that's largely down to people not taking EU elections as seriously as national elections. The ones elected by my country are always largely the most doldrum people from the main parties that aren't charismatic enough to win in national elections (The b-squad basically) ... and a handful of the kind of people that think windfarms generate wind and that we need to leave NATO.. even though we haven't joined NATO. The kind of people you vote to send to the EU so that you don't have to see them. There was an election in 2024 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_European_Parliament_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_European_Parliament_elect... For people unfamiliar with it https://elections.europa.eu/en/ https://elections.europa.eu/en/ The parliament is elected by people in each country, those elected them elect the commission. So a form of indirect elections.
- paganel 1y ago
  > I think that's largely down to people not taking EU elections as seriously as national elections. No, they don't represent anyone because we, the European people, are voting based on lists, we do not select our own "representatives" by name and surname. This "contact your representative" trope is an American thingie, which, like many American thingies, has no place outside of its original context.

bluecalm 1y ago

We (in most EU countries) don't have representatives. Parties have representatives. To be listed on a ballot you need to be with good standings with your party and get chosen by them. Then various method ensure that you can't be elected if you are not a member of a party (anyone from a party below 5% is not getting in for example). This means officials only care about what their party leaders tell them to do, not what voters think because voters matter very little to them. That's why American "contact your representatives" does very little here - they are not your representatives, they are representatives of party leaders.

Kenji 1y ago

[dead]

mrtksn 1y ago

> Then EU will be forced to make its own chat app, UX will be terrible, Why? EU can just tell an LLM to build an alternative app, they can just tell it to make it user friendly and make no mistakes. That's the primary use case of Trillions of dollars of investment in GPUs and electricity to power them. JK(or am I?), a protest will be a boon for EU, which is growing Anti-American each and every day. The EU alternatives don't exist not because Europeans can't code but because EU market is open to US companies and there's no reason for duplicate effort as winner takes it all thanks to network effects. EU capital just invests in USA based companies that operate in EU. It's much easier, lower taxes lower worker protection standards etc. Also, US has much more capital to burn to corner the markets, they also just go ahead and buy anything European i.e. Skype. and not risk competition.

harvey9 1y ago
If you think that's a lot of electricity, you're going to be amazed how much they can spend on bureaucracy before they even start building anything.
- mrtksn 1y ago
  Electricity bureaucracy, whatever doesn't matter. Huge money is invested into making programmers obsolete and they are claiming that it already happens. If the tech is real, Europeans can just tell it to make them all these apps that American companies may choose to deprive EU to teach them a lesson. If the AI tech is real then Europeans get their apps no need for American companies anymore. If the tech isn't real then the chat app makers(in Europe that's all Meta, WhatsApp + Messenger. Apple is a no go due to low market share) lose half of their revenue to teach Europeans a lesson. Europeans them switch to Signal, Telegram(Popular all over the place) or Viber(this one popular in Eastern Europe). If they all decide to boycott, there you have opportunity to hit a 400M market. Let's say Europeans can make AAA games but can't code a chat app, give visa to US developers that were laid off for the last many years to come over. Maybe it's politically unpopular? Maybe they are not the best? That's fine, EU is an open market - anyone who is interested in making billions can just make a chat app and take over the EU market. Indians, Chinese, Turks, Africans, Americans that earn less than billions of dollars. It's a huge opportunity. Instantly. Meta made $38.4 billion USD revenue in EU last year. It's very unlikely that no one will be interested in taking that. US companies aren't doing charity to EU, it's always their second largest revenue stream after USA.

bee_rider 1y ago

This article is about an existing UK law and Imgur, an image hosting site (although, it does have some social features).

FinnKuhn 1y ago

Why are we talking about the EU in this thread? I don't see how draconian UK laws relate to a proposed chat control law in the EU that hasn't even been drafted and would likely not survive a judicial challenge if it were to be approved.

lokar 1y ago
This is not about the EU, and it's also not about chat control, or encryption. The only connection I see is "I don't like UK Internet policy"
bapak 1y ago
Well, it relates in that the UK also hates encryption and is extremely likely to get their own Chat Control anytime this decade.
- FinnKuhn 1y ago
  The same could be said for the US as well though looking at the EARN IT Act that is reintroduced every couple of years just like Chat Control in the EU with both having failed multiple times so far.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- rightbyte 1y ago
  The UK allready has its own Chat Control-ish though in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023

dyauspitr 1y ago

I might be the only one that’s in support of chat control. I would like the internet to be so walled off that it becomes boring and maybe it will stop all the brainrot.

p0w3n3d 1y ago

> Then EU will be forced to make its own chat app We'll make our own Chat App! With blackjack! And...

basisword 1y ago

This is nothing to do with Chat Control or the EU.

sjw987 1y ago

Why would the UX be terrible necessarily? If the EU or companies within did make a chat app and it got widespread appeal, it would just be exactly the same as WhatsApp. WhatsApp isn't special in any way whatsoever, besides having a critical mass of users.