6 ms·

Europe's Digital Sovereignty Paradox – "Chat Control" Update

123 points by neustradamus 1y ago

demarq 1y ago
In real life countries can have sovereignty. In cyberspace only individuals can have sovereignty. Otherwise you’re just choosing who misuses their privilege to your data.
- SiempreViernes 1y ago
  > In cyberspace only individuals can have sovereignty. If you set the sovereignty at the lowest hardware level, it doesn't seem right to call it a space: what you are postulating is a set of unconnected nodes. To a get a network you will need individuals to give up some of their sovereignty to a shared entity that decides things like what protocol to use.
  - demarq 1y ago
    Absolute decentralization is difficult or maybe impossible. But you don’t need absolute decentralization to achieve sovereignty. For example a small group of certificate authorities are trusted by all of us for privacy, however these CA’s are unable influence what we encrypt since they can’t see what we encrypt. So relying on a provider doesn’t always have to equal control. Decentralization does not equal Sovereignty. But it helps.
dariosalvi78 1y ago
> It is time for Europe to develop a coherent tech strategy. Can we build digital sovereignty while simultaneously undermining the protocols that enable it? We should. The problem is that politics is messy and with lots of opposing views. See the GDPR versus this Chat Control absurdity. But _principles_ are those that stick, and I think that the principle that communication should be private _always_ should become sort of constitutional within the EU. We are the ones that vote, we are the ones that need to signal that we don't want to give up privacy for whatever "security" some, completely uninformed, want to promise.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  >we don't want to give up privacy for whatever "security" some, completely uninformed, want to promise You'd be surprised how easily people give up their rights for the made up security promises, without putting up a fight. Let's go through a short list I experienced during my lifetime in my country, off the top of my head. -2001 Invasive airport checks after 911 -2015 mandatory registration with ID of prepaid SIM cards after islamist terrorist attacks -2020-2022 mandatory COVID vaccine ID, to be able travel and enter establishments None of these saw any kind of major disruptive backlash against the government to convince them to backtrack, so chat control and digital ID to access the internet and comment online is only a matter of time, all it needs is another black swan or even a false flag event. Sure there was the famous trucker protests in Canada against mandatory COVID pass, but the government cracked down on that, so your protests against systems of control are irelevant. Chat control is inevitably gonna happen with or without your approval.
  - mavhc 1y ago
    People really like staying alive
    - abc123abc123 1y ago
      Oh yes... there's a terrorist behind every bush! I had to chase awat 10 alrady this morning who were out in my garden! As for corona, it's more or less common knowledge by now that unless you're 60+ a common cold is more dangerous.
      - mschuster91 1y ago
        > As for corona, it's more or less common knowledge by now that unless you're 60+ a common cold is more dangerous. That's a lie. The reality is that Covid-19 is massively more fatal than the ordinary flu [1]: > We take the comparison between Covid-19 and flu seriously by asking how many years of influenza and pneumonia deaths are needed for cumulative deaths to those two causes to equal the cumulative toll of the Covid-19 pandemic between March 2020 and February 2023—that is, three years of pandemic deaths. We find that in one state alone—Hawaii—three years of Covid-19 mortality is equivalent to influenza and pneumonia mortality in the three years preceding the Covid-19 pandemic. For all other states, at least nine years of flu and pneumonia are needed to match Covid-19; for the United States as a whole, seventeen years are needed; and for four states, more than 21 years (the maximum observable) are needed. The reduction in CFR since 2022-ish can mostly be attributed to vaccines [2], but unfortunately it turns out that said vaccine protection only lasts for about 6 months - that is why we are seeing COVID "summer waves" [3] which hasn't been a thing for influenza... people get vaccinated in autumn and winter, which lessens the impact of Covid during the winter time, but once that partial immunity expires cases go up again. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10168500/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10168500/ [2] https://www.rsm.ac.uk/media-releases/2023/risk-of-death-reduces-after-covid-19-vaccine-but-protection-wanes-after-six-months/ https://www.rsm.ac.uk/media-releases/2023/risk-of-death-redu... [3] https://www.npr.org/2025/07/22/nx-s1-5453516/summer-surge-in-covid-cases-appears-to-have-begun-epidemiologists-say https://www.npr.org/2025/07/22/nx-s1-5453516/summer-surge-in...
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
That’s a fairly sensible writeup. The issue with these types of battles, is that each side tends to resort to extreme hyperbole. That basically gives the other side ammunition for wholesale dismissal. It’s important (IMNSHO) to have reasonable, sane discussions, and avoid falling into the “screeching monkey” trap.
- HPsquared 1y ago
  It tends to happen when people discuss abstract topics. Interesting phenomenon.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
croes 1y ago
And at the same time Ursula von der Leyen keeps deleting work messages … to free storage
- steinvakt2 1y ago
  This demonstrates the incompetence in tech in EU. Either she wants to enforce laws for the common people and not for the elite, or she is incompetent enough to believe that deleting text messages affects storage.
  - 1718627440 1y ago
    > incompetent enough to believe that deleting text messages affects storage. Do you think that message somehow magically don't have a size? Phones aren't able to receive messages when they have no storage for that. I have been regularly deleting messages for that reason.
    - croes 1y ago
      You will experience different problems if you are low on storage long before you can’t receive simple text messages
      - 1718627440 1y ago
        Depends on the phone. The phones I had this problem with don't do more complicated things than "receive simple text messages", so they also don't have the storage for more. I guess when you do shady contracts you would use a burner phone, so it's quite likely that this was the case here.
        steinvakt2 1y ago
        A few seconds of video on a recent phone is quickly the size of thousands of text messages. So the size of a text message is basically zero. So deleting text messages for the sake of storage is ridiculous
zoobab 1y ago
Ministers are making laws for themselves, especially their police services. Montesquieu warned about the seperation of powers between the legislator and the executive, but it seems that it is still not the case at the EU level.
- mk89 1y ago
  The best façade you can set up. Someone in a separate thread called this EU a "coordinator".
roenxi 1y ago
At this level it really is a case of purpose-of-the-system-is-what-it-does. The EU is clearly not interested in building up a tech sector. Factions in the EU, yes. EU as a block, no. They've shown less than no interest; the EU would be a great place to build software companies if the governments weren't hostile to the idea of large tech companies which is where the market wants to go. Nice place to live. Software companies tend to migrate to the US. I suspect that in the halls of power they would rather interpret "digital sovereignty" as a state where they, the sovereigns, have power in the digital world to mess with EU citizens online lives. It seems very optimistic to think that the EU is suddenly going to get interested in supporting software companies. Even philosophically, why bother changing suddenly just to do something they can ask the Americans to do? Economies require specialisation, everyone can't do everything. It isn't even a bad thing that the EU doesn't have a thriving software ecosystem but for the fact it appears to be driven by governmental hostility to freedom. Good companies can come from the US. Bad companies can come from the EU. They already have a good FOSS ecosystem. The only problem is the EU seems to be more likely to bring in something like chat control and beat down anyone who achieves enormous success.
- n4r9 1y ago
  > large tech companies which is where the market wants to go Could you expand on that? Is there something inherent about the tech industry that makes large companies desirable?
  - roenxi 1y ago
    Imagine one actor in the tech space charges $/whatever which is slightly cheaper than the next nearest rival. Everyone flocks to that company and they become fabulously wealthy. Because of that effect the market tends to centralise. Another way to look at it is some company is the best at whatever, everyone wants to go with that company and it is technically possible for that company to serve everyone. So there is the same tendency for companies to get very large. Obviously oversimplifying, there are a lot of ways the tendency manifests. Metcalfe's law and all that. That applies less in the physical world because distance is a factor. If there is some hairdresser in Silicon Valley who does amazing haircuts I'm still not going to go there to get my hair done. But I'm happy to watch YouTube which is ultimately being coordinated from nearby to that hairdresser. The issue is, based on how things have actually played out, the EU is not the place to be if you're a hyper-efficient company serving a huge number of people with huge capital reserves. I assume the tax system is the root cause.
egorfine 1y ago
> Can we build digital sovereignty We did. Cookie banners have persisted for well over a decade, so that's a proven track record.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 1y ago
  Which EU law mandates cookie banners? For the vast majority of cases, it's malicious compliance by websites to make people believe the issue of the banner when the problem is the data collection.
  - SiempreViernes 1y ago
    I think OPs point is that even malicious compliance is proof that companies feel they cannot simply ignore EU law.
  - DocTomoe 1y ago
    Mostly it is general caution of website owners not wanting to get sued by Saul-Goodman-type lawsuit mills who abuse this - and virtual every - half-baked law that comes out of the EU. Now, if I was cynical, I would point out that most parliamentarians - regardless on where they sit - have a background in legal professions. I would then suggest that there is a 'make a bad law' -> 'make cash suing over it' pipeline. But that would be cynical. Instead, I'll end with Tacitus: Corruptissima republica, plurimae leges.
- steinvakt2 1y ago
  And did it achieve the desired effect? I don't think so. But it caused banner fatigue and insane amount of cognitive load while not improving privacy for probably +90% of people.
  - egorfine 1y ago
    > did it achieve the desired effect? Desired by whom? At this point the desire of EU legislators is to make sure that EU never gets any chance of success in the tech field. Cookie banners do serve this goal well.
thefz 1y ago
Brightball's comment here is relevant in this context as well. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45579968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45579968 We build robust encryption, then comes the naive-ignorant wave of "why do we need this? let's remove it" because policymakers don't grasp the extent of it, nor have any clue how it works and why.
mrtksn 1y ago
EU isn't ever going to have its own "tech" industry as long as US has full access to EU markets and IMHO the ChatControl thing is totally unrelated. Anyone who has a "tech" industry besides US has it thanks to trade barriers and embargoes because otherwise doesn't make sense to have it. The product doesn't have a considerable marginal cost to distribute, doesn't make sense to have it made in more than one place. 50 US states don't have EU regulations and yet everything is still happening in SV only, the rest of the "tech" in US is about as developed as in the rest of the world and they all feed into SV one way or another. Also, there's no way for competition as the capital in US(which can come from Europe, Arabs etc. too) can provide the services at loss for 10-20 years until drives everyone out of business. EU tried to be open for business and have sovereignty through things like privacy and data control laws but the end result was that whoever is worth their salt goes to SV and sell it in EU from there and when tangental industries like VW or Mercedes need top talent for their software there's no one left or those who are still in EU are not doing things that transfers well into their niche. ChatControl, IMHO is just some career move of some politicians from the ultra low corruption small northern countries where people trust the government way too much. They appear to believe that they can solve some issues with it. Not that different from all the governments who want control and each one wants as much control as possible. I think the age control attempts are much more interesting and consequential. Why? Because bots don't have age. If implemented in a way that preserves anonymity while ensuring that the things are written by a real person(or at least has someone responsible for it even if its AI written) it can actually solve the bot problem and social manipulation problems like people from other countries pushing an agenda that doesn't actually have organic roots in the society. Anyway, the issues are real and the risk are real and I think its a good idea to seek methods to mitigate the risks while keeping in mind that even if you currently like the government in few years the people who you don't like might be in power so, be careful.
- Xelbair 1y ago
  >EU isn't ever going to have its own "tech" industry as long as US has full access to EU markets and IMHO the ChatControl thing is totally unrelated. It's even simpler - EU does not foster any form of framework for growing any industry, they incentivize things that were already successful elsewhere and were found necessary to have in EU. It's all top-down in form of EU grants/benefits/whatevers. And even then - those grants are are tied up with basically pre-planned prince2 style project management that makes deviating from them hard, and sometimes impossible. Purchases have to be pre-planned, for almost anything. >ChatControl, IMHO is just some career move of some politicians from the ultra low corruption small northern countries where people trust the government way too much. They appear to believe that they can solve some issues with it. Not that different from all the governments who want control and each one wants as much control as possible. Yes but no - it comes from Denmark, which has a lot of issues with overstepping legal bounds when it comes to data gathering and privacy. It seems more like attempt to legalize those using excuse of "EU forced us to adopt it :)". >I think the age control attempts are much more interesting and consequential. Why? Because bots don't have age. If implemented in a way that preserves anonymity while ensuring that the things are written by a real person(or at least has someone responsible for it even if its AI written) it can actually solve the bot problem and social manipulation problems like people from other countries pushing an agenda that doesn't actually have organic roots in the society. I think it's quite the opposite - identity fraud will become more profitable, while "open" internet will be infantilized into child-safe zone. Full of bots, but now any real form of communication will have your full doxx attached to it - doesn't matter if visible or not, just possiblity of it is enough. You will self censor yourself just in case. Also all of those systems do not preserve anonymity, and basically are another mass surveillance tool. It is just another step towards ChatControl, one surveils, other forces self-censorship. While reverse would make sense - make children only internet that's actively monitored, accessible only via government issued smartcard/e-sim/thingy, while leaving it up to parents if their child should or should not access real internet.
jgilias 1y ago
The truly mind-blowing thing to me is that chat control literally goes against the constitutions of a lot of EU countries. Pooling sovereignty is one thing. Voting for regulations that you then need to implement as local laws where those local laws would directly contradict the constitution is something else. I don’t assume malice where stupidity suffices though.
a022311 1y ago
I really wish it were as easy as presented in this article. Realistically speaking, we'll probably see some minor changes thrt address concerns of some opposing member states (or maybe there will be some bribery behind the scenes) to win majority support.
1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
IMHO, the position statements of VPN companies like this one suffer from a conflation of "private communication" with "business of providing private communication 'as a service', for profit" AFAICT, "Chat Control" did not target the notion of "private communication" It targeted third parties, e.g., "VPNs", providing "private communication" to the public "as a service", for profit IMO, there is a difference and using third parties for "private communication" has consequences
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
  Do not take my word for it, read the draft legislation yourself https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-10131-2025-INIT/en/pd https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-10131-2025-... Some HN voters seem to agree using third parties is not ideal https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45468830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45468830
- tendie_enjoyer 1y ago
  Is the postal service not also a third party?
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
  "Centuries ago, people in England, France and the German states fought for the right to send letters without their being opened by the "black chambers" of absolutist monarchs. Martin Luther, whose letters had been opened by the Duke of Saxony, raged that "a thief is a thief, whether he is a money thief or a letter thief." Regulations called for postal secrecy in 1532 and 1573 in Austria's Tyrol, in Prussia in 1685, in the oath of succession taken in 1690 by the Holy Roman emperor Joseph I and in his postal regulation of 1698. Rulers ignored them. Like Britain's Oliver Cromwell, who saw the post as "the best means to discover and prevent many dangerous and wicked designs against the Commonwealth," they justified letter-opening. It sometimes worked. In 1723, Bishop Francis Atterbury was exiled, partly on the basis of intercepted letters, for trying to put a pretender on Britain's throne. Monarchs got information from their "black chambers" - secret rooms in post offices in main cities into which the mail was brought for opening. London's was in Abchurch Lane, near St. Paul's. Black chambers resembled laboratories. Kettles spouted steam to soften wax seals. Experts took impressions of seals with a soft amalgam to make new ones in case they broke the originals while sliding hot wires under them. Specialists slid thin batons with a long slit into envelopes and twirled letters around them so they could be extracted without breaking the seals. Austria's black chamber was reputed to be the most efficient. Sacks of diplomatic mail arrived at 7 a.m., the letters unsealed and read, the important parts copied, sometimes by dictation, the letters replaced and resealed and sent to the embassies by 9:30. The employees sometimes erred, however. When the British ambassador in Austria complained that he was getting copies instead of originals, the prime minister, Metternich, coolly replied, "How clumsy these people are!" But the public knew about the letter-opening and hated it. The pre-revolutionary French assembly, the Estates-General, received complaints from all regions of France and from all classes of society about this invasion of their thoughts. Throughout the 20th century, many nations continued to intercept diplomats' messages, but most seem to have stopped reading their citizens' mail. Not totalitarian governments, though. After World War II, nations paid at least lip service to letter secrecy. Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed by many countries, holds that "no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his correspondence." Not all keep their word." https://web.archive.org/web/20070311121314/http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/jan172006/panorama19352006116.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20070311121314/http://www.deccan... Is "the postal service" a "third party" Of course it is But that's not what I mean when I use the term "third party"^1. I'm referring to so-called "tech" companies^2 Postal service is generally provided by governments Governments are the ones drafting the proposed "Chat Control" legislation It should be obvious using the government as a third party to manage private communication is not ideal It should also be obvious parties to a communication who want privacy from third parties should be encrypting their own messages not delegating encryption to a third party (who is also encrypting messages for any member of the public, including criminals, as is the case for so-called "tech" companies) 1. AFAICT the "Chat Control" draft legislation seeks to regulate _third parties_ not the parties to the private communication 2. And when I use the phrase "for profit" I'm alluding to the incentive so-called "tech" companies have to frame any debate about "Chat Control" in terms of (a) "private communication" instead of (b) "private communication services provided by third parties to the public". If (b) were regulated by "Chat Control", it might kill their middleman business. But it would have no applicability to (a), namely parties who encrypt their own messages (b) is a subset of (a)

123 points by neustradamus 1y ago

In real life countries can have sovereignty. In cyberspace only individuals can have sovereignty. Otherwise you’re just choosing who misuses their privilege to your data.

SiempreViernes 1y ago
> In cyberspace only individuals can have sovereignty. If you set the sovereignty at the lowest hardware level, it doesn't seem right to call it a space: what you are postulating is a set of unconnected nodes. To a get a network you will need individuals to give up some of their sovereignty to a shared entity that decides things like what protocol to use.
- demarq 1y ago
  Absolute decentralization is difficult or maybe impossible. But you don’t need absolute decentralization to achieve sovereignty. For example a small group of certificate authorities are trusted by all of us for privacy, however these CA’s are unable influence what we encrypt since they can’t see what we encrypt. So relying on a provider doesn’t always have to equal control. Decentralization does not equal Sovereignty. But it helps.

dariosalvi78 1y ago

> It is time for Europe to develop a coherent tech strategy. Can we build digital sovereignty while simultaneously undermining the protocols that enable it? We should. The problem is that politics is messy and with lots of opposing views. See the GDPR versus this Chat Control absurdity. But _principles_ are those that stick, and I think that the principle that communication should be private _always_ should become sort of constitutional within the EU. We are the ones that vote, we are the ones that need to signal that we don't want to give up privacy for whatever "security" some, completely uninformed, want to promise.

FirmwareBurner 1y ago
>we don't want to give up privacy for whatever "security" some, completely uninformed, want to promise You'd be surprised how easily people give up their rights for the made up security promises, without putting up a fight. Let's go through a short list I experienced during my lifetime in my country, off the top of my head. -2001 Invasive airport checks after 911 -2015 mandatory registration with ID of prepaid SIM cards after islamist terrorist attacks -2020-2022 mandatory COVID vaccine ID, to be able travel and enter establishments None of these saw any kind of major disruptive backlash against the government to convince them to backtrack, so chat control and digital ID to access the internet and comment online is only a matter of time, all it needs is another black swan or even a false flag event. Sure there was the famous trucker protests in Canada against mandatory COVID pass, but the government cracked down on that, so your protests against systems of control are irelevant. Chat control is inevitably gonna happen with or without your approval.
- mavhc 1y ago
  People really like staying alive
  - abc123abc123 1y ago
    Oh yes... there's a terrorist behind every bush! I had to chase awat 10 alrady this morning who were out in my garden! As for corona, it's more or less common knowledge by now that unless you're 60+ a common cold is more dangerous.
    - mschuster91 1y ago
      > As for corona, it's more or less common knowledge by now that unless you're 60+ a common cold is more dangerous. That's a lie. The reality is that Covid-19 is massively more fatal than the ordinary flu [1]: > We take the comparison between Covid-19 and flu seriously by asking how many years of influenza and pneumonia deaths are needed for cumulative deaths to those two causes to equal the cumulative toll of the Covid-19 pandemic between March 2020 and February 2023—that is, three years of pandemic deaths. We find that in one state alone—Hawaii—three years of Covid-19 mortality is equivalent to influenza and pneumonia mortality in the three years preceding the Covid-19 pandemic. For all other states, at least nine years of flu and pneumonia are needed to match Covid-19; for the United States as a whole, seventeen years are needed; and for four states, more than 21 years (the maximum observable) are needed. The reduction in CFR since 2022-ish can mostly be attributed to vaccines [2], but unfortunately it turns out that said vaccine protection only lasts for about 6 months - that is why we are seeing COVID "summer waves" [3] which hasn't been a thing for influenza... people get vaccinated in autumn and winter, which lessens the impact of Covid during the winter time, but once that partial immunity expires cases go up again. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10168500/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10168500/ [2] https://www.rsm.ac.uk/media-releases/2023/risk-of-death-reduces-after-covid-19-vaccine-but-protection-wanes-after-six-months/ https://www.rsm.ac.uk/media-releases/2023/risk-of-death-redu... [3] https://www.npr.org/2025/07/22/nx-s1-5453516/summer-surge-in-covid-cases-appears-to-have-begun-epidemiologists-say https://www.npr.org/2025/07/22/nx-s1-5453516/summer-surge-in...

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

That’s a fairly sensible writeup. The issue with these types of battles, is that each side tends to resort to extreme hyperbole. That basically gives the other side ammunition for wholesale dismissal. It’s important (IMNSHO) to have reasonable, sane discussions, and avoid falling into the “screeching monkey” trap.

HPsquared 1y ago
It tends to happen when people discuss abstract topics. Interesting phenomenon.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

croes 1y ago

And at the same time Ursula von der Leyen keeps deleting work messages … to free storage

steinvakt2 1y ago
This demonstrates the incompetence in tech in EU. Either she wants to enforce laws for the common people and not for the elite, or she is incompetent enough to believe that deleting text messages affects storage.
- 1718627440 1y ago
  > incompetent enough to believe that deleting text messages affects storage. Do you think that message somehow magically don't have a size? Phones aren't able to receive messages when they have no storage for that. I have been regularly deleting messages for that reason.
  - croes 1y ago
    You will experience different problems if you are low on storage long before you can’t receive simple text messages
    - 1718627440 1y ago
      Depends on the phone. The phones I had this problem with don't do more complicated things than "receive simple text messages", so they also don't have the storage for more. I guess when you do shady contracts you would use a burner phone, so it's quite likely that this was the case here.
      - steinvakt2 1y ago
        A few seconds of video on a recent phone is quickly the size of thousands of text messages. So the size of a text message is basically zero. So deleting text messages for the sake of storage is ridiculous

zoobab 1y ago

Ministers are making laws for themselves, especially their police services. Montesquieu warned about the seperation of powers between the legislator and the executive, but it seems that it is still not the case at the EU level.

mk89 1y ago
The best façade you can set up. Someone in a separate thread called this EU a "coordinator".

roenxi 1y ago

At this level it really is a case of purpose-of-the-system-is-what-it-does. The EU is clearly not interested in building up a tech sector. Factions in the EU, yes. EU as a block, no. They've shown less than no interest; the EU would be a great place to build software companies if the governments weren't hostile to the idea of large tech companies which is where the market wants to go. Nice place to live. Software companies tend to migrate to the US. I suspect that in the halls of power they would rather interpret "digital sovereignty" as a state where they, the sovereigns, have power in the digital world to mess with EU citizens online lives. It seems very optimistic to think that the EU is suddenly going to get interested in supporting software companies. Even philosophically, why bother changing suddenly just to do something they can ask the Americans to do? Economies require specialisation, everyone can't do everything. It isn't even a bad thing that the EU doesn't have a thriving software ecosystem but for the fact it appears to be driven by governmental hostility to freedom. Good companies can come from the US. Bad companies can come from the EU. They already have a good FOSS ecosystem. The only problem is the EU seems to be more likely to bring in something like chat control and beat down anyone who achieves enormous success.

n4r9 1y ago
> large tech companies which is where the market wants to go Could you expand on that? Is there something inherent about the tech industry that makes large companies desirable?
- roenxi 1y ago
  Imagine one actor in the tech space charges $/whatever which is slightly cheaper than the next nearest rival. Everyone flocks to that company and they become fabulously wealthy. Because of that effect the market tends to centralise. Another way to look at it is some company is the best at whatever, everyone wants to go with that company and it is technically possible for that company to serve everyone. So there is the same tendency for companies to get very large. Obviously oversimplifying, there are a lot of ways the tendency manifests. Metcalfe's law and all that. That applies less in the physical world because distance is a factor. If there is some hairdresser in Silicon Valley who does amazing haircuts I'm still not going to go there to get my hair done. But I'm happy to watch YouTube which is ultimately being coordinated from nearby to that hairdresser. The issue is, based on how things have actually played out, the EU is not the place to be if you're a hyper-efficient company serving a huge number of people with huge capital reserves. I assume the tax system is the root cause.

egorfine 1y ago

> Can we build digital sovereignty We did. Cookie banners have persisted for well over a decade, so that's a proven track record.

rcMgD2BwE72F 1y ago
Which EU law mandates cookie banners? For the vast majority of cases, it's malicious compliance by websites to make people believe the issue of the banner when the problem is the data collection.
- SiempreViernes 1y ago
  I think OPs point is that even malicious compliance is proof that companies feel they cannot simply ignore EU law.
- DocTomoe 1y ago
  Mostly it is general caution of website owners not wanting to get sued by Saul-Goodman-type lawsuit mills who abuse this - and virtual every - half-baked law that comes out of the EU. Now, if I was cynical, I would point out that most parliamentarians - regardless on where they sit - have a background in legal professions. I would then suggest that there is a 'make a bad law' -> 'make cash suing over it' pipeline. But that would be cynical. Instead, I'll end with Tacitus: Corruptissima republica, plurimae leges.
steinvakt2 1y ago
And did it achieve the desired effect? I don't think so. But it caused banner fatigue and insane amount of cognitive load while not improving privacy for probably +90% of people.
- egorfine 1y ago
  > did it achieve the desired effect? Desired by whom? At this point the desire of EU legislators is to make sure that EU never gets any chance of success in the tech field. Cookie banners do serve this goal well.

thefz 1y ago

Brightball's comment here is relevant in this context as well. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45579968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45579968 We build robust encryption, then comes the naive-ignorant wave of "why do we need this? let's remove it" because policymakers don't grasp the extent of it, nor have any clue how it works and why.

mrtksn 1y ago

EU isn't ever going to have its own "tech" industry as long as US has full access to EU markets and IMHO the ChatControl thing is totally unrelated. Anyone who has a "tech" industry besides US has it thanks to trade barriers and embargoes because otherwise doesn't make sense to have it. The product doesn't have a considerable marginal cost to distribute, doesn't make sense to have it made in more than one place. 50 US states don't have EU regulations and yet everything is still happening in SV only, the rest of the "tech" in US is about as developed as in the rest of the world and they all feed into SV one way or another. Also, there's no way for competition as the capital in US(which can come from Europe, Arabs etc. too) can provide the services at loss for 10-20 years until drives everyone out of business. EU tried to be open for business and have sovereignty through things like privacy and data control laws but the end result was that whoever is worth their salt goes to SV and sell it in EU from there and when tangental industries like VW or Mercedes need top talent for their software there's no one left or those who are still in EU are not doing things that transfers well into their niche. ChatControl, IMHO is just some career move of some politicians from the ultra low corruption small northern countries where people trust the government way too much. They appear to believe that they can solve some issues with it. Not that different from all the governments who want control and each one wants as much control as possible. I think the age control attempts are much more interesting and consequential. Why? Because bots don't have age. If implemented in a way that preserves anonymity while ensuring that the things are written by a real person(or at least has someone responsible for it even if its AI written) it can actually solve the bot problem and social manipulation problems like people from other countries pushing an agenda that doesn't actually have organic roots in the society. Anyway, the issues are real and the risk are real and I think its a good idea to seek methods to mitigate the risks while keeping in mind that even if you currently like the government in few years the people who you don't like might be in power so, be careful.

Xelbair 1y ago
>EU isn't ever going to have its own "tech" industry as long as US has full access to EU markets and IMHO the ChatControl thing is totally unrelated. It's even simpler - EU does not foster any form of framework for growing any industry, they incentivize things that were already successful elsewhere and were found necessary to have in EU. It's all top-down in form of EU grants/benefits/whatevers. And even then - those grants are are tied up with basically pre-planned prince2 style project management that makes deviating from them hard, and sometimes impossible. Purchases have to be pre-planned, for almost anything. >ChatControl, IMHO is just some career move of some politicians from the ultra low corruption small northern countries where people trust the government way too much. They appear to believe that they can solve some issues with it. Not that different from all the governments who want control and each one wants as much control as possible. Yes but no - it comes from Denmark, which has a lot of issues with overstepping legal bounds when it comes to data gathering and privacy. It seems more like attempt to legalize those using excuse of "EU forced us to adopt it :)". >I think the age control attempts are much more interesting and consequential. Why? Because bots don't have age. If implemented in a way that preserves anonymity while ensuring that the things are written by a real person(or at least has someone responsible for it even if its AI written) it can actually solve the bot problem and social manipulation problems like people from other countries pushing an agenda that doesn't actually have organic roots in the society. I think it's quite the opposite - identity fraud will become more profitable, while "open" internet will be infantilized into child-safe zone. Full of bots, but now any real form of communication will have your full doxx attached to it - doesn't matter if visible or not, just possiblity of it is enough. You will self censor yourself just in case. Also all of those systems do not preserve anonymity, and basically are another mass surveillance tool. It is just another step towards ChatControl, one surveils, other forces self-censorship. While reverse would make sense - make children only internet that's actively monitored, accessible only via government issued smartcard/e-sim/thingy, while leaving it up to parents if their child should or should not access real internet.

jgilias 1y ago

The truly mind-blowing thing to me is that chat control literally goes against the constitutions of a lot of EU countries. Pooling sovereignty is one thing. Voting for regulations that you then need to implement as local laws where those local laws would directly contradict the constitution is something else. I don’t assume malice where stupidity suffices though.

a022311 1y ago

I really wish it were as easy as presented in this article. Realistically speaking, we'll probably see some minor changes thrt address concerns of some opposing member states (or maybe there will be some bribery behind the scenes) to win majority support.

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago

IMHO, the position statements of VPN companies like this one suffer from a conflation of "private communication" with "business of providing private communication 'as a service', for profit" AFAICT, "Chat Control" did not target the notion of "private communication" It targeted third parties, e.g., "VPNs", providing "private communication" to the public "as a service", for profit IMO, there is a difference and using third parties for "private communication" has consequences

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
Do not take my word for it, read the draft legislation yourself https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-10131-2025-INIT/en/pd https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-10131-2025-... Some HN voters seem to agree using third parties is not ideal https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45468830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45468830
tendie_enjoyer 1y ago
Is the postal service not also a third party?
1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
"Centuries ago, people in England, France and the German states fought for the right to send letters without their being opened by the "black chambers" of absolutist monarchs. Martin Luther, whose letters had been opened by the Duke of Saxony, raged that "a thief is a thief, whether he is a money thief or a letter thief." Regulations called for postal secrecy in 1532 and 1573 in Austria's Tyrol, in Prussia in 1685, in the oath of succession taken in 1690 by the Holy Roman emperor Joseph I and in his postal regulation of 1698. Rulers ignored them. Like Britain's Oliver Cromwell, who saw the post as "the best means to discover and prevent many dangerous and wicked designs against the Commonwealth," they justified letter-opening. It sometimes worked. In 1723, Bishop Francis Atterbury was exiled, partly on the basis of intercepted letters, for trying to put a pretender on Britain's throne. Monarchs got information from their "black chambers" - secret rooms in post offices in main cities into which the mail was brought for opening. London's was in Abchurch Lane, near St. Paul's. Black chambers resembled laboratories. Kettles spouted steam to soften wax seals. Experts took impressions of seals with a soft amalgam to make new ones in case they broke the originals while sliding hot wires under them. Specialists slid thin batons with a long slit into envelopes and twirled letters around them so they could be extracted without breaking the seals. Austria's black chamber was reputed to be the most efficient. Sacks of diplomatic mail arrived at 7 a.m., the letters unsealed and read, the important parts copied, sometimes by dictation, the letters replaced and resealed and sent to the embassies by 9:30. The employees sometimes erred, however. When the British ambassador in Austria complained that he was getting copies instead of originals, the prime minister, Metternich, coolly replied, "How clumsy these people are!" But the public knew about the letter-opening and hated it. The pre-revolutionary French assembly, the Estates-General, received complaints from all regions of France and from all classes of society about this invasion of their thoughts. Throughout the 20th century, many nations continued to intercept diplomats' messages, but most seem to have stopped reading their citizens' mail. Not totalitarian governments, though. After World War II, nations paid at least lip service to letter secrecy. Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed by many countries, holds that "no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his correspondence." Not all keep their word." https://web.archive.org/web/20070311121314/http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/jan172006/panorama19352006116.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20070311121314/http://www.deccan... Is "the postal service" a "third party" Of course it is But that's not what I mean when I use the term "third party"^1. I'm referring to so-called "tech" companies^2 Postal service is generally provided by governments Governments are the ones drafting the proposed "Chat Control" legislation It should be obvious using the government as a third party to manage private communication is not ideal It should also be obvious parties to a communication who want privacy from third parties should be encrypting their own messages not delegating encryption to a third party (who is also encrypting messages for any member of the public, including criminals, as is the case for so-called "tech" companies) 1. AFAICT the "Chat Control" draft legislation seeks to regulate _third parties_ not the parties to the private communication 2. And when I use the phrase "for profit" I'm alluding to the incentive so-called "tech" companies have to frame any debate about "Chat Control" in terms of (a) "private communication" instead of (b) "private communication services provided by third parties to the public". If (b) were regulated by "Chat Control", it might kill their middleman business. But it would have no applicability to (a), namely parties who encrypt their own messages (b) is a subset of (a)