EU Parliamentary Research Service calls VPNs "a loophole that needs closing"

https://cyberinsider.com/eu-calls-vpns-a-loophole-that-needs-closing-in-age-verification-push/

by muse900 • 2 months ago

663 406 2 months ago

cyberinsider.com

chii3• 2 months ago

How come tax loopholes aren't as scrutinized?

Mandatory age verification online is a blight imho. It should be outlawed.

stirkac• 2 months ago

How can you define a tax loophole then? Since there isn't a thing you can do called a "Tax loophole", but rather a collection of otherwise totally legitimate practices, just used as an optimization, they are impossible to define, and as such, be scrutinized. It's a neverending whack-a-mole...

jraby3• 2 months ago

Why? Isn't your age verified when you renew your drivers license? Purchase something on Amazon?

When I was a kid, child programming and commercials were heavily scrutinized. Now any kid can access porn, violence, and scams on the internet. That's a blight. Not age verification.

oneshtein2• 2 months ago

Now any kid can access porn, violence, and scams on the internet.

Before Internet they used paper.

zeroonetwothree• 2 months ago

I don’t understand, did broadcast TV or cable do age verification? Surely kids could watch content that was for adults very easily.

tmjwid• 2 months ago

As a kid, you never found a stack of porno magazines in the woods did you?

kaliqt• 2 months ago

That’s the job of parents. No exceptions. OP is right, it needs to be outlawed.

pibaker• 2 months ago

And yet juvenile crime rate is down. Bullying is down. Teenage pregnancy is way down. Even underage smoking and drinking is down.

Maybe porn and violence is making today's teenager behave better than those 30 years ago after all!

vkou• 2 months ago

What makes you think they aren't? The Double-Irish-Dutch-Sandwich in particular was cracked down on.

spwa42• 2 months ago

To be replaced by the Irish tax department making direct deals that are essentially the same. But ONLY for specific companies (principle: big multinationals don't pay tax at all, local companies get big tax raises. Irish companies are dying, multinationals are moving to Ireland)

https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/ireland/corporate/tax-credits-a...

In case anyone wonders: this means the FANG companies don't pay tax in Ireland if they hire enough people in Ireland, which has famously high income tax. It is, in other words, effectively a massive tax increase on the employees while actually reducing total tax income in the EU compared to the "double dutch sandwich".

Note that Ireland signed at least 2 international treaties that they weren't going to do this (OECD minimum tax treaty, EU tax treaty). Of course, there are no consequences to this.

The response to is that EU is exploring company-tax-per-transaction which is so incredibly bad in the massive administrative burden it will generate. It's not final, but it will mean that for every transaction done companies will have to keep (PER transaction) pieces (plural) of evidence for what country they happened in. Every single transaction.

https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/projects-and-acti...

tgv4• 2 months ago

Just the fact that it takes NGOs and journalists to uncover tax evasion practices. The governments and tax offices aren't looking. CumEx was a scandal in 2017, and despite being known since 1992, has only recently led to just a handful of prosecutions.

reddalo• 2 months ago

I agree, age verification on the web should 100% banned.

Parents should learn how to be parents; the government shouldn't force companies to do parenting instead.

eloisant3• 2 months ago

Governement should force companies to give parental controls tools. Gaming companies like Nintendo and Steam do that, I can create a kid account with parental controls.

Social media companies (e.g. Meta, Snap) are the first that should provide that but they don't.

otabdeveloper43• 2 months ago

So you're implying alcohol and cigarettes should be sold to children?

(Not to mention all the other consent age laws.)

That said, VPN is a national security issue, children are only a pretext.

gherkinnn• 2 months ago

Band and severely punish systematic violations of privacy.

Regulate the poison first, not the access to it. All this age verification nonsense is an admission that some platforms knowingly harm their users. And instead of fixing the issue by cracking down on the proverbial crack, governments make everybody's life worse.

I remain hopeful that one day, humans will regard the online advertising companies with the same scorn we do the tobacco industry and may they be ashamed and disgusted at our inaction.

loeg• 2 months ago

A tax "loophole" is just a deliberate policy you happen to disagree with.

SilverElfin• 2 months ago

Ugh. Here we go again. Europe’s politicians just cannot stop with wanting to control everyone and everything. It’s as if bureaucracy is the actual goal. Privacy and anonymity should be protected by law. Not violated by law.

LaurensBER• 2 months ago

I listen to a bunch of (mostly left) podcasts where they sometimes invite members of the European parlement and while I can agree with some of their opinions its downright scary how they think about regulations.

For everything that's wrong in society the answer seems to be more and more regulations. The negative effects (such as the lack of European AI companies) are then waved away (it's because Europe spends their money on American AI instead of investing in EU AI).

It's honestly scary.

mclbdn• 2 months ago

Care to share some of these podcasts?

rufasterisco10• 2 months ago

EU enshrined privacy in its charter of fundamental rights. GDPR was and still is a major protection.

US, from its biggest companies to the whole of Silicon Valley culture has done the exact opposite.

Within the EU, multiple attempts at pushing changes in opposition to this have been proposed, debated, voted on (and rejected), as democracies do.

Not perfect, but when you come down to laws, EU bureaucrats gave EU citizens article 8, US gave them the CLOUD act.

rdm_blackhole7• 2 months ago

EU enshrined privacy in its charter of fundamental rights. GDPR was and still is a major protection.

GDPR does not protect you from governments snooping on you. The same way it does not stop governments from collecting data on you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive

It sometimes even forces governments to collect more data on their own citizens like in Romania.

The only difference between the US and the EU is that the EU has somehow managed to convince a bunch of useful idiots (not saying that you are part of it) that it is better than the US when in reality its the same shit just with a different color and smell.

JoshTriplett2• 2 months ago

Within the EU, multiple attempts at pushing changes in opposition to this have been proposed, debated, voted on (and rejected), as democracies do.

If 51% of people want to do something wrong, they should do it to themselves and leave the other 49% alone. Democracy is not an excuse for doing the wrong thing and going "oh well, guess people want it".

ktallett• 2 months ago

EU didn't state this for one. The paper they wrote quoted someone else stating this.

blockmarker• 2 months ago

The goal is privacy and anonymity. Removing them that is. They don't care about teenagers watching porn, what they want is to know what every person is reading and saying, and being able to punish whoever says things the eurocrats don't like. That's the reason the age limits are not set in the device by the parents, but you must give your id to some entity.

oneshtein2• 2 months ago

Yet another «copy protection».

Legislation must call real experts before making any *technical* decisions.

applfanboysbgon9• 2 months ago

Ah yes, the most pressing issue of our times. Mandatory surveillance of every person's activities is a reasonable solution to the critical issue of teenagers watching porn, who totally won't be able to bypass this by... grabbing Dad's phone.

Obviously, it's not about the children. It was never about the children. If I had my way every one of these people would be taken to a gulag, because they are evil, have evil intentions, and blatantly lie to further their evil goals. I am tired of the intolerant being tolerated, and by allowing this to fester we are headed for a much worse totalitarian dystopia.

donmcronald2• 2 months ago

All accounts and that are important to kids have are being tied to their real identity and they won’t be able to get a new one if they’re banned. The potential for social engineering is insane.

All of these ID laws are going to make it more dangerous for kids online IMO.

“Hi I’m a Roblox moderator. Your account was reported for X and you’ve been temp banned. Come to platform Y to appeal. Start by submitting all your personal info and a selfie.”

And it’ll be completely normalized by big tech. Seriously. WTF are they thinking?

microtonal4• 2 months ago

First, I should say that I am against online age identification. But if we are going to get age verification because the larger population wants it, I definitely prefer the EU's privacy-preserving age verification that uses zero knowledge proofs (yes, they have issues too) over private companies doing age verification, requiring uploading scans of your ID, filming your face, etc. For the reasons that you mention (people can easily be tricked into giving information to the wrong people), but also because I simply do not want my data to be in the hands of random private companies that will sell the data, give it to Palantir, etc.

That makes this fight so annoying, we have to fight age identification, while at the same time also promoting privacy-preserving age verification for the case it happens anyway.

tgv4• 2 months ago

grabbing Dad's phone

That will only very rarely happen. Do you actually know people that will just give you their phone so you can watch porn? For more than one minute? People are so addicted to their phones.

it's not about the children

It's also about the children, but there surely are parties which use the process to further their own goals.

I am tired of the intolerant being tolerated

That's not the right quote for this case.

applfanboysbgon9• 2 months ago

Do you actually know people that will just give you their phone so you can watch porn?

They don't ask for it, they take it when you're busy or sleeping. Teens certainly weren't asking for Dad's VHS tapes or magazines when I was a kid. I suppose this problem is solveable, too, though. Mandatory biometric locks on every device capable of accessing the internet, why not?

That's not the right quote for this case.

It is. These people are fascists. Their goal is to create a society where the government has a permanent record of everything every person is doing, monitored 24/7 so nobody can defy it. The point about tolerating intolerance is that by abiding such people, you allow them to create an intolerant society, thus it is prudent even in a tolerant society to be intolerant specifically towards those whose goal is intolerance.

donmcronald2• 2 months ago

I think all the identity verification schemes should start with the beneficial owners of companies. Governments have been lobbied to allow complete anonymity for the wealthy that own businesses doing questionable things while regular people are going to have to show id to buy food.

patrickk• 2 months ago

Shell companies for the ruling class, ever decreasing anonymity for the peasants.

nickff2• 2 months ago

As someone who lives in a jurisdiction which does require such disclosure: it is a significant inconvenience for small businesses, and no benefit to the general public.

walrus01• 2 months ago

Do small businesses in your area have complicated ownership structures that it's significantly inconvenient to disclose the one family that owns, for an example small business , a plumbing repair company with 4 vans and 6 employees?

messe3• 2 months ago

Precisely what inconvenience does it actually cause those businesses?

palata23• 2 months ago

Governments have been lobbied to

Yep... and to make it worse, nobody is trying to push them towards looking at privacy-preserving age verification: instead technologists try to convince them that they just shouldn't regulate anything. Which... may not work so well.

JV002• 2 months ago

Perhaps these legislators are addicted to porn and don't want their children to do to themselves the same they have done. Would explain their obsession and relentlessness to get this done.

It's just a pity they are destroying the internet while doing that. They should be attacking the companies making money from porn instead.

And by the way porn can damage your mind even after 18 so age verification is not a real solution anyway.

skeptic_ai• 2 months ago

Porn or social media or fake news destroy kids brain more? I can’t even tell

balamatom2• 2 months ago

Parents destroy kids' brains the most.

lifestyleguru3• 2 months ago

I agree that age verification is old perverts addicted to porn simply projecting their problem onto others. Kids after a day of continuous swiping of tiktok and instagram want tattoos and bitcoin.

xg155• 2 months ago

Which is why the age restriction would apply to "normal" social media as well?

danaris2• 2 months ago

Porn addiction has been shown not to be a real thing.

People who believe they are addicted to porn view porn at approximately the same rate as other people: they just feel more guilty about it, due to being raised to believe that it is shameful.

One source on the topic: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-apes/202207/...

olsondv• 2 months ago

The article gave one anecdotal example of a person who misdiagnosed themself and then tried to make a broader point by disregarding the definition of addiction. Addiction is not just how many times a compulsive behavior is done. It’s the inability to regulate oneself for the behavior often at the expense of relationships or other responsibilities. If you’re looking at porn when you should be working, that could be addiction, for example. Apply that to relationships too. If you’re looking at porn and masturbating instead of being with your spouse, that’s addiction too.

bigstrat20032• 2 months ago

That's absolutely ridiculous. Porn addiction is 100% a real thing. You can't hand wave it away by saying "porn is actually ok, the problem is just that they believe it is bad so they feel shame".

rsynnott3• 2 months ago

Which legislators? No legislators are involved anywhere here. This is an advisory body quoting a foreign advisory body.

JV002• 2 months ago

From the article:

""" At the same time, regulators are beginning to address VPN use directly in legislation. Utah recently became the first US state to enact a law explicitly targeting VPN use in online age verification. The state’s SB 73 defines a user’s location based on physical presence rather than apparent IP address, even if VPNs or proxy services are used to mask it.

The EPRS suggests VPN providers may face increasing scrutiny as the EU revises cybersecurity and online safety legislation, noting that future updates to the EU Cybersecurity Act could introduce child-safety requirements aimed at preventing VPN misuse to bypass legal protections. """

qnpnpmqppnp3• 2 months ago

This title seems misleading.

The EP paper appears to be highlighting the existence of a debate regarding VPN.

Relevant quote:

"Some argue that this is a loophole in the legislation that needs closing and call for age verification to be required for VPNs as well. In response, some VPN providers argue that they do not share information with third parties and state that their services are not intended for use by children in the first place. The Children's Commissioner for England has called for VPNs to be restricted to adult use only.

While privacy advocates argue that imposing age-verification requirements on VPNs would pose significant risk to anonymity and date protection, child-safety campaigners claim that their widespread use by minors requires a regulatory response. Pornhub and other large pornography platforms have reportedly lost web traffic following the enforcement of age-verification rules in the UK, while VPN apps have reached the top of download rankings."

Of course I'm not saying the EU won't regulate VPNs, but nowhere in this paper is "the EU" stating that VPNs need closing.

karmakurtisaani• 2 months ago

This needs a new "law of headlines": whenever it's the EU saying something, it's never the EU that said that.

dinfinity• 2 months ago

Even the, it's incredibly vague at best, equivalent to "The USA said that", which only makes sense in a context where the relevant spokespeople are well-defined (such as a UN assembly or something), but who is the general spokesperson for the USA or the EU?

Usually things like these are qualified like "the Department of Defense of the USA stated X".

rufasterisco10• 2 months ago

The title is also the exact title for that paper’s chapter.

You are right at pointing out that the paper is overall presenting the subject in a balanced manner, unfortunately it seems a bad choice was made when it came to that specific sentence, that gives a venue for it to be fed in the outrage machine.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2026/7826...

ChrisSD• 2 months ago

In that specific sentence the source is cited (via hyperlink). So even if you read it out of all context you can still find out the source is UK's Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza who said it, not "the EU" (whatever that means).

For this "story" to gain legs, someone must have pulled that sentence out of content without mentioning the source and then added some misleading context for the outrage.

oytis2• 2 months ago

These dimwits (and I don't just mean those in EU) seriously want to stop adolescents from watching porn, and are ready to mess with internet infrastructure for that. That's a depressing manifestation of aging society

eowln2• 2 months ago

Practically all the ills we suffer currently are depressing manifestations of an aging society.

That, and the lack of real issues to solve.

chii3• 2 months ago

seriously want to stop adolescents from watching porn

no, they want to pretend this is the issue, so that pervasive monitoring or permission and/or deanonymization is normalized. It is to serve the state apparatus, rather than any actual protection.

cess115• 2 months ago

It's not really about kids looking at porn, it's about tracking everyone else and making it easier for state surveillance and corporations to identify people.

Kids don't have money and hardly ever manage to do crime without getting caught so they're profoundly uninteresting to surveil in this way, but adults are and here the interests of the state and corporations converge so they'll make a push for tyranny.

But how to make people accept it? Tell them they want to expose kids to gruesome tentacle porn, or else they'd support this. Few adults are willing to admit they even look at porn, let alone argue that this is an important activity that needs to be protected, which it is.

palata23• 2 months ago

Adolescents, or kids? Would you say it's completely stupid to want to stop kids from watching porn, or accessing social media?

Did you grow up with free streaming platforms? Pretty sure many adolescents were accessing porn before those, though it was slightly less accessible.

I personally don't have a definitive opinion about porn (I feel like young kids obviously shouldn't have access to it, but it shouldn't be illegal to adults, but I don't know where the limit should be), but I feel like making it harder for kids to access social media makes sense.

Mad_ad• 2 months ago

it's not about porn, it's about power over all citizens.

Roark66• 2 months ago

Believe me, in some EU countries (like my country Poland) people are very sensitive for this kind of bullshit.

Last two times they tried to push other censorship/tracking laws (claiming as always "we have to, EU is making us") there were mass protests in every city and town.

In my own town of 5k people there were several hundred (500 people at least, probably more). And the previous govt backed down.

This topic seems to be coming back everytime certain countries (Denmark etc) hold the rotating EU presidency. Our current PM is certainly in the same EU clique that wants to push this so much, but it's an extremely unpopular position and he is already leading a weak minority coalition govt. It wouldn't take much to topple him, so he will not do anything like that (unless he is convicted people are distracted with some crisis, but that is where normal people come in. To keep watching what is being smuggled in).

I wonder why do voters in those countries that propose these laws tend to allow this to happen again and again.

jasonvorhe• 2 months ago

You don't really believe this is about porn?

shevy-java2• 2 months ago

But you single out just one paper. If you include all paper and discussions the picture is super-clear, and the title is not misleading at all. This has to be said.

Of course I'm not saying the EU won't regulate VPNs

The word choice is quite revealing. You write "regulate VPNs". To me this is not "regulation" at all - it is restriction or factually forbidding it. It is newspeak language here if we dampen it via nicer-sounding words. It also distracts from the main question: why the sudden attack by EU lobbyists against VPNs?

qnpnpmqppnp3• 2 months ago

This is the only paper that is presented as a source for this statement. I'm not the one singling it out.

rounce• 2 months ago

why the sudden attack by EU lobbyists against VPNs?

Live sports, they’re already assaulting internet infrastructure in various EU member states (eg. La Liga forcing Spanish ISPs to block cloudflare IPs during matches). With this in mind it seems less a case of surveillance state and more a case of corporate state capture.

sexylinux• 2 months ago

Showing children naked humans is a horrible crime.

Bombing children is OK and we happily produce and deliver all the weapons needed for that.

Patterns of an ill society.

inglor_cz• 2 months ago

This is how waters are tested and potential negative reactions are probed.

MandieD• 2 months ago

"Children's Commissioner for England"... that's not the EU. Really not the EU - they had a whole election and years-long process to leave the EU.

graemep• 2 months ago

The point is that does not stop the EU from quoting the Children's Commissioner for England on the first page of this document:

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2026/7826...

rdm_blackhole7• 2 months ago

Here we go again with new restrictions on civil liberties. This is Chat Control all over again.

The EU won't stop until it has access to all your data, all your messages, anything you read, save, send will be scrutinized by the the big great EU and it's little minions.

Hey, at least we get the freedom of movement right?

microtonal4• 2 months ago

There is no such thing as the EU wants X. There are huge differences between what the European Commission, the European Council, and the majority of the European Parliament want.

Most of the anti-privacy crap hasn't happened thanks to the EU. Particular countries and lobbying groups have been pushing this through the Commission and Council and most attempts have been rejected by the EP.

If we didn't have the EU, some countries would have long introduced this nonsense (like the UK). But in the EU that does not make much sense, since there is a single market, so you have to enforce it EU-wide.

The European Parliament + courts of justice/human rights are one of the last beacons of democracy/freedom worldwide that resist upcoming authoritarianism. We should support them and remind the Parliament over and over again that they should be continuing the good fight.

---

By the way, nearly all your comments on HN are about politics and all trying to sow dissent on Western (and especially European) democracies.

dryarzeg4• 2 months ago

By the way, nearly all your comments on HN are about politics and all trying to sow dissent on Western (and especially European) democracies.

Disclaimer first: I'm not trying to protect him and I'm not tied to him in any possible way. But since when constantly expressing your own opinion (that's what I assume given the age of the account; maybe I'm wrong, but this seems rather like a person than a bot) is a deliberately malicious activity (as implied by your "trying to sow dissent" expression)? If their opinion doesn't match yours, it doesn't mean that they're evil or something similar. It just means that your views are different.

rdm_blackhole7• 2 months ago

There is no such thing as the EU wants X. There are huge differences between what the European Commission, the European Council, and the majority of the European Parliament want.

Of course there is such a thing as EU wants X. The commission drafts laws and presents them to the MEPs who vote on them. The MEPs do not have the ability to propose their own laws. So all these bullshit laws that are voted on originate from the commission.

If I tell you that you can have a red balloon and you only choice is either to accept or reject the balloon, then you don't really have a choice do you? You can't say I want a blue balloon.

Most of the anti-privacy crap hasn't happened thanks to the EU. Particular countries and lobbying groups have been pushing this through the Commission and Council and most attempts have been rejected by the EP.

Most attempts? And that should somehow reassure me?

Here is another law that was overturned after many years even though everyone knew it was illegal from the start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive. It only took something like 8 years.

When Romania protested that this was illegal under their constitution, the EU sued them and forced them to spy on their own citizens. So thank you but no thank you.

If we didn't have the EU, some countries would have long introduced this nonsense (like the UK). But in the EU that does not make much sense, since there is a single market, so you have to enforce it EU-wide.

On the contrary, if we did not have the EU then it would not be such a problem because the same people who are pushing for this crap would have to repeat the same process 27 times, one in each country and they would have to convince/bribe their way into each government. Instead they can now push this stuff through the commission and it gets voted on and if approved gets applied to 450M people in one go.

That is the definition of single point of failure if I have ever seen one.

The European Parliament + courts of justice/human rights are one of the last beacons of democracy/freedom worldwide that resist upcoming authoritarianism. We should support them and remind the Parliament over and over again that they should be continuing the good fight.

Do we now have to resort to this sort of emotional arguments? The EU as a whole is 27 countries, the world has more than 200 countries today. Are you claiming that most of them are hell-hole under some sort of tyrannical government? You can't be serious.

This is my problem with the EU supporters these days, you guys are so quick to shove in everyone throats the amazing stuff that the EU supposedly does for us every day but as soon as someone complains, you revert to using the same tactics as populists with the US vs Them rhetoric, the emotional manipulative language and what not.

Also your last paragraph is in complete contradiction with your previous statement. Somehow the EU/European parliament is the last bastion of democracy/freedom but it stills wants to access my private messages and emails (for my own good of course), and now it wants to force VPNs to record identifying information of its users (for our own good again).

If what you say is true then we wouldn't be having this conversation because anyone who proposes this sort of law should have been ostracized and kicked out of the commission in no time. Yet here we are.

By the way, nearly all your comments on HN are about politics and all trying to sow dissent on Western (and especially European) democracies.

Ha, yes, you got me! I can see that when the push comes to shove it's easier to go for the subtle ad-hominem or character attacks.

God forbid someone in Europe could have any issues with the way things are going at the moment. Seems highly suspicious.

Should I send you a copy of my EU passports? Maybe that's whats going to be required in a few years time to post online if the all-mighty EU gets its way but I can understand if you want to start doing the policing early. After all we can never be too careful.

By the way, I love the new definition of democracy theses days: agree with us about everything or we will consider you a Chinese/Russian/Populist/evil (take your pick) troll.

Its perfectly fitting with the way the EU is trending down towards authoritarianism and subtle freedom of speech suppression.

jackjeff• 2 months ago

Too easy to dunk on the EU. The UK, USA and Australia seem to have reached the same conclusions. In UK all young males now have a VPN rather than do whatever you’re supposed to do to see porn. VPNs went from “nerd talk” to “vpn=porn” in the space of weeks. Whatever is next will suffer a similar fate.

sev_verso• 2 months ago

VPNs are essential tools against government persecution. Linking identity to a VPN session under any guise (age verification or otherwise) is something out of the playbook of dictatorial states.

0x073• 2 months ago

There was a time that parents control what websites children can access.

Now there is a time politicians control what websites we can access.

pveierland5• 2 months ago

Age restrictions + VPN bans + encryption restrictions + client-side monitoring + restricting general purpose computing.. It's just rapid descent into digital fascism set up by people who have no ability to see how the dots will end up connecting.

lpcvoid• 2 months ago

I think they absolutely have the ability to see it, it's part of the value proposition for them.

pveierland5• 2 months ago

Speaking from the POV of my country, you absolutely have prime minister + minister level understandings that seem to plainly be based on issues such as "we need to stop children from bullying each other on social media", "we need to help police surveillance to stop crime", "we need to protect people from internet porn" etc, and it seems to be that the political capital and will to create these measures comes from short-term attempts to solve certain problems, without being able to understand how a broader set of these measures will together create digital fascism.

Beyond that I fully believe there are intelligence agencies, advertising agencies, military interests, IP control interests etc that are all working very diligently and in more targeted ways to each achieve their goals better by pushing for specific measures and helping to amplify moral panics to build the necessary political capital.

rufasterisco10• 2 months ago

I am sorry you see it this way, when the very subject at hand is a practical example of how the EU has planned and built a wallet around the very same ideas you seem to cherish.

Unfortunately, now that it comes to the news cycle, it’s easy to get outraged around misleading headlines.

I encourage you to invest time in researching what the EU has done in the past decade around digital identities and their framing around privacy questions on this. I hope you will find, as I do, that it moved the needle in t he right direction.

pveierland5• 2 months ago

I don't care for a limited and selective best-possible interpretation of a subset of measures viewed in isolation. The point is that a broader set of vectors are being used continuously to gradually ensnare and limit digital freedom.

This is not a misleading headline, this is a document from the European Parliamentary Research Service that calls out VPNs as a technology that may need to be moderated in order to enforce restrictions such as age verification.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2026/7826...

As you are calling me out - specifically answer how restricting access to VPNs would benefit the freedom of thought, communication, and information within Europe, and not be something that - together with other measures - can help facilitate digital fascism.

thunderbong• 2 months ago

I have a question that's been going through my mind -

Why is age verification connected with identity verification?

I understand why the former is not possible with the latter, but my question is -

Whichever entity is responsible for the verification can just pass on the age verification confirmation without passing through any of the other details, right?

Am I mistaken here? Because if this was possible, I could still go ahead with using the VPN.

xg155• 2 months ago

This seems to be what "double-blind" verification is doing:

The report highlights emerging approaches, such as “double-blind” verification systems used in France, where websites receive only confirmation that a user meets age requirements without learning the user's identity, while the verification provider does not see which websites the user visits.

dinwos• 2 months ago

It's a question of blind trust in your government to respect this, when they themselves control the age verification apps, at least in the EU who wants to impose its own system and not rely on an autonomous third party.

palata23• 2 months ago

It is cryptography. Just like you don't have to blindly trust Signal with end-to-end encryption (their client app is open source), it could be implemented in a way that you don't need to blindly trust your government.

rufasterisco10• 2 months ago

From a tech perspective it has been a solved problem since about a decade ago, via DID (decentralised identities) and their Verifiable Proofs.

The EU digital wallet framework is built around those, and your suggested scenario is a first class citizen.

It is now moving from the academic/research world, to the political field, and feedback/pressure from both commercial groups and political agendas is muddling the field.

Here are some links to canonical docs, you can easily find high quality videos that explain this is shorter/simpler terms to get a grasp of it.

https://www.w3.org/TR/did-1.0/

https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model-2.0/

A note: it’s one of the healthy byproducts of the blockchain age, don’t get sidetracked by some hyped videos from crypto bros.

userbinator• 2 months ago

It's a "solved problem" that didn't ever need solving in the first place.

palata23• 2 months ago

You are right, it is possible to do age verification in a privacy-preserving manner. Feels like most people being very vocal against the idea don't know about that.

At least most complaints I see here are assuming that age verification means tracking.

Too bad, there could be interesting discussions about privacy-preserving age verification, if people just bothered getting informed before complaining.

mzajc• 2 months ago

We already have privacy preserving age verification: the website asks for your age (or just whether you're over 18), and lets you through.

There's no issuing party to collude with to deanonymize users, no hard requirement on owning a Google- or Apple-vetted smartphone, and generally no way to identify me besides my choice of random numbers.

You move past that, and people rightfully tell you that your scheme outright breaks privacy, or that it makes too many assumptions or is too complex to easily verify it actually preserves privacy.

jeroenhd4• 2 months ago

Why is age verification connected with identity verification?

With the EU's current approach, disconnecting the two is the exact point. There is no third party, the government ID you already have can be used to verify your age directly with an online service.

lifestyleguru3• 2 months ago

They EU authorities care for children so much that they haven't noticed almost none are being born anymore in EU.

Joel_Mckay• 2 months ago

Sounds more like they should have sand-boxed white-listed school networks for known publishers in each age group.

Then leave the rest of the world out of domestic failed parenting nonsense. However, policy would still likely fail given the cruelty youthful ignorance often brings, and persistent 1:100 child psychopath occurrence rates. =3

shevy-java2• 2 months ago

The lobbyists are doing what they are paid to do.

People pointed that out quite a while ago already. Age sniffing is a joint attack on the freedoms of people, which explains why these lobbyists also try to abolish VPNs. Their vision for the world wide web is one of authorization. Ultimately they will fail, but a few get rich here in the process.

harvey9• 2 months ago

The people who really want to stop VPNs are commercial streamers, especially for live sports. Regardless of state, or governing party, it always comes back to money.

FrustratedMonky2• 2 months ago

This probably needs to be highlighted more.

It isn't just governments.

This is also quietly being backed by some big corporations with money .

joshstrange• 2 months ago

governments
big corporations with money

Is there a notable difference between these two in most places? There _should_ be but in practice it feels like more and more places function closer to an oligarchy than whatever form of “democracy” they espouse to practice.

spacedoutman• 2 months ago

We desperately need a new internet

rswail• 2 months ago

Governments already have everyone's ID, including DOB. They say that the problem is non-adults accessing adult sites and services. So therefore, the sites need to know that users are over 18 (or the selected government age).

There should be a standardized government ID service/API that allows a person to let it disclose their age (or other user selected information) to a requesting site/service. That's all that is needed if the government ID service has appropriate 2FA and security.

Both the request and the response can be appropriately anonymized so that the government doesn't know the site, and the site doesn't know the person's identity.

Why isn't this a thing yet? As far as I know, no one has proposed it.

pembrook4• 2 months ago

if the government ID service has appropriate 2FA and security.

You're kidding right?

Hikikomori2• 2 months ago

These already exist in several eu countries. Imagine that there are governments that is not America and that actually work.

drysine3• 2 months ago

Why?

In Russia we have gosuslugi.ru (state services), which nowadays requires 2FA and hasn't been compromised in any major way so far.

Among other things they provide a way for a third party to use it as identification service and a user chooses which data about himself he wants to share. No anonymity, though, and I don't see how it can be implemented so that the verification provider doesn't know which service is requiring age verification.

mr_mitm2• 2 months ago

The german gov id supports that. They have a PKI and the id is a smart card with a cert and private key on it [0]. It lets you answer the question "are you over 18" with a zero knowledge proof. I guess it only proves you have in your possession a valid id AND know the PIN to it, but that should be fine. France apparently has this, too, according to the article.

[0] https://www.personalausweisportal.de/Webs/PA/EN/government/t..., https://www.bsi.bund.de/EN/Themen/Oeffentliche-Verwaltung/El...

jeroenhd4• 2 months ago

This is the technology behind the digital wallet/age verification app. A challenge with these systems is that card readers that actually support this kind of thing are excessively rare and expensive for what they do, especially when used with desktops.

My German isn't that great, but I can't find any sources that state that the German eID can use ZKPs directly. From what I can tell, it uses basic signatures, and the new/upcoming wallet app will take care of ZKP generation. But maybe I'm missing a source in German?

mcv4• 2 months ago

Exactly. Governments that really care about age verification should provide the tools to do so. They have the means to do so without violating privacy. Something like the Dutch DigiD service (the one they're about to sell to the US despite literally everybody opposing that) would be a great basis for this; just add an age verification service to it. They already know who you are in the most legal sense possible.

pimterry• 2 months ago

This has been widely discussed, and initial implementations exist: the EU digital wallets are doing exactly this. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/spaces/EU....

In theory, every EU state will have to support this soon so users can use it to verify age privately online. Still work to do to roll this out for real, but the technological part is very much already happening and I think the rollout plan is committed.

thrance• 2 months ago

There should be a standardized government ID service/API

Most European country already have one, some are still testing theirs. They're required by the EU to make one accessible to their citizens by the end of this year, in the context of the eID project [0].

[0] https://commission.europa.eu/topics/digital-economy-and-soci...

codedokode• 2 months ago

No. You seem to not understand how government works. It will never be anonymized so it's an awful idea, you basically suggest to link accounts to a passport.

qnpnpmqppnp3• 2 months ago

Both the request and the response can be appropriately anonymized so that the government doesn't know the site, and the site doesn't know the person's identity.

Yes that's how it's done in France for instance, and generally how it's being discussed in the EU.

kro• 2 months ago

VPN usage increased, but how to they draw the conclusion that this is children. I think it's more likely that adults are using VPNs to not have to deal with the ID process. I would do that.

As VPNs usually cost some money, which is already a barrier for minors.

nirui• 2 months ago

In case people no longer remember, when China started to require websites to register for a license before be allowed to operate, it was for "protecting the children" too.

This simple policy then goes on to silence most individual publisher(/self-media) and consolidated the industry into the hands of the few, with no opportunity left for smaller entrepreneurs. This is arguably much worse than allowing children to watch porn online, because this will for sure effect people's whole life in a negative way.

Also, if EU really wants "VPN services to be restricted to adults only", they should just fine the children who uses it, or their parent for allowing it to happen. The same way you fine drivers for traffic violation, but not the road.

And if EU still think that's not enough, maybe they should just cut the cable, like what North Korea did.

zero-hp• 2 months ago

Not only in China. Russian internet cenzorship also started as a "children protection" measure.

pronik2• 2 months ago

Ursula von den Leyen has been pushing internet blocks in Germany for the sake of the children since 2009. Which is when "Zensursula" nickname has been coined. You don't need to look far to find the same thinking by the people in power.

otabdeveloper43• 2 months ago

No, actually it started to protect intellectual property. A guy posted a recap in a post above.

delusional5• 2 months ago

This is arguably much worse than allowing children to watch porn online, because this will for sure effect people's whole life in a negative way.

I would like you to make that argument.

pembrook4• 2 months ago

What argument?

You're the one that needs to argue the presence of harm, given you're the one arguing we need to create a surveillance dragnet to shield certain age groups of humans from witnessing how their species procreates.

The default state is that humans procreate via sexual reproduction. You need to argue why we need to take action to hide this, especially given we let children witness other far more brutal activities from the human species like violence.

swiftcoder• 2 months ago

Nobody thought to protect western millennials from accidentally wandering across porn on the internet, and we mostly grew up ok

christophilus• 2 months ago

Parents can protect their children. Source: I’m a parent. My kids haven’t seen porn and can’t access the internet. This doesn’t affect the free exchange of ideas that my fellow countrymen enjoy.

Governments getting involved absolutely, unequivocally will be used to clamp down on the free exchange of ideas.

ozgung• 2 months ago

But you are asking logical questions. You are thinking and talking too much for a World citizen in 2026. "Reasoning" is a reserved word for chatbots now, so we humans are not allowed to do that anymore. We can only obey like a bot and pretend all the lies they tell are the truth.

BTW I live in Turkiye where the government banned ALL the adult websites around 2008. Even as an adult you can't access them. This year they are banning VPNs, introduce age controls and ID verification COORDINATED with the rest of the world. Also banning some games, control social media, and basically make it legal to control and track everyone on the internet. What a coincidence that similar attempts are simultaneous in many independent countries.

And no, children have not been really protected in Turkiye since 2008.

rvnx3• 2 months ago

Not only that, sprinkle a bit of hate speech laws on top and then you got rid a lot of political competition that could disagree with you

retired• 2 months ago

Grab a SIM-card from Bulgaria with roaming enabled. Internet is routed through the Bulgarian ISP even when you are in Turkiye. Full internet access, no VPN required.

andai• 2 months ago

Where do they coordinate that?

u80804• 2 months ago

Just a recap how it happened in Russia:

1. First, year ~2015 legal framework was created under disguise of banning pirated media(specifically torrents.ru)(legislative push). State-wide DNS ban introduced. Very easy to circumvent via quering 8.8.8.8

2. Then, having legal basis, govt included extra stuff in banned list(casinos, terrorist orgs, etc)(executive push). IP bans introduced, applied very carefully.

3. Legal expanded allowing govt to ban specific media on very vague criterias(legislative push). IP blocks tried on some large websites. DPI hardware mandated to be installed by ISPs to filter by HTTPS SNI(executive push).

4. At ~2019 Roskomnadzor(RKN) created, special govt entity which enforces bans without court orders(legislative push).

5. ~2021 sites become banned if they are not filtering content by Russian laws by request of RKN(executive push). VPN services were obligated to also DPI-filter traffic(legislative push).

6. ~2023 Crackdown on VPN started(executive push). Popular commercial services were IP-banned, OpenVPN and IPSec connections selectively degraded by DPI.

7. ~2025 Heavy VPN filtering(vless, wireguard, etc) introduced(executive push). Performance of certain sites were degraded(youtube, twitter, etc).

spixy• 2 months ago

DPI = Deep packet inspection?

dvtkrlbs• 2 months ago

Similar stuff is happening in Turkey as well. Afaik with ipv6 adoption goverment mandates DPI hardware at ISPs. It was voluntary for ipv4 traffic.

darqis• 2 months ago

and yet my friend in Moscow is able to use VPN to get around all this

d1sxeyes2• 2 months ago

I remember writing about Roskomnadzor well before 2019, it’s existed at least since 2013, and don’t think it was particularly new then.

comonoid4• 2 months ago

8. 2026 White-list mode is occasionally enforced.

Saline95154• 2 months ago

France is already at 5! The free world marches on.

googlehater• 2 months ago

i noticed your profile has a lot of great info onthis. where did you learn?

yorwba• 2 months ago

In case people no longer remember, when China started to require websites to register for a license before be allowed to operate, it was for "protecting the children" too.

Indeed I do not remember this, nor can I find corroborating evidence that there was much of an effort to justify the requirement to the public at all. As far as I can tell, the government simply decided that they needed more control over the internet, so they made a law to give themselves more control over the internet. https://www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2000/content_60531.htm It has no special provisions limited to children that only later got extended to adults. (Meanwhile, restrictions on how long children may play games continue to only apply to children, AFAIK.)

nameconflicts• 2 months ago

You're right

leonidasrup3• 2 months ago

You always hear the argument "protecting the children", because anyone oposing the regulation/laws can be labeled at best "exposing the children to danger" or at worst "pedofile". So as a consequence at best the oponents of such regulation/laws should not be listened to, or at worst they should be put into prison.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children

buran77• 2 months ago

The excuse has to be something nobody can appear to be supporting (pedophilia, terrorism, nazis, etc.). It's not only an appeal to emotion, it's also a false dichotomy, a loaded question, guilt by association.

Others look at this recipe and can't help but notice its effectiveness. Eventually nobody is beneath pulling this kind of logic, even if they were the ones crucifying it just a few short years ago. The weaker the leader, the more likely that that they forget where they wrote down those principles of theirs and resort to this crap.

idiotsecant• 2 months ago

All government drifts toward autocracy over time, it takes constant pressure to keep it on track. It makes you tired after a while.

izacus5• 2 months ago

In case people no longer remember, when China started to require websites to register for a license before be allowed to operate, it was for "protecting the children" too.

People don't remember because it didn't happen and the license wasn't about protecting the children. But it's so convenient to just blantantly lie on the internet nowadays, isn't it?

Just like the title of this article blatantly lies about "EU" doing something.

card_zero2• 2 months ago

One of you ought to find out what really did happen, and tell us. I can only do the lame thing and quote Wikipedia:

China had no such legislation until 1997. That year, China's sole legislative body – the National People's Congress (NPC) – passed CL97, a law that deals with cyber crimes, which it divided into two broad categories: crimes that target computer networks, and crimes carried out over computer networks. Behavior illegal under the latter category includes, among many things, the dissemination of pornographic material, and the usurping of "state secrets."

redeeman• 2 months ago

or maybe just maybe its time for people to realize that the EU is an enemy of the people, and hold the people pushing for this personally responsible.

lemoncookiechip• 2 months ago

You know, if Politicians, Law Enforcement and Military Personnel are included and affected by all these anti-privacy laws, I'm all for it (not really). Let their daily corruption come to light by the opposition exposing all their dirty laundry (because of course they'd used the data against each other) and vice-versa over and over... and that's not gonna happen because we don't live in that world where laws apply fairly to everyone.

"Rules for thee but not for me."

miohtama3• 2 months ago

Europol is lobbying for this.

Of course, by using tax payers money.

TacticalCoder• 2 months ago

And if EU still think that's not enough, maybe they should just cut the cable, like what North Korea did.

I'll make a similar comment I made on another thread: we saw a thread with many upvotes hating on the cyber-libertarians... We all know the EU institutions are ran by cyber-libertarians and that it's cyber-libertarians making such research and decisions right?

Pick your fight brothers. I don't think spending your time hating on the three John Galts of this world is a worthy fight. You may even turn out to be more morally aligned with the John Galt of this world than with the people running the EU institutions (and North Korea).

rini17• 2 months ago

The former cyber-libertarians are running the tech unicorns now. Ofc they would prefer you see them as John Galts lol. But they aren't that and they will defend freedom of cyberspace only as far as it aligns with their power and profit.

rdiddly• 2 months ago

"...into the hands of the few..."

And there you have it, the actual reason for this.

ZetsuBouKyo• 2 months ago

I have an extreme slippery slope idea.

If they want to protect children, shouldn't they sterilize everyone?

Every child born, regardless of wealth will inevitably suffer injury, illness, and psychological setbacks. Therefore, the best way to protect them would be not allowing people to have children.

By the way, not having children is also more eco-friendly, because an infinite series simply converges.

I wonder if I’ll see this ridiculous scene in my lifetime.

noisy_boy• 2 months ago

Forced sterilisations for population control has been a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uttawar_forced_sterilisations

AnthonyMouse3• 2 months ago

By the way, not having children is also more eco-friendly, because an infinite series simply converges.

This one isn't actually accurate. Younger people have longer time horizons (i.e. aren't expecting to be dead as soon) and are therefore more likely to support policies like electrifying transportation and generating power from lower CO2 sources, and policies get enacted when they have majority support, so causing the population to skew older by reducing the number of children is ecologically very bad.

vixen99• 2 months ago

Worth remembering that eugenics was the smart idea among many intellectuals in the earlier 20th century. The fascinating list of eminent adherents include J. Maynard Keynes, Winston Churchill, T. Roosevelt, Francis Crick, Linus Pauling, Herbert Hoover, J.H. Kellogg (of corn flake fame), Oliver Wendell Holmes, GB Shaw, Sidney Webb (early socialist, co-founder of the LSE & the Labour Party) and William Beveridge who created the British National Health System (NHS). Apparently Hitler wrote "There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States.". (Mein Kempf).

roncesvalles• 2 months ago

They should just mandate 1 spouse should stay at home (working remotely or not working) or you must hire a full-time nanny. I'm only half joking. If your kid has enough unsupervised time to be watching porn on a regular basis, wtf is going on?

odiroot• 2 months ago

A modest proposal?

cameldrv• 2 months ago

You shouldn't have to be an "entrepreneur" to have a website. The idea that the only useful/interesting things to say are those that are profitable is a big part of the problem we find ourselves in.

eduction• 2 months ago

Do you have a single link or other piece of evidence to substantiate this? I’ve never seen, nor can I find in a search, any evidence the ICP license scheme in place for that past 26 years in China has ever related to children in any meaningful sense.

It has the ring of BS. Why would an authoritarian government in a country with no free press or free elections feel any need to justify a speech regulation with a fig leaf? They openly restrict speech.

I think you’re full of it.

luotuoshangdui• 2 months ago

An authoritarian government needs excuses too. China even claims to be a democratic country. North Korea even has the word Democratic in its name. "Protecting children" is a common excuse China uses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_erotic_very_violent is a famous example of them trying to justify internet censorship under the name of "protecting children".

qingcharles• 2 months ago

The simplest solution is perhaps to simply imprison any children found using a VPN until they reach 18, then the state can exert total control over their access to information and they can be safely released into unmoderated society on their 18th birthday.

baranul• 2 months ago

It is definitely not really "for the children", when legislation is aimed at all adults, and not specifically for parents. It is parents who should be responsible for the actions of their children and given the software tools to manage their online access. This arguably can be done with government sponsored and specific help for parents; software, websites, and shops with IT personnel.

These measures taken by the EU and other government entities has always been about surveillance, censorship, control, and eliminating freedom of speech and association. People need to keep calling out this continual deception and attempt to erode freedoms.

ActorNightly• 2 months ago

Prove to me that people deserve to be free and not micromanaged on a day to day basis.

alibarber• 2 months ago

The same way you fine drivers for traffic violation, but not the road.

Eh - my new car has an EU mandated speed limiter in it that takes over the cruise control. It uses a combination of GPS and vision to determine what speed limit to apply. Only slammed the breaks on on the motorway to drop from 120 to 80 KM/h erroneously 4 times in one journey last week.

Much like the oft maligned Google PM that releases/deprecates another chat product to get their promotion, some commissioner somewhere in Brussels managed to make the world a better place with this too.

LightBug1• 2 months ago

Over my dead internet connection.

VPN for the VPN with a back-up VPN for the VPN's VPN.

Havoc• 2 months ago

Tiresome surveillance state push

dragonelite• 2 months ago

The western great fire wall is reducing its scope..

FrustratedMonky2• 2 months ago

If my kid can setup a VPN, then he's old enough.

ogogmad• 2 months ago

ὦ Ευρώπη, this would kick off an arms race. μολὼν λαβέ!

padjo• 2 months ago

So a research arm of the European parliament is "the EU" now?

rsynnott3• 2 months ago

They also didn't say it was a loophole that needs closing; they just pointed out that the Children's Commissioner for England said that...

Reporting on the EU tends to be quite bad, because people often don't really understand what it is or how it works (in particular there's a tendency to conflate what the commission wants to do with EU policy), but this is unusually careless reporting.

miohtama3• 2 months ago

It's funded by the EU budget.

EinigeKreise• 2 months ago

I'm sure you don't think that suffices. Do you extend that thinking to US and any of its national laboratories?

megous• 2 months ago

Some EP commitee writes a report about some UK (not-EU) person stating "VPNs are a loophole that needs closing".

  > A loophole that needs closing
  [Some argue] that this is a loophole in the legislation that needs closing and call for age verification to be required for VPNs as well.

[Some argue] being a link to some UK website

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EPRS_AT...

jimkleiber• 2 months ago

Maybe the problem is trying to govern a global space with sub-global governments.

ChoGGi• 2 months ago

More bullshit from the gov.

Add better parental controls to devices, if Facebook sends my children porn on a phone that's "underage" than they get a big fat fine.

But I guess then there's no sending my ID to the world, think of the poor advertisers.

Kim_Bruning• 2 months ago

People keep looking at the consumer privacy vpns , but there's a huge field of commercial vpn usage for a broad spectrum of tasks in the european union. Point to point tunnels connecting two sites into a single network. Allowing access to (corporate) resources via laptops and mobile devices. Fixing the one way nature of crappy internet that most people are forced to work with these days (or simply never realized), etc etc.

Basically if you want to do any sort of remote work, I'm not saying you're necessarily using one right now, but the odds are good. Possibly the politician's own IT back-end might have ... opinions... on the ability of the executive to overly check the legislative too.

ofrzeta• 2 months ago

Sorry for being blunt but those fuckheads won't stop until they ruined everything. No age verification in my house for computer use.

shark1• 2 months ago

It's very easy to fall in this trap of "surveillance for the greater good".

It reminds me the Mullvad pub campaign: https://mullvad.net/en/and-then/uk

rsynnott3• 2 months ago

Terrible headline. The EPRS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliamentary_Researc...) said a thing, not the EU.

Also, the EPRS did not argue that they are a loophole that needs closing.

From the actual paper:

Some argue that this is a loophole in the legislation that needs closing and call for age verification to be required for VPNs as well. In response, some VPN providers argue that they do not share information with third parties and state that their services are not intended for use by children in the first place.

The "some argue" is a link; it turns out that 'some' here is the Children's Commissioner for England, a post with, AIUI, only an advisory role in the UK, and obviously not even that in the EU.

petre3• 2 months ago

Who are the commies behind this, apart from Ylva Johansson who pushed the former agenda and VdL?

sharyphil• 2 months ago

Welcome to Яussia.

kkfx• 2 months ago

The China gap is going to zero, yet slave masses still sleep...

kennykartman4• 2 months ago

If any EU government people are reading this, I'd like to send you a short message:

Please stop thinking about the kids on the internet. But here's a brief list of things you must work on with higher urgency:

- taxing more large corporations,

- taxing more ultra-rich people,

- funding EU-made (open source) tech and infrastructure,

- let parents spend more time with their kids so they can actually protect their offspring and keep them safe from predators, more than any stupid law you think you can devise can do,

- more trains.

tt24• 2 months ago

Lol, a list of other bogeymen

“Don’t look at this scary monster, look at my pet issue scary monster instead!”

fithisux2• 2 months ago

And then EU tyrrants

please abolish yourselves. You are worse than cancer.

Squarex3• 2 months ago

I am sure that the problem of current EU is not lack of excesive taxation.

kennykartman4• 2 months ago

I don't think that from my comment anyone can infer that I'm opposed to reducing general taxation. I'm, in fact, in favor in increasing taxes for who owns too much, not against reducing taxes to population with lower income.

tistoon• 2 months ago

This! More taxes and - yes - more state-controlled tech! Wait. Why stop there? Let’s just bring back the SED and the Stasi too. Also, prevent people (the rich? yeah!) leaving Europe too with big walls [1]! I love your ideas comrade! LOL. Seriously, you should read more history books (and read it to your kiddos while you're at it, please). Peace.

[1] German men must ask the army for permission to leave country - https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15706287/German-men-a...

kennykartman4• 2 months ago

Ah, sorry if "parents spending more time with their kids" is a too extreme and communist view.

jazz9k• 2 months ago

It always seems like the people on the right are almost always correct on calling things like this out early..and ignored as a conspiracy theory by the left, until it's far too late.

The EU was known to be a privacy rights nightmare for at least 10 years now.

kittikitti• 2 months ago

When the surveillance state wants to ban VPN's, we know their backdoors aren't as effective as they would like.

Detrytus• 2 months ago

Well, we have to remember that the mankind natural state is slavery, a 200-year period of democracy was an anomaly that is now self-correcting.

zugi• 2 months ago

I think it's more accurate to call the EU Parliament a "loophole that needs closing."

gnarlouse• 2 months ago

Y'all see the plan though, right? Control the internet. Remove e2e encryption. Control/stifle dissent and uprisings.

The plan is to replace the 99% with machines. It doesn't matter to the 1% if you survive their glorious, great filter.

The great filter is billionaires. It's a billionaire control problem, not a superintelligence control problem. You're livestock. There's a better ox and cart that just pulled down the gravel road.

fithisux2• 2 months ago

They can't do it.

They need a referendum since it affects people's security and well being.

EU is a tyrrant.

sph• 2 months ago

What annoys me the most is the half of these comments discuss the ‘protecting the children’ agenda when it is clear that it is all smoke and mirrors and it’s just a stepping stone for mass surveillance of adult citizens.

You guys should know better, yet keep falling for the distraction every time. That’s exactly how they win.

jurschreuder2• 2 months ago

The internet is not the nice place it used to be with personal blogs. When we get younger employees they almost cannot work because of their phone addictions.

There is billions of research going into making children addicted through the window of their phone screen to watch apps, and now with AI this is getting even more dangerous.

It's not only children, also many elderly people are targeted. They are very lonely and then develop a Claude addiction.

poly2it• 2 months ago

If you would be proposing a ban of VPNs to shield people from social medias, you would be missing the forest for the trees.

jurschreuder2• 2 months ago

No I would propose to ban all smart phones and the entire internet

dmos62• 2 months ago

I guess the basic way to do this is to make VPNs age restricted.

I'm not as bearish on all this as most people here. I don't see much use for age restriction, except maybe keeping preteens off social media. That said, the proposed verification tech is very private, as far as I can tell. My review was cursory, though. Also, each EU member is free to use a different technical solution. Of course they're free to not make age verification obligatory at all. This programme is meant to be a strong default legislative and technical framework: it can't make EU members do something.

holoduke• 2 months ago

The problem with the EU is people like Kaja Kallis. Imbeciles without intelligence bringing Europe to a downfall. Lobbyists are entrenched in every part of its political system. Every single party is controlled and infiltrated by these groups representing institutions and large capital and most certainly not citizens. It's far worse than the US where there is a much tighter connection between politicians and local states. In the EU there is no transparency. Selection of jobs are done at prestige elitists universities where you opinion is carefully examined before entering the club.

varispeed• 2 months ago

Translation: Advertisers need to know precise identity and location of the user for targeting. Corrupt EU Parliamentary: CLOSE VPNs!

rcbdev2• 2 months ago

The EU is losing around €50 billion every year to the fraud-scheme dubbed the VAT carousel (or MITF). The fix would be ridiculously simple, starting with an EU-wide VAT-ID scheme and a modicum of cooperation between financial ministries.

Not one policy maker has ever seemingly cared about this. But VPNs! That'll fix the budget and demographic crises of European nations, for sure.

I'm curious to see how the EU will maneuver it's new long-term financial plan when none of the members can even pay the membership fee soon.

subscribed2• 2 months ago

So the next step after that will be some DPI imposed on the ISP, aimed at detecting Tor and "invisible" or private VPNs...

How come being that corrupt pays off so well when you're a politician.

miroljub• 2 months ago

EU is totalitarian. If Europeans want to have a chance of protecting what's left of their freedoms, there's no other way than dissolving EU completely. It's not possible to reform that monster.

consoleable• 2 months ago

The world is becoming like China.

dplesh• 2 months ago

EU people are the poorest people of our world. Living in false pretense of being "free". The fancy pot on this fancy stove took a long time to reach boiling point. So long that the little frog inside did not even notice that it is the main course. Sometimes its too late to jump out of this pot.

Feels like its state vs man nowdays, worldwide. Don't let them mislead you.

lacker• 2 months ago

I wonder, if you ask a local LLM to access a forbidden site, from within Russia or China, can it figure out a way to do so, out of the box?

snapplebobapple• 2 months ago

Personal freedom research service calls EU Parliament an abuser that needs heavy restriction on their actions and scope.

EU Parliamentary Research Service calls VPNs "a loophole that needs closing"

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