English translation of the Italian 10x30 episode, first aired on 12 may, 2026.
First, a quick service announcement. After years, I’ve finally decided to put the DataKnightmare scripts online. It took a while to find software, and a provider, that relied as little as possible on the United States. Especially if you’re like me and, even if you’re not pissed off, you lose you heart over the futility of it all. Not exactly the attitude for winning marketing.
Luckily, there’s Elena Rossini, who faced the same problem and shared her solution with me. So, starting today, if DataKnightmare finally has a home at dk.dataknightmare.eu, we owe it to Elena as well. For now, I’ve uploaded two seasons in English and the latest one in Italian. It’ll take a while, but not another ten years.
Let’s get down to business. Amid the infernal noise of useless news coming out every fifteen minutes, I thought I caught something interesting.
You’ve probably read about the so-called “Palantir manifesto,” those twenty or so points on Twitter that summarize the book by Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir.
And you may have heard about the so-called “interview with Claude” conducted by Walter Veltroni, an Italian politician, on a national newspaper.
Before you stop listening, let me say right away I have no intention of going into detail about either one. I barely skimmed Palantir’s tweets, and as for Veltroni’s interview (whatever it contains) I don’t deem it worth the time it would take me to read it.
And then?
And then I want to talk not about either of those things (because they’re clearly both nonsense) but about what they represent, which I actually find interesting.
Let’s start from the beginning. From a long time ago.
My generation brought information technology into the workplace. Since I didn’t fight at Waterloo, automation was already there, but my generation did see typewriters and fax machines get replaced first by WordStar, then Word, and finally the whole shebang.
These were tumultuous decades during which everything that could be digitized was digitized: sometimes well, sometimes so-so, and other times, just like shit.
It was a period when everyone dreamed their own version of the mythical “flat organization” about which all business schools wrote entire shelvefuls.
My point is that an organization is not just a technological construct. It is a complex socio-technical structure, where technology plays a part. The result is that the mere arrival of a technology does not automatically bring about changes in the processes and social structure of the organization, due to the interactions and feedback loops among all the components of the system.
To put it more bluntly: whatever technologists may think, there are no purely technological solutions to the problems of a socio-technical system.
One of the most striking examples is, for instance, “going paperless”, a topic on which I personally have spent many years and a great deal of effort. I believe we can all agree that there has never been as much paper in offices as there has been since documents went digital. No longer used for storage, maybe, but incessantly printed and reprinted every time a document is needed.
And since documents have gone digital, there are countless versions of them, all subtly incompatible with one another, all living independent lives in different parts of the organization.
To give a simple example, there used to be letterhead (spoiler alert, it still exists, but only for contracts signed by top executives); today, every single local office, and every department within that office, has its own “official” version of the letterhead, with a specific version of the logo, different from all the others.
If, on the other hand, you feel too tech-savvy for letterhead, we can talk about processes, software, APIs, and the related documentation, of which there are as many versions as there are developer teams.
Every incompatibility that arises during a project is resolved , and sometimes documented, on a case-by-case basis by the various teams that must collaborate, with the sole result that, in the end, there will be yet another version of the code, and sometimes of the documentation too. And don’t tell me your Confluence or your GitHub are in order.
What happened to documents happened to everything, of course. Processes, tasks, hierarchies.
The issue of hierarchy is an interesting one. We were saying earlier that everyone dreamed of their own version of the mythical “flat organization” that business schools assured us was the future.
For me and those like me, a flat organization meant a top leadership that would set strategic direction, and immediately below that a line of highly competent operatives with complete autonomy, eliminating any interference from top management in technical decisions and getting rid of the useless third of middle management.
For middle management, “flat organization” meant automating or outsourcing, but in any case eliminating, the useless third of the operatives, with their fixation on raising technical objections to the strategic directives from the top (and to middle management’s interpretations thereof).
For top management, too, “flat organization” meant eliminating the unnecessary third of operatives and interfacing exclusively with middle management, so as to finally overcome the need to consider so-called “technical details.”
If you look around today, it’s not hard to see who won. Top management is still all there, and middle management has more people than ever. The flattening of organizations, if it happened at all, meant mostly ousting and outsourcing technical expertise.
At the same time, there has been a significant evolution in top-level roles. With the advent of venture capital from the 2000s onward, top executives have shifted from being managerial figures to being increasingly performative ones. In no role is this more evident than in the role of the CEO. Today, the CEO is above all someone capable of weaving a compelling narrative of their "vision" for the future, in order to raise, on the market or from private investors, the funding necessary to build it.
Whether that future makes technical or economic sense, whether it is even possible, or whether it bears any relation to the future described in the last financial report, is unimportant.
What matters is that the CEO, and the narrative they present for this quarter, continue to inspire investor confidence. Nothing else matters.
Today’s CEO doesn’t need to be capable of “doing,” nor even of "leading" anymore. He just needs to know how to persuade. Relentlessly, changing the story whenever necessary without batting an eye. His defining qualities are stubbornness and an inflated sense of self-worth, which, unfortunately, are also hallmarks of the pathological narcissist.
Think of Zuckerberg, who started with the brilliant idea of creating a social network where his classmates could rate female students’ bangability; luckily, Sheryl Sandberg came along to help him actually make money; then he tried to reinvent money (remember Libra?), then he peddled the metaverse, and now he’s trailing the AI bandwagon after the disastrous launch of Galactica, which shut down in 72 hours.
Think of Musk, who has the imagination of a mediocre teenager in 1975, and his endless bullshit about self-driving cars, colonizing Mars, and mega-constellations of satellites.
Think of the best of them all, Sam Altman: a guy who writes a blog and the world goes crazy as if John the Evangelist had just published a revised version. Altman has bamboozled the entire venture capital world with the sole promise of burning through all the investors’ money only to raise even more.
From one boast to the next, they all think their success isn’t the result of luck, connections, government contracts, and monopoly, but of their being special, and especially visionary. While Taleb teaches us that moderate success can be explained by skill and effort, but overwhelming success is explained by variance.
Let’s not digress. Today, a digital CEO must be able to declare:
“We are driving the synergistic evolution of our value ecosystem through a holistic and data-driven approach, enabling scalable paradigms of sustainable innovation centered on change.”
and do so with an air of deep conviction. It’s obviously just hot air, but anyone who laughs or thinks the phrase makes no sense will never be a C-level and will never get an interview.
In tandem with the performative shift of CEOs and founders, the media system has also adapted. With bankruptcies, restructurings, and acquisitions, today the media are, with few exceptions, outsourced marketing in the hands of the very industrialists the media should be investigating. Let’s be clear: every powerful figure has always had sycophants and hagiographers in every publication, but today the media is required to stick to amplifying the corporate narrative. Washington Post, anyone?
A certain mythical, very American interpretation of the digital sector and its players has also contributed to this, and not insignificantly. From William Gibson’s “keyboard cowboys” to Steven Levy’s “heroes of the digital frontier,” every effort has been made to revive the foundational myth of the Frontier, with all its toxic baggage, for the digital age.
The result is that today, the protagonists themselves view themselves in mythical terms. Sure, it couldn’t be any other way; no one wants to think of themselves as merely a lucky teller of six-monthly fairy tales, no matter how skilled.
No, instead they are all “visionaries,” “builders of the future,” if not outright “revolutionaries”, obviously in the capitalist sense of the term, that is, destroyers of industries and communities for their own exclusive benefit and that of their investors.
This finally brings us to Palantir and Alex Karp. He is not content with merely having founded a company that got fat on military contracts (capitalists want the state reduced to a bare minimum except when it's a client a client) but he channels his own mythical image as the defender of a West conveniently besieged only by those problems his products claim to address.
And not, for instance, by unprecedented economic and social inequality, by global social and climate changes, or by a caste of tax-exempt billionaires with a penchant for oligarchy. Once again, we are witnessing the bluster of someone who has not a single original idea in his head and has made his fortune precisely because of that.
That Karp, like all his other billionaire buddies, believes he has a “vision” to communicate to the public (beyond the quarterly earnings report) is no surprise. Nor is it surprising that he reiterates the book’s themes in a series of tweets, perhaps to compensate for less-than-overwhelming sales: everyone, after all, wants to be seen.
But if you scratch just beneath the surface of these CEOs’ narratives, you realize that Silicon Valley produces nothing but variations on the theme of those who have always created and financed it: the Cold War Pentagon.
Read Amodei, Altman, Karp, Zuckerberg, and Thiel all you want. You’ll always find U.S. supremacy through ICT technology, the export of American capitalist values, social control, and the containment by any means necessary of any competing power on the Eurasian plate.
Stuff that hasn’t changed one iota since 1946, written and systematized by top-tier minds like Bush (Vannevar, scientific advisor to Roosevelt and Truman, namesake but not related to the subsequent presidents George Bush and George Bush the Lesser), Kissinger, Brzezinski, Cheney: people who have steered U.S. policy for decades while the presidents in office played the cool guys on TV, parroting the season's buzzwords.
This does not mean that the oligarchic delusions of Karp and company are harmless, far from it. But they are not evil geniuses. They are merely actors who, offstage, still believe they are Julius Caesar.
These fake champions of free enterprise with public money, these self-appointed “inventors of the future,” are merely parroting the catchphrases of those who created, and sustain, them.
Now, power attracts servants and sycophants, as I said. But it isn’t satisfied with them, whom it ultimately despises. Every powerful person, and all the more so every nouveau riche braggart, needs to feel validated by someone whose social or cultural stature they secretly envy.
And here comes the bard. Somebody who in the 20th century would have been called an “organic intellectual,” whose task is to use their own art and culture to make the powerful shine. The bard is subtler than the sycophant, and can even afford a superficially critical attitude, because his role is not to confirm the narrative of the powerful point by point (there's already servants and sycophants for that), but to validate it by taking it completely for granted, and to distract attention from the problems, with a highly erudite discussion of some insignificant detail.
So, while the AI guys are wooing investors with fairy tales of sentient machines and the elimination of workers, sorry, the transcending of work, the bard doesn’t get into the substance of the matter, but instead interviews artificial intelligence. This is what Walter Veltroni, a seasoned Italian politician, did just last week. From someone like him I would have expected, if not more dignity, at least better timing. Interviewing an Artificial Intelligence is so fall-winter 2023.
The bard is more insidious than the sycophant, because he doesn’t take a stand for or against. He merely includes the narrative of power in the “cultured” debate.
If power speaks of next-generation nuclear power, the servant will shout from the rooftops that solar and wind power are outdated; the sycophant will point out that the green area around the plant is ideal for a family picnic.
The bard, on the other hand, will wax emphatically about how the cooling towers might inspire a XXI-century Wordsworth to compose a modern version of Tintern Abbey
The digital bard, with all his erudition, has nothing specific to say, but he says it with refined words and high-sounding quotes. His task is not to discuss or refute, but to undermine any serious debate by taking the narrative of power for granted and constructing a seemingly scholarly discussion on completely marginal details.
And in this, Veltroni has done his job. The very act of “interviewing” an automatic text generator, and choosing to do so on issues that would be profound if he were talking to a human being and not to a rhetorical mirror, is the most devastating weapon one could bring to bear in support of the millenarian delusions of the digital braggarts.
If the role of public intellectual still has any meaning, Veltroni’s puff piece is a complete betrayal of that role, it is the subjugation of culture to the interests of those who have no culture whatsoever, but are awash in money.
While actual experts have pointed out since forever how harmful it is (and whose interests it really serves) to anthropomorphize a technology like so-called "Artificial Intelligence", Veltroni just waltzes in and interviews "AI" on the meaning of life. It doesn’t matter that the obviously "AI" has nothing to say on the matter. What matters is that a text generator suddenly comes across as something you can actually “talk” to about such a topic.
Veltroni could have truly played the intellectual and discussed the point of a European Union willing to chase after the United States in a speculative bubble. He could have talked about the problems of using Artificial Intelligence in the professions, in the media, and in education.
He could even have played the left-wing intellectual and spoken of oligopolies and rent-seeking, of techno-feudalism, of the political role of Artificial Intelligence in dismantling the bargaining power of labor.
He could have talked about all of this and much more.
Instead, he chose to play the cheerleader for the nouveau riche braggarts, and in doing so, I believe he has established his place in the hierarchy where Leonardo Sciascia listed men, half-men, little men, ass-kissers, and windbags.
I have an idea.
Esther Payne
in reply to European Commission • • •Yes absolutely, but not with age verification please.
Hold providers like Meta and Alphabet to account.
reshared this
Matteo Bertini 🇮🇹 🌈 e Joe Vinegar reshared this.
Numerfolt
in reply to Esther Payne • • •Joe Vinegar reshared this.
European Commission
in reply to Numerfolt • • •Holding tech companies accountable is exactly what we are doing, and will do more of.
Check out our deep-dive on this topic: youtube.com/watch?v=nEaEsJRENP…
Why was X Fined €120 Million? The Truth About the DSA
Made in Europe (YouTube)Fam
in reply to European Commission • • •Bro
in reply to European Commission • • •Except that isn’t! You are actively assisting big tech with this move.
Asking children and adults to identify themselves online isn't holding big tech companies responsible!
Verifying who everyone is with government ids is not a solution. It’s a massive data breach waiting to happen.
You are enabling much much more harm to children and everyone using the internet by pushing this narrative of verification.
#chatcontrol #idverification #privacy #eu
reshared this
✊🇵🇸Palestine🇵🇸Action✊ reshared this.
David
in reply to European Commission • • •Where are the bills of those fines? 🤔
Because you say you fined X, Meta, Google, Gandhi or Mother Theresa does not mean they paid.
What was the money used for? American holidays for Ursula Von der Liar?
We know how servile the #EU is with #USA and #Israel.
This is not about the children.
Is about CONTROL of everyone. Kindly remind us... How many times yoi tried to pass ChatControl law?
Forbid those american companies to operate in Europe. If they wanted, they could open servers audited by the EU so they dont transfer data to a foreign countries. And usage of open source software. Auditable by anyone. Of course they never will do or allow that. Mother Ursula will be sure her american children eat alm the european data they can get.
🤬🤬🤬
And they must pay taxes on every country in the EU. No tax deduction allowed on any country of the EU.
No Frontex. Erase that project. We don't want an European ICE. Be aware this is not America, and you can start a real revolution that you will not be able to stop. 😒
No fucking age verification, biometric authentication or health data given to foreign countries. And forbid social networks for non adults, your childrens safe as well.
That is how it should be done.
But you will not while you're the lap dogs of USA and Israel.
Instead of the european citizens that elect the parties that put you there and pay your salaries with europen public money.
Therefore you should be accountable for any problems that could arise of your wrong implementation in this issue.
eobet
in reply to European Commission • • •oh, right... this you just a few days ago?
Just admit that you expect climate breakdown induced food shortages to incite widespread mass protests and you need fascist aligned surveillance tools to control the populations when that happens, all because you weakened environmental protection rules to placate corporations owned by the billionaire class so you could meet short term cancerous economic growth demands!
rebalance-now.de/en/von-der-le…
Von der Leyen Halts Billions-Dollar Fine Against Google – Criticism from Parliament and Civil Society - Rebalance Now
Max Bank (Rebalance Now)MaddieM4
in reply to Esther Payne • • •@onepict it is obvious to most people, even if this particular phrasing is mine, that you cannot "big tech companies collecting PII" your way out of a "big tech companies collecting PII" problem.
The only real solution is for these companies to know less about us, and critically, to not know who is of age. Until you're ready to treat that as a core requirement to build the rest of your online privacy policy around, you're not taking the problem of surveillance capitalism seriously.
Paul
in reply to Esther Payne • • •MostlyTato
in reply to Esther Payne • • •This. Hold Meta and Alphabet to account, make them moderate their content. Age verification won't help; it's a Trojan horse that's really ID verification in a virtue signalling mask that will end privacy online and force surveillance onto everyone. It won't even protect children successfully. A scam that Meta are pushing so they won't have to moderate their content but can continue to spread harm.
mray
in reply to European Commission • • •Loop Farmer
in reply to European Commission • • •A Sardinian Abroad
in reply to Loop Farmer • • •Ok, you must be proud of yourself 😂😂
Loop Farmer
in reply to A Sardinian Abroad • • •@ASardinianAbroad
My kids get 2 hours a day on the internet. 20 minutes of that is educational. They have 1 hour of video games with friends.
We have their devices routed through content management systems that we control, that we understand and monitor.
What are you doing to protect your kids on the internet?
As an adult, I don't need corporations keeping my kids safe.
Fam
in reply to A Sardinian Abroad • • •The_Universality
in reply to A Sardinian Abroad • • •@ASardinianAbroad @theloopfarm A lovely argumentational faul whether intentional or not.
Most don't have issue with making things safer, they have issues with the instruments achieving this.
Would you be willing to be "safe" if it would consist of curfews, movement restrictions, facial recognition (even on toilets - we can't risk anything ;) and vacation permits for vacations in foreign countries?
There are better instruments, for example actually parenting your children.
Penguin Rebellion
in reply to European Commission • • •If you are serious about this, start regulating platforms.
Instead of subjecting everybody to "verification" processes that lock adolescents out. Processes that merely enable platforms and their "partners" to collect more and more data about #EU citizens, destroying even the tiny bit of privacy that is still left.
#AgeVerification
Joe Vinegar reshared this.
ProScience 🇪🇺
in reply to Penguin Rebellion • • •@penguinrebellion
They don't care one bit for kids, or they would pursue totally different policies *and* properly apply the ones that exist.
They pretend to care to cover up their true aim: to abolish our democratric rights of privacy. They're far-right authoritarians just like the US tech fashs, Trump, the Heritage Foundation et al.
@EUCommission
The_Universality
in reply to ProScience 🇪🇺 • • •@proscience @penguinrebellion
This is quite too extreme. If at most, I would blame this on a good old corruption, (edit) but most likely this mstdn.social/@samueljohnson/11… (/edit)
Also, the EC is in no way far-right but rather left-leaning.
SamuelJohnson
2026-05-12 15:26:11
SamuelJohnson
in reply to The_Universality • • •@The_Universality @proscience @penguinrebellion I have corresponded with an MEPs. They are technologically illiterate, naive about the collateral effects, subjected to lobbying by both big tech firms and law enforcement that always wants more surveillance and uses horror stories effectively. In addition, some are religious fundamentalists with latent authoritarian instincts.
None of that amounts to corruption.
The_Universality
in reply to SamuelJohnson • • •@samueljohnson @proscience @penguinrebellion That's why I've said at most, although I shall have been more specific.
You are right on this. The good old nescience and/or incompetence is behind most.
(I'll edit my previous message to mention this.)
ProScience 🇪🇺
in reply to SamuelJohnson • • •@samueljohnson
While I wouldn't be surprised if some are corrupt, I believe the vast majority neither accept money nor other favors but abolish our rights and sell us to Trump and US tech fascists out of conviction:
They share the same authoritarian ideology, happily oppress citizens and abolish our rights because they *want* to do it.
SamuelJohnson
in reply to ProScience 🇪🇺 • • •@proscience The EU is an association of democracies. The only democracy in Western Europe in which politicians have campaigned for removing rights from citizens is the UK, a majority of whose citizens reportedly now regret their vote to leave the EU.
I'd ease off on the hyperbole. The EU has fought the US very effectively in the past with targeted measures and faces timing constraints at the moment and which won't last forever.
Elric
in reply to European Commission • • •The_Universality
in reply to Elric • • •@elricofmelnibone
I mean the metric is most likely true.
If you read closely it reads
"92% of Europeans say children’s protection online is high priority"
but there is no mention by which instrument. Whether by education or ID checking.
So it may be misleading at best.
On the other hand, EC doesn't suggest the instrument in this message either.
Elric
in reply to The_Universality • • •The_Universality
in reply to Elric • • •@elricofmelnibone Yeah. The Danish representative tried this several years ago.
That still doesn't affect the way the prompt is phrased.
If the prompt would be that 92% Europeans say they want protection via ChatControl of course it would be manufactured, but that is phrased as generally safety.
We now need to wait for the EuroBarometer to release the full report.
Erotic Mythology 🌈
in reply to The_Universality • • •Sensitive content
The_Universality
in reply to Erotic Mythology 🌈 • • •@AimeeMaroux @elricofmelnibone Yes, but this is the post, not the survey. You do not show these kinds of images in surveys, just the prompts.
And the prompt is simply "safety" not "safety by ID verification".
Erotic Mythology 🌈
in reply to The_Universality • • •Sensitive content
The_Universality
in reply to Erotic Mythology 🌈 • • •KickDownCH
in reply to European Commission • • •dekompozycja
in reply to European Commission • • •Gabriel Markley
in reply to European Commission • • •tripleman, a 🇨🇦 in 🇩🇪
in reply to European Commission • • •Martin Sutherland
in reply to European Commission • • •Yes, so please enforce regulations against the platforms rather than imposing restrictions on children. If what the platforms are doing is bad for children, they're bad for everyone else as well.
Right now I'm far more concerned for my parents' safety online than for my kids' safety. Age isn't the problem.
Dorien
in reply to European Commission • • •ℂ𝕖𝕝𝕖𝕤𝕥𝕖
in reply to European Commission • • •Yet, instead of sanctioning Meta, X, etc. for their anti-democratic, predatory algorithms and business practices, you are engaging in age discrimination and victim blaming. Talk to the ones affected by your legislation, instead of pushing it on them without their participation in the process or their consent.
Stop big tech from preying on all of us, instead of blocking children from accessing the services of our modern world
#age_verification #discrimination #ageism #cyberfascism
Buridan's procrastinator ⁂ reshared this.
Dorien
in reply to European Commission • • •✊🇵🇸Palestine🇵🇸Action✊ reshared this.
The_Universality
in reply to European Commission • • •Gonzalo Nemmi
in reply to European Commission • • •absolutely!. Now start by scrutinizing Meta and Alphabet products designs and business models and practices!. Identify and ban those that expose children's safety and imperil their right to grow up free, safe and protected. We all know you have the funds, the human resources and expertise to do so and do it well. We are counting on you!
Just don't ever forget to put the burden on the perpetrators, not on the victims. That's the way it works, not the other way around.
Carlos Solís likes this.
European Commission
in reply to Gonzalo Nemmi • • •Yes, we are holding tech companies accountable. Our Digital Services Act gives us the legal means to do so. You can read more about it in this recent example:
digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/…
Commission preliminarily finds Meta in breach of Digital Services Act for failing to prevent minors under 13 from using Instagram and Facebook
Shaping Europe’s digital futureM/KΞ
in reply to European Commission • • •@gnemmi yeah you old them accountable, by letting google take the control of the web with their last reCAPTCHA bullshit, and do nothing against their android lock down.
they have bough you traitor
Gonzalo Nemmi
in reply to European Commission • • •excellent article!. I know you have what it takes to solve the issues at stake.
But, given Meta's ineffective and systematic failure to enforce their self imposed restrictions to prevent underage citizens from exposure to age-inappropriate experiences, wouldn't it be time to start thinking about taking away their right to do so and begin to impose them legislated planned restrictions in accordance to the law of the state instead of shifting the burden on the citizen's shoulders?
JakeKb
in reply to European Commission • • •aprilfoo
in reply to European Commission • • •_slowly
in reply to European Commission • • •Leendaal
in reply to European Commission • • •-karlos-
in reply to European Commission • • •satmd
in reply to European Commission • • •Bart Schuller
in reply to European Commission • • •It’s a shame you start with framing the results before releasing the full report.
> The full Special Eurobarometer on the Digital Decade results will be published in June 2026 as part of the 2026 State of the Digital Decade report package.
Paul
in reply to European Commission • • •and one person, that’s me, keeps saying; that’s the responsibility of the parents and the tools to protect your children are becoming easier and easier to use. Most of them are, by the way, free of charge. They come as a package with the Internet provider.
Go and start doing something useful. For starters: create a uniform European capital market.
The_Universality
in reply to European Commission • • •Then fine the Google and not let them break the law.
rebalance-now.de/en/von-der-le…
social.tchncs.de/@kuketzblog/1…
Von der Leyen Halts Billions-Dollar Fine Against Google – Criticism from Parliament and Civil Society - Rebalance Now
Max Bank (Rebalance Now)Kuketz-Blog 🛡
2026-05-12 07:57:55
Joe Vinegar reshared this.
el_haych2024
in reply to European Commission • • •Murdoc Addams 🧛🏻 🇨🇦
in reply to European Commission • • •Karsten
in reply to European Commission • • •DavidM_yeg
in reply to European Commission • • •“Tech providers are responsible for the safety of their products and their safe use”
And this principle applies for *everyone*
The products must be made safe - for everyone.
The providers must be made responsible - for everyone.
The profiteers must be accountable - to everyone.
The solution isn’t to wall children off from the world, it is to go back to building safe, decent, accountable society - starting with the wealthiest and most powerful.
UkeleleEric
in reply to European Commission • • •Salem's Lot
in reply to European Commission • • •Ivan Tsenov 🇧🇬 🇺🇦
in reply to European Commission • • •G 🇮🇹
in reply to European Commission • • •Gonzalo
in reply to European Commission • • •M/KΞ
in reply to European Commission • • •and you immediatly ban them from internet to sell your "age verification" surveillance tool for palantir.
Traitor
Mathematiker auf dem Sofa
in reply to European Commission • • •vekkq
in reply to European Commission • • •I'd be glad if children would be protected offline.
Despite a duty of protection, schools often don't protect children from continued bullying.
inctail
in reply to European Commission • • •Then maybe address it the right way, you write the following:
the negative impact of social media on their mental health (93%),
cyberbullying and online harassment (92%)
These two are addressed if you go after the real problem, Big tech and their algorithms, not restrict citizens rights by making us send more information to them.
assuring mechanisms to restrict age in appropriate content (92%).
This is plain and simple parenting, all my children have iPhones, none of them have social media because I speak to them about the issues and set boundaries, now none of them want it.
BasieP
in reply to European Commission • • •Also, digital safety doesn't allow for mass surveillance (called age verification)
Antonio
in reply to European Commission • • •stealthradek
in reply to European Commission • • •I think the original post is better if the word "children" is replaced with "everybody".
There's no need to have a better, "separate" internet for kids so they will get a nasty surprise when they grow 18. Let's have it nicer for all, including children, shall we?
neongod
in reply to European Commission • • •You could dismantle the whole attention economy by making it impossible to offer their services for free while making their users the product. Just by regulation, without any tech.
If for-profit social media would not be free, most kids would have no access. In fact, most adults would stop wasting their life there too. It would not only solve child safety, but make everyone’s life better. Without the need for age verification and building a surveillance state.
Ryoma123
in reply to European Commission • • •Jurgis Kirsakmens
in reply to European Commission • • •cid_terron
in reply to European Commission • • •You've made quite a few laws ensuring child safety.
Let's consider a law successful if children are safe.
Have the unsuccessful tries been revoked and the incompetent supporters been removed?
No - you definitely should. Child safety is important. But I consider abusing children for mass surveillance as child abuse.
Johan Sköld
in reply to European Commission • • •James Tweedie
in reply to European Commission • • •jose
in reply to European Commission • • •Patrick
in reply to European Commission • • •Hey, why not give all the evil companies doing wrong, and all the advertisers, everyone's ID forever and pretend we're not giving them the biggest gift they've ever had.
I wonder how many people organizing this are on the take from the companies that will profit most from this criminal assault on privacy?
joyandsadness
in reply to European Commission • • •philip
in reply to European Commission • • •In case you hadn't noticed, age verification is a trojan horse. Please make the perpetrators pay instead of EU citizens.
edri.org/our-work/why-age-veri…
Why age verification misses the mark and puts everyone at risk - European Digital Rights (EDRi)
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Brie Mmm
in reply to European Commission • • •Alan Clifford 🏌️♂️🦈 📷
in reply to European Commission • • •Facebook is a publisher just like the BBC but they don't make any attempt to control their contributers.
Rudi
in reply to European Commission • • •the best protection for children is controlling the platforms, not controlling the people.
Mx. Luna Corbden 🐸
in reply to European Commission • • •Riley S. Faelan
Unknown parent • • •@killick You know, if we kept dangerous sillionaires off the Internet, it could be as safe to kids as it used to be before Bocefaak.
@EUCommission
Andrey
in reply to European Commission • • •Earthlingz FREE PAL HOSTAGES
in reply to European Commission • • •Saffy
in reply to European Commission • • •J$
in reply to European Commission • • •catraxx
in reply to European Commission • • •kikebenlloch
in reply to European Commission • • •Never gets old.
🖌 John Jonik
#cartoons #humor #vinhetas
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D. G. Marshall
in reply to European Commission • • •So, are you actually holding tech platforms accountable?
Or doing "age verification", forcibly identifying every user so you can conduct surveillance on those who don't agree with the government, and putting everyone's I.D.s online to be data-leaked?
Dielectric_Boogaloo
in reply to European Commission • • •Erotic Mythology 🌈
in reply to European Commission • • •Sensitive content
"Europeans still report feeling personally impacted by:
- fake news and disinformation (53%),
- the misuse of personal data (47%),
- insufficient protections for minors (41%)."
Nobody wants the misuse of personal data, like age verification surveillance tech. Stop trying to make it happen. Anyone involved in the protection of minors online says age verification won't even protect children. It will just put everyone more at risk.
doneknitting
in reply to European Commission • • •But how about making an internet where kids aren't bombarded with advertising? 🧐
Bartek
in reply to European Commission • • •Joanie with the Good Hair 😷
in reply to European Commission • • •Guys, you are *so close* to actually getting it.
(Hint: It is not "age verification" - aka. total digital surveillance.)
display name
in reply to European Commission • • •You cuntsuckers love to hide behind children. Because who would dare speak out against them?! Who would dare risk making themselves out to be in favor of child abuse?
But the reality is that continually you use children as a shield to justify sweeping reductions of fundamental rights. More and more, you justify exclusionary politics for the sake of control and gubernatorial stability—NOT safety. Not the safety of the children, that is. Not the safety of the children, nor the people who really matter, but the safety of an oppressive status quo which is destroying not only human autonomy, but the planet itself.
Eat shit.
The funniest part though? Is how you dont even realize—or care—that youre selling yourselves out to neo-reactionary postliberal authoritarians while championing "child safety". The very same companies are killing children in Palestine.
Nadia/Надя/नाडिया/娜迪亚/ نادية
in reply to European Commission • • •Ilja Tihhonov
in reply to European Commission • • •Gabe
in reply to European Commission • • •the only way to enforce age verification of minors is through total internet supervision of everybody. And it won't help with any of the problems on the internet, because facilitating and effectively rewarding terrible behaviour optimises the revenue of the main players.
If you want a better internet, step one is to ban behaviour-based profiling for advertising, with no "consent" loophole. It makes surveillance ("tracking cookies") immediately illegal (no "legitimate interest" excuse, GDPR does the rest). That trashes the direct "more bullying and hate leads to greater revenue" connection, which immediately removes the incentive to put active effort into more vicious online spaces. This applies to Google, Meta, X, Reddit, etc.
Note that the "consent is not an excuse" part is critical. "Ask me later" just means that people are worn down into clicking "yes" eventually, just to get it out of the way, you know yourself the dark patterns, you know yourself the cookie consent forms, where "none of them" is tedious and must be repeated on every visit, but "yes please" is simple and eternal. Try changing that decision later.
Ban the surveillance. Yes, it's many companies' entire business model. That's too bad for them, should have tried being socially positive. Yes, many services will have to start some sort of subscription or pay per use model instead of being fake-free. That's OK, they'll also be disincentivised to enshittify.
It'd make the internet better for everyone, including children, who could continue to find and create so many positive communities online, instead of being blanket-banned.
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Mario
in reply to European Commission • • •Parents are responsible for their children's safety, not capitalist companies. So hands off my children!
#chatControl #EUcorruption #surveillance #privacy #humanRights #freedom
Ricardo Antonio Piana likes this.
troy_friz_zell
in reply to European Commission • • •No one is buying your bullshit.
The problem is not anonymity. The problem is the failure of big tech to moderate their platforms.
Stop fucking blaming me. I don't own a global platform.
Fuck off. You can't have my ID.
Jernej Simončič �
in reply to European Commission • • •estibensito_
in reply to European Commission • • •Kᑐᑌᑐᕮ
in reply to European Commission • • •👎🏼 for age verification (= identification of everyone..)
Regulate (Big Tech/) companies, not innocent people.
Loop Farmer
in reply to European Commission • • •swieczkos
in reply to European Commission • • •Rhiig
in reply to European Commission • • •They don't prevent children from accessing things they aren't supposed to access and doesn't prevent bad people from hurting children. Both will find a way.
"If privacy is outlawed only outlaws will have privacy"
- Phil Zimmermann
Lexi
in reply to European Commission • • •kuro 🇪🇺🔏
in reply to European Commission • • •Marta Threadbare
in reply to European Commission • • •Cogito ergo mecagoendios
in reply to European Commission • • •If I go to the doctor with a broken arm and they ask if I want my arm to be healthy and safe, I say yes. But if they ask if I want a heart transplant to heal my arm, I'd say no because a heart transplant is a very high risk last resort measure and it doesn't even have any provable relation with healing broken arms.
The existence of these valid concerns does not legitimize surveillance laws.
Karel 'Clock' K.
in reply to European Commission • • •Age verification is IMO discrimination and ageism and grossly tramples the basic human and constitutional fundamental right to freedom of expression and seriously impinges upon the ability to socialize. I think it's an authoritarian attempt to prevent people from rightfully and freely organizing and exchanging ideas.
#discrimination #ageism #ageverification #humanright #freedomofexpression #youth #children #freedom #righttoassembly #organizing
Rob Williamson
in reply to European Commission • • •Agree that protecting children online is important. The way to do that is absolutely not to track all citizens in all online interactions. On the contrary, permitting profit-motivated private 3rd parties to do this incentivises precisely the kinds of surveillance capitalism driven algorithmic content delivery that is shown to demolish the mental health of all who come into contact with it, not just children.
Anonymity online (making surveillance illegal) and education, protects.
Daniel Blake
in reply to European Commission • • •@EUCommission
Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦
in reply to European Commission • • •All people deserve a digital world where they can communicate and work together free, safe and protected.
From harmful content and cyberbullying to addictive online designs, concerns about the risks everyone face online are growing across Europe.
Tech providers are responsible for the safety of their products and their safe use. Let us give sovereign rights back to our citizens.
@EUCommission