- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
- privacy@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
- privacy@lemmy.ml
You must log in or register to comment.
I’m fully onboard, we have to fight this for everyone’s sake.
Not completely related, but is this 100-mil-in-profits the best option to gather signatures?
Via wiki/Change.org:Change.org is a website which allows users to create and sign petitions in an attempt to advance various social causes by raising awareness and influencing decision-makers. The site is a US-based for-profit company and claims to have 557 million users as of August 2025.
Isn’t there a EU site to petition?
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/petitions/Going to sign it when it’s there and not on some US site.
Didn’t even know there was an EU website for that. Would be neat to have it there.
Here’s a tool to quickly email you’re representatives about chatcontrol. It’s really easy to use and is generally great! https://fightchatcontrol.eu/#contact-tool
But it’s for EU citizens only right ?
Oh so this was the real reason they wanted interconnected chat apps.
Educate friends and family on government surveillance, use privacy tools like Signal, VPN, Tor, etc. Help them set it up. You can do everyday actions to push back far more useful than signing a petition.
Until they decide those tools are illegal as well. They solve a different problem. The government will ban things it cannot control so you have to fight governments directly, not just work around them.
We should vote and learn how to shoot. Sign petitions and learn how to use privacy tools.
When used with a bridge/Snowflake, Tor can bypass government censorship. It works in China for example.
Guys, we got a wolf
Fucking hell. When does it stop? It’s gotten shot down multiple times, so why do they keep trying? Do they see more of a chance now that we’re getting more conservative views in the EP? It’s good to see my country opposes it, but man.
It never stops. They keep trying and trying and trying until they get what they want. The only time things like this stop is if whatever wouldn’t otherwise stop would inconvenience or take power from people in high places.
See: Brexit, where an advisory referendum was upheld, but we won’t ever get another one to reverse it, even though that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to want. Too many powerful people would stand to lose out.
It’s only assumed the Netherlands opposes it because of the now fallen governments stance on it before. We all know that their campaign promises and ‘regeerakkoord’ are completly meaningless. So I’m still trying to call and emailing the dutch MEP’s
Yeah, I’m not confident either. There are definitely parties in our government that don’t actually oppose this (like the VVD)
I was relieved when I learned NL is opposing, but to be fair I was also a bit surprised. Don’t think there is a good reason to be in favour of chat control, but kind of expect it from VVD, PVV and BBB anyway. They might even already want to expand it beyond child abuse to also include money launderers, immigrants and climate change protesters.
Thoughtcrime is near…
They are already rounding up anyone protesting against genocide.
Well, how can I put it… Apparently, peaceful protests are not enough for them, they want people to use force? And then use it as an excuse for total control.
I’m currently reading 1984 and already seeing references to it a bit everywhere. Same happened when I read hitchiker’s guide to the galaxy.
Yeah, of course, but it does happend from time to time(especially for hitchiker’s guide).
Examples from hitchhikers?
Mostly towels and 42.
Maybe I should reread hitchikers guide to the galaxy then
Don’t forget your towel!
I am so tired of this shit… every year they try to do this shit again. Every year we again have to convince them not too. Then a year later they try again.
They will keep trying until they win. Instead of focusing on important things, they just want to push laws for more control. Even our representatives should KNOW that people don’t want this.
I always wonder that. When we mass call and email to let them know they are wrong on something incredibly obvious. Do they go “oh wow we didn’t know you didn’t want us to know your private conversations or have a list of your favorite porn categories 😲😲😲”? They should already know this.
yall gonna need some proverbial guiliotining, tbh. this is just another power grab.
They do know. They just don’t care. It’s not for you. It’s to empower themselves. Even if it completely compromises/ends all private communications.
Dear Jack, where and why were you going to send photos of a child’s genitals? Are you a pedophile? And you can’t prove that this organ is yours and not a child’s without shame…
Exactly. And that is why i always feel like these “contact your representative” calls are useless. I will still do it, but it will happen. Maybe not now. Maybe not next time they try. But they will get it through.
The last time I contacted a representative they started relentlessly blowing up my phone begging for donations, so I don’t even do that anymore.
Take note that there are lobbies pushing for these. Security state, police and religious fanatics wanting morality policing, also politicians who re afraid of popular upheaval.
The biggest lobby pushing this is companies like Thorn, who promise to provide (I.e. sell) the technology required to comply with such a law. It’s literally just a business investment for them.
Yeah, and, unsurprisingly, the actual experts on child abuse and privacy are mostly against this.
Maybe if politicians did what the people wanted, they wouldn’t have to be afraid of an uprising against them… and if religious cunts would just stay in their churches and mind their own business…
I’m a religious cunt, a Christian cunt if you want to be specific, and this bullshit about controlling the population is NOT part of my faith. As a matter of fact, it goes entirely against my faith, and is extremely detrimental to every single Christian.
Having said that, this is simple. Religious people that support all this are the same so because it adheres to their end game, not because of their faith.
Religious people are counted on to support this. Not to sound like an edgy teenager but while you yourself might know better, the vast majority of people looking for a shepherd are sheep. And the vast majority of people signing up to be a shepherd just want a flock.
They need control for the sake of control, there is nothing higher than absolute power.
The European Union has begun to cross the border. I think they were inspired by United States and Signal and etc.
I’m not sure if this is petition is actually helpful. It is 4 years old and hasn’t been updated to note the renewed focus on this legislation: https://www.techradar.com/computing/cyber-security/the-eu-could-be-scanning-your-chats-by-october-2025-heres-everything-we-know
Instead it might be more helpful to directly contact your representatives.
This website can help you figure out who they are, and help formulate an email send to them:
https://fightchatcontrol.eu/(Obviously it is best to write your own response, or at least update the text to be your own, but it could be a good springboard)
MEPs get elected with proportional representation on closed lists in a nation-wide single district.
Emailing 60 of them from an array of different parties with no official stance on the issue and no more of a direct relationship with you than with millions of other people is less direct political action and more spam. Pretty sure collective action would have a better chance.
I’m not sure how contacting my representatives in the European Parliament over something that I am concerned about, would be spam.
I don’t care what party they are from, or what part of the country they are from. They are still my representatives.
They sit there to represent the concerns of their constituents in parliament, and they cannot effectively do that if they do not know the concerns of their constituents.If you have good ideas for collective action I’d love to hear them, but until then shooting an email can never hurt.
Edit: Just so there is no confusion, I don’t think signing a four year old change.org petition is any more effective than directly contacting your MEPs
Well, the EU has a consultation period on new regulations, but I don’t know if that’s open for this specifically.
Generally, I would say organizations on each country are often the ones with the infrastructure in place to issue a recommendation on these things. Consumer support orgs, unions, privacy groups and so on. Political parties if your country has one with a definite stance on the issue. If you can get those involved and they can get the press involved now you have an avenue for mainstream awareness, which frankly is more likely to do something than a purely online-driven signature or email campaign.
The rest may differ per country and even per party. It depends on what participation mechanisms you can deploy for each.
To be clear, I’m not against also reaching out to MEPs, but given how in many places they act as a collective blob representing national partisan interests and how electorally they don’t have a particular incentive to engage with individual voters I don’t know that it’d work best in isolation. I’m not particularly against that, either. “Contact your representative” is a staple of small district, majoritarian, first-past-the-post nonsense and I have no particular desire to move in that direction. I’m way more comfortable with a party-heavy system than with that weirdness.
What really stands out in all this is the following (it’ll be long-winded, so feel free to skip to the next one) :
1.- The vast majority of the politicians in those countries are pushing to make this happen, and it seems that in every new try there’s more of them supporting this.
2.- Every single one of those politicians were put there by the population.
3.- The population pushes against it (at least it seems to be most of the people being against this). But the corrupt politicians THEY put in power don’t give a damn (made abundantly evident in point 1).
4.- The people start calling or emailing the same politicians, or signing “petitions” (which should be “orders” instead, since they are supposed to work for you).
5.- Let’s say it doesn’t pass again this year. They will try again next year, and then the next if it doesn’t pass, until they get away with what they want to.
6.- 1 year passes and you’re back on point 1.
My confusion is: Why would any of you think calling them, emailing them or signing stuff in the internet is going to make any difference? As we are all aware of the disgust everyone (not in power) hates this as much as we do, you can bank on the fact that every single one of those criminals in power are aware as well, and yet they keep pushing it.
You will NOT stop this by calls, emails and signatures, it’s that simple. Look at Australia, the UK, the US, etc. The governments keep pushing their agenda every single time, effectively telling the population to fuck off.
I have yet to see any country where the will of the people is actually what happens, unless there is a civil war, which will lead to lots of bloodshed and it’s a lose - lose situation. They know nobody wants violence, so they believe they have the right to use violence against the people. They use the police and even the military if it comes to that, all with the intent of not losing the power, nothing else.
If the Europeans don’t rise against this, they’re utterly fucked, because now the ones in power will be able to pinpoint everyone that might spell dissent, and make their lives a living hell. And the worst part is that this is a cancer, first it was China, Russia, North Korea and many other totalitarian countries, now it’s spread to the “democratic” countries as well, and then it’ll come to our pseudo-democratic 3rd world countries, until the whole world population is under constant surveillance.
How much worse do you think it will be then? So you really think you will get to keep ANY of your freedoms?
I, for one, if this happens in my country (and I’m sure it will at some point) will be in deep shit, because I flat-out refuse to give up my privacy, even if it means losing my life.
What Europe and the UK are living is a dictatorship supported by the peaceful population. Why do you think you have (had?) the right to “peaceful protest”? It’s because that way law enforcement has the upper-hand because they get to be “not-so-peaceful”, and then you have no way to defend yourself.
I’m not an American, but I certainly understand the need for the population to have the right to bear arms. In a country of almost 400 million people, the military and law enforcement together cannot fight against that (short of nuking a few towns, maybe).
Do I like the idea of having everyone armed to the teeth? Absolutely not, but that is an actual deterrent to bullshit like this. As much as the US surveil their population, they have a way better chance to hold their powerful people accountable for extreme shit like this.
Wao, that actually felt good.
Is there a widely accepted European equivalent for “Sir, this is a Wendy’s?”
Didn’t think I needed one, and then…
What kind of collective action are you thinking of?
And it is on change.org, just some portal that no one has to take seriously
EU actually has a website to make real petitions, 8 think it was https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/_en
Though I think the proper action would be to contact your local politicians.
Citizen’s Initiatives are great, but I’m not sure they are the right mechanism in this case.
They are meant to make parliament address a concern, and not to inform legislators how you feel about a law proposal that is already on the table. All a Citizen’s Initiative does is force the European parliament to address a concern if a certain threshold of signatures is met. They will be doing that anyway when the law proposal is being voted on.
And on top of that, the time frame for a Citizen’s Initiative is too long (over a year) to be a meaningful shield against Chat Control.
Contacting your representatives to the European Parliament is probably the best way forward at this point.
Perhaps an initiative should be started that introduces a law banning such laws?
Also I still think contacting your politicians directly (and telling friends and family to do the same) will have better result than change.org petition, but there’s nothing stopping people to do both.
It might be worth making a bid for legislation that requires that the public give up privacy to the government, those in government must make the same information public.
If they can read my messages, I should be able to read theirs.
And how much energy will be spent on this… power for the sake of even more power, right?
EU is a regulation superpower.
And in most cases it’s really good, thought out, constantly moving with the market & reports/reviews on it’s efficiency.
It gets fucky when personal interests (like “politicians keeping down crime & protecting the kids”, or lobbyists doing the same) get mixed in tho.
This is such political popularity case.
