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Stop Killing The Internet: No Digital ID & No Age Verification | European Citizens' Initiative
(citizens-initiative.europa.eu)
this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2026
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This initiative is just a smokescreen; it actually pushes things down the slippery slope.
Define "necessary". Define "by law". The pushers for proof-of-age already say it's anonymous – but it can't be.
I asked theses questions to the person in charge, and published the response, you can read both questions and answers here : https://lemmy.world/post/51227026/25554402
I find the person's answer very disturbing and twisted:
Note how he/she is speaking as if EU was Russia. There's a regime that governs on us; we can try to fight it. This is not democracy, where the goverment represents the people and the people's will. Either – very likely – this person has simply accepted (and I don't know how good such an attitude is) that EU is not a democracy; or they have unclear ideas about democracy.
~~Well they don't write that in the initiative's text. They just say "unless provided by law". This means that if a law passes that mandates chat control, or age-verification for accessing all internet, then it's OK with them – it's provided by law now.~~
I stand corrected, they specify "Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights" in the Annex. But I still think this is poorly written: why not explicitly mentioning the main message of those Articles in the main text? That "unless provided by law" in the main text is extremely ambiguous without the Annex.
I agree it needs to be well defined. But there are government and private services that require identification and uploading selfies and passport pictures onto random websites is worse than a regulated ID service that can provide a trusted API.
There are tons of risks though: data gathering, privacy invasion, censorship, disproportionality...
That's why I prefer good regulation. One that also defines when it's "necessary" and when it's inappropriate to the point of illegal.
Let's add more conditions: privately owned or managed brings the risk to open up the "service" to more and more websites that don't need or shouldn't require your identity. If it has no monetary interests that risk is reduced. Not when you live in an oligarchy though...
do we sign it this way? it would just agree to doing nothing but with fancy words, wouldn't it?
No, we don't; it's exactly as you say. My impression is that this is something organized by the pro-chat-control and pro-age-verification lobbies, to deceive with words people who are against. They get them to sign and then they can say "people signed for this!".
It's surely important to spread an anti-misinformation campaign!