Is there a translation of https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence into Nepali yet, I wonder.

yup, that is why (if memory serves) the chat control proposal has rules in it that look like they were specifically written for messengers, the authors seem to have no clue that encryption can, you know, just be run on any device using publicly available algorithms…

The Internet has become popular enough that governments care about what happens on it. And it’s not just European countries, US states too (at least for age verification).

More specifically for your two points:

Encryption

It used to be that very little Internet traffic was encrypted, much less end-to-end encrypted. After 2013 (Snowden revelations), this changed, e.g. messengers started to E2EE, many more websites than previously started to use HTTPS. So all we are seeing now is the reaction to those positive changes…

Age verification

This has to do with mobile devices more than anything else. I think a lot of parents now just hand their children smartphones or tablets and may then be surprised that their children can then access things they don’t want their children to access. This was less of a thing in the desktop era because it was easier to see what children were doing online if it was happening on a huge computer in the living room…

Now personally I don’t think anyone (including young people) should ever be prohibited from watching or reading anything they actively want to see. For preventing young people from accidentally accessing porn, an “are you over 18” banner ought to be enough… I don’t think people who want to prevent that kind of access want anything legitimate. But you asked about why it’s happening now and not at another time and I think this is the answer.

Sidenote: I remember reading that when television was newly introduced in East Germany, it was still able to be somewhat critical of the regime; after some years, this stopped because a lot more citizens were able to watch it. The equivalent of that is currently happening to the Internet.

I would have thought that by now, enough voting adults would have grown up also having watched online pornography when they were underage and realizing it didn’t harm them.

I have yet to read any coherent argument why any kind of media that young people actively choose to watch, actively seek out, would ever be harmful to them.

annnnnd it’s bipartisan

The worst bills in the US Congress are always supported by both parties, I suspect so there is no way to vote against them.

so which is it, are you asking for a friend or for help improving this? :D

Yes, the federated model might make it somewhat harder for governments to enforce these kinds of laws. Until those governments catch up. 🙁

John Perry Barlow was right: https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence

happens occasionally, but not only “lately”, I have been using it for many years and it does (rarely, but occasionally) cause performance drops, yes

Cookies don’t, but cookies are part of an IP packet which does. So yes, your scenario is possible if the website you visited first stored which IP addresses that cookie has previously been used with.

Harder here than on centralized platforms because everything you posted here has been copied to other servers which might ignore your requests to delete things.

What data?

It’s possible there’s something in the firmware or BIOS that transmits some things to Apple; I do not know for sure, but maybe someone else will show up here who knows details about this. Even if that is so, Apple gets significantly less data because anything built into macOS won’t be running.

that may in part be out of consideration to others, most others don’t want to see that… so maybe a bad example…

True in general, but there’s no reason why voting should be one of those things.

the enemy is both weak and strong

I prefer this distinction: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/moderation-is-different-from-censorship

Different pieces of legislation. This was about the French legislature voting against a national anti-encryption bill. Chat control is an EU-level bill and the French legislature isn’t really involved in that, only the French government and France’s EU representatives.

If It Can’t Steal All Your Copyrighted Work

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Copying_Is_Not_Theft.webm

You want to switch from a free and open source browser to a proprietary browser and think this will improve your privacy?

I don’t think there are any viable engines other than the three you mention. Other browsers than the three you mention are viable, I am typing this in LibreWolf, but they are all based on one of these three engines.

I recently tried Ladybird and it crashes e.g. when I try to access my Lemmy instance. Definitely not viable yet in 2025, but this doesn’t mean it must remain so.

I’ve been using Ghost Commander for years and it does everything I need, although I don’t have your specific requirements so you need to check that yourself.

I think you can publish on many ordinary (micro)blogging platforms through Tor, but you’ll need a valid email address.

So the problem is reduced to: how can you get a valid email address through Tor that is not linked to either a phone number, your real identity, your credit card, or another email address that has any of these pieces of information stored.

I have never needed to do this, but to my knowledge, there are email providers where that is possible. Another user linked to privacytools.io where I can find this list https://www.privacytools.io/privacy-email - so that may be a place to start.

The thing is that the presidency of the Council will change (I remember reading: from Hungary to Poland) at the beginning of 2025. Now look at the map which sides Hungary and Poland are on.

Convenience link https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

The good part is that at least according to https://netzpolitik.org/2024/letzter-anlauf-zur-chatkontrolle-ungarn-will-zustimmung-zum-scannen-erzwingen/ this is the last time they’re trying to get the Council to agree.

The EU legislative process is long and convoluted, there are many websites where you can look it up. What’s happening now (what OP is about) is figuring out whether the Council will agree to it.

I am not sure what Udemy is or how it works, but on most websites that have a “sign in with Google” link, it means that you don’t actually have a separate password for that website, instead you authenticate yourself by having a cookie for your Google account set in your browser.

but it was trash at loading html websites

as opposed to websites written in excel 2003 format or what

So, we have reasons not to use Signal, reasons not to use Matrix

yes, nearly all possible things in the world have been argued by someone somewhere already

All VPNs do is change who has your browsing data: your ISP or the VPN operator. You may or may not trust either of them not to keep records, in either case you have no way of verifying this.

Nearly all open source map apps (definitely OsmAnd and Organic Maps) use openstreetmap.org as a data source which is literally a wiki, ie. anyone can edit it. If there is a lot missing in your area on OSM, then please add those things yourself. It is exactly as good as volunteers made it.

Government just days from taking over the country, warns /u/schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de

From your article:

Despite this, KOSA enjoys bipartisan support, including a July endorsement from President Joe Biden.

The worst laws in the US are usually supported by both parties.

I have no idea how government regulation of the Internet has become so normalized.

https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence