Yes, but on average what is the minimum percentage of support needed for an authoritarian regime to remain in power? 30%, 20%, 10%, 5%? Currently, less than 30% of Americans seem to support MAGA. Will that be enough to break this tyrannical trend?

We must learn from the best. Why are the Chinese mad that the Europeans want to try doing a little of what they’ve been doing for years?

Why aren’t they wearing spiked collars then? Are they stupid?

LoL This is completely ridiculous. It was a bunch of Russian oligarchs who put Putin on the Kremlin throne thinking they had a passive pawn, but instead ended up becoming the puppets themselves. After the fall of the USSR, most of the countries that comprised it did not develop into the despotic, revanchist, chauvinistic, and increasingly totalitarian country that Russia is today.

The attempt at Westernization in all the former Soviet republics in Europe also occurred, but it did not have the devastating consequences that the Russians experienced. The benchmark for what went really wrong in Russia is different and comes from within.

Fuck Russia. Putin and his oligarchs are a snake that nobody can trust.

Shit, it looks like Höcke really will be Chancellor. History rhymes and Germans really do want to repeat the same mistakes.

Adapt or perish.

And no verification at all will be always the ideal, of course.

Yes, an adult could give them, just as nowadays an adult can forge fake IDs to sell to kids, but it would be a crime. If they were caught, they would suffer appropriate consequences.

In my proposal, there is no need for them to scan your ID, they would only see your age written on the citizen card, just like they do when you want to buy cigarettes. Don’t pretend you didn’t understand the spirit of the suggestion.

P.S.: Nothing is safer than paper. I’m also against electronic vote.

P.P.S.: This app is open source, but you can’t confirm that the Play or App Store build matches the source. You’re not allowed to compile and install the app yourself, downloads are enforced by hardware attestation and there’s no way to verify what the EU servers are actually doing on the backend side.

In the very near future you must accept Google or Apple terms and conditions to discuss things online, because the surveillance app only runs on genuine Android and iOS devices. Age verification is a manufactured issue pushed by surveillance companies.

Even if the EU identity wallet, Russian MAX and Chinese WeChat apps were perfectly privacy‑preserving, it’s still outrageous to require age checks just to let people communicate with each other.

It would still be made by the government and distributed by third parties and the government. What matters here to give me confidence is that it would be physical and only one person at the counter would know my age which would obviously be much safer and would ensure that no other information would be passed on.

Also,

https://cybernews.com/security/eu-age-verification-app-hack/

LoL

The verification could make sense with something like a physical gift card.

Go to a store or kiosk, show them your ID card or driver’s license, and they’ll give you a card randomly chosen from the shelf with a code to activate the +18 version of any social network of your choice.

Each code could only be used once. People would have to buy more, at a symbolic cost, for each social network they wished to activate.

I would tend to be against this on principle in the same way, but at least it would be something I could understand where the objective is actually what is being presented (protecting the children), albeit misguided, because to me it is clear that what is currently being promoted and proposed has nothing to do with age verification, but rather with mass surveillance, marketing and censorship. Fascistic authoritarianism.

The leash is getting shorter, paving the way for authoritarianism.

None of that matters because the objective is the same. This measure is simply the normalization of government and corporate overreach towards authoritarianism under the flimsy excuse that it’s to protect children.

They know very well that it’s unpopular, and therefore western leaders are coming up with the strategy of implementing this crap all at once and taking a certain care to generate as little further distrust as possible. The enshitification will come later.

And the new internet that is on the horizon will be the definitive establishment of these same billionaires as feudal lords.

She must be very envious of Xi, or rather, her lobbyists are. The place for rotten corrupt politicians should be in prison for life, not on a comfortable throne in Brussels.

And the European Century of Humiliation is only just beginning.

With something like a physical gift card.

Go to a store or kiosk, show them your ID card or driver’s license, and they’ll give you a card randomly chosen from the shelf with a code to activate the +18 version of any social network of your choice.

Each code could only be used once. People would have to buy more, at a symbolic cost, for each social network they wished to activate.

I would tend to be against this in the same way, but at least it would be something I could understand where the objective is actually what is being presented (protecting the children), albeit misguided, because to me it is clear that what is currently being promoted and proposed has nothing to do with age verification, but rather with mass surveillance, marketing and censorship.

The same with Portugal’s government.

That’s not enough. It should be 24 hours of work per day, in a 10-day week.

It seems that our politicians are paving the way for dictatorship with these mass surveillance initiatives.

A social credit system would be the next step after online ID verification and ChatControl come into effect, and then our generous Lords would sleep more soundly knowing they were safe. Poor things, currently suffering from an insomnia that can only be consequence of the injustices they must be dreaming to commit.

Greetings from Portugal.