this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2025

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734

CALL FOR URGENT ACTION to stop Chat Control legislation in EU (chng.it)

submitted 6 days ago by kokesh@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.world 109 points 6 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 43 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] SugarCatDestroyer@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

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...

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[–] SugarCatDestroyer@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago

They need control for the sake of control, there is nothing higher than absolute power.

[–] ReluctantZen@feddit.nl 63 points 6 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 43 points 6 days ago

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.

[–] cazzmaniandevil@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] ReluctantZen@feddit.nl 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah, I'm not confident either. There are definitely parties in our government that don't actually oppose this (like the VVD)

[–] huppakee@feddit.nl 4 points 6 days ago

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.

[–] Australis13@fedia.io 47 points 6 days ago (2 children)

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

[–] Humanius@lemmy.world 38 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

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)

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 10 points 6 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Humanius@lemmy.world 13 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

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

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 6 days ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] mat@linux.community 6 points 6 days ago

What kind of collective action are you thinking of?

[–] takeda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Humanius@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] takeda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 6 days ago

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.

[–] SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 days ago

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.

[–] SugarCatDestroyer@lemmy.world 40 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Thoughtcrime is near...

[–] int32@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 6 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Konstant@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

[–] int32@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, of course, but it does happend from time to time(especially for hitchiker's guide).

[–] Poem_for_your_sprog@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Examples from hitchhikers?

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[–] pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Maybe I should reread hitchikers guide to the galaxy then

[–] int32@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago

Don't forget your towel!

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

They are already rounding up anyone protesting against genocide.

[–] SugarCatDestroyer@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

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.

[–] misteloct@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 28 points 6 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] misteloct@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I don’t trust tor. It’s western tech developed by the US and they’ve been caught lying multiple times about security features being removed from tor browser.

I’m glad it’s there and we should always have multiple options but at this point i2p has more credibility and fewer questionable ties than tor does.

[–] misteloct@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Tor is more established than I2P but they're both good, using either is a dramatic improvement in your privacy.

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 days ago

The public launch of tor was only 1 year before i2p.

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[–] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 22 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

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/

[–] somewa@suppo.fi 5 points 5 days ago

Going to sign it when it's there and not on some US site.

[–] amju_wolf@pawb.social 4 points 5 days ago

Didn't even know there was an EU website for that. Would be neat to have it there.

[–] AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago (3 children)

The linked petition says:

The European Parliament MPs must vote AGAINST Chat Control legislation during EPlenary vote in June-August 2021.

It's not even up to date. And it only has 1.8k signatures.

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[–] CheerfulPassionFruit@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago

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

[–] SugarCatDestroyer@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago

And how much energy will be spent on this... power for the sake of even more power, right?

[–] MITM0@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago (2 children)

But it's for EU citizens only right ?

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[–] DarkSideOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

Oh so this was the real reason they wanted interconnected chat apps.

[–] fozie@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

The European Union has begun to cross the border. I think they were inspired by United States and Signal and etc.

[–] Amoxtli@thelemmy.club 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

EU is a regulation superpower.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

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.

[–] Electricd@lemmybefree.net 2 points 5 days ago

change.org doesn't do shit and it's bad for privacy and anonymity

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