GDPR meant nothing: chat control ends privacy for the EU [video]

Child Protection vs. Mass Surveillance

• Broad agreement that online child abuse is real and harmful, but deep disagreement on solutions.
• Many see “protect the children” as a political wedge: once client-side scanning exists, scope will expand (misinformation, terrorism, dissent).
• Several argue there is no way to both fully protect kids online and fully avoid a 1984-style surveillance state; society must consciously choose the “lesser evil.”
• A minority explicitly say they’d rather accept more child victimization than universal surveillance and are frustrated others won’t admit that tradeoff explicitly.

Role of Parents, State and Society

• One camp insists the answer is parenting: no unsupervised internet, locked-down devices, social sanctions on negligent parents.
• Others counter that this is already the status quo and it still fails; even careful parents can’t foresee all risks or control every context (sleepovers, shared devices, life crises).
• Debate over whether community structures (schools, churches, clubs) help or themselves often become abuse vectors.

Free Speech, EU Legal Order, and Comparisons to US

• Long subthread disputes how robust EU free-speech protections really are: some highlight constitutional and ECHR guarantees; critics list hate-speech, insult, and blasphemy cases as evidence of “wrongthink” policing.
• Comparisons with the US: some say the First Amendment still provides stronger protection; others note extensive US surveillance and practical privacy failures.

Legitimacy, Actors, and Democratic Risk

• Many see ChatControl as part of a long-running push by EU governments, police, and NGOs to normalize mass surveillance.
• Denmark and certain NGOs (especially anti-CSAM organizations) are repeatedly cited as key drivers; Europol is seen as eager for broad data access.
• Fear that such tools make genuine opposition and future democratic change impossible, since dissent can be detected and neutralized before it organizes.

Technical Responses and Limitations

• Discussion of decentralized or P2P secure messengers (Briar, Tox, Matrix, Delta Chat) and networks like I2P as possible escape valves.
• Skepticism that tech can solve a fundamentally political problem: decentralized tools are hard to use, easy to regulate or criminalize, and node operators can be targeted.
• Some argue strong, ubiquitous privacy-by-design protocols are still worth building to make surveillance technically and politically harder.

GDPR, Cookie Banners, and EU “Privacy Hypocrisy”

• Several argue GDPR was about controlling corporations, not states; ChatControl exposes that governments exempt themselves.
• Big debate over cookie banners: some blame GDPR/ePrivacy; others insist banners are industry’s dark-pattern response, not legally required in their current obnoxious form.
• General sense that EU privacy law is strong on paper but unevenly enforced and compatible with expansive state surveillance.

Public Apathy and Emotional Reactions

• Multiple commenters are baffled by limited public outrage compared to past fights (e.g. SOPA); see normalization, learned helplessness, and platform gatekeeping as factors.
• Some express outright despair or fatalism, predicting repeated reintroduction of such laws until one finally passes.