Die EU will neue Motive auf die Euroscheine drucken. Zur Wahl stehen a) Grenzen überfliegende Vögel b) hässliche Visagen Dort ist eine Umfrage. Ihr wisst, was zu tun ist. surveys.ecb.europa.eu/10b/newe… #europa #eu
#Canada, which will be subject to a 10% tariff under the arrangement, already prohibits importing forced labor goods. The #EU, also at 10%, has a ban that is scheduled to take effect in December 2027. But #Trump officials say that the governments have not effectively enforced those laws [like they actually care].
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However you look at it, #ageverification is a major change to the internet and our freedoms.
We've seen all kinds of legislation pushed through in the past, often even against major resistance.
What makes me suspicious this time is the speed at which some of the slowest bureaucracies in the world are adopting it and how it's happening in 20+ countries in parallel.
It's like they're all in a group chat, fast-tracking this before resistance can even form.
France's parliament on Tuesday approved a social media ban for children under 15. President Emmanuel Macron immediately hailed the "major step forward", saying in a video posted on social media that "France is leading the way in Europe when it comes …
Want an update on the Weekend at Bernie’s clown show that is W Social? No? Me neither, but here we are…
So before we start, let’s recount the whole dystopian raison d’être of these Davosian clowns: to be a EU®opean “alternative to X” that – cue the 1984 theme tune – verifies your identity to ensure that only “real people” are on it (real is what your government says it is).
Now, let’s fast forward to last week, when TikTok set up an account on W Social.
That’s nice, isn’t it? One surveillance capitalist lending their support to another? Kumbaya and all that. The only problem? (spoiler alert), it wasn’t TikTok. (Shocking, I know.)
The account, Identity Verified™ by EU X – sorry, W Social, was a spam account and immediately labelled as such by BlueSky moderators. (Don’t you love a “decentralised” system where a post on an EU server, accessed from another EU server, is moderated by our benevolent Big Brother in Trumpland, by the way
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Want an update on the Weekend at Bernie’s clown show that is W Social? No? Me neither, but here we are…
So before we start, let’s recount the whole dystopian raison d’être of these Davosian clowns: to be a EU®opean “alternative to X” that – cue the 1984 theme tune – verifies your identity to ensure that only “real people” are on it (real is what your government says it is).
Now, let’s fast forward to last week, when TikTok set up an account on W Social.
That’s nice, isn’t it? One surveillance capitalist lending their support to another? Kumbaya and all that. The only problem? (spoiler alert), it wasn’t TikTok. (Shocking, I know.)
The account, Identity Verified™ by EU X – sorry, W Social, was a spam account and immediately labelled as such by BlueSky moderators. (Don’t you love a “decentralised” system where a post on an EU server, accessed from another EU server, is moderated by our benevolent Big Brother in Trumpland, by the way? I know it just warms the cockles of my heart. So much sovereignty! But I digress…)
So @_elena calls them out (someone has to while @EUCommission is busy preparing for their honeymoon after expressing their undying devotion to W Social recently on every social platform¹):
Anna Zeiter – W CEO, Stanford’s own, and ex-eBay executive (such sovereignty) – replies with this absolute zinger:
> “We are just verifying if some [sic] is a human and at least 18 years old. Users are then free to choose their own user name. This (human) user apparently chose the name TikTok.“ (mu.social/profile/anna.wsocial…)
Read that as many times as you like until it really sinks in.
These incompetent clowns (dangerous competent clowns but incompetent clowns nevertheless) make people go through a ridiculous 13-step identity verification stage² and then… umm… you get to choose whatever identity you want.
🤡🤡🤡
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they’re incompetent. It would be worse if they were competent, given they’re a closed-source venture-capital-funded startup determined to prove your identity.
> “Yes we have a business model, it’s not a philanthropy, we are not a B corp, we actually want to make money.” – Anna Zeiter³
But, what I want to know is this: Why has @EUCommission embraced a proprietary, closed-source, corporate ghost town with 14,300 accounts, 90% of which have not posted even once (in other words, with only 1,259 accounts that have ever posted)⁴ when there is a thriving non-corporate fediverse with millions of active people on it.
Could it have anything to do with identity verification, surveillance, and control?
And if so, why can’t they even get that right?
Looking forward to seeing how long @EUCommission can drag the corpse of W Social around before people realise it’s dead.
Oh, and how does this make the whole “European alternatives” thing look? Not good. Not because there aren’t excellent European alternatives but because the folks at the commission are either too clueless or too corrupt to recognise and support them.
W Social's tagline is "Trust Your Feed" but the company's landing page displays inflated engagement metrics - a misrepresentation that contradicts its own promise.
Needless to say, do not sign up for W or give them your ID information no matter how simple they eventually manage to make it.
You simply don’t need to.
You’re already in a far superior – non-corporate, federated – space.
Do not sign up for W. And warn your friends.
The only time you have any power to stop this is now. If they succeed in gaining network effects, you will be as powerless to stop them as you are with X.
And yes, they’re just another venture capital funded surveillance capitalist, people farmer, and burgeoning Nazi Bar. They just happen to be based in the EU. (As Nazi Bars traditionally have been.)
DNS4EU is a privacy-first DNS resolver by the European Union and Whalebone, available for free to all European citizens under the GDPR.
The service is anonymized and offers child protection, ad blocking, DNSSEC, IPv4, IPv6, DoH, DoT, and anycast, ensuring excellent privacy and minimal latency regardless of your location.
Your browsing data stays within the EU and is protected from cyber threats without being monetized!
Experience DNS4EU, the European security ecosystem led by Whalebone. Access our free Public Service for private browsing or upgrade to DNS4GOV for professional-grade government and critical infrastructure protection.
All non-FOSS, proprietary mobile apps must have a web alternative. This will allow people to use services without relying on Apple/Google services and telemetry via a phone web browser of their choice (rather than having to download the app).
Yes - there'll be plenty of cases where this can't happen, but I think it's a good starting point.
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday announced a "drone deal" with Ukraine to boost joint production of the key battlefield technology. Ukraine has already signed similar deals with some individual EU countries and Gulf nations looking to tap into the expertise Kyiv has developed during more than four years of war with Russia. FRANCE 24's EU correspondent Dave Keating has more. #Ukraine #Russia #EU youtube.com/watch?v=TDUnyYyOot…
Bekijk je favoriete video's, luister naar de muziek die je leuk vindt, upload originele content en deel alles met vrienden, familie en anderen op YouTube.
We live in sorry times: singers/pop stars (#Albania) and comedians (#Zelensky) must do the jobs of politicians. But then, we have a former gameshow host who has turned the US and foreign affairs into #RealityTV. #SoSad.
However, let's hope that the peaceful uprising of the #Albanian people will not fall victim to the #ArabSpring but will lead to an East-#German, #WieSindDasVolk!
Instead of pantomime by-elections and using ‘the establishment is against me” bullshit excuse, why doesn’t farage just show the evidence that proves him innocent of wrong doing. Surely that’s easier
Today, the European Parliament allowed the suspicionless mass scanning of private communications ("Chat Control 1.0") to pass, a measure it had rejected twice in March.
Germany’s AfD has developed "Alternita," an AI-driven platform designed to quickly generate provocative social media posts. An investigation by Correctiv revealed the software uses large language models to create "rage bait" for digital campaigns.
So the whole push to switch from US tech to EU tech was a lie to just allow the powers-that-be gain more info and data upon a global level. #EU are traitors to the people. Not surprised. They don’t care about anyone same as US. They just kindness-wash the people to make you think they are different than the likes of the other horrible political folk. #BigTech #DataPrivacy
"A little birdie told me this, about the fact that we'll give them the right to make Patriots," President Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Three and a half years after becoming Italy's first female head of government, Giorgia Meloni remains one of Europe's most influential and controversial leaders. From her working-class roots in Rome's Garbatella district to debates over immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, and Italy's future, France 24's reporters investigate the impact of the "Meloni Effect" on everyday Italians. #GiorgiaMeloni #Italy #FarRight #EU
Bekijk je favoriete video's, luister naar de muziek die je leuk vindt, upload originele content en deel alles met vrienden, familie en anderen op YouTube.
Ahhhh #Iceland. Somewhere I wouldn't mind visiting during the next European heatwave...
But did you know that Iceland is planning a referendum this summer about Joining the #EU? What do you think? Should they join? What are your favourite facts about Iceland? And do you have any questions about Iceland joining the EU, or any about Iceland at all?
"Given that there are no independent authorities in the US anymore, we call on the European Commission to orderly withdraw the adequacy decision on the US." noyb.eu/en/us-supreme-court-ju… This would effectively make it illegal for EU companies to export personal data to US-based cloud providers. #politics #EU #USA #GDPR #SCOTUS
The US Supreme Court decided that the US Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) may not be independent anymore – with major implications for EU-US Data Transfers.
"Lured by tax breaks and a culture of gentle persiflage, giants such as Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, OpenAI, TikTok and X all established their European headquarters in Ireland. The EU’s “country of origin” principle determines that the country that hosts a company’s European HQ is the country responsible for regulating it across the EU. This legal quirk has turned the Irish data protectioncommission (DPC) into Europe’s primary watchdog for the tech sector: Ireland pushed to make this happen as council president in 2013.
The effects of this arrangement are staggering. The DPC’s chairperson recently admitted that apart from “amicable resolutions” on trivial issues, Ireland has not completed a single EU inquiry into Google or any of its subsidiaries in the 10 years since the GDPR was enacted. EU-wide protections are paralysed because every other member state must wait for Ireland to act in an EU-wide response.
When the DPC has enforced against big tech firms, it has done so poorly and under duress from other European reg
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"Lured by tax breaks and a culture of gentle persiflage, giants such as Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, OpenAI, TikTok and X all established their European headquarters in Ireland. The EU’s “country of origin” principle determines that the country that hosts a company’s European HQ is the country responsible for regulating it across the EU. This legal quirk has turned the Irish data protectioncommission (DPC) into Europe’s primary watchdog for the tech sector: Ireland pushed to make this happen as council president in 2013.
The effects of this arrangement are staggering. The DPC’s chairperson recently admitted that apart from “amicable resolutions” on trivial issues, Ireland has not completed a single EU inquiry into Google or any of its subsidiaries in the 10 years since the GDPR was enacted. EU-wide protections are paralysed because every other member state must wait for Ireland to act in an EU-wide response.
When the DPC has enforced against big tech firms, it has done so poorly and under duress from other European regulators. It did move with uncharacteristic speed in one instance, against Elon Musk’s Grok AI, but then accepted a settlement that appears to have collapsed. Ireland’s media regulator, Coimisiún na Mean, enjoys a better reputation but has far weaker powers. For a decade now, Ireland has held open the regulatory back door that allows giant US and Chinese companies to operate with impunity across Europe. It has become not only a tax haven, but a haven from regulation.
The economic dependency is stark. Three US firms accounted for almost half of Ireland’s corporate tax revenue in 2024. In 2022, Ireland collected almost five times more corporate tax per person than France or Germany. You may admire a once small, poor and un-industrialised country for having won the race to the bottom and becoming rich. But the consequences have been grim..."
The country is dependent on the global giants that call Dublin home. Irish ministers can’t be trusted to chair vital European digital sovereignty talks, says Irish civil liberties campaigner Johnny Ryan
So dear European banks, who you force your customers to use apps from Apple/Google stores or-else, and didn't want to listen ever: what are you going to do now?
* binding your customers to US stores: illegal * using those analytic frameworks: illegal * using Apple/Google cloud messaging: illegal * your apps: illegal? * most of your branches: closed ("go online!"). * banking: how?
So dear European banks, who you force your customers to use apps from Apple/Google stores or-else, and didn't want to listen ever: what are you going to do now?
* binding your customers to US stores: illegal * using those analytic frameworks: illegal * using Apple/Google cloud messaging: illegal * your apps: illegal? * most of your branches: closed ("go online!"). * banking: how?
Yesterday the US Supreme Court ruled that the US Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") may not be independent anymore. But being independent is the entire basis for (and only reason) why Europeans are allowed to send data from the EU to the USA.
Without this basis, you aren't allowed to use Google Analytics, to give perhaps the most concrete example for why this is a big deal.
> noyb has sent a formal letter to the European Commission today, asking the Commission to take the appropriate steps to repeal the EU-US data deal in an orderly way. > noyb will also file a lawsuit in the coming weeks, aiming to allow the CJEU to annul the current deal. However, such a lawsuit typically takes 2-3 years until a final decision is reached.
If your employer uses Google Analytics, they better start migrating to a self-hosted solution like Matomo or Plausible.
The US Supreme Court decided that the US Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) may not be independent anymore - with major implications for EU-US Data Transfers.
Also, please remember that all #WSocial has to do to win is have the benefit of the doubt.
Don’t give them that.
If they have it, with so much money and political influence, they can scale.
If they scale, they can reach network effects.
If they reach network effects, there’s zero you can do to stop them.
Fine! So what?
Well, they have mandatory identity verification.
Once they have network effects, the European Commission can say “any social network that doesn’t implement mandatory identity verification is henceforth illegal in the EU. We have our own “sovereign” network, WSocial, that implements it and if any other networks want to operate in the EU, they must too. Facebook, etc., will implement it in a heartbeat. The fediverse? It’ll be illegal.
Also, please remember that all #WSocial has to do to win is have the benefit of the doubt.
Don’t give them that.
If they have it, with so much money and political influence, they can scale.
If they scale, they can reach network effects.
If they reach network effects, there’s zero you can do to stop them.
Fine! So what?
Well, they have mandatory identity verification.
Once they have network effects, the European Commission can say “any social network that doesn’t implement mandatory identity verification is henceforth illegal in the EU. We have our own “sovereign” network, WSocial, that implements it and if any other networks want to operate in the EU, they must too. Facebook, etc., will implement it in a heartbeat. The fediverse? It’ll be illegal.
So, yeah, maybe don’t give them the benefit of the doubt.
Actively resist them.
Don’t engage with people on there.
Warn your friends.
They’re not building a social network. They’re building the infrastructure for a police state backed by the European Commission.
#WSocial posted a message on their official account talking about "temporary profile issues" for "some W users."
Reality (exposed in my latest article): their network was BRICKED for ALL NEW USERS who joined starting on June 22 (some 3100+ accounts out of 5000) for 7+ days.
An amateur reporter and self-hosting newbie (aka me) figured out the problem and the solution, bringing attention to this matter.
I'm glad that my article helped bring attention to this problem - which had bricked your network for all new users who had joined starting on June 22 (3000+ accounts, for 7+ days - I've got .csv records to prove it).
Lobbying, incompetence, unlucky while doing thinkinks, bad hair day ... 🤔
I'm sure there are many valid reasons why they point in one direction with one hand, and in a completely different direction with the other. The head? Oh, it's up there somewhere, where the sun is probably not present.
