The Belgian presidency has drafted yet another tweaked #chatcontrol proposal. In summary, the proposal remains completely unacceptable.

TLDR: All the problems pointed our in our earlier open letters are still there
https://nce.mpi-sp.org/index.php/s/eqjiKaAw9yYQF87
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13Aeex72MtFBjKhExRTooVMWN9TC-pbH-5LEaAbMF91Y/

a) the risk of abuse of the solution for other applications (including political purposes)
b) the huge number of false positives (no waiting for 2 alerts does not work)
c) the fact that the real targets will use other technologies (e.g. sharing links to encrypted files).
d) chilling effect on teenagers.

Summary of latest proposal:
1) Detection of known CSAM and of new CSAM using AI (2 hits before you are reported) remain fully unacceptable because it just does not work for technical reasons pointed out earlier.
2) Grooming detection in text and audio is abandoned; information is pseudonymized before it is reported (presumably identity of the user is known)
3) User has to give consent before the client side scanning; details are not known but it is unclear what happens if consent is not given – is the message not sent? Why do policy makes believe that popups solve problems (cookies anyone)?

Source (in German):
https://netzpolitik.org/2024/internes-protokoll-belgien-will-nutzer-verpflichten-chatkontrolle-zuzustimmen/

We've got this cheap egg cooker that plays the loudest, most terrifying alarm you've ever heard when it's done cooking. My wife requested that I make it "less aggressive" so I hacked it into the most gentle egg cooker of ALL TIME

(warning: probably loud)

Why would Apple's brand be at risk? Their products are manufactured in China, chips designed in Israel. They keep breaking laws and bullying their partners, tell us that developers leech off their success. They monopolize the market, nanny their users. They kicked the leading game engine developer off their platforms over a dispute over an (illegal) clause in their contracts. Their prices keep going up in a cost of living crisis. And they tell us it's for our own good.

I see no problems here? 😜

Stack Overflow joins Twitter and Reddit in demonstrating control-freak contempt for the people who made the platform what it is.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/stack-overflow-bans-users-en-masse-for-rebelling-against-openai-partnership-users-banned-for-deleting-answers-to-prevent-them-being-used-to-train-chatgpt

The company will probably get away with it, because people seem unable to fight back in effective ways, at least in numbers that make a difference.

So there's a lot of kvetching, from myself included, about how the modern internet has gotten worse, usually due to a combination of SEO, social media gone evil, and the prevalence of money as more and more of a guiding factor in tech.

But of course the old internet had the problem of being fairly boring. The interesting question is how to get a third way. I've heard a few proposals: