I can't wait for the EU to preemptively delete emails with language that is supposedly deemed offensive or possibly containing misinformation or god forbid, pictures of my nieces and nephews which could be interpreted as child grooming.

Yes, we should all let the governments decide if we should have access to our email addresses and pinky promise they won't use your data against you if one day you decide to disparage the sitting president/prime minister of the country you reside in.

Corporations bad! Government good! M'kay!

The EU is pushing to intercept and scan all private chat messages and all emails to "protect" the children and give all this information to Europol to keep in perpetuity so they can build a profile on you but sure everything is peachy.

Then you have the German chancellor saying that we should all have our real names attached to all our online accounts but rest assured, nothing nefarious going on here.

France arrested the Telegram founder a few months ago for no apparent reason and the French Justice minister also not long ago wanted to ban EtoE because it makes their job harder so wouldn't it be nice if everyone could just simply share their private life with the government voluntarily?

The UK is looking into getting rid of VPNs to, you guessed it, "protect the children" and Denmark has re-introduced blasphemy laws.

Finally there is the DMA that has been approved the EU which outlaws hate speech on online platforms except that hate speech is never defined in the text so you can pretty much use this law to ban any content you want without due process and without consulting the population.

The US has many flaws, nobody is denying that but to assume that the EU has better privacy is a mirage from a bygone era. The EU politicians are now looking at what China is doing and use that as playbook.

> In politics, we engage in debates in our society using our real names and without visors. I expect the same from everyone else who critically examines our country and our society.

Whats the problem with this exactly? As a politician who is part of the government then every action by these people should be scrutinised intensely. We should know who they meet, when and what was agreed.

Nobody is forcing these people to become politicians but expecting transparency from people who govern us is the least we should expect from them.

We as citizens, get to criticise the decisions they take but we are not the ones in power so expecting the same transparency is completely unwarranted.

> Merz warned that liberal democracy was at risk and said he had underestimated the extent to which algorithms and artificial intelligence could be used for targeted influence campaigns.

What a bad take. As if governments would not use these same tools to shape opinions.

> He said such tools made it possible to manipulate opinion and to undermine the foundations of a free society.

Friendly newspapers and public funded news channels have been used by various governments to manipulate opinions just as much in the past.

To claim that suddenly anonymous comments on social media will bring the end of democracy as we know it is just pure fear mongering and speculation.

If Mertz feel so inclined to only engage with people who post under their real names, he can just sign up to a social media service that requires this from their users and see what happens.

Europe is really turning into a China light these days with their dreams of client side scanning of messages and the end of privacy on the internet.

Why always bringing back everything to racism? The people of Switzerland want to maintain the look an feel of their country as it is. How is racism the first thing you think of when no one mentionned race?

Those same methods of identification are created by the same people who just a few months ago were arguing if it was legal to read all your private messages in case you are criminal of some sort without warrant , without due process. You'll understand if I don't trust them.