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Won’t somebody please think of the children? >> Hey there guys, Roman here and I have a question for you. Do you like privacy? You see, coming from Russia, I do know what it’s like to not have privacy and to be forced to not say certain things in private conversation because you know that the government is reading in on your chats. In Russia, the government has been spying on us for at least 10 years now, ever since 2016 when the Russian government got full access to the Russian people’s private
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conversations and also forced tech companies to store more personal data of Russian users, which then is fully for the Kremlin. Russian propaganda, of course, claimed that it was all done for child safety and to combat terrorism, but either way it was a super unpopular law that caused a lot of protests around the country and it was also the reason why when I lived in Russia, I preferred to talk about politics with my friends only in real life because online the chat can be fully accessed by the
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government and no conversation is truly private. And obviously, when you live in a country where disagreeing with the government is a crime and where simply describing the so-called special military operation in Ukraine as a war can also land you in prison, you become more careful and paranoid about the things that you post and say online. And it’s exactly this kind of government control and surveillance that I wanted to escape by moving to Europe. Well, apparently I’m a complete because
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the EU has just decided to extend the infamous chat control legislation, which has pretty big negative implications for the future of privacy in Europe. Now look, it’s not completely over yet because chat control has actually already been in place in Europe for a few years and nothing really changed with this new legislation, but there’s a possibility of this going way further in the future with chat control 2.0. And also, the way this regulation was passed and voted for was actually quite shady.
[usually before noun] (informal) seeming to be dishonest or illegal 可疑的；鬼祟的；非法的
a shady businessman/deal
行为可疑的商人；一宗有问题的交易
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Even Euro News pointed out here. And yes, if you live in European Union, I do think that you should be concerned about this even if you think that you have nothing to hide. So basically, from what I understand, chat control is a regulation that, according to its own definition, goes against the European law on privacy and is legally known as a temporary derogation from the certain provisions of the e-privacy directive. And the e-privacy directive is a regulation that is in power in place in the European Union right now that is
directive: an official instruction
The EU has issued a new set of directives on pollution.
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supposed to protect the confidentiality of online communication and messaging. Chat control was introduced in 2021 as a derogation of the e-privacy directive, which in simple English basically means that it’s a law that allows for the certain rules of the privacy directive to no longer be followed. Now, isn’t legalese great, guys? It is not breaking the law, it is simply a derogation from it. And it is not an invasion of privacy, but it’s actually a special messaging scanning operation. Anyway,
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the idea of chat control was basically to allow said companies to voluntarily scan people’s messages to detect abuse material involving children. So, technically, Facebook, Google, or whatever other tech giant is allowed to, but is not required to scan everybody’s messages in the EU with the exception of end-to-end encrypted communication. Chat control was introduced as a temporary measure that officially expired in April of 2026, and it had to be extended to keep functioning. The law itself was met
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with a lot of opposition in the European Parliament because it is a measure that is highly controversial and that is causing a lot of debates about the intrusion of privacy. Now, what’s interesting is that earlier this year, in March of 2026, the idea to extend chat control has already been rejected in the European Parliament with the majority 311 MPs voting to cancel chat control and 228 voting to prolong it. It got rejected, everybody forgot about it, and lived happily ever after. Well, not
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quite because right after this, the presidents of the European Parliament decided to completely ignore the vote of the MEPs and override this decision, asking member countries in the European Council to approve the bill that was canceled by the European Parliament. Now, this also caused a lot of controversy in the European Parliament with a lot of MEPs claiming that this undermines democracy. And on July 9th, 2026, there was yet another vote in the European Parliament to reject the chat control package. And the European MPs
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have once again voted to end it with 314 members voting to cancel chat control and 276 voting against canceling it. So yes, guys, once again, another epic win for gamers. The people have spoken, democracy has done its thing, and now surely chat control will be canceled, right? Well, apparently not quite, because even though the majority has voted to cancel chat control, it apparently does not count because the amount of votes to cancel the legislation has not surpassed 360, which is known as the absolute
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majority. Fair enough, I guess, right? Except for the moment when you realize that 112 members of the European Parliament simply did not vote. And that does not mean choosing to abstain from the vote, right? That was only 17 people. 112 members of European Parliament were simply just not present at the time of this vote, which once again, guys, is surely fine. I mean, you do always have some no-shows that don’t like to show up to work, I guess, right? But 112 people not showing up to work is
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a bit excessive. Well, there is a reason why, and it’s because the council sent the file back to Parliament at the beginning of the vacation season, when many members of the European Parliament are taking a nice little summer break. And very conveniently, since 112 members simply did not show up to vote, the votes to cancel chat control simply just did not pass over the 360 quota, which would constitute an absolute majority. And as a result of all of this, the law is now officially extended and is going
a fixed number of votes that a candidate needs in order to be elected
Link to original
Circular transclusion detected: Lexicon/new-words/quota
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to be in place until the year 2028. Very nice. And also, the EU was discussing a possible future amendment to this law known as chat control 2.0, which could massively increase government surveillance. This exact regulation is still being debated, but it’s very possible that version 2.0 is going to make it mandatory for social media websites and tech giants to monitor all of the messages of their users for this child abuse material. And this monitoring may even possibly include end-to-end encrypted messages, too. All
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of this is kind of like a big tug of war between the European Parliament and the council right now. EU Parliament, for example, says that they would like this mandatory scanning to only be mandatory for people already under investigation. But still, there are massive negative implications for people’s privacy either way. So, yeah, this law, rather this derogation to the European law, it is not still in power in its worst possible form. And in general, not much has changed since 2021 when a law was
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originally put in place. But from what I can tell, basically a lot of Europeans are only finding out about chat control and what it means now. And I’m actually the same. I did not know about chat control before all this buzz. But I’m new here in Europe, okay? So, please give me a break. >> I’m a guest in your country. Give me a break. >> Now, the way you react to this kind of surveillance obviously depends a lot on your personal politics and beliefs. I know there is people out there who might
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say that these kinds of measures do make sense. Many people might use the classic argument about privacy saying that if you don’t have anything to hide, and if you are truly not involved in any criminal activity, then you have nothing to worry about. And if you’re worried about this law, then you’re probably like an abuser yourself who is just scared of getting caught. And this is a pretty common argument. It’s an argument that is kind of similar to what people say when they defend these like
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streamers like Vitaly ZDTV who found a new grift now where they’re like supposedly catching predators. And whenever anybody has any kind of criticism about the way these predator catching streamers act, the knee-jerk response of their fan base is usually to go like, “Oh, I know. The only reason why you don’t like Vitaly is because you’re probably a predator yourself. And the only reason why you don’t like his antics is probably because you yourself are going giddy modes and are, you know,
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scared of getting caught.” And it’s just really stupid because it This is the point of the criticism entirely. And instead makes it about the critics supposedly being against fighting child abuse. I don’t think that the people who have a problem with chat control have a problem with fighting child abuse. I think these people are just concerned about their privacy and how their personal data is going to be used by governments and, you know, these scummy tech giants. And again, even if you
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think that you have nothing to worry about because you’re not a criminal, who’s to say that simple issues and errors cannot happen? Because they do. I highly suggest guys check out this article by Patrick Breyer, who’s a German ex-member of the European Parliament and also a digital rights activist. His article makes a lot of pretty interesting points about why control is the wrong approach to tackling these kinds of crimes. And there’s also links to reports of the European Commission that talk about the
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effectivity of these measures. And in the case of Meta or Facebook, in 2023 there have been 250,000 cases where the user has complained about wrongfully being targeted by the system that decided that they’re actually an abuser. And apparently almost 12,000 content items were actually restored by Facebook. So, that’s at least 12,000 cases where people are getting called predators without being predators. That’s a bit too much for me, okay? And obviously you can imagine that all this monitoring is probably not being done by
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a human being who understands context and who actually know has a working brain. It’s all being done by AI and clearly there are some mistakes that are happening. Thousands of people are getting flagged for nothing. Yes, I think it’s a great idea. I definitely do want all of my personal messages and plans to be monitored by AI 24/7. I really cannot imagine how any of this can go wrong and I love Benjamin Netanyahu. Also, give me a break, okay? All of the governments around the world now are like using this pretense of
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protecting children to destroy privacy on the internet. The UK has introduced the online safety act and ID age verifications which from what I can tell that everybody in the UK pretty much hates, right? People now have to confirm their ID to use certain websites which you know opens them up to having their personal data leaked or stolen. And it is all of course being done in the name of protecting kids. >> Think of the children. Won’t somebody please think of the children? >> similar thing is happening in Australia
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from what I can tell. And like I already said, my own country Russia has already had some pretty ridiculous surveillance measures in place for a long time. In particular, I’m talking about the infamous Yarovaya law which actually was passed in 2016. And the gist of the law is that it basically made it so that the Russian government now has full access to the Russian people’s private conversations and also general activity on the internet. Russian mobile carriers and internet providers now have to
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record and keep all the phone conversations, text messages, and also internet traffic of the Russian citizens. Arguably, the Russian government has already had access to a lot of these things even before this, but this law kind of made it all official. And of course, the Russian propaganda told us that it’s all about protecting children and combating terrorism and extremism. Around this time, for example, in Russia, there was a massive craze about the so-called Blue Whale Challenge, which was a supposed
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network of groups on Russian social media websites which apparently drove Russian children to take their own lives as part of some perverse game. This story did turn out to be just pretty much like a sensationalized hoax, but the Russian propaganda used this story to create like a massive narrative about how Russian children are not safe online, and therefore, of course, the government just had to introduce more surveillance to help sort the situation out. And ever since this law was passed, a lot more people in Russia have started
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to get arrested over things they said on social media. You know, like leaving anti-Putin comments on the internet, or for example, even having saved like anti-Putin memes on their private profile on the social media like VK. Russia became a way more restrictive place for internet users pretty much overnight, and it even changed the way I used the Russian internet. Like I said, now since I knew that all my private messages can be read by the government, I tried to not discuss politics too much and not voice my opinion too much in
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private messages. And even if I did, I would often use euphemisms and like word replacements for certain things that I thought were like keywords. Words like Putin, government, you know, Duma, whatever. And I’m far from the only person who’s doing this, okay? And this kind of policy from the Russian government is actually, for example, why the Telegram messaging app exploded so hard. And you know, now it’s known as the Russian people’s main most favorite messenger. Telegram promised to never
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sell out the Russian people to the Russian government and never expose their info. Telegram also boasted about its encryption, and so Russians basically flocked to it because they felt like it’s the only place left where their conversations are not being monitored by the Kremlin. Even right now, during the Ukraine war, Russia is still using protecting children as a pretense to introduce more censorship and surveillance. If you’ve been following my channel or just in general what is going on in Russia recently, you
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probably know that Russia has banned a lot of Western social media apps, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Viber. All these apps are completely banned now, and Russia is basically trying to replace them with a new state messenger known as Max. It is basically a piece of Kremlin spyware on your phone, and the Russian government has making everybody install it. They’re literally forcing people to do it. The Russian people are obviously not very happy with all of this being banned, and they do not want
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to install this state messenger Max. And the Russian government, once again, likes to claim that the main reason to use Max instead of these, you know, scary Western messaging apps is apparently because a lot of these Western apps have scammers, you know, predators, and all sorts of weird people on it. However, the state messenger Max is safe because you have to, you know, get registered with your ID. So, once again, it’s kind of pretty much exact arguments. Won’t you just please think of the children, and also let us spy on
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you 24/7. And also, not to be that guy, but you know who was also claiming that they protected children? The Nazis. >> [laughter] >> Yeah, how about that? Still think it’s a good idea? Anyways, being serious though, I’m not trying to say that Russia and Europe are exactly the same. Russia’s main goal, of course, is to filter out dissent and not to, you know, try to provide safety for anybody. And I would still like to believe that the interests of Europe are actually to protect the children, okay? But here’s
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the thing. Even if it’s not in Europe’s interest to filter out dissent right now, and it’s not what they’re trying to do, who’s to say and who can guarantee us that Europe is actually not going to use these tools to control political dissent in the future, and to monitor people for these opposing views? Again, I don’t want to be an alarmist, and I want to try to cause panic here and say that it’s over. And I can understand some people might say I’m insane because
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it’s very hard for a lot of people to imagine Europe heading down a dark path like this. I don’t know, guys. I might just be traumatized by my own country going insane, to be honest, you know. Throughout my entire life, I’ve pretty much seen Russia get less and less free, you know, the internet in Russia get less and less free. I’ve seen the country degrade, and you know, completely destroy the last remnants of democracy. I’ve seen my country take the last bits of privacy away from people,
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and the people not being able to do anything to stop it. And I’m just kind of worried that it might happen again. And sometimes with these kinds of laws, it low-key feels like Europe is almost slightly following Russia’s playbook. And I guess this is something they just do now, you know, Europe, for example, recently introduced new tariffs on, you know, stuff from China, like Temu and so on. So, now I have to pay extra to get stuff delivered from China, because I guess Europe just cannot outcompete
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China, and they have to introduce Trump-style tariffs. So, they’re pretty much copying Trump’s playbook as well now, which is insane to me. So, I don’t know what to expect, guys, you know. Are we going to see a future in Europe where, you know, they’re going to try to do the exact same things as Russia, you know, where we’re going to see like Pavel Durov, the head of Telegram, you know, fight against Europe, and Europe is going to try to ban Telegram and ban VPNs, God forbid. I hope not. I really
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hope that’s not the case. And I really hope that’s not the future that we had in Soviet times, too, because I don’t like seeing that in my own country right now. And it’s not something that should be copied, okay? I don’t know, guys, but all I’m trying to say with this video is that as a person who’s already seen his own country degrade, I just want to send out a message to Europeans out there, you know, to not let it happen again. Because it would kind of suck. So, yes, anyway, I hope you people
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enjoyed this video and this take I had. I thought this would be an interesting subject to discuss, and you know, I do expect that probably there’s going to be some people out there that are going to say that, you know, I am a Russian propagandist that is trying to spread anti-EU messaging, but I don’t really see how this is anti-EU messaging when like half the European Parliament also agrees with me. And it seems like the public in Europe is not vibing with chat control too much. But, you know,
“Vibe with” means to like, connect with, or feel comfortable with someone/something. It’s very casual/slangy.
to have or create a particular feeling:
vibe with
The room vibed with tension.
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whatever you say, guys, yes, I’m a Russian propagandist, sure. But, whatever, you know, people are going to say all sorts of nonsense. I just think that I’m being consistent more than anything. I mean, when I lived in Russia, I was against surveillance on my own people. And now that I’m here in Europe, I also don’t like surveillance, you know? I think I’m just being consistent, you know? It’d be kind of funny if I didn’t like and criticize the Russian surveillance, but then all of a
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sudden I would like and not criticize European surveillance, you know? Anyways, people, let me know what you thought in the comments down below. I’m especially very interested if you’re from Europe. Thank you for making it all the way to the end. If you guys enjoyed this video, please make sure to slap the like button on it. And as always, if you guys want to support this channel additionally, and that is financially, go over to link down in the description, become a YouTube channel member, or
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support us and buy me a coffee. And yeah, people, thank you so much watching this video, and I will see you guys in the next one. Peace.