Hacker News Reader

Comment by BlargMcLarg | Hacker News Reader

It's funny because in this regard, The Netherlands is actually trying to do better and change the laws to allow mutually consenting teens to do this stuff (still tentative) and punish blackmail, prostitution (edit: of minors), minor-adult sexual interaction etc.

Our general mentality also seems to be a lot more lax and supportive of kids being victims of their own mistakes rather than going "yeah, that's illegal, let's throw a fine on top". Almost as if we acknowledge teens are going to experiment.

View on HN

It probably helps that we were complaining about and even making fun of[0] our government for using child pornography as an excuse for pushing through draconian populist laws a decade ago already. We may just happen to have a little head-start here basically.

Edit: for the non-Dutch, the link goes to an article by the Dutch equivalent of The Onion and the headline says "Opstelten [our minister of Security and Justice at the time] says new regulations are needed or else child pornography".

[0] https://speld.nl/2012/10/24/opstelten-%E2%80%98nieuwe-maatre...

You need awareness that things most people don’t understand fully are absurd. Humour can be a tool for that.

The Netherlands seems great as an outsider. I've been to Amsterdam, which was too touristy for me, but still beautiful. And we took a train to Utrecht and the surrounding areas which was great. Even struck up a conversation with a group of (local) software developers on the train.

Even with the lockdown protest issues it seems like it should be on the shortlist if you want to move to the EU as an American.

Keep in mind that comp for Dutch software developers is probably an order of magnitude lower than what you can get in the US.

That and it’s a fairly racist place in my experience so don’t bother if you think that would affect you.

> it's fairly racist place in my experience

Out of curiosity, did you live in other countries as well? I have the impression that in NL there certainly is a certain level of racism, but it's less systemic/endemic/widespread than in other countries (including parts of the US).

It's an opinion based on very limited data and personal observation, so take it with a grain of salt.

Not nearly as racist as the US where people of color are regularly murdered.

Just ask yourself, when was the last time something like this happened in the Netherlands? https://www.wivb.com/news/buffalo-supermarket-mass-shooting-...

I think your racism meter is mis-calibrated. Sure, the Dutch are a bit funny about all the Turks in the country, but I find their racism against the Turks to be way lower than say a lot of Americans' racism against Hispanics.

I don't think we should tell someone who implies they have experienced racism first-hand that they haven't experienced racism. Especially if the counter-argument is "other ethnicity I belong to doesn't seem to be treated that badly compared to racism against yet another ethnicity I don't belong to in a different country."

You're right, but the poster above seemed to be talking for a whole population, which I then did too by talking about Americans as a counter-example. It's just that my experience of the Netherlands isn't that they are particularly racist, but if you haven't experienced other cultures then it is easy to lose calibration. Like how a lot of Americans tend to think of the country as number one in a lot of things (e.g. education), but when you visit other countries or explore other cultures you find out your views are miscalibrated.

The Netherlands government has quite deep ties with the WEF, so expect The Netherlands to be at the forefront of pushing the WEF agenda. You can decide for yourself if that’s a good thing, but I’ve made my choice and am happy not living there anymore.

But I should add I left a couple of years before I even heard of the WEF. Me leaving The Netherlands was for other reasons.

This seems to imply normalizing scanning of private information between kids. All I see is getting them used to governmental privacy infringement early, so they won't complain about it later as adults. Very sneaky of them. Again it's "to save the children"

To clarify, the sexting part of the proposal[0] is only there to modernize. Loosely translated:

>For example, sexting is no longer punishable if this happens with consent. This is seen as sexual experimentation behavior among youth.

It has nothing to do with scanning private information. It only legalizes what would realistically never appear in court except for twisted revenge cases most of the Dutch shake their heads at (girl sends boyfriend nudes under mutual consent, they break up, now ex-boyfriend tries to accuse her of breaking the law which is technically true, but absurd).

[0]: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/seksuele-misdrijven... (Dutch)

To be clear upfront: mandatory scanning of private communication is a no go. And even child protection advocates, mostly do not demand this. So here really other interests might be leading the EC, which is bad

However, particular servers in the Netherlands have been hosting a lot of CSAM and revenge porn type of material. The EU is increasingly becoming a major host for illegal and dangerous material. This is a reality and a problem.

The problem IMHO is that it is really hard to have a reasonable discussion on how to tackle this. Reasonable voices are often the quietest.

In Germany we woke up to really bad experience with pedophiles actually loudly undermining political parties in the past (particularly the Greens). Just as a reminder: This is not all black and white.

I agree it is a problem, even more so in light of fake material looking more and more realistic, and the negative effects of social media on teens.

One of those other solutions is simply teaching teens the potential consequences of these actions. One sibling linked to an article 10 years ago. This was about the time schools in The Netherlands were filled with lectures regarding lover boys, sexual and emotional blackmail, and more. Despite that, many would still put themselves in a position a malicious person could take advantage of them, but at least you're arming teens with information on which to act autonomously.

I simply doubt the EU's proposed solution would really help prevent that many cases. It might even drive the more rebellious teens into sections of the internet where the consequences are far higher. Which makes giving up all that privacy a pretty hefty price, for both minors and adults.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com