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Comment by pzo | Hacker News Reader

> I don't see a way out of this except government regulation.

IMHO governments are partially behind those initiatives so they are unlikely to regulate themself- reason in last few years they intensified work on Digital ID, Age Verification, Chat control, KYC, etc.

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EU is schizophrenic enough that it often produces very conflicting directions, opinions and policies.

One thing EU loves is regulation though, so I expect they will introduce preemptive regulations to enforce strict ID verification as well as regulations to fine big companies for breaching user privacy with strict ID verification policies.

ID verification for app stores already discussed and voted behind closed-doors trilogue meetings, unelected governments like darkness:

https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/end-of-chat-control-eu-parl...

"Next up in the ongoing trilogue, lawmakers will negotiate whether messenger and chat services, as well as app stores, will be legally obliged to implement age verification."

For the limits on side-loading in particular, there are a few southeast asian nations (I can't recall, Vietnam? Thailand?) where almost all internet access is via Android, including banking. And social engineering fraud, where they call someone up, pretend to be the bank, and get them to side-load malware, has become a major financial, and political problem.

AIUI, they have told Google to find a fix, or else.

> pretend to be the bank, and get them to side-load malware, has become a major financial, and political problem.

I been living in SE Asia for few years each in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and really didn't notice that this is supposed to be like major political problem.

'Fraud' is the same smoke screen and excuse as 'protect the children from social media or pedophiles'.

I can't find it now, but the article I read seemed to say that the gov was specifically upset about the banking issue, and might tell the banks they can't allow apps anymore.

Someone has to stop the pedophiles from using social media to scam vulnerable children out of their millions of hard earned robux.

There are different governments and different subdivisions within any given government. The only thing you need to get a government that had been pushing Chat Control to do some trust busting is to get more votes.

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