turbinemonkey

Oh, stop. Tinfoil-hatting like this is how privacy and internet freedom activism gets a bad rap.

QWAC certs are only for "high value" sites: banks, government services, etc. They can only be issued by "Qualified Trust Service Providers" (e.g. digisign, D-TRUST, etc -- not governments), and cost many hundreds of euros. Your blog and mastodon instance and 98% of businesses just aren't affected.

People operating in "high risk" sectors that need access to payment infra (porn, drugs, etc) are, as always, going to have a hard time. That's a worthy conversation, but nothing about QWAC or eIDAS is about "the government not issuing certs to people they don't like".

QWACs exist to provide a more stringent and user-accessible way to assert a website's identity, mostly to foil phishing and other exploits that regular certificate systems don't address well. Where does this cross into censorship at all?

Heritage has been laying waste to America my whole life. They basically planned all of Reagan's legislative agenda, too, just like Project 2025 is doing today. In very real ways, they and their vision are America (a system is what it does, not what it says it does).

    Compare this to what the EU built. The EU Digital Identity Wallet under eIDAS 2.0 is open-source, self-hostable, and uses zero-knowledge proofs. You can prove you're over 18 without revealing your birth date, your name, or anything else. No per-check fees, no proprietary SDKs, no data going to a vendor's cloud. The EU's Digital Services Act puts age verification obligations on Very Large Online Platforms (45M+ monthly users), not on operating systems. FOSS projects that don't act as intermediary services are explicitly outside scope. Micro and small enterprises get additional exemptions.

    The US bills assume every operating system is built by a corporation with the infrastructure and revenue to absorb these costs. The EU started from the opposite assumption and built accordingly.

Just another reminder of how we need to protect what we have in the EU (not a guarantee, but at least a chance of fair dealing and a sustained commitment to civic values). Now that the mask has fully fallen, we have to take every step possible to root out American influence.

There's tons of people making more within the Microsoft/Oracle/SAP/Apple/etc ecosystems than employees of those companies, too. This is different insofar as the market was not intentionally created, but it's hard to blame him for "exploiting" the circumstances.

I'm well aware of the issues that some designers have with 99designs and such. I have sent briefs to recommended local designers, but they're either unwilling to work within my budget, or ask for unworkable terms (e.g. no revisions).

Given that, I don't see how I have any other recourse. So far, the traditional designer/client relationship certainly hasn't served me well.