To clarify for fellow readers, since this is a messy situation:
This is about a new temporary measure to legally allow instant-messaging providers to scan their users' messages. Providers lost that legal right when the previous interim act (the Interim Derogation of the ePrivacy Directive, sometimes called "Chat Control 1.0") expired on 4 April 2026. Several large providers have said they'll keep scanning regardless.
This is only one piece of a bigger effort. For years the Commission has been trying to put a more permanent regime in place (the CSA Regulation, or "Chat Control 2.0") without success.
As both a lawyer and a software engineer, I don't understand why big tech and EC want to scan messages, if they actually want to combat online abuse. The research points the other way:
- Most messages on these services are end-to-end encrypted, so they can't be scanned at all (assuming the E2EE is implemented correctly). The Commission itself says 70% of messages on popular chat platforms are E2EE [1].
- Instant messaging isn't the main distribution channel for CSAM in the first place, per data from the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children [2].
So the evidence points to low overall efficacy for message scanning against its stated goal of combating online child sexual abuse.
I don't think it'll pass this time. What worries me more is the spread of mandatory age-verification laws worldwide. That train is already going full steam ahead..
Given the insistance to pass this and the will of EU enforcement agencies to be able to monitor all communications in a Stasi-like manner, there is a large chance that the EC is applying the "salami technique" here.
First, install a monitoring system "for the kids", then you can expand for surveillance, and repression of incorrect political thought. Just like what China and Russia are doing, which has started the same.
You could additionally point out that most EU states are DEfunding helping actual victims of CSAM. Because they are. So is the UK, for what it's worth.
This supposed goal of the legislation never even gets mentioned in the discussions about these laws.
Which seems to go further into that direction you're pointing to as well: this is about scanning all instant messages across the entire EU, for reasons other than protecting children. They don't even discuss actually protecting children.
I'd say this is more about being able to identify and crush any nascent political movements that threaten the status quo in their infancy, but no reason not to let the implementers wet their beak to get buy in.
This is bullshit. No "nascent political movement" spread with user-to-user end-to-end encrypted messages. People spread their shitty opinions as loudly as they can on public platforms. Those already scanned.
I don't think the concern here is scanning messages for "incorrect political thought", when people willingly yell their shitty opinions through Twitter/Reddit for maximum exposure. It's not like people are discreet with this shit.
What huge tech companies and the comissioners they lobby with actually want is more avenues of data collection, particularly people that they can't reach as easily.
> I don't understand why big tech and EC want to scan messages
I believe that's a form of corporate greenwashing. If you can prove your claims that you do everything in your power to prevent abusive materials, you're going to get less attention from annoying authorities next time a pedo network/terrorist cell hits the news.
Aside from that, there are a lot of well-meaning people who want to try every little thing to help stop horrific abuse. Police investigations are happening too slowly (if at all); if the police won't help solve the problem, going the civil route may help, even if just a little. I think it's an act of desperation rather than malice. Plus, just like there are plenty of people who say "they've got nothing to hide, I don't need encryption", there are plenty of people who feel like a tech panopticon is worth it if it catches some abuse cases. Besides, in cases like these, scientific evidence often doesn't matter as much as the emotion behind proposals, and most messaging providers couldn't appear more devoid of emotion if they tried.
I don't agree with the idea to scan every message for various reasons. If the police won't investigate criminals with the massive amount of power they already possess, overwhelming them with "abusive" material from an algorithm is only going to make it harder to filter out the real criminals. Plus, if a few large providers do it, that will put pressure on all the other providers that don't do it (see, for instance, that time they arrested the CEO of Telegram for not volunteering information without a warrant, like other messaging providers seem to do).
But, as much as I disagree, I do understand where those people are coming from. And then there are also the blatant comic-book villains that just want totalitarian government control over all information exchange, of course.
Working on Gaming Couch, a web-based local multiplayer party game platform. It's like a lovechild of Jackbox Games and Mario Party: https://gamingcouch.com. More specifically I'm currently working on the 3rd party development tools so in the future anyone can make their game dev dreams a reality and make a simple and fun multiplayer party game for the Gaming Couch platform, ideally in only one weekend! If you're a game dev or aspiring to be one and want to develop and ship your own party game, check out https://gamingcouch.com/developers
The TL;DR of Gaming Couch:
- Currently in free Early Access with 19 competitive mini-games.
- Players use their mobile phones as controllers (you can use game pads as well!)
- Everything is completely web-based, no downloads or installs are necessary to play
- All games support up to 8 players at a time and are action based, with quick ~one minute rounds to keep a good pace. This means there are no language based trivia or asynchronous games!
Working on Gaming Couch, a web-based local multiplayer party game platform. It's like a lovechild of Jackbox Games and Mario Party: https://gamingcouch.com. Three months ago, back in December, Gaming Couch hit the front page of Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46344573). We've had an amazing time since, with each month more and more people finding the platform, enjoying the games and giving awesome feedback!
At the moment working on the 3rd party development tools so in the future anyone can make their game dev dreams a reality and make a simple and fun multiplayer party game for the Gaming Couch platform, ideally in only one weekend!
If you're an interested game dev that would like to beta test the dev tools, hit me up either here, via Discord (link available from https://gamingcouch.com) or by emailing me at gc[dot]community[at]gamingcouch[dot]com!
The TL;DR of Gaming Couch:
- Currently in free Early Access with 18 competitive mini-games.
- Players use their mobile phones as controllers (you can use game pads as well!)
- Everything is completely web-based, no downloads or installs are necessary to play
- All games support up to 8 players at a time and are action based, with quick ~one minute rounds to keep a good pace. This means there are no language based trivia or asynchronous games!
Still working on Gaming Couch, a web-based local multiplayer party game platform. It's like a lovechild of Jackbox Games and Mario Party: https://gamingcouch.com. Back in December Gaming Couch hit the front page of Hacker News, you can check it out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46344573
At the moment working on the 3rd party development tools so in the future anyone can make their game dev dreams a reality and make a simple and fun multiplayer party game for the Gaming Couch platform, ideally in only one weekend!
If you're an interested game dev that would like to beta test the dev tools, hit me up either here, via Discord (link available from https://gamingcouch.com) or by emailing me at gc[dot]community[at]gamingcouch[dot]com!
The TL;DR of Gaming Couch:
- Currently in free Early Access with 18 competitive mini-games.
- Players use their mobile phones as controllers (you can use game pads as well!)
- Everything is completely web-based, no downloads or installs are necessary to play
- All games support up to 8 players at a time and are action based, with quick ~one minute rounds to keep a good pace. This means there are no language based trivia or asynchronous games!
Very cool! Opened a PR to add my local multiplayer game platform, Gaming Couch (https://gamingcouch.com), to the list of games :) Just recently posted a ShowHN post about it which hit the front page and generated so much great feedback and discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46344573
In a nutshell its a web-based game platform where up to 8 players use their smartphones as controllers to play real-time action mini-games on a central browser screen. It takes a lot of inspiration from classic party games like Jackbox, Mario Party and Mario Kart.
I saw your post a while back and decided to try out your game while a few friends were over. Everyone had a blast! Great work on the game, looking forward to more modes in the future :)
Awesome to hear! Bunch of new things in plans for the near future, including 3rd party dev tools so that other devs can also make new games for the platform. Hopefully a lot more games to play after that :)
I'm building a web-based local multiplayer party game platform. It's like a lovechild of Jackbox Games and Mario Party: https://gamingcouch.com. Back in December Gaming Couch hit the front page of Hacker News, you can check it out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46344573
The TL;DR:
- Currently in free Early Access with 18 competitive mini-games.
- Players use their mobile phones as controllers (you can use game pads as well!)
- Everything is completely web-based, no downloads or installs are necessary to play
- All games support up to 8 players at a time and are action based, with quick ~one minute rounds to keep a good pace. This means there are no language based trivia or asynchronous games!
- In the future the plan is to open up the platform for 3rd party developers (and Gamejams!) as well. We'd take care of the network connectivity, controllers etc.. 3rd party devs can focus on developing cool multiplayer mini-games without spending an eternity with networking code and building the infrastructure.
Hey! Thanks for the detailed feedback, really appreciate it.
I agree with you that making games that appease everybody will not work in the long run. Did your friends give any examples of why they hated 75% of the games? Was it too much the same (e.g. too many variations of the Party Car games) or just didn't overall like the competitivness?
Wrt the lag you mentioned, that's interesting if you had such a varied experience in the same network. Is it possible that some had VPN's in use? That could be one explanation for the variance.
Also, not sure if applicable but just putting it out there that I've noticed a bug with Android+Firefox browser where the ping-indicator does not work and keeps showing +1000ms regardless of what the actual ping is. But sounds like that was not the issue here.
I actually looked at the dev competition they had! The problem was that Discord activities don't support the use of WebRTC as they require all network calls to go through their proxy. This makes real-time gaming a bit harder to implement
This is about a new temporary measure to legally allow instant-messaging providers to scan their users' messages. Providers lost that legal right when the previous interim act (the Interim Derogation of the ePrivacy Directive, sometimes called "Chat Control 1.0") expired on 4 April 2026. Several large providers have said they'll keep scanning regardless.
This is only one piece of a bigger effort. For years the Commission has been trying to put a more permanent regime in place (the CSA Regulation, or "Chat Control 2.0") without success.
As both a lawyer and a software engineer, I don't understand why big tech and EC want to scan messages, if they actually want to combat online abuse. The research points the other way:
- Most messages on these services are end-to-end encrypted, so they can't be scanned at all (assuming the E2EE is implemented correctly). The Commission itself says 70% of messages on popular chat platforms are E2EE [1].
- Instant messaging isn't the main distribution channel for CSAM in the first place, per data from the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children [2].
So the evidence points to low overall efficacy for message scanning against its stated goal of combating online child sexual abuse.
I don't think it'll pass this time. What worries me more is the spread of mandatory age-verification laws worldwide. That train is already going full steam ahead..
[1] https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/internal-security...
[2] Page 18, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...
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