ruination

Same. I'd rather they not exist, but if they must, better that it isn't under big tech's grubby palms.

Technically true, but in practice, it's very vulnerable to conglomeration of power by a few. Social media, for one: it's not exactly a matter of quality to get users to use your platform. Beyond a certain threshold of minimum quality, people use and stay on a certain platform because the people they know are on it, such that it becomes a chicken and egg problem. Other than that, Google have such a ludicrous market share of web advertising (which unfortunately remains the primary method of monetising the web) that it's very difficult to not use Google's advertising, giving them immense power to surveil and monitor people. Google Chrome, which remains the most popular browser for reasons that elude me, has so much sway over the internet that it had the courage to even propose the idea of WEI. The infrastructure on which the entite internet runs are controlled by just a handful of massive ISPs, yet another centralisation of power.

I'd imagine if, say Signal, refuses to comply and gets banned from the EU, one could always use a VPN. I think that nothing short of either a full global ban or implementing a version of The Great Wall of China would allow these ridiculous laws to be enforced. Even then, there will always be ways around it for those willing to go the extra mile.

Honestly, they could at least wait and see what happens in the UK before proposing something similar. They literally have a free guinea pig next door.

It's such a shame though, since as far as I know, the EU have had such an amazing track record. I'd expect no less from big tech, but not the EU.

I wish people who proposes laws and regulations that violates human rights with provable intent to do just that would be fined or imprisoned.

Even more reason for me to never get a car!

Are adblockers even illegal? I didn't think it was.

I know that some manufacturers ship QubesOS, those are intended for people with high threat models afaik.

Time to poison their data, I guess.

Ah, that's understandable. My native tongue doesn't really have gendered pronouns so they/them feels right at home for me (though ironically, the people in my country are mostly conservative and bigoted and wouldn't accept nonbinary)

I keep it simple and default to they/them unless they mention some specific preference. Doesn't matter if they appear to be very traditionally masculine or feminine, or anything in between.