Chat Control: Why Europe's Proposal Will Cripple European Communication Industry
5 hours ago
- #EU Regulation
- #Digital Privacy
- #Child Protection
- The European Council will vote on 'Chat Control' proposal 11596/25 on October 14th, which could dismantle decentralized messaging in Europe.
- The proposal requires platforms to scan for child sexual abuse material, including private chats before encryption, raising surveillance concerns.
- The regulation's technical demands are unworkable for open, federated protocols like XMPP, as they cannot control all clients or encrypted content.
- Legitimate services, such as medical messaging, would face broken confidentiality without effectively monitoring out-of-band transfers.
- Criminals can bypass scanning via distributed architecture, external encryption, or modified clients, making the regulation ineffective.
- The proposal structurally advantages US tech giants over European alternatives due to compliance complexity and costs.
- European decentralized messaging ecosystems, like XMPP and Matrix, may be forced to shut down or migrate to centralized platforms.
- The regulation risks crippling Europe's communication infrastructure while failing to protect children as intended.