The nerds and their thought leaders b... business leaders often proclaim a "paradigm shift", "transformative development" and other platitudes when some consumer technology becomes omnipresent. European union is no different: the "precautionary principle" with product safety and/or environmental impact is notably absent when internet "services" are concerned.
The nerds also had an opportunity to develop tools for safety of children to exposure of unsuitable content, but were not interested due to infantile, ignorant and naive attitudes towards "freedom". The result of a failure to protect the weak, has been an erosion of privacy for all.
Now we have the prospect of supra-state surveillance such as age verification. Maybe better late than never although the nerds are quick to write crtiques (e.g. 'electronic frontier foundation': parts one, political context; two, age verification software; three, alternatives to age verification), like the open source software evangelists, the nerds have lost the initiative to the politicians and their business friends.
Military war has always been an "accelerant" to scientific progress; it should never surprise that the two &emdash;together with politics&emdash; are in-extricably connected. The notion that Iran should never develop the knowledge of atomic bomb weaponry, seems discriminatory. European supremacy is a ship that has sailed...
To lament the demise of 'xitter' on yet another commercial service, is to forget root cause analysis. Teachers have been in this situation before, most memorably with the 'tes community fora'; content had been contributed freely for many years, then abruptly closed by the (commercial) owner. A solution to this problem is to use open source, decentralised social media, but edu-celebrities are unsurprisingly resistant to the concept.
