- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
- privacy@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
- privacy@lemmy.world
I believe the current Danish chat control is still trying to convince the countries against it to change their minds by Christmas, hopefully they won’t and some of the countries for it will see sense. In the meantime it is worth noting how effective this campaign has been.
From October 8th 2025
One-man spam campaign ravages EU ‘Chat Control’ bill
A software developer from Denmark is having an outsized influence on a hotly debated law to break open encrypted apps.
BRUSSELS — A website set up by an unknown Dane over the course of one weekend in August is giving a massive headache to those trying to pass a European bill aimed at stopping child sexual abuse material from spreading online.
The website, called Fight Chat Control, was set up by Joachim, a 30-year-old software engineer living in Aalborg, Denmark. He made it after learning of a new attempt to approve a European Union proposal to fight child sexual abuse material — a bill seen by privacy activists as breaking encryption and leading to mass surveillance.
The site lets visitors compile a mass email warning about the bill and send it to national government officials, members of the European Parliament and others with ease. Since launching, it has broken the inboxes of MEPs and caused a stir in Brussels’ corridors of power.
“We are getting hundreds per day about it,” said Evin Incir, a Swedish Socialists and Democrats MEP, of the email deluge.
Three diplomats at national permanent representation offices said they too have received a large number of emails.
Joachim’s website has stoked up an already red-hot debate around the CSAM proposal, which would give police the power to force companies like WhatsApp and Signal to scan their services for the illegal content. Critics fear the bill would enable online state surveillance.
Elon Musk’s X said Monday that the bill could enable “government instituted mass surveillance,” and encrypted chat app Signal said last weekend it would pull out of Europe if the bill passed. Meta’s WhatsApp also came out against Denmark’s proposal — backing Europe’s privacy groups, which have railed against the bill ever since its conception.
EU countries are split into two camps. One side broadly backs the bill’s measures as a way to stop predators from sharing illegal content of children; the other says it would create a surveillance state and be ineffective.
Denmark proposed a new version on its first day holding the presidency of the Council of the EU in July. Danish diplomats hope to get an agreement at a meeting of ministers in Luxembourg next week, and for that, the proposal needs to get past EU ambassadors on Wednesday.
Continue reading here - https://www.politico.eu/article/one-man-spam-campaign-ravages-eu-chat-control-bill-fight-chat-control/
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Can we just get mods to delete this literal fake news title? Its not a “one man spam campaign”, its carried out by many thousands of completely independent people with the same goal. Its organized advocacy.
This is what the site does:
You choose a list of politicians you want to contact, and the issues you wish to address scpecifically. It then uses the
mailto:protocol to create a letter as the mail body, and pre-fills the address field*, and opens the result in your mail program.That’s all.
It’s arguable, but I don’t like that the article calls that spam.
Again arguable, but I also don’t like that they write “European bill aimed at stopping child sexual abuse material from spreading online”, twice. The aim is very clearly much broader, and the term “EU Chat Control” is well established and describes the desired end result much better.
* (Personally I put the addresses in the Bcc field, you might want to fix that too if you use it)
I was just going to comment this too. All the guy did is make it easy for people to email their representatives a stock letter to complain about policy they don’t like, which is something people should be doing if they don’t like a policy.
If they found they were all sent by bots with fake emails I’d buy it’s spam.
(Personally I put the addresses in the Bcc field, you might want to fix that too if you use it)
I can’t speak for the EU, but in the UK some parliament members will ignore emails that are not addressed specifically and only to them. They claim that it’s a precaution against spam 🙄
AFAIK, if you Bcc someone, to them it looks like a normal mail with only one recipient. It’s called blind carbon copy.
Possibly, I honestly can’t remember. The only emails I tend to get are either only for me, or the sort of spam where I’m in the cc field, but there are loads of problems with the email anyway.
They have the money to get multiple mail addresses if they want to avoid spam. And let’s not talk about automatic mail management
I’ve used it to send personalised emails to each representative. I don’t think it is spam.
I’d like it not to be spam really because that would undermine the emails sent by real users like me…
That said, I have sent to all eu politicians of my country both the ones for and the ones against the bill.
I have only received two replies. One personal reply from a far right politician who agrees with my concerns and one AI generated auto-reply from a central politician complaining that they get many emails of this type
