It’s amazing how few people know this very basic fact about EU regulation yet are so quick to criticize it. Internet in a nutshell I guess…

Phone number requirement is there to avoid spam, isn’t it? How else would you do it?

Privacy is not free, you can’t just get it by choosing the right phone. Sadly everything is set up today to gather as many info about you as possible. If you want to avoid it you have to make some compromises.

Everyone one is already giving all their data to google/facebook/tiktok/amazon. Why would you care about average internet user?

Wait until they figure out you can browse youtube without logging in.

But we’ll still be able to buy new phone every year, right?

The only collective effect I can think of is that if everyone would start blocking ads google and others would crack down on ad-blockers and it would be more difficult for us to use them. Let the sheep feed google so it doesn’t care about the 1% that’s currently hiding.

Google is so embedded in most stock Android version it’s pretty much impossible to lock it all out. Google assistant, Gboard, RCS, location services… You can start disabling it all manually but there’s a big chance you will miss something ot some update will just enable it back for you.

I think it will be exactly the same as with current web in general. 99% of people mindlessly consume YT influencers, disinformation on facebook, watch all the adds and buy everything they see in them. What percentage of Americans believed in QAnon? 25%? These people stopped thinking for themselves years ago. It’s hard to believe AI will make it worse. At the same time everyone who avoids all this shit will also find it easy to avoid AI generated content. It’s not like AI will start posting on lemmy and turn all or us into Trump supporters.

It’s actually pretty big problem in Spain. I have to keep blocking spam numbers. I think it’s the same in Poland. EU is not regulating this, it’s up to individual governments and some are not handling it well.