Listening to podcasts comes pretty easy to me. Chat control is a outrageous piece of privacy-violating (privacy-ending even, when it comes to online chat) leglislation which must be stopped. (How bad? Bad enough that it goes against the Universal declaration of human rights.) We made an episode of Kodsnack about it, and I have listened to several other podcast episodes discussing it in depth.
But this one, I suddenly find myself bracing for. It is the podcast episode I have been hoping for, one where Ylva Johansson - the driving politician behind this insanity - talks to someone with deep technical knowledge, someone who is also able to explain technical issues and their consequences in a fantastic way. That some one is in this case the excellent security expert and technology inspirer Karl Emil Nikka. Simply put, it is one of those dream cases.
"Surely, if Ylva just got to talk to the right person, she would understand the problem?"
That is rarely the case of course, and the podcast is much too short to have the time to dig into very many things at all. So I am excited to hear what and how Karl Emil says and how Ylva might respond, but I am also set up to be disappointed. Part of me just wants to dig in and wonder if Ylva actually believes the thing she is pushing for, if she has read and understands all of it, if she has consulted any technical experts before, and wonder if she has been handed this whole thing by someone with profit or power motives of their own.
But what good does that kind of thinking do me? Demonizing the person who disagrees you is one of the great problems of our times. So what to do instead? Listen more to people, I think. Stop bracing and start listening. And, in the ever-challenging step two, preferably start actually interacting with people of like and differing views. Do some part to get involved and, hopefully, nudge things a little bit in the right direction in a constructive way.
Stop bracing and start listening. Just half an hour, you can do it!
Then … find out how to leave feedback to some EU parliamentarian I guess? Make voice heard and all that.
Try to make the world a slightly better place.