cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/25779751
The intative promises to be privacy-friendly with no tracking. Stating:
Your privacy is important. The WiFi4EU app ensures a private online experience with no tracking or data collection. Simply connect and enjoy free public Wi-Fi without concerns.
Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/wifi4eu-citizens
Will be interesting to see how this spans and plays out in reality. Looks promising too, did a quick scan of their builtin permissions and trackers and looks good too. (Scanning tool is called Exodus)
That’s cool. Here in the US, we’re this close to banning vaccines. *sad trombone sound
Having a union-wide regulatory framework for soda bottle caps, or mandatory categorization of cucumbers seems a lot less like a government overreach in comparison. Thanks, I guess… 🥲
oh dude, they promised to be privacy friendly! maybe I’m just too american to believe in promises.
The EU is almost just as bad, I know the bar is high compared to the US, but still.
There are tons of things the EU is doing well, dude.
From resisting the technocapitalist rethoric of the US, to standing up against imperial bullies like Russia.
I’m not saying it is perfect, nothing is. But sometimes it feels like the EU is the only reasonable beacon in a sea of corruption.
The EU only cares about blocking the private sector from getting their citizen’s data. They actively harm privacy when it’s about government access
Title is wrong. It’s an old initiative, not even funded anymore. Ran from 2018 to 2020 with 120 Million EUR.
A bit offtopic about a pet peeve of mine, but this is why it’d be super nice if social media that end up getting screenshot had absolute timestamps. Thank you for letting us know.
my bad! I misread the context and had not heard of it before - yet living in the EU. I will change the title. I got confused as I saw their post on LinkedIn, and it was posted recently: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/european-commission_wifi4eu-activity-7359136374895046656-oXYi
Well I don’t know if that’s a good use of EU money. I’d rather see investments in large and difficult infrastructure, rail, software, datacenters, industrial sectors we’re currently lacking, grid investments - stuff like that.
End user internet access is more like thousands of small decentralised projects. The coordination might make it easier to use compared to if everyone did their own free wifi project, but that’s such a small benefit…
As always, it’s not like both aren’t possible. As a matter of fact, there is a lot of railway projects ongoing at the same time, to only quote one of your examples.
A government can take care of more than one issue at a time, luckily.
It may be a small benefit for you (I assume you are german based on your server), but not every european country or citizen has the same access to internet. This is a good initiative, but obviously not primarily intended for the richer citizens/countries of the union.
