Holy shit, have y'all seen Sánchez's Davos speech? Man really got up there and proposed making anonymity illegal on social media. Not just "we need better moderation" - straight up "one government ID, one account" dystopian nonsense.
Like yeah, misinformation and bots are problems. But his solution? Force everyone to link their social accounts to an "European Digital Identity Wallet." Want to keep your work life separate from your shitposting? Too bad, that's illegal now. Need anonymity because you're LGBT+ in a conservative area? Get fucked, government needs your papers. He claims it’ll only be platforms which see the real id, but we know no systems are secure. And it makes decentralized networks illegal too!
But wait, it gets better! He also wants to make platform CEOs personally liable when users break "laws and norms." THE NORMS. Not just illegal content - the fucking NORMS. It's like throwing Verizon's CEO in jail because someone planned a crime over the phone.
The only way ANY platform could operate under these rules would be to completely block European users. Twitter, Reddit, Discord - boom, gone. Or they become heavily censored government-ID-required wastelands.
And the real kicker? He buried some actually decent ideas about algorithmic transparency in between these two absolute nightmares. Like yeah, we should know how these platforms decide what content to promote. But holy hell, way to poison the well by sandwiching it between "papers please" and "jail CEOs for bad vibes."
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/01/davos-2025-special-address-pedro-sanchez-prime-minister-spain/
