The app, which rolled out in 2027, was supposed to protect children against the dangers of the internet, and boy was it effective. The app did face some difficulties though. The Zero-Knowledge Proof mechanism, which was supposed to ensure privacy and unlinkability was never properly rolled out, but as one Eurocrat points out, it was never a mandatory or a particularly important part of the app. It was also not required by the law, so it could be safely abandoned.

Following the rollout, the children of the EU were perfectly safe on the internet. Well, most of the children anyway. Some children, particularly LGBT teens and those suffering mental health issues, found themselves locked out of important resources and online communities. One Eurocrat dismissed the criticism of this by pointing out that no one could have ever seen that coming, so you can’t exactly blame them for that.

Some smaller online communities had to shut down because of the cost of compliance, but as one European politician points out, “they were not important anyway”.

The popular app quickly found other uses too. It turns out that the tokens can contain arbitrary claim fields. In the beginning, claims were just about if the user was over the age of 18, but The Committee For Chat Control Now! quickly realised that they could be used for pretty much anything. Suspected of grooming young people? You’re banned from Discord. Or any internet forum with people under the age of 25.

Once politicians agreed that those convicted of certain offenses should be banned from sites, and saw that this was a great success, they moved on to other uses. Russian disinformation is a huge problem, so access to certain news sites should also require verification, as should posting to any news site or blog with a certain reach. Russian troll factories were soundly defeated. What a triumph.

But then the politics of verification got a little complicated. Certain politicians on the left wanted to restrict people convicted of posting “hate speech” from accessing social media entirely. Politicians on the right did not agree, but a compromise was reached. Since too many young people were trans, and that this is surely the result of extreme woke propaganda, they agreed only if access to trans content was age gated to 35+.

But now that we have reached a compromise, everything is good, and everyone agrees that implementing a system that can lock down arbitrary parts of the internet to certain individuals is a great thing. It’s such a lovely thing to see such a great example of a living, evolving piece of legislation. Can you imagine that some people believed that the first draft of the law would be permanent without any changes whatsoever? Hehe. It’s good that The Committee For Chat Control Now! reminded them that the law can change. Great civics lesson.