My response to what Ylva wrote (1):
"In my home country a for-profit company selling privacy products has launched an expensive billboard campaign against my proposal with the company name and logo on full display and sent brochures to all MEPS. Yet no one asks: is that political campaigning or commercial advertising? Is there not a conflict of interest here?"
1) It's not only this particular company which is opposing it.
2) They're not micro-targeting individuals based on their religion or other sensitive attributes. That was one of the reasons why she came under fire, and leaving this out leaves out a great deal of context.
3) They're not using the resources of the State (i.e. taxpayer money), that has to be millions of euros on advertising, to try to push through a highly controversial (and somewhat misleading) proposal which undermines fundamental rights.
"If my proposal is not adopted, we face a complete ban of the detection of child sexual abuse when the temporary legislation that allows it expires next year."
This is not true (2), it could easily be extended. Also, this hasn't been quantified, and aren't the only means to discover abuse. It's been argued throughout this entire process that this proposal is simply not proportionate and violates fundamental rights.
"Providers will be obliged to prevent abuse on their systems. If – and only if – that prevention fails could they be obliged to detect it."
Practically speaking, the Commission is always going to argue it has failed on any provider large enough to really matter. Also, nebulous attempts to "prevent abuse" sounds like a recipe for other kinds of fundamental rights violations.
"Opponents of my proposal have focused on my gender, or my appearance."
Looking at comments on Twitter, I cannot find any comment which focuses on gender, or appearance. Comments appear to be more along the lines of her being corrupt, incompetent, or evil.
In any case, facing heat is an inevitable consequence of disingenuously trying to push a proposal which impinges on people's rights. Expecting them to just roll over and take it without any show of emotion is just ridiculous.
"No individual company or organisation will benefit."
Curiously, she leaves out that people are accusing Thorn (who has high level access to her which many do not) would make money from it, and the AI investor techbro who runs it would be able to sell "AI" as a "wonder solution" more broadly.
"Yet no-one asks if these are strange bedfellows, no-one assumes Apple is drafting EDRI’s speaking points."
It's not hard to assume someone is influencing Ylva's speaking points, when she repeats what someone said line by line, word by word, uncritically, even when it comes off as completely nonsensical or irrelevant. Even mindlessly dropping in the "let victims work as police officers" proposal at one point which never really made sense.
Also, I assume that Apple didn't found this organization, and is not the primary funder of it, which I can't say the same about when it comes to some of these shadow lobbying groups, like WeProtect (founded by and it seems funded by the foreign British Government), which one of her it seems deputies is sitting on the board of.
WeProtect tries to convey the impression of being a multi-stakeholder group involving industry and others, but when you actually look into it, it is really just a government lobbying shell org. The idea that people would just ignore this sketchy looking org at such an important time is a silly one.
EDRi is not exactly my favorite org. I think they put too much faith in the State, and it is precisely State power which leads to the undermining of all the things they'd hold dear, such as fundamental rights. Nonetheless, this is a very weak insinuation from a desperate official.
As always, there is a strong stench of emotional manipulation throughout this entire article, because that is really all Ylva has.
"a new poll"
A poll which was barely warmed up, and which I casually spent a bit of time completely eviscerating as pure nonsense by a pressure group (3).
"Like the 150 experts in a recent letter."
Unlike the letter with hundreds of PhDs though (4), I recall this one includes people who work for think of the children groups (among others). It is also objectively easier to say warm fuzzy words about vague government initiatives (while not thinking of the practical implications).
1 https://commissioners.ec.europa.eu/news/setting-record-straight-2023-10-15_en
2 https://qoto.org/@olives/111240892835205013
Ylva appears to be doing the political equivalent of "no u" without realizing (or caring) that it's complete nonsense.
I imagine this disingenuous talking point probably comes from shills / lobbyists from the pressure groups which she favors, as they sound awfully similar to the most bad faith one of all. #chatcontrol