I find the person’s answer very disturbing and twisted:

The battle that can still be won is over whether using them stays a free choice.

Note how he/she is speaking as if EU was Russia. There’s a regime that governs on us; we can try to fight it. This is not democracy, where the goverment represents the people and the people’s will. Either – very likely – this person has simply accepted (and I don’t know how good such an attitude is) that EU is not a democracy; or they have unclear ideas about democracy.

“Unless strictly necessary, proportionate and provided by law”: this is not our invention and not undefined. It is the limitation test of Article 52(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the standard the Court of Justice applies to every restriction of fundamental rights.

Well they don’t write that in the initiative’s text. They just say “unless provided by law”. This means that if a law passes that mandates chat control, or age-verification for accessing all internet, then it’s OK with them – it’s provided by law now.

I stand corrected, they specify “Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights” in the Annex. But I still think this is poorly written: why not explicitly mentioning the main message of those Articles in the main text? That “unless provided by law” in the main text is extremely ambiguous without the Annex.

It’s surely important to spread an anti-misinformation campaign!

No, we don’t; it’s exactly as you say. My impression is that this is something organized by the pro-chat-control and pro-age-verification lobbies, to deceive with words people who are against. They get them to sign and then they can say “people signed for this!”.

This initiative is just a smokescreen; it actually pushes things down the slippery slope.

Citizens must not be forced to identify themselves to access lawful online content or services unless strictly necessary, proportionate and provided by law. The legislation should require anonymous or pseudonymous proof-of-age, data minimisation, selective disclosure

Define “necessary”. Define “by law”. The pushers for proof-of-age already say it’s anonymous – but it can’t be.