Every day we get closer to an Orwellian society. The United Kingdom may already be one.
US big tech is influencing europe to do the same as the us, and opening them up for absolute power.
the only way out is to stop being US vassals.
No. This is a very naive & dated way of thinking about the world of today. We don’t really have distinct borders distinguishing politicians at that level.
It’s more accurate to say the Davos group is ruling all western nations. What looks like separate world leaders and parties is actually one world-spanning organization of those with power. And what’s worse, they’re all Nazis and technocrats.
The Nazis learned from WW2. If you invade a country, the people fight back. If you groom and install/bribe your own people into leadership positions, the people just let it happen.
big US capitalists are the ones ruling western nations (and the third world, through neocolonialism). other western oligarchs might play a role.
in this case, europe doesn’t have its own big tech that compares to the US’s, and i don’t think they are allowed to.
i don’t think they are relying on a formal, yearly summit to do so either. the real politics are made behind close doors, and i doubt there’s a public list anywhere of the people coming to agreements on how to direct their power.
i will agree they are fascists who learned their lesson from nazi mistakes.
They don’t need their own tech companies. Europe has its own oligarchs. They’re the problem.
being independent is better, but oligarchs are a real problem aren’t they. we really gotta figure this shit out.
I’m not going to defend the US and it’s tech oligarchs, they are all shit, but the way things are going, the EU and the UK are currently in way worse shape than the US in terms of all this 1984 bullshit.
No country is safe from this anymore, and we may very well be looking at the worse time to be alive when it comes to privacy, regardless of where you live.
I highly doubt it’s the worse time. There used to be no concept of privacy you lived in a small town everyone knew everything and you lived in a one room house and familys had on bed for everything. There would have been no privacy at all.
That’s an opinion lol
We deff have it better now with corpo and goverment replacing family and the hood
You do make a good point. However, consider the fact that you could talk with your wife, kids, friends or anyone for that matter, and the only way someone else would find out was if one of the parties involved told someone else or if you were too loud for someone else to listen. Now we have to go fully out of our way to keep anything under wraps, and even then, there’s no guarantee that nobody else knows.
I firmly believe this is the worst the world has ever been for privacy and individualism, and everything points to that everything is going to be worse moving forward.
Additionally, it’s highly that any of us lived through those times you mentioned, so I’m speaking from my own life experience, and I’m over half a century old.
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The olygarch’s have ruined everything again?
The tree of freedom must periodically be watered with the blood of tyrants.
Also the problem with wealth. No more overthrowing the rich happening.
zoinks
As a US citizen, pray for us 🙏
Almost the entire western world is going authoritarian. Very worrying trend. It has to be stopped.
the only thing that can really stop it IMO is mainstreaming decentralized social media and messaging services.
You’d need to effectively replace Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Whatsapp etc… The only thing that totally keeps us from 1984 is that all these platforms for now have decided to be relatively free and impartial (compared to how bad it could be). But that could change at any time if the powers that be decide to on a whim. They could completely ban all privacy, pacificsm or any kind of political opposition tomorrow.
No it won’t stop it. Blood and violence is needed but we are sheep.
From the fact Britain produced Orwell, Huxley’s Brave New World, and Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta, I figure the UK has always been some shade of “Orwellian”.
Historically, the UK has always been very self assured in their goals and never looked for outside input while disregarding the people that they were upending. Anyone who wasn’t helping them was viewed as an enemy to be controlled, oppressed , or destroyed. If that isn’t a non-political explanation of rightwing authoritarianism, I’m not sure what is.
The UK ain’t part of the EU mate
the EU is eyeing similar rules
It’s worse in Germany.
France is doing the exact same shit as the UK with age verification…
Not officially, but the same powerful monied interests control both.
Not any more 😭
Old enough to remember how Europeans smugly thought that they lived in some sort of an enlightened and free society.
Now do Russia and and china
Having supposed freedumbs is literally what y’all have been braying made the West different from Russia and China.
So where is the distinction then
The distinction with China is in actual human rights like people being able to afford housing, food, and education. People not having to worry about losing their job and ending up on the street or being able to retire in dignity.
Whataboutism
No… Just exposing bias of the commenter.
Russia and china good
Westoid regime bad
Imagine simping for some gereatric strong men as an adult 🤡
Lol. Incoherent
No one in those countries believes that they live in a free, enlightened society…
But the west always portrayed otself in such a light… Now everyone knows their politics are just as ugly as Chinas, Irans or Russias politics.
I don’t see anyone in US LARPing freedom bullshit since at least covid lol
Well besides regime whores on tv… But that’s a different story
But in us unlike china or russia, shit posters don’t get charges or at least not nearly as much for saying stupid shit online. People in russia peope get prison for being anti war.
lmfao people literally get arrested for social media posts in UK and Germany
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My comment likewise touches on the fact that people living under western regimes are disappeared in regular course of business. In fact, there’s far more evidence for people disappearing without any reasonable grounds in the west than there are in China.
If this was true, half of Lemmy would be in Gitmo already
Does china have a place like reddit or fediverse?
Link it up!
On average, US security forces summarily execute three people a day.
someone here talking facts. this is true. prolly around 1k per year
A friend of mine travelled to China, to talk about politics with locals they used his phone because they were afraid of their govt listening in. So yeah maybe the EU/US ain’t so bad.
I do agree. But calling the UK Orwellian is kind of funny, given Orwell’s 1984 is largely, if not mostly, based on the UK:
- Like Winston, Orwell worked in the UK as a war propagandist, and lamented that he constantly had to lie and censor facts, but thought it worth it to defeat the Nazis.
- The ‘ministries’ were entirely based on the UK’s, especially e.g. the ‘Ministry of Defense’ actually being a ministry of war.
- Orwell complained that the UK secret police constantly opened all his letters because he was a commie.
- Room 101 and the Ministry of Truth is basically just satire of the BBC.
As well as cultural changes in the 80s-90s, I think people don’t quite realise how much the internet ‘escaped’ the grasp of governments for the past few decades. By constantly banging the drum of “what about the children D:”, governments are finally just catching up to where we used to be.
Surpassing where we used to be in that regard as in the mean time they have been busy locking down controls over other facets of society.
We are living in Orwellian society, it’s just the news catching up with reality.
The news has been trying to obfuscate this awareness for as long as possible.
It has been effective but every day more people take notice.
The EU is using genocide censorship as an excuse to abort all “freedom” laws. A hillarious twist.
I am not aware of any western country that isn’t a police state.
The reason the police state gets worse and worse is simply that our glouriouss western countries shift closer and closer to fascism every day.
Unfortunately that doesn’t only impact privacy but also stuff like state repression or presence of state thugs.
To quote very smart people:
OOONEEE SOLLUTION
REEEVOLUTIONI hope for a revolution, but as for my country (Italy), too many people have been brainwashed by mainstream media’s pro-European and Atlanticist propaganda. We call them “euroinomani” (“euro “drug” addicts”)
I’m quite curious to see how it will end in the UK with the porn filters because the people don’t seem to be inclined to use their IDs online, the system is brittle, and non-porn websites are being blocked too.
As a Brit who has seen the UK government’s ill thought through and unworkable attempts at police state bullshit go through the process a few times now, I’m going to predict: VPN use goes up massively, the government starts talking about banning VPNs without considering that this would break half the internet, then some wealthy business donor has a quiet word to them because businesses need VPNs to function, but they can’t publicly back down because they already called everyone who opposed it a pedo. So they pick one or two VPN companies (whichever ones have the most foreign-sounding names), have the tabloids run a propaganda campaign about how evil they are, then ban them even though they aren’t based in the UK and it makes no difference to anything, then they’ll claim they won and the laws will stay on the books forever but nobody will bother to enforce them and everything will carry on as before.
then some wealthy business donor has a quiet word to them because businesses need VPNs to function
A little credit here. They’d rephrase the law to only target VPNs whose purpose is offering as a service to the general public (as opposed to exclusively employees and contractors) the ability to connect to a private network with exit points / the ability to appear as if their traffic originates from outside of the UK.
On a related matter they could also require know your customer for all VPNs, require all VPNs keep logs available on request for police inspection and those who don’t are banned. All companies keep extensive logs for corporate VPNs so this wouldn’t present any additional burden to private enterprise but would be the end of anonymous VPN services.
I really don’t think this is more of the spectacle and move on. Not this time. I think Palestine has them spooked because they lost control of the narrative and the best way to seize control of the internet and clamp down on people conveying information they don’t like is starting with things like this.
Sign ups for Swiss VPN providers from the UK are up massively, nobody will use their ID for porn.
Must be a great time to be in þe VPN market.
For the age verification is it possible to sign a petition? I think is not too late to join forces… or anything but not letting them go further… as of the chat control probably only contacting the representatives. I really hope lawyers and businessmen try to fight it…
Orwell never could have imagined society as it exists currently.
https://chng.it/YtL2XwbwBc There is already a petition. I’m posting it here.
Share the good work!
Oh yeah, I should post about my arrest
Sounds like there’s a story waiting to be unleashed. Please continue.
Took a while to get it all down but I’ve posted it here: https://hexbear.net/post/5776309
It’s a post in itself and I only got about half of it down before work, so I’ll drop a link here after I finish it tonight.
Have you already written to your members of parliament about chat control, and possibly other matters? Seriously, do it. There is very little you can do, but this might actually help. Slightly. Maybe.
