zlacker

>>mmaria+(OP)
Basically every new law, piece of news or media I see coming from the UK paints a picture of a beat-down, cynical & scared society that's complacent to or in support of increasing surveillance and control by the government. Like maybe Adolescence or basically any mention of the NHS. The crimes they cite like child grooming or terrorism/hate being incited sound pretty terrible too, but I wonder why the UK specifically is taking action - is the issue bigger there, or are they just more aware of and willing to act on it.

>>zapthe+zf
> I wonder why the UK specifically is taking action - is the issue bigger there, or are they just more aware of and willing to act on it.

Other countries are moving in the same direction. The EU has repeatedly tried to push things like on device scanning or banning encryption.

> Basically every new law, piece of news or media I see coming from the UK paints a picture of a beat-down, cynical & scared society that's complacent to or in support of increasing surveillance and control by the government.

Mostly a failure of democracy - we have two major parties that are hard to tell apart.

They are both cynical and scared, and have for decades believed the future of Britain is managed decline. They also strongly believe the hoi polloi have to be forced to do what is good for them - e.g. the sugar tax and other "nudge politics", or the currently Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill which is basically about imposing central policy on how children are brought up and educated.

>>graeme+b51
The EU is also increasingly against free speech. It turns out banning hate speech was a slippery slope to government overreach after all. Huh.

>>j-krie+8q2
Besides the never-ending back-and-forth between the EC and the EP [1] what are the latest anti-free-speech moves you've seen in the EU?

Germany's gotten more freedom online since the EU DSA forced them to abandon their idiotic strict liability law for online activities [2]. You can't criticize Israel, but you never could - that's not a new thing.

[1] basically "Can we have mass surveillance now, pretty please?" "No and fuck off" "Please please please please please?" "No" "How about now?"

[2] they would trace the activity as far as they could, and whoever they couldn't trace further beyond was automatically fully liable for that activity. Public wifi was effectively illegal, because you'd suffer the full consequences for anything anyone did with the connection, until a few years ago when they carved out an exception, but it still remained generally illegal to share a connection in other circumstances until the DSA.