America, Great Britain, and the EU are all creating tracking, monitoring, and censorship regulations. All at the same time.
We're turning the internet into the 1984 inevitability it was predicted to become.
We need a Bill of Rights against this. But the public is too lay to push for this. Bolstering or eroding privacy rights will never happen in the direction we want, only the one we don't. It's so frustrating.
That said, the UK doesn't need much convincing in this regard I suppose, they've always had their fair share of extreme laws along these lines and Leyen has personally dreamt of this for ages.
Where are the celebrities and public figures taking a stand against this?
Where are the grassroots organizations organizing protests and promoting sousveillance programs against the authoritarians who want to take away our rights and privacy?
The reason why this is all happening at once is because there's no resistance to it.
Until there's meaningful resistance you're just gonna see authoritarian policies keep snowballing.
It's a tremendous opportunity, presently.
Power is never before so easily gotten.
Fight: Collaborate, Empathize, Reject division.
F that noise.
These guys have been at it for a while.
They're afraid of losing their job or being painted as someone who supports terrorists, pedophiles, or other criminals.
Now they just need to find a reason to brainwash the general public to sleepwalk into fighting another war.
Just a friendly reminder that it was millenials who brought us censorship, cancel culture and other totalitarian bs. People who are older today, saw nearly absolute online freedom and miss that, not some "nostalgic reactionary politics".
The Establishment really don't like how they're not in control of what everyone hears or sees any more. It used to be so cozy for them.
Many of them support it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(organization)#Notable_s...
Before the Internet went big and mainstream we were in an era I've heard termed managerial democracy. Big media was able to largely regulate the Overton window. Social activists were able, by getting into big media via the path of the universities, to push things like racism and homophobia out of the Overton window and keep them out. This largely worked, creating the illusion (and I now firmly believe it was an illusion) that these things were dying or dead. I remember growing up in the 90s and thinking racism was something maybe a few old geezers in the South believed. "Sure grandpa, the South will rise again, now lets get you your meds."
Personally I see this as well-intentioned, but that's because I think racism is a low form of primate tribalism.
Then the net came along and made it so any yahoo with a few bucks could post. Couple that with algorithms that tend to elevate controversial (thus engaging) content, and racism and all the other banished isms vaulted back onto the stage. They were never dead IMHO, just out of polite discourse. I didn't realize that growing up but I sure see it now.
Lefty cancel culture was an attempt to repeat the purge of those things from big media with the Internet and it didn't work and couldn't work. I did and still do sympathize but I think it's pissing into a hurricane.
Of course there's plenty of right wing cancel culture too that we're seeing now. That's a different beast. Cancel culture historically is a creature of the right. The left form is probably a brief historical aberration brought about by the conditions I outlined above. I'm hearing lefties admit defeat on this right now, and some question whether it was a good idea to try.
Racism won't be dead until people actually change their hearts and minds. Controlling the discourse just means you don't hear about it.
I guess liberal democracy's days are numbered.