I can understand why governments would push for something like this after 9/11, though it of course goes without saying that this is a totally unacceptable violation of someone’s basic rights. It also goes without saying that governments always want more control over their citizens, but what exactly are they so worried might happen, right now, in 2025 or the near future?
Another factor is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Late capitalism has to keep finding more and more shameless ways to squeeze regular people as the easy money recedes. Lobbyists are pushing harder to lock people into a few big services and subscriptions so they are forced to yield more personal data and spending money.
The genocide in Gaza and the massive response against it made them realize that they no longer had the ability to control the narrative despite their best efforts to spread Zionist propaganda. The so called “free world” has always relied on being able to sway public opinion and manufacture consent through media when necessary. Now that it’s stopped working because of people’s access to media on the internet that contradicts their claims, they decided it’s time to push a more restrictive regime in order to deal with the issue.
How can we decapitate this system before it strangles us back into the silence of the pre-internet ?
The countries under discussion are democratic republics, aren’t they? If so, then age verification is what the people voted for, not an insidious plot by “they”.
the people get a choice between a few candidates, all of whom are preapproved in the major parties by the donors, who aren’t really of “the people” in any meaningful sense of the word
I feel it’s the same vibe with return to office policy in Canada.
These things seem like they come from absolutely no where with no legitimate reason and then all of these executives are on board making it happen.
Like what the fuck is going on
It’s all rigged, we are cattle
It’s due to Palantir and co, lobbying various European governments in recent years. Look at which EU governments are Palantir’s clients.
As a European, it’s been a long time coming. I would say tide turned in favour of it and both Ukraine and Israel-Gaza have been important factors - Most countries suddenly decided they didn’t have enough sway over public support for Western imperialism. And the big part of that has been the internet.
It’s a coordinated play, that’s why. Their hope and plan is that VPNs become worthless because you’re gonna be VPNing into censored countries anyway. They won’t want anonymity/pseudo-anonymity like we’ve had.
Gaza
Does Israel have that much sway over Europe? The Germans are perhaps still motivated by guilt over the Holocaust, to the extent that they’re willing to look the other way while another one is being committed. Makes sense, right? 🤦 Pure insanity.
70 years of propaganda has its roots deep in generational beliefs that any criticism of Israel’s actions as a nation state could only be rooted in their ethnicity and religion and therefore must be countered.
No one wants to criticize privacy-invading “think of the children” laws for fear of being seen as a pedo or pedo-enabler, and likewise no one wants to stand up against Israel for fear of being seen as a Jew-hating antisemite.
I see the parallels, but is it really causal? I feel like this was going to happen given the state of net neutrality in general with or without Gaza.
In terms of “why?” it’s not causal on its own, but in terms “why now?” I believe it is. It’s the two-by-four that broke the camel’s back.
it was always going to happen eventually, but the situation with gaza lit a fire under its urgency and you can see it happening for yourself as the west is capturing moderation on all centralizated social media platforms via appointing of idf & isreali officials/officers.
Denmark decided against banning genital mutilation of boys (girls are thankfully already banned), just after Israel said they’d view it as antisemitic, and would take economic steps against Denmark if they (we) banned it. The danish government went into a complete fucking panic and shut down all talks about banning it.
For some retarded reason, the world actually gives a shit what Israel thinks…
europe, despite its efforts to keep up appearances, has been lieutenants of the american empire since bretton woods. they reap the benefits of american empire and in return they never question or undermine it
The Germans are perhaps still motivated by guilt over the Holocaust
Honestly I’m not entirely convinced the Germans ARE motivated by guilt; it seems to me more that they’re not happy with the image they created among their (perceived) peers and are now trying to create a new image to be seen by. They want TO BE SEEN as having overcome their past and become better for it, but the idea that they’ve fundamentally changed is a joke. They committed atrocities in Namibia for example but have never paid reparations to the people there, and of course why should they? Other European countries rag on Germany for the holocaust, none of them give a damn about the atrocities committed against the Herero people.
They bend over backwards for Israel because they don’t want to be mocked as Nazis; they want to continue viewing themselves in the same lofty position they see other Western European countries in.
This. I always side eye people when they rag on Japan for not being publicly repentant about WW2 atrocities. I never hear Europeans tip toe and apologetic about Africa and especially not Asia. Americans are verbally repentant about slavery but not Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, … Native Americans are mostly ignored and native Hispanic may as well not exist. Afghanistan and Iraq are referred to mostly as a waste of time and money rather than as terrible atrocities committed by us. Zero concern or feelings of responsibility for latin American imperialism by the US. Presumption of practically any immigration Muslim men of being problematic but little to no concern for the imperialism of their homelands that made them want to leave
I get annoyed at leftist meetings where people get annoyed at immigrants and their children for being successful because they must have come from money for their family to immigratr to the anglosphere or Europe. What money are modern people thinking people from Afghanistan came here with. The families from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia that came in the 70s-80s. China didn’t really become wealthy until the last couple decades and most Chinese people in the US are from before the 90s. Insane poverty back then. Very interesting times in the west these days. Conservatives are crazy but leftist are starting to get a bit xenophobic and ignorantly presumptuous and blaming of immigrants in my opinion too. I’ll add that I don’t hear resentment about immigrants being successful from the former Yugoslavian states from back during the Yugoslav wars in the 90s
Are those people actually leftists? Because they sound like liberals, not socialists.
Not truly leftist but in times of frustration people look for a group to feel acknowledged so even if they’re not an ideologue, they’ll comingle and the not true leftist, opportunistic “leftist”, outnumber the ideological leftist. Has to be watched out for in caution of them hijacking organizations to drum up a populist anti-immigrants/racist movement that adopts some leftist terminology for marketing.
Corporate/imperialist Republicans courted evangelicals for votes but didn’t want to enact policy of evangelicals until evangelicals took over enough of the party positions. That’s a caution for socialist commingling with labor activist that are really just about their paycheck rather than being about labor. I’m all about labor unions but I know labor unions are filled with people happy to pull up ladders and scapegoat out groups
German philosophy professor: Guilt Pride: A German Vanity Project Conquering the World
It’s partly because of the guit of holocaust, but also because they just don’t personally want to lift a finger regarding Palestine. It’s a toxic mixture of inbred zionism, cold geopolitical calculus, appeasing the US in trying time in transatlantic relations, and neocon hubris. They maybe can bend to appease their own populations, but they really are not prepared to stop Israel and they would much rather help them. They just want the genocide to happen, but quietly and out of sight and no protests.
But it’s not really just Gaza. They do this because of Ukraine, rising cost of living, European humiliation in from of Trump, falling economy, their own unpopularity, etc… They are fearing the upheaval and people getting ideas when Brussels doesn’t seem to have any of it’s own. Remember that these are the same people who though that the end of the soviet union was the end of history and they are the culmination of humanity. They cannon accept being wrong or stepping down at this point.
Does Israel have that much sway over Europe?
It’s not so much that Isreal does, but for all intents and purposes Israel = America. It’s our colonial outpost in the Middle East, an “unsinkable aircraft carrier”, and as Joe Biden said, “if Isreal didn’t exist, we would have to invent it”. And as much as Europeans don’t want to believe it, most European countries are American vassal states. Look at the pictures of all of your leaders gravelling at Trump’s feet and literally calling him “Daddy”.
Gaza is only the beginning. They are also preparing for mass unrest at home as standards of living worsen. Just this week the German chancellor said Germany “can no longer afford the welfare state”, meanwhile they are spending record amounts on arms. They are preparing for millions of climate refugees at their borders.
You should expect and prepare for a lot more Gazas all over the world in the future. Your leaders are.
I think the question isn’t “why are Western countries afraid of Israel” or “why does the West fear its citizens criticizing Israel,” but “what are Western countries planning to do in the near future (especially with the climate crisis) that requires them to support Israel and learn from it right now?”
I do think it’s Gaza. For decades until the last couple of years, the plight of Palestinians have been mostly ignored. The whole of Europe and algosphere in the middle east have had active or passive public approval for middle east policy for the past century. Vietnam war reporting soured the public on far east colonialism and war reporting went softball afterwards and that softball unraveled in the 2010s and now Gaza is the modern day Vietnam war for reporting on disregard for life from pretty much ourselves. Israel is an ally of our countries.
So now government policy is incredibly misaligned with public opinion now and what was a steady grind at enacting internet control is suddenly a mad rush for governments. Israel is a line in the sand for the powerful like Vietnam was in the 60/70s was for media control/influence
I think there are two discrete forces at work pushing in the same direction here. The Jewish supremacist EU states want to spy on all communications because of Gaza, but the push for age verification is more that ad companies fund everything in the West and ads sell for WAY more if they know exactly who you are (this was Facebook’s major advantage in an internet that was largely pseudonymous at the time). Age gating the images of warcrimes and making those who see them register that they’ve seen the images to see them is just a side benefit.
Honestly this
I recall something (RFK?) said that tiktok took the narrative on Gaza out of their hands. They can’t tell people what to think if people have access to events (through video and images) that previously the news used to either hide or share tidbits about but heavily color by narrative.
Falls somewhere between people not being cool with genocide and greed.
It’s nothing new, They try to pull some bullshit at least once every decade. In the USA it was the Clipper Chip in the 90s where they said “trust the government with a backdoor” and then it got cracked and they tried very hard to prosecute one of the inventors of PGP… in the 2010s it was SOPA and other bills they tried to pass.
Why are so many European countries getting worried about encryption and/or age verification?
EU elites want to hold on to power. They know everything is going to shit economically and politically and there will be backlash for this economic situation, covid, Ukraine, Gaza and everything. So they try to shut down free information and speech by censoring internet and enforcing self censorship to stay in power. Free speech and any civil liberty is on the loan anyway, unless the people are ready push back constantly. These fuckers have no morality or common sense otherwise.
This could be it. If they get any inkling that people are seriously organising politically, they’ll want to get in early and nip it in the bud.
This battle will define the class war.
I doubt plebs win, at best tech savy will maintain modicum of privacy while under class will be fish in a bowl… All that data will be used to enslve them even further.
Sadly, many just accept it
Because people aren’t supportive enough of Ukraine and
, and they blame the phonesMore than one European prime minister spoke loudly about a coming war. Whether they mean it or it’s an excuse to do fascist stuff is another topic. There’s also the Russian sabotage going on.
This is not solely a european problem, and it’s not new.
A faction of conservatives will scream up and down that they’re protecting the children. Most people will generally side with privacy.
My suspicion is that the end goal is to classify people to target your opponents, even the ones who don’t have much of a platform.
Once you can identify all the anonymous people on the internet and build profiles of all their communications with ML, you can easily generate a list of people who are against your policies and target them. I’m pretty sure you could find other subsets of data linking these people so you can then target them indirectly without too much friendly fire against your supporters.
In the US, One easy target I haven’t seen any actions for is Marijuana. All those medical patients are in a database somewhere. All the debit card transactions in stores are in a database somewhere. It’s still federally illegal and the punishments are nuts if prosecuted. Take your communications list, and the MJ list, target the ones on both and ignore the rest. You get to legally enslave your opponents under the guise of weed.
Sports rights holders
are bleeding money due to IPTVgot even more greedy and they own the politicians.Is that the reason?! Good grief.
Interesting theory
