Every day we get closer to an Orwellian society. The United Kingdom may already be one.
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.
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.
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”.
Old enough to remember how Europeans smugly thought that they lived in some sort of an enlightened and free society.
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.
The olygarch’s have ruined everything again?
zoinks
As a US citizen, pray for us 🙏
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”)
Oh yeah, I should post about my arrest
Is this thread about the rising fascist movements? Oh…
Is it about the refugees from their colonies they drown in the Mediterranean? Oh…
Well is it about the pivot from renewables and nuclear to oil and gas? Wh… well what is…
Oh. This is a thread about your online treats.
#1 on lemmy ‘top in last 12 hours’
you are saying that as if all (or any) of those would have started to be a problem just in the last 12 hours…
and this is not about “online treats”, but online threats. It’s not just netflix, amazon and other silly unnecessary things, it’s everything, including every forum where people can organize and discuss things, fucking youtube with their tons of knowledge based content, …
but sure! we have 4 other problems, count climate change too, that’s 5, we really should just ignore this one because it’s literally meaningless!
You’re right! I forgot about the genocide your governments are enabling!
The UK would be one if anyone could be bothered to run it properly.
They’re looking to install Nigel Farage as their prime minister. The island is derelict.
Not quite.
Farage keeps running around saying “Pick me! Pick me!” and the press keep asking “Is farage a viable candidate?” while not offering the same credence to anyone else.
The British public are “We’re fucking sick of this bollocks from the establishment” and a lot of them are falling for the privately educated ex city trader Farages nonsense that he’s a “man of the people” because all the centrist parties are saying “aren’t immigrants awful?” in an attempt to distract from their own incompetence and quite frankly, the left is 10 years behind in offering a coherent alternative to all the bullshit.
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.
As an American it’s nice to see were not the only ones in a complete downward spiral.
EDIT: wild that there are users pretending to be butthurt by this obviously joke comment so they can farm upvotes from the tens of users on Lemmy
As an American, no it’s not nice. Why would I want more of this shit elsewhere?
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Nice? I wish it was just the US so getting to another country would make it safe for us. This is awful.
The EU is using genocide censorship as an excuse to abort all “freedom” laws. A hillarious twist.
