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?
it looks like they’re just realizing that they can push it this far and people won’t really fight back about it
Totalitarianism.
People outside Europe doesn’t understand how our governments are speed running getting a totalitarian government. More and more aspects of anyone’s everyday life are getting controlled everyday.
Here they are already starting a system of garbage bags with nfc tags to have our garbage controlled.
At the end of the day they are thirsty for power and control.
Here they are already starting a system of garbage bags with nfc tags to have our garbage controlled.
Sounds like a great way of getting people to throw their garbage in any place other than the bag…
Which country is it?
Spain. They have started in some regions. And they are aiming for a national implementation in a few years.
Fascism or at least the police state politicians are getting a lot of funding because information is profitable.
European elites are worried about losing control, and they are responding by restricting freedoms.
The Palestine/Gaza issue is one concrete example: European elites are very pro-Israel and pro-Genocide. But they have completely failed to control the narrative and European populations are not as pro-Israel as their elites.
They might also be getting cocerned about people finding out that elites routine participate in sexual abuse of children.
I don’t see how any regime can maintain legitimacy if normies finally grasp the scope of the issue.
They are prepping to rule by force, fuck your consent.
They will rape children and jack shit you can do about it.
Because there’s a surge of fascism and they think they can get it
This has been ongoing for decades now, nothing new. They try every other year or so and they only need a single win
It’s definitely due the erosion of living conditions and increasing discontent of the people towards the state as a way to crackdown on criticism and discontent.
Their paid right wing politicians are getting the upper hand so they are preparing to go full Fascist again. The Liberals are paving the way so the Fascists have everything set for authoritarianism when they win the election.
It’s due to Palantir and co, lobbying various European governments in recent years. Look at which EU governments are Palantir’s clients.
It’s sadly led to the EU has actually announced a copy of the UK Online Safety Act for 2026, as far as I can tell: https://leminal.space/post/25089051/17854998 It’s received less press coverage than the whole Chat Control thing.
Peter Theil is the #1 most dangerous man in the world right now. Need Luigi #2.
We are realistically looking at losing between 200 million and 1 billion people over the next 20 years due to climate-change induced famine and heat stroke. Those are realistic estimates. More optimistic scenarios could make that number less, more pessimistic ones could reduce it. We are on the eve of what future histories may refer to as the Great Hunger.
Even for those lucky enough to not live in regions being rendered uninhabitable, the quality of life for the average citizen is collapsing. The developing world will experience mass famine. The developed world will experience food prices not seen since the advent of mechanized agriculture. Home prices will continue to become more unaffordable, as more and more homes are destroyed by rapidly increasing natural disasters. In the US, tens of millions of homeowners are going to have their primary asset, their homes, rendered completely worthless after they become uninsurable. Governments can try to prop up the insurance market if they want, but not even national governments have the resources to subsidize an insurance market in an era of spiraling natural catastrophes.
Leaders around the world see a future of chaos, famine, and strife. Really all the Four Horseman are coming out. In developed countries, leaders fear millions of desperate poor people from developing countries trying to cross their borders. Internally, they fear violence by their own populations, who are seeing their standard of living rapidly collapse.
The borders are being locked down. The walls are going up. People everywhere are being increasingly surveilled and controlled. Political leaders might be cynical enough to deny climate change for political gain, but that doesn’t mean they’re ignorant to the actual future we’re running headfirst into. Technology is also advancing, allowing “mass shooter” type individuals to potentially cause much larger acts of destruction in the future.
Most governments would prefer to maintain power by actually improving the lives of their citizens. That’s the safest and most moral approach. But in a world of rapidly spiraling climate change, governments simply are not capable of on improving the lives of their citizens. They can’t even maintain the standard of living their citizens already have. So, the leaders have to turn to more brute force methods to retain control. Best to be loved. But if you can’t be loved, then at least be feared.
Who’s “we”?
https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population
“The world’s population is projected to continue growing for the next 50 to 60 years, peaking at approximately 10.3 billion by the mid-2080.[sic]”
Those projections assume agricultural yields have no effect on human well being or numbers. They don’t factor in climate induced bread basket collapse.
Oh I don’t dispute that we can only reach and sustain such vastly inflated populations without significant fossil fuel inputs, I just want to know your source. Are you implying the UN forgot to take agriculture into account?
Yes. That’s exactly it. They assume business as usual. And your source is a landing page, not an actual source. And even then, that site doesn’t discuss any effect of climate change on population projections. You just blindly linked to the UN’s population agency.
For every degree of Celsius warming, farm yields of major staple crops decline 16-20%. We’re already at 1.5C warming, and the rate of warming is rapidly increasing. We’re looking at another 0.5-1.5C increase by 2050. There’s no way this doesn’t lead to mass famine on a Biblical scale.
This paper in Nature predict 4-14% in total global food production by 2050 due to climate effects. And these are using the RPC models, which we’re learning are far too conservative in their predictions. I’m sure if everyone in the world went vegan tomorrow, we could absorb a 10% decline in agricultural production, but not a chance in Hell of that happening.
As far as the UN, they do work on climate change, but their population projections don’t factor it into account. Here is a link to the 2024 population prospects summary
When you pull open that PDF, you won’t find mention of climate change being incorporated into their methodology at all. As far as I’m aware, the UN’s figures are purely based on population pyramids, demographic factors, birth rate projections, etc. Demographers don’t like looking at factors beyond just population numbers, gender mixes, and age distributions. Other things, like war and economic policy, can certainly affect population numbers, but those are generally considered too unpredictable to properly model. The population projections you see are purely demographic models.
As far as I know, agricultural yields are never even part of their methodology. They look purely at what ages people are and how many children people of different ages have. They generally assume that resources will be available for those who want to have children. Do you have any evidence that they do take climate effects on agricultural yields into account when making their numbers?
Good, we can’t sustain even the 8 billion useless eaters we have now. I welcome a decline to 4.
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.
It’s the frustration of European elites who realized that they can’t control the narrative anymore. Gaza is one prominent example, but not the only one.
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.
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
“To any Westerners losing sleep over the situation in Ukraine: Just pretend it’s happening in Africa.” —Sergei Lavrov (paraphrasing)
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
Removed by mod
Please don’t tarnish your quality comments with ableist slurs so I won’t have to regret needing to remove them.
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
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.
You expect this scenario to somehow be an exception to
?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?”
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.
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.
Most of this was happening or initially attempted long before the current Gaza situation, so it’s not that.
How can we decapitate this system before it strangles us back into the silence of the pre-internet ?
We probably can’t because the political formations that need to be organized take years to develop and grow. Namely, socialist organizations. And the ruling class and its political class lackeys already go after those as well, so it will be full of struggle. But it is the only real path forward for any kind of actually democratic system and is worth pursuing ASAP.
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”.
I think if you asked the people whattl they voted for none of them would say it was this. And yet it is still set to roll out.
Makes you wonder what liberal democracy really means doesn’t it?
Sometimes policy issues arise after an election cycle, in which case the voters didn’t have an opportunity to vote for or against the candidates based on their position on the policy issue. Was that the case with age verification in the UK?
In a healthy democracy, future elections decide the fate of these policies, which can be reverted. Even the USA’s complete prohibition on recreational alcohol, which was popular with voters at the time, and codified into the constitution itself, later became unpopular with voters, and was repealed. So as long as the democracy remains healthy, there is always an opportunity for bad policies to be repealed.
You should read the rest of the thread to get an understanding of why surveillance and deanonymization is being pushed. It is not to solve some real issue to the benefit of the public, it is a response to the failure of the media systems of control to control narratives.
Your claims about a “healthy democracy” are fairy tales. That’s propaganda about how it works, not how it works in practice. The UK has its current Prime Minister due to a series of coordinated media campaigns against the previous leader of Labour, for examlle, with an internal purge using bad faith claims following his removal. No element of that was democratic and none of the UK governments have been popular for ages.
Question why so-called democracies only produce unpopular governments. Why don’t the parties align with popular interests in reality? Whose interests do they align with?
Now I’m even more confused lol. What’s the motive for media companies to promote candidates who pass laws that require age verification on websites such as porn sites? Are porn websites causing media companies to lose revenue or something?
Media companies oppose left candidates. Left candidates threaten the material interests of the owners of these companies, the ad buyers, the people who fund think tanks and establish or otherwise embed in academic programs like journalism schools.
The remainder is non-left candidates. These are people who work in those interests and therefore receive media support. For example, Reform UK gets inordinate neuteal or positive media coverage as well as volume compared to even the greens who are not much of a threat to capital.
These mass surveillance laws are a reaction to an failure in this overall apparatus to control thought and speech re: Gaza. They want to track and suppress and oppress information and speech that runs contrary to ruling class interests. The ruling class is heavily invested in the genocidal settler colonial project of “Israel” both literally with piles of cash and politically-strategically as a means by which to control and profit from political destabilization in parts of the Middle East.
Their explicit statements about why they want to do this are just a lie, a pretext. They are not personally or politically invested in protecting kids, lol. These are the people that protected Jimmy Saville and impoverished and made food insecure huge percentages of UK children.
The Australian labor government didn’t have age verification as one of their core policies. Also the specifics in Australia is being done by the esafety commission rather than through parliament. This whole age verification stuff is very undemocratic in nature
People don’t vote for policies in a western democratic republic, they vote for candidates that are pre-approved by parties and donors.
It is in the best interests of the parties to put forward candidates and policies who will have voter appeal, in order to prevail over competing parties.
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
There’s no conspiracy of collusion between parties. Any party is free to put forward candidates who favor popular policies. And if that candidates wins, but doesn’t fulfill their promises, then the voters will remember that.
and yet they all have the same donors and the same lobbyists
Democratic? That is exactly what the US is and you see how that worked out.
The USA is not a healthy democracy.
are you antisemitism concern trolling or new?
Even if our elections were “democratic” (they aren’t), there is absolutely no chance of voting this shit away before it is foisted onto the population.
Do you have evidence to support the claim that European elections are being rigged?
Authoritarianism
For those here who didn’t know specifics, as far as I know the EU has announced in July 2025 guidelines, set to come into effect until 2026, that seem to basically be the same as the UK online safety act:
https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/redirection/document/118226
These guidelines say, among other things, check the last link: “Where the provider of the online platform has identified medium risks to minors on their platform as established in its risk review […] and those risks cannot be mitigated by less restrictive measures. The Commission considers this will be the case where the risk is not high enough to require access restriction based on age verification but not low enough that it would be appropriate to not have any access restriction […]” And “Self-declaration is not considered to be an appropriate age-assurance measure as further explained below.”
If you don’t want the Online Safety Act in the EU, call or e-mail your representative now. If you enter your country here, it shows a list: https://fightchatcontrol.eu/#delegates As far as I can tell, unless it’s reversed this will be coming soon. The clock is ticking.
My representatives don’t care. They want it. They are the ones thirsty for power. The only solution is to completely remove them from power. Any letter sent to them is nothing more than toilet paper for these people.
Still worth reminding them some of us will vote them out unless they walk this age check nonsense back. If thousands of people do so, it can be relevant.
Centralization tends be self-reinforcing. Social unrest might cause the public to demand more safety measures, which usually come at the expense of freedoms. I’d also wager that the lower the level of trust in government is, the more they want to impose control and authority.
And in the EU specifically it is because lobbyists have been working overtime to try and pass chat control: https://borncity.com/win/2023/09/27/european-union-which-lobby-organizations-are-behind-the-plans-for-chat-control/
If you didn’t know, it seems like the EU has actually announced a copy of the UK Online Safety Act for 2026 too, as far as I can tell: https://leminal.space/post/25089051/17854998
