We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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Samizdata quote of the day – Police State Britain is not even hiding the reality anymore Sir Keir Starmer is set to announce sweeping reforms tomorrow banning under-16s from 10 major social media platforms, including X, but not the Left-wing platform Bluesky.
– Toby Young
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LOL!
It is hard to overemphasize how chilling this statement is. Here in the USA there is constant chat of a “threat to democracy”. The administrative state and their ability to effectively pass new laws without any democratic approval is far and away the biggest actual threat to democracy.
The dark side is that Starmer – and all the “Yes Minister” bureaucrats – are going full Airstrip One.
The bright side is that there is X and the internet more generally. Without that, pulling off Airstrip One would be much easier and more thorough.
If I have read things correctly, Carney has announced the same for Canada.
OK, so what are we going to do about this? The Left is very good at getting what they want, by getting the courts to overturn laws they don’t like. So how about us? I realise there is an issue of funding such a court case, but I’d be quite happy to chip in as, I am sure, would a lot of other people.
Which is more likely? A new non-Labour Government axes the reforms – or they add the Left-wing platform Bluesky?
Yes it is nothing to do with sex (although sex is trotted out as the excuse) – it is about the political and cultural indoctrination of the young. And, probably, older people as well – as “age verification” will put some people off accessing Twitter (now X) and so on.
The establishment (not just Sir Keir Starmer – the establishment generally) want to control young minds – because the young grow up and might vote against the establishment or even rebel against them.
It is that brutally simple.
Why is the Australian flag presented as the anti- terrorism option for the British Prime Minister?
Blobfish,o
I was thinking that too!
Definitely older people. Every time somebody goes through the “age” verification rigmarole you are reminded YOU ARE BEING WATCHED. You are reminded you can only use these services due to THEIR LARGESSE and should be on your best behaviour OTHERWISE THEY WILL TAKE IT AWAY. A bit like being allowed a radio in your prison cell. It is not just government. I’m currently serving a suspension from Reddit for using the word “fag”. My comments show I’m British and the context was clearly to do with smoking and not homosexuality. Are Reddit willingly complicit or are they just scared? I dunno.
Which is more likely? A new non-Labour Government axes the reforms – or they add the Left-wing platform Bluesky?
The latter. The Tories know – and this is the evil cunning of what Starmer is doing – that this is what the Dads and Mums are fine with. It’s about the kids. Social media has become the new tobacco. Every major issue today is often talked about with an obligatory reference to social media now. So we will have the ratchet effect. Little of this will be undone. Remember, it was the Tory government that introduced the Online Safety legislation, crafted by that towering figure of 21st century statecraft, Nadine Dorries, who has by the way gone off to Reform (it is welcome to this fathead).
Starmer is pitching for the “worried centre” – those who think that Something Must Be Done about X or Y. Classic example: Mumsnet (the forum on which mothers express their views about certain topics. Needless to say, they’re for a ban, or at least from some of the comments on there when I took a look).
And yet this government wants to lower the voting age to 16, but as far as I understand, if you are 16 or younger, you cannot look at social media.
There is an argument, which I have seen and heard made by the likes of Bloomberg columnist Adrian Wooldridge – and I follow him because he is one of the more articulate and he can be thought-provoking – to say that if we want to prepare people for a liberal order, there have to be guardrails, and that childhood should not be wrecked by over-hasty exposure to certain things. My problem with all this, as with earlier moral panics about video games, rock music and so on, is that some of the risks are overblown, and the dangers in expanding the State’s remit are under-appreciated until it is too late.
I suspect there is also an element here of bashing of Evil Big US corporations in all this.
Dear Blobfish, Australia introduced strict social media laws to protect young people from on-line predators. The best argument against such laws is they don’t seem to be working. About 3/4 of under-16s say they still can get the media they want.
If they’re banning platforms by name, I guess truth.social and gab are okay also.
Blobfish: The cartoon’s been recycled; it originally depicted Uncle Sam, with US flag wrapping (drawn by John Jonik in 2005). Then it was tweaked to use the Australian flag and the Australian PM’s face when they decided to censor their internet. Whoever edited in Starmer’s face was too lazy to change the Australian flag for the UK’s.
From my viewpoint on the west side of the Atlantic, britain is as much the enemy as the former East Germany was, for many of the same reasons. Your government has has taken control of the internet, daily we watch reporters arrested for the “crime” of reporting on the government, and the government is sponsoring attacks on the serfs in your country by hostile foreign invaders. The next step will be GULAG camps for enemies of the State. Your choices seem to be leave, fight, or submit. For those who think this can be beaten back by voting, I note a certain saying that came from a certain leader in China during their cultural revolution.
Subotai Bahadur
[B]ut not the Left-wing platform Bluesky.
On the bright side, I don’t think anyone much uses that echo chamber of a site.
Though I can’t say for sure because, er, I don’t use it and I don’t know anyone who does.
At this point, Starmer and Co. are simply rubbing your noses in it.
It can absolutely be beaten back by voting Reform, Reform, and only Reform at every level. And if that doesn’t work, 1642 it is.
Good, that exactly what’s needed to get people to act.
Considering it will take a year or more to bring in further legislation I can’t help feeling that the timing of the announcement is another ‘stunt’ by Starmer.
We deserve better.
Thomas Fairfax (Yorkshire) [and any others on this site]
Serious and not at all sarcastic or meant to be insulting questions:
What if Labour falsifies the election as we have endured in California or just blatantly cancels it? After all, they are engaged in a grab for total power and those involved in that sort of thing do not bother with customs or Laws. There is no such thing as a moderate coup d’ etat.
Do the british people have the will and fortitude and the logistics to resist and prevail? In armed conflict; amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics.
Subotai Bahadur
Something I, stupidly, missed earlier – today was Magna Carta day (the Great Charter of 1215) as a lawyer and a leading member of the (deeply evil) Haldane Society, Sir Keir Starmer would have known this – he, or someone else, deliberately picked today to announce the censorship and indoctrination move – as a way of spitting on Magna Carta.
Quite an intelligent move, learned – and evil.
It seems that no commenter here has noticed, or is willing to address, how warmly this measure has been welcomed.
Of course the TV audience and many newsppers readers are being guided to the approved viewpoint. I saw on the BBC a number of grieving parents who have lost children.
I have not seen any equal prominence to explanations or even discussion of the dangers of this censorship.
The programme editors are not stupid; they know what they are doing, and why they are doing it.
I am going to a social group this morning. I expect to be in a minority of one if the topic comes up.
Be worried.
James Strong – I am indeed worried, and disgusted by the media reception of this measure.
And by the support for this measure by the Conservative Party down in London – yet again sex is being used as an excuse for a measure that is really about political censorship.
The establishment do not care about children being raped – they proved they did not care by covering up the Islamic rape gangs, covering it up for years.
What the establishment do not want is for children, or adults, to be presented with “right wing” political and cultural opinions.
As I wrote before: And if that doesn’t work, 1642 it is.