The UK’s tortured attempt to remake the internet
theverge.com
theverge.com
Social media has arguably had an appalling effect on the mental being of teenage girls.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/metaverse-facebook-inst...
Personally, I'd be happy if there was some magic way to stop people under 30 interacting with me online in any way (as long as it _was_ magic, and didn't laws or "technical" fixes).
This article is 80% opinion and 20% descriptive statistics. There's no experimental, quasiexperimental, or qualitative research cited.
A systematic review from 2020 found that the evidence is mixed at best, and more research is needed: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02673843.2019.1...
Ultimately, we have responsibilities to ourselves and our loved ones. Reflect on your life, talk to your friends and family, and if you think introducing restrictions on your social media use would improve your/their wellbeing, then do so and see if it helps. Xx
Absolutely, and I'm not suggesting I shirk my responsibilities as a parent. One of the things that annoyed me when I was a kid was parents wanting to restrict TV and video games, because they didn't want to take their precious "me-me-me" time and devote it to actually raising their children.
This isn't the same thing though. You can be as present and involved as possible in your kids life today, but the web trumps all. It's all pervasive, all encompassing, and normalised. You could switch the TV off, or talk about problematic themes on it, but the web is a different beast.
If you lived through the before-times, you saw the difference between then, during, and after the iPhone. The kids have never been alright, but as one of those kids who was on the wrong side of the outer-edges of not-alright, I can tell you that the situation now is dire in comparison.
In fact I feel somewhat, that some of the these types of discrimination is just a way for one group, i.e. adults to exert their dominance over younger people. Just as way of showing power. There might be some kind of unconscious primitive behavior at work here????
It's "almost" like you're making an underage sex argument.
In fact, to not suspect that one would have to give you a lot of credit.
What do you think, are internet strangers going to give you the benefit of the doubt? Yes or no?
Children are restricted from some things because their minds aren't fully developed.
Downstream from that hardest of facts is general environment that commonly presents dangers to development, a unique vulnerability to adult criminal predation, an inability to give informed consent, and an inability to make independent judgement in service of their long-term welfare.
In contrast and in light of the above points, there are individuals like yourself whose aim is to undermine child protection.
Rational adults ask: to what end?
The other poster's "discrimination" argument is kind of stretching it, but I feel like the core of the issue is that social media has a lot of positive aspects, and we should at least consider the relative significance of positive and negative effects of social media before banning it altogether.
How much do kids lose by not being able to communicate through social media? Is it more or less than how much they gain from such protection?
In fact, it's to do with autonomy and freedom of choice of children during their teenage years. I am opposed to coercive education and want to give children more choice in what they can do during their teenage years. Such as choosing their subjects at school.
I believe that teenage children are being micromanaged, they are being developmentally delayed by the restrictions imposed by adults, especially in this day and age. They might be exhibiting the same behaviors as a micromanaged subordinate in the workplace does.
And I am campaigning for children's rights because this micromanagement has severely affected me personally, and I do not want other people to go through the same.
“You are seeing this ship, all of us, from a unique perspective - from a child's point of view. It must seem terribly unfair and restrictive to you. As adults, we don't always stop to consider how everything we say and do shapes the impressions of young people, but if you're judging us, as a people, by the way we treat our children - and I think there can be no better criterion - then you must understand how deeply we care for them. When our children are young, they don't understand what might be dangerous. Our rules are to keep them from harm, real or imagined, and that's part of the continuity of our Human species. When Clara grows up, she will make rules for her children, to protect them - as we protect her.”
ST TNG - Imaginary Friend
I cannot wait for the uprising or revolution to come against this in the decades to come. And I hope it will be spectacular. It's not a matter of if, it's just when.
> "As adults, we don't always stop to consider how everything we say and do shapes the impressions of young people, but if you're judging us, as a people, by the way we treat our children - and I think there can be no better criterion - then you must understand how deeply we care for them."
And it's reminiscent of a controlling partner who doesn't allow his wife to go out at night, over an absolute deep feeling of care for her. That still doesn't make it acceptable.
Also "give me liberty, or give me death". A thought experiment: As an adult, would you choose personal freedom over other adults controlling your life, even if that control was found to actually make you more successful in life?
> "When Clara grows up, she will make rules for her children, to protect them - as we protect her"
Well, for me I'm not having children at all because of how society treats and micromanages them, especially teenagers. And when I was younger, I have even encouraged other people not to have children too (!). Take that, dogmatists (I'm not speaking against the original poster of this phrase, I'm just speaking towards society in general, especially those people who coddle children).
Took me a decade+ to dig out from that hole socially... one resulting from a lack of competent parental guidance. The experience limits my career to this day, a glass ceiling due to credentialism prevents me from taking advantage of the best opportunities.
Also, no one told me until many years later that your brain does not fully mature until you're about twenty-five. So expect to do a lot of stupid shit until that age.
There _will_ be a revolution, but it'll be in your head — when you're older.
It’s ok to gate keep certain things based on experience. Experience is valuable.
Experience discrimination is a cornerstone to how we credible resource the most important problems in our society.
It's called "being young", you'll get over it.
I remember feeling pretty pissed off about this very thing around 16, but I had completely forgotten until just now when I read your comment.
An unpopular truth — that'll no doubt send you into a fit of rage, apologies — is that "you'll understand when you're older" is a cliche for a solid reason. Every one of us who says that, was your age, and felt the same way you do now. There's nothing new under the sun.
Some constructive practical advice though: Prove the adults wrong by working around the limitations and restrictions placed on you. You'll be amazed how quickly they scramble to move them out of your way. You don't even need to succeed, it'll be enough that they see you're trying your best despite the obstacles.
• dislike, hostility, or unjust behaviour deriving from preconceived and unfounded opinions
Let me tell you that my opinions on people under 30 are 100% based on reason and actual experience. Some of it is even judgement on _me_ when I was under 30.
Don't take it personally, people just haven't gone through a certain amount of life before 30. It doesn't make them bad, or less deserving of respect. But let's be real, giving someone respect as a human being isn't the same thing as taking their opinions on say, how society should be run, as seriously as someone who's older.
This is of course generalising, as you're going to get a few 21 yearolds wiser than a few 51 yearolds, but that's how generalisations work; they're true in _general_. It's become common-place to see generalisations as an automatic bad thing, but bear in mind they serve a function, and are even how brains work.
And prejudice also serves (as an excuse, most likely) to impose power structures and dominance hierarchies as well. It keeps those being discriminated against powerless. Where those with power want them to stay. This happens on every level of society.
Much of this prejudice, in all walks of life is nothing more than social dogma which is pushed aggressively from parent to child, down the generations, without any rational thought. Just emotions. And challenging these dogmas is taboo, sometimes it's even heresy, depending on what dogma it is.
Generalisations _can_ be used to push "social dogma", but it doesn't have to be, and it doesn't mean generalisations are automatically a bad thing. They are a useful evolutionary shortcut our brains invented.
If I see 100 people with easily identifiable attribute X, and 90 of them are mean to me, my brain makes a useful shortcut in the form of a label and says "attribute X" is connected to being treated meanly, avoid those guys. It's not that I don't know 10 of them treat me fine, it's just that it's less of a problem to miss out on 10 potential friends to avoid having to deal with 90 meanies.
It's probably important to say that I'm speaking as a "brown person", who has been "discriminated" against plenty in my life. I don't make a fuss when I get "randomly selected" every single time at the airport, because they're working with statistics.
There's plenty of precedent. I'm allowed to give my kids alcohol, but you're not. Something similar could make sense for social media below a certain age.
You mean, ban it everyone under 16? Why ban social media for boys if it only negatively affects teenage girls?
The implication is that society is also very hostile to men and boys right now, demonstrated by them becoming incels in large numbers.
Thus, while it may linguistically be the western version of some exotic-sounding Japanese word that translates as "single adult", the implication is the exact opposite causality of your question: they are single because they are bad, not vice-versa.
Being an incel is something you choose. Everyone else just isn't having sex.
But a lot of them act in bad ways because they believe/have been told to believe that their difficulty in finding a relationship is someone else's fault.
This often makes them utterly insufferable to be around, which is a positive feedback loop.
And then, hey, look, here's a disaffected community of angry young men, all feeling that society has taken a great big dump on them, all ripe for radicalization by some cynical ideologue.
They are bad people because incel forums are normally filled with crab-bucket mentality users who regurgitate highly misogynistic tropes up until the edge of being openly violent to women.
If you are unable to see the misogyny towards woman in many incel communities for whatever reason, at the very least I would say that they are bad for men because they tend to grow by reinforcing the idea that their community will never be good enough, that there is nothing that they can do, and it is the fault of society for all their problems.
If you are going to sit here and pretend Elliot's manfesto wasn't misogynist, then so be it, there's no point to carry water for these guys.
The first paragraph speaks for itself. The whole "involuntary" part of "incel" implies that your celibacy - the fact that people don't want you as a partner - is totally out of your control. Incels are the epitome of "nice guys".
It is common to see some one with that mindset to see outcomes as inevitable or as a function of things wholly out of their control such as looks or a perceived social dynamic involving 'chads' and 'staceys' that they are ineluctably locked out of.
Just some real bad vibes.
Meanwhile, boys struggle just the same, society just doesn't really accept vanity in teen boys the same way they do teen girls. Being a teen is very rough these days in terms of mental health, and this applies to all genders and sexes.
We had IRC, BBS et al in the '90s, they weren't designed to be addictive. It's such a different landscape these days for so many reasons. Models were airbrushed, then models started being Photoshopped, that affected how people felt too. It isn't necessarily a problem unique to social media.
Imagine reading a magazine full of ads and perfectly good-looking people almost every waking hour as a teen. You're going to end up very unhappy if none of what you're seeing looks like you. This is why representation is important, but when it's reduced to a box-ticking exercise then we have a problem, albeit a different one.
Teen suicide has been a problem for a long while though, even pre-internet.
MySpace was interesting because you saw average looking people generally instead of algorithmic focus on the best x. Not saying MySpace was healthy though, the "number of friends" popularity contest and hoping to be in someone's "top y friends" was miserable.
In 2018 "obesity prevalence was [...] 21.2% among 12- to 19-year-olds." [1] according to the CDC. That's one out of 5 being obese, not just overweight. And it has more than tripled since the 70's [2]. I have to wonder if it's related. A lot of teenagers are bombarded with images of their peers' perfectly healthy bodies that, quite simply, won't match what they see in the mirror. The solution? Ban mirrors.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_child_15_16/obe...
Social media shows you whatever the algorithm is designed to show you at any given moment.
These two things are not the same.
We are already raising a coddled generation who have little concept of basic liberties and natural rights. We will have a disaster on the horizon when they grow into adults, and who will accept the same treatment from the government this time.
For instance, I follow powerlifting pretty closely. A lot of folks who have been around for a while will tell their viewers something similar to, “don’t structure your training like the people on Instagram”, or “don’t believe everyone is like the people on Instagram - it’s just a highlight reel”. Because of the algorithms they use, you only see the strongest people on your feed, because that’s what people want to see. It’s exciting. But even if the algorithms were tweaked so that somehow this didn’t happen, while still providing content you wanted to see, it wouldn’t solve the issue.
Continuing with my above example, nobody posts their grueling, three-hour-long workouts. They post the single PR (personal record) they hit, or some motivational song played over their heaviest set of the day. They post the four-month diet transformation, not the daily low-calorie meals, the times they have cravings, the unremarkable week-to-week changes. They do that because they know that’s what people want to see, but more than that, they do it because that’s what they’re proud of.
The reality is that people are much more than what they are proud of. People have good days, and people have bad days. People have motivated days, and people have days where they drag their feet. People have strong and weak days, heavy and light days. Sometimes these phases last for weeks or months. When you assess others through the lens of their social media profile, you see a minuscule sliver of who they are and what is going on in their life. That sliver is curated by them to be exactly what they think makes them look best.
So to come full circle, even if all the algorithms on social media platforms tried to be less detrimental to mental health, I don’t think it would work. Instead of seeing the strongest people on the planet hitting PRs and thinking themselves weak, people would see whoever they followed hitting PRs and think themselves weak. Social media encourages you to compare yourself to what others are posting, which is a cherry-picked sample of the best moments in their life.
No one's bad lifts made it into the magazine either. No one posted off season pictures in a bodybuilding magazine basically ever. Ever picture the person was in the absolute peak shape of their life.
The users need to take responsibility for their use because there is no other solution. Users need to stop blaming other people.
We tried prohibition before to protect people who can't control their alcohol use and it was a disaster. The solution is if you drink too much you get help for your addiction.
With kids, parents need to actually be parents. Parents have basically abdicated responsibility for their kids when it comes to social media. Over protect the kid in meaningless ways but then send them to bed with an unlimited porn device and complete access to all kinds of mentally unhealthy behavior.
"Everyone is doing it" is not an excuse for shitty parenting.
This gets said often and it's true. But it's also self sustaining, and not just at a societal level, at an individual level. I previously worked with many people who lead full lives with minimal online interactions besides group chats with family. They were not significant people in a significant place but they lead meaningful lives. I personally find it helpful to remember that.
Children have the right to be protected until adulthood.
Kids in the USA are "protected" to/from walking to school. They must be driven. etc...
Also they don't have this right. Parents might have a responsibility to protect them, children don't have a "right" to protection.
I can't think of a way to define "social media" that wouldn't include forums, mailing lists, Stack Overflow etc. It would be a shame to deprive young people today of the opportunities I had growing up.
Not sure how you could differentiate, but there has to be a way, as forums -feel- different than, say, Instagram.
Maybe something around media? Banning sites that allow or host media(pics/vids/audio) sharing directly?
Imgur is an example of social media that pulls this off perfectly. Yes it's still a silly place designed for wasting time rather than personal enrichment, but it doesn't -feel- like other social media does.
Here's the trick: No selfies. No profiles. No follows. You post your meme pseudo-anonymously and hope it makes the central stream. Everything else dies in obscurity.
It's a lot like Hacker News in that way, which is also social media but feels different. Because 99% of the time I don't even read the usernames of who I'm talking to. We live and die on the basis of our ideas, not our identities. Even the famous people.
That's a great point and interesting because I'd thought of HN as much like fora, but there it was (is?) common to address people by username (or partial) - 'Thanks cheesepuff[86] that worked perfectly' - which is seldom seen and would be a bit jarring, wouldn't it Swizec, on HN.
Yes. Even Wikipedia has a comments section and profile pages.
I'm also deeply grateful for all the things I learned from interacting with other people on the internet. In fact, most interactions I've had were without any party knowing much about who the other person was. We didn't care about age, gender, race or any of the other real-life traits. We only cared about a shared curiosity. Forcing real identities and age verification onto the internet will destroy safe spaces for human interactions.
Social media isn’t a requirement for learning a skill.
Access to a table saw isn't a requirement for making cabinets.
It makes things a lot faster and easier. At the risk of a little danger.
Why does it need to be faster and easier? I wrote about this in another reply [1], the difficulty of the trial and error process was what gave me the insight (I believe anyway). Obviously, not everyone's the same, so I don't expect my journey to map perfectly onto everybody else's, but there is definitely something to be said for the joy of finding out yourself.
I'd say the majority of my learning came from manuals [1] and books I either read in the library or bought [2][3a][3b][ca][3d].
The rest came from brute-force trial & error - which I don't think should be downplayed. As a child I had time and energy to just try stuff out, that repeated process of failing until succeeding probably gave me more insight than any online writings would today.
It's probably not that far from how I learn new things now. I might learn the basics of something online (a few key pointers) and then go and prototype and try until I'm happy it's sunk into my brain.
I see this as similar to the kind of constraints that music producers have. Whether it's an instrument they play, or the limited kit they have in a home studio. Being forced to learn the thing inside out, because of some arbitrary constraint, often leads to more creative use and a deeper understanding. Modern producers have access to thousands of plugins that replicate the old expensive gear. What happens is they drown in a sea of options, never really learning any one of them in any depth.
Back to the point, if a child wanted to learn programming (without social spaces) - then perhaps some online free-courses, good references sources, combined with the trial & error process I describe above, would be just as effective as the social-network approach? Who knows, it may even be more effective. I see a lot of junior engineers struggle with the basics - basics I taught myself in my teens.
I guess we'll never know, there are so many variables in this equation:
* Are there good non-social-space reference resources?
* Are the free courses good enough - and would they inspire a child to do them?
* Is the current landscape of technology so large that this approach wouldn't work?
I believe inspiration is the key to learning. On the first manual I read [1], after the pages for plugging the computer in:
* Page 10 - drawing lines and triangles on the screen
* Page 11 - making sounds
Before long I'm making a rocket fly up the screen. I'm instantly thinking "I can make a game", and that's it, I'm hooked...
[1] BBC Micro User Guide - https://stardot.org.uk/forums/download/file.php?id=91666
[2] BBC Micro Advanced User Guide - https://stardot.org.uk/mirrors/www.bbcdocs.com/filebase/esse...
[3a] RISC OS Programmers Reference Manual [Volume 1] - https://www.4corn.co.uk/archive/docs/RISC%20OS%20Programmer'...
[3b] RISC OS Programmers Reference Manual [Volume 2] - https://www.4corn.co.uk/archive/docs/RISC%20OS%20Programmer'...
[3c] RISC OS Programmers Reference Manual [Volume 3] - https://www.4corn.co.uk/archive/docs/RISC%20OS%20Programmer'...
[3d] RISC OS Programmers Reference Manual [Volume 4] - https://www.4corn.co.uk/archive/docs/RISC%20OS%20Programmer'...
And as tge other person says, how do you define social media? Forums?
* No recommended content. Chronological feed with basic search functionality is okay. Auto-generated "popular posts" section is social media.
* No targeted ads. Static banners which everybody sees are okay. Decision-making about which ads to show based on user data is social media.
I think those two simple rules would keep a "not social media" company's incentives aligned against invective and towards relevant discussion, even if they were in the business of facilitating discussion amongst like-minded people. And it's not like social media would be banned: just more tightly regulated.
No USER targeted ads. Ads based on page content should be allowed. I say this as someone fully against ads as a concept entirely. They are not helpful nor a benefit for consumers. Consumer awareness and product fit for purpose tests should be funded and expressed in other ways. Maybe a competition (think 'buy ins' like poker tournaments) as an idea / one example.
I subscribe to hot rod magazines for the express purpose of the ads.
But somehow, the targeting of ads by Amazon, etc., have never turned up anything I wanted to buy.
Which is fine, but probably something to keep in mind when debating definitions.
Most of what you mentioned is more about privacy. Which could indeed do with some additional protections, though attempts at an age restriction tend to run into the paradox that you need to know someone's age to enact the restriction, which means you need their personal info, which is what we're trying to avoid.
I'm not sure preventing targeted ads or recommendations it is enough though. Part of the problem with social media is that they accelerate all types of social interaction, which may be harmful in and of itself (you don't need recommendation algorithms or targeted ads for something to go viral after all, viral memes predate both of those).
It is not the same experience anymore. The driving forces are algorithmically lead platforms, which will decide what you get to see and are more likely to promote the latest fad with the largest traction.
There's no hard and fast rule the government can apply which would serve the people, for sure.
But from a parent's point of view it's not that hard to evaluate. If a forum is about things, and people rarely enquire about each other's personal life, it's probably safe. If it's about feelings and dividing communities along personal lines, it's probably not. If adults and children commonly come into contact and the community isn't on guard for creeps, it's not okay. If your kid really wants to participate in an unsafe seeming community, do it with them.
What government could do is mandate that social media sites of a certain scale run only from known domains, with clearly separated subdomains by activity, and have other tools to express parental control - and then leave the application of those to parents. Right now it's technically hard or impossible to enforce parenting rules, often by design.
Then again that is basically the same fear that is preventing children from playing outside unsupervised. And not letting children play unsupervised may end up doing more harm, whether it is playing outside or exploring the internet.
That said I'm not sure if not doing something is an option here, partially because I'm getting the impression it's not simply the (luckily) rare 'bad people' that are a problem on the internet, there's whole industries that profit from children without concern for their wellbeing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pester_power
Sadly there's no chance of a moral panic ever happening over this, because the media which stoke the panics, are funded by advertising from the #1 predator of children, the marketing industry. So the media are never going to bite the hand that feeds them.
And of course the traditional media loves focusing on their competitors such as social media and saying that it causes harm. While completely ignoring the advertising towards children that likely causes a different type of harm, but it's still detrimental to children.
However the severity of the harm from social media is much greater, because we have an enormous increase in suicide rates in teenagers since 2012, and the prime culprit is the smartphone.
i think browsing the internet via terminal like w3m does might take out a lot of the addictive nature of what catches your eye, and you can keep the utility of stack overflow
another equivalent would be teaching them to scrape each individual web-page for text on their own
If a student does not pass the class they are sent to an advanced training camp to fix their nutrition, get them off all prescription drugs and teach them how to verbally joust with the master trolls.
IMO we should try to outlaw that and see what happens, before legislating on the downstream effects. Might still need stuff like social media account age minimums, but... might not.
Source: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/234197/at-least-million-chil...
How?
Social media sites already don’t allow accounts for those under 13, but kids can just lie…
They were detaining thousands annually by 2016, for speech deemed innocuous enough in any other country, and the number has only grown.
And I am unnerved by expressing some of my opinions here on this forum, fully knowing that intelligence agencies such as GCHQ are likely monitoring my controversial posts. Well controversy is required for society to progress, and the chilling effect on other people is hindering the development of society itself.
However I am not going to let the chill have any effect on me here. And I am thus going to continue to speak my mind. Because I don't think I'll be in the UK for much longer, being able to get an EU passport relatively easily. The faster I get out of this sinking ship of a country, the better.
2. I think we need a better term than "social media". I suspect it's mostly not the "social" side that are causing mental health problems, it's the celeb / influencer / brands that are the problem. Maybe we need a social network where all messages disappear after more than 10 people read them or something.
IMO, they're just trying to get through the things they want into legislation before they get booted out next year.
But, they've been so awful generally that the public are beginning to see for themselves why we can't trust government to 'do the right thing' for the people.
Of this election cycle, even - we had one (Cameron -> May, May -> Johnson) in each of the previous two cycles as well.
(We've had 5 swaps 2000-2023 compared with 12 1900-1999)
> The current UK government are on their last legs
I hope you're right but the UK populace does show a distressing talent for ignoring the past and electing horrific parties when it comes to a general.
This is crowd-pleaser legislation; they're hoping it's a vote-winner. They think they have a chance in the next GE.
I'm inclined to agree; I can't vote for Starmer's party, so unless something changes, I won't be voting.
Take Bath for example (I happen to vote there, since it's the last place I lived - prior to that I lived in North East Somerset where the dynamic is the same, but with different parties).
There has not been a member elected for Bath since the 1800s who was not either a member of the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives, or a party which became one of those. The margins are usually comical. Therefore, one must vote according to who they want to prevent winning if one is not for either of those two candidates. Realistically, the only hope even for _Conservatives_ in Bath in the modern era is that a general election is held during University holidays.
Vote tactically if you want to kep a party out, otherwise vote for the party you most want to win. Every vote counts in short money if nothing else, and every vote counts for the continued pressure for PR which seems inevitable given that the only people against it now seem to be the tories and the labour leadership (but not membership)
I encourage anyone who feels this way to spoil your ballot paper. This sends a different signal than not voting: if there were lots of spoilt ballot papers this would be received differently to low turnout.
There is no "message" - the message is to vote for the least worst, or start your own party.
Do they even count spoiled ballots? They certainly don't report them.
I guess in theory, someone who spoils their ballot has "turned out" to vote, so should be counted in the turnout. So it should be possible to work out the number of spoiled ballots from the difference between the turnout, and the total of votes cast. It would be interesting to see if the news media report it so the difference is zero.
See "Rejected ballot papers" https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-w...
By not voting you make it easier for the parties to not change, it means they can play to the most populist views of the moment for their side of the fence and know that the disgruntled middle can be ignored therefore making the system worse over all.
I can't - not with the major parties, anyway.
I can't support the present shower of incompetents and thieves.
I would normally vote Labour; but (a) the party is currently infested with agents of a foreign power; and (b) Starmer won the leadership on a set of pledges that he repudiated as soon as he won, and is still trying to destroy and bury his predecessor.
I can cast a vote for a candidate that doesn't have a snowflake's, such as Green or one of the socialist parties. My vote might suffice to save their deposit, I suppose. But I'm reluctant to cast a vote for someone I know nothing about.
Always an odd point of contention.
The Prime Minister is never elected in the same way as a President is in other countries. That doesn't mean they are "unelected".
I would say the issue is rather that the current manifesto hasn't got a mandate.
In reality the vast majority of people vote for the MP who is a member of the party with the leader they like the best
Then again, the absolute trainwreck that next year's election in the UK will be, is going to be nothing compared to how the US is looking.
Even in the Uk, in practice a new prime minister is chosen by the party member, as the voters only vote for delegates in general election and usually the new PM is the leader of the winning party.
In countries like Germany, where hardly a single party commands a majority in the parliament alone, the process is even more opaque, and more directed by the parties bureaucracy than the popular vote itself.
It's not the current government that's on its last legs, it's your system of government. With the upcoming coronation, police are being given sweeping new public order powers and opponents of monarchy are being pre-emptively warned not to upset the apple car or face penal consequences. Meanwhile the establishment press regales the populace with an endless torrent of nonsense about how many twists are in King Charles' gold braid and what sort of 500 year old pie recipe will be served at the royal feast.
After briefly abolishing the monarchy and establishing a parliament, the UK went back to being an aristocracy and went in an imperialist direction instead. The peasants and later the working class were willing to put up with it by virtue of feeling that they were at the top of the international heap and thus far better off than all those savages in the colonies. As imperial dreams faded under the stress and cost of war, the country pivoted to being the center of a 'commonwealth', but at its core its still an aristocracy, with nearly unlimited privileges for the very rich or the very well-bred, and open-air prison conditions with bread and circuses for everyone else, kept in line by an especially cynical press. The whole Brexit mess was based on nostalgia for the days of Britain being an empire with a built-in moat. The only things saving the UK from international irrelevance are money (in the sense of being a tax haven for the very wealthy), a seat on the UN security council, and a small nuclear capability.
Nothing is going to change until the country becomes a republic, and the only way to get there is to abolish your benighted aristocracy, confiscate its assets, and convert a subject population into citizens by refactoring your legal code to make it meaningful and comprehensible to schoolchildren. Otherwise it's just going to continue down the Harry Potter theme park track.
you can't possibly understand
Even if I was an outsider, why not? Everyone has deep feelings about their own country, culture, history and so on. Don't you think it's a little silly to imagine a country is simply beyond understanding by anyone else? Certainly outsiders have a different relationship insofar as they didn't grow up listening to smack of leather-wrapped balls on cricket bats or [insert distinctive national trope here], but so what? Lacking experience of other cultures never deterred the British from opining about and sometimes taking them over during the age of exploration. If anything, their ability to understand the dynamics of other countries was a major factor in becoming an imperial power in the first place.
UK system is sublime and built on subtlety and nuance
That's just a flowery way to say you like how things have always worked and have a good grasp of unwritten rules. It's equally applicable to the Catholic church or Kalahari bush society.
people who don't fully understand it underestimate it
Americans think the same thing about their Constitution, and this has a lot to do with why the country nowadays lurches from one crisis to the next, failed to anticipate the possibility of a coup attempt 2 years ago, and still hasn't got to grips with it as a polity, despite having successfully prosecuted a number of people for sedition.
I recall 10-15 years ago where when I first became convinced that the US had some serious structural problems and was headed toward acute domestic conflict, academic/legal friends would just go misty -eyed and say nice things about constitutional checks and balances and the wisdom of the founders. If had been sufficiently prescient or had a time machine to say 'by 2021 you'll have civil unrest all over the country and a mob of Donald Trump supporters will force their way into Congress to prevent the transfer of power' they would have laughed out loud or summoned an ambulance.
Also English people do not make up the United Kingdom. Nor do they constitute the entirety of British influence. But that's a trivial matter to a world expert such as yourself, who can't even remain consistent in a baseless rant.
The distinction between English and British in my comment was intentional. The unique style of self-infatuation expressed in the parent comment is quintessentially English (white English, to be even more precise); not Scottish, Irish, or Welsh.
And that is another fear I share for the loss of a monarchy. Something familiar and deeply associated with our long history will be gone, and home will look even more like everywhere else.
Racism and xenophobia divide the working classes as the current government shifts to the far right to pander to white supremacist voters. Politicians lie with impunity. Human rights are supposed to be human. But by othering humans of different nations we are being tricked into dismantling what remains of our own freedoms.
The government would rather outlaw protest, than pay essential workers such as doctors and ambulance staff living wages.
The voting system is unrepresentative and politicians serve corporate interests above their citizens. You've articulated well how there have always been injustices, but as long as things were better than somewhere else, you had a captive and passive populace. They felt powerful despite not being a part of the establishment, as if they were supporting a sports team that was doing well. We were never on the team or a part of the inner circles of wealth creation.
The UK became short sighted, complacent, greedy, and lazy. The country is tearing apart at the seams as the inequality gap continues to widen. It feels as if after almost a decade of Conservative government that the UK itself is being run as if it were a former colony. There is no longer a cohesive populace or vision from government about how to bind the political and working classes together. It feels as if the UK itself has become colonised by international business interests. The elites can live anywhere they choose, so no longer have ties to the soil of the country and are not emotionally invested in saving it.
The UK has failed to prepare for the fact that it has become a multicultural society. You can't discuss the issues of racism in this country without discussing how it is that people of colour have come to live here. Reni Eddo-Lodge begins to ask these questions in her book 'Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race'.
We are still reckoning with imperialism and the end of empire and honest conversations about our past and the source of our nation's wealth are being capitalised on to further societal and political divisions and being labelled as culture wars or wokery. The transatlantic slave trade and the roles of royally chartered companies such as the East India Company/Royal African Company have through systemic exploitation and misery of others made Britain 'Great'. It provided the foundational wealth of industrialisation. The nation is a developed nation because of it. The City of London would not be as powerful as it is now, were it not for the abhorrent trade. There is an unwillingness to admit this, because to do so would expose the lies created to justify white supremacy, slavery and capitalism. Exactly how you describe, the larger population are assets to exploit and are not stakeholders in the business of the nation.
We desperately need to mature as a country.
/rant
The whole comment here reeks of hyperbole and university student angst and anger.
Not saying there aren't fundamental problems but this is extreme.
They're good at fooling people. They steal a few of Labour's policies, put a few non-White people in Government/Cabinet, and suddenly they're a centre party? Please.
They control who runs the BBC.
They hate poor people - just look at the realities of our benefits system.
They banned protests; those which cause annoyance.
They suppressed voters with voter ID, using the lie of significant voter fraud as justification
Every Home Sec recently been strongly authoritarian. They tend to use the Home Sec as a distraction, knowing they'll attract all the far-right accusations, leaving the rest of the party looking squeaky clean.
Prominent cabinet members have supported far-right groups/parties on Twitter.
They hate unions.
They hate human rights.
They're obsessed with appearing to defend our borders.
They strongly, STRONGLY defend the rights of corporations to exploit and profit.
They're anti-intellectual and anti-elitist, prominently expressed around the Brexit vote.
In 2019, Boris Johnson unlawfully suspended parliament
During and post Brexit they heavily promoted nationalism.
They're obsessed with appearing tough on crime.
Rampant cronyism and corruption (particular prominent during COVID)
It's a collection political confetti.
Civilizations are cyclical. The pretend-status of the commoners is cyclical. Sometimes they are too-free, and sometimes they are overtly enslaved. Generally speaking, and while nothing is black and white, these are the two extremes.
The idea is to find the Springtimes in this eternal cycle and to hold the cycle there for as long as possible, lest one of the extremes yet again comes back around sooner than later.
Holding Springtime requires compromise, grit, a respect for the social compact, clear eyes in regard to society's class hierarchies, individual morality, and moral reason in regard to government and social norms.
As those who benefit from the extremes will use any one of those compromised avenues. They have unlimited funds to both open the road and to travel.
The trick is that those who are most oppressed during any single extreme are the ones manipulated into advancing it.
If you think that this era is moving toward a Springtime and not away from it, then you're missing the clear and eternal signals and are going to be in for a shock.
I'm amazed that a book with this title was published. Some people disagree with the cynical 'everything western is evil' narrative for entirely plausible reasons. This title doesn't indicate an openness or curiosity from the author, and it does so on the basis of dismissing an entire ethnic group. The fact that the conversation has moved this way bodes ill for us all.
I'm not sure it's fair to characterize Magna Carta as the core of the UK Constitution, especially since most of it has not been in force for centuries. It looks to me that the main thing it imparts to the constitution is the existence of something which eventually becomes Parliament. Instead, the core of the constitution is probably the English Bill of Rights.
E.g. Manga Carta Article 39: "No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor will we send upon him except upon the lawful judgement of his peers or the law of the land."
By medieval standards, not bad.
Aren't you holding that up as a bit of a silver bullet? There are many republics in this world and I'd not want to live in them. Changing the head of state from a powerless unelected to a powerless (or worse, powerful) elected head of state would change little practically. It would be just another part of our nation handed over to the partisan political class.
And even if we became a republic, who would run for election? The members of same political class as before. Just now they're even more entrenched in the structure, and we will look a bit more like America with its heated Republican/Democrat presidential elections every few years.
I think your post comes off a bit cynical. Can you not see any advantages and positive achievements of the British history of constitutional monarchy, common law, Bill of Rights, etc? Jury trials, habeas corpus, etc, have done much for freedom. The legacy code, if we might call it that, is the only thing still holding back the authoritarian ambitions of the powerful.
I think we've fared a lot better than many other countries, and it has taken great effort to destroy our institutions. We're definitely far gone now, but I can't join in with the kicking of a formerly great man when he is down.
>Can you not see any advantages and positive achievements of the British history of constitutional monarchy, common law, Bill of Rights, etc? Jury trials, habeas corpus, etc, have done much for freedom. The legacy code, if we might call it that, is the only thing still holding back the authoritarian ambitions of the powerful.
So what's your position exactly? On one side you claim it's a powerless family that would get replaced by a (potentially) worse elected person, on the other side it turns out it's a very influential family that prevents authoritarians from taking the power. Then, you finish up with non specific examples of republics that are much worse off than UK monarchy while conveniently excluding republics that are doing equally well or better than UK (you didn't specify in what UK is better so I can also be nebulous I guess).
In my view, monarchy is an artifact of the past. It's pretty much a family inheriting rather high privileges because of some things (which we can agree were important) that happened in the remote past. Nowadays, what's the point? Why do we need to continue with that? If they're powerless as you say, why not just get rid of them? Save money, make the country more democratic (at least on paper) and all that. Oh yeah, and as a spaniard I can also guarantee that a monarch can become a piece of trash like any elected official so those guarantees are thin as paper.
I just would like to hear real arguments about why a monarchy is so much better than an alternative.
That's exactly the trick. Have the head of the state encrusted in titles, ceremony and tradition, but with no practical power. Leave the gritty parts of politics to the parliament. Let the King shake hands and open buildings and leave the governing to the MPs. It was basically figured out over centuries of compromise and finalised with William III's Glorious Revolution. Britain has had some bad eggs but never a tyrant. We've never had a Robespierre, Stalin, Mau or Franco. It seems to have worked.
> Save money
I look forward to finding a politician who will work for nothing. The royal family pay for themselves through their own property and holdings, they actually pay 80% of their earnings to the state and keep the remaining 20% for themselves.
While how much money is spent on American presidential elections? It will frighten you. That money has to buy something, right?
> Nowadays, what's the point? Why do we need to continue with that?
Generally we continue with things because they've worked well for us for centuries. I don't see anyone in the current political class that I'd rather have as a 'president' than Elizabeth II or even Charles III. The British way is empiricism, biased more to observation than pure reason.
> I just would like to hear real arguments about why a monarchy is so much better than an alternative.
It gives us someone who can speak for the nation, untainted by party politics. This is something you'll miss if you abolish the monarchy.
If you are actually curious to read the other side, I'd recommend Roger Scruton.
If the king/queen shakes hands and open buildings, do we really need a royal family with all its associated costs (not only monetary) or a single appointed person that can do these things and get replaced if it's not doing a good job? Let the people vote for it in elections or let the Parliament appoint someone to do these things. I just don't see why the nation should keep giving power to the same family over and over.
>I look forward to finding a politician who will work for nothing. The royal family pay for themselves through their own property and holdings, they actually pay 80% of their earnings to the state and keep the remaining 20% for themselves.
I didn't say it'd cost nothing. Also, the majority of the property and holdings of the royal families come from all those privileges obtained over the centuries, which they get to enjoy while the rest of the people don't have a chance unless allowed in isolated occasions (if so).
>Generally we continue with things because they've worked well for us for centuries. I don't see anyone in the current political class that I'd rather have as a 'president' than Elizabeth II or even Charles III. The British way is empiricism, biased more to observation than pure reason.
Fine, but this is literally an appeal to tradition [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition
>It gives us someone who can speak for the nation, untainted by party politics. This is something you'll miss if you abolish the monarchy.
But this is the case in many republics as well! I live in Finland where the head of state speaks for the nation and is untainted by party politics. He was elected in 2012 and re-elected multiple times, becoming one of the highest valued officials of all time (I think it's currently the second). I have listened to him a bunch of times and I can clearly see he's a "king" with the difference of eventually getting replaced due to better people around or just doing poorly. Good luck doing that with a king/queen - in Spain, it just happened when scandals keep stacking up to an unbearable point where he had to forcefully abdicate or else monarchy could have been really gone.
All this being said, I believe the discussion won't become very productive because you're pro-monarchy and I'm anti-monarchy, in general terms, and some couple paragraphs here and there probably can't change much (specially given the feeling we're both well informed about our positions and it's not simple fanatism). We have exposed our arguments but I really see this can get really long and at the end pointless. I appreciate the time you spent answering my questions with your opinions that, while I don't agree with, are respectable and educated. I'll take a look at Mr Scruton.
I'll concede that the Finnish presidency sounds like a fair option, with some of the benefits I see in the monarchy. Longer term, but ceremonial and elected presidents are preferable to what we see in America. I think it is a similar arrangement in Ireland and Germany.
The British Monarch has more practical power than some elected heads of state in parliamentary republics (who typically do not have both vast personal landholdings and properties tied to the job and a veto, exercised confidentially, on any law that would impact them in their enjoyment of those privileges, which serves for potent and secret leverage on general legislation.)
Britain has a very vibrant and creative culture which has led to lots of great technical innovation in the past, but there are too many perverse incentives in place under the existing system for it flourish, in my view.
They're manifesto pledge pretty much seems to be "we're not the tories" and most depressingly of all, I can say that for me that seems to be just about good enough. Not good mind you, not good at all, not its enough (considering that the competition to the big 2 are either even more loathsome or have no chance in hell)
Sunak is as "elected" as any PM we've ever had. That is, no PM has ever been elected to that position. They are always MPs selected to lead their party by other MPs.
Age checks for porn sites: seems like if parents care about this, there are plenty of technological ways to restrict their children's access? Is there a gap between what's available as a technological intervention and parents' want?
Measures to clamp down on “anonymous trolls” by requiring that services give the option for users to verify their identity: for minors it seems like parents could restrict access to websites via technical means, for adults... don't use the website/app?
Criminalizing cyberflashing (aka the sending of unsolicited nudes via social media or dating apps): as long as this parallels in-person flashing law, this seems reasonable?
Cracking down on scam ads: not sure what this means, but fraud is fraud whether it's on the internet or not. This feels like more outsourcing of law enforcement to companies. If there are complaints about scam ads, then law enforcement should investigate, with subpoenas if needed, and prosecute. Does there need to be a separate law for this?
The real problem behind that are various Evangelical groups running scare campaigns against parents and pressure campaigns against ISPs and individual sites. The US was the first with FOSTA/SESTA, the UK followed suit, and here in Germany our media regulators are going nuts as well.
> Measures to clamp down on “anonymous trolls” by requiring that services give the option for users to verify their identity: for minors it seems like parents could restrict access to websites via technical means, for adults... don't use the website/app?
That one is more complex. There are many different and valid points that collide:
- the EU GDPR effectively demands that services can be used anonymously, and so did the old §13 TMG law in Germany.
- service providers (Facebook most infamously) try to skirt these laws because they sell "authenticity" of users as part of their product appeal, and others to combat spam
- the people demand the ability to post on the Internet without having to reveal their identity - say, in customer or employer review sites, or when unionizing or protesting against the government
- Employers and brands do not want anonymous reviews due to the libel potential
- people wish to watch porn or sext anonymously, because of the risk that a link between their porn habits and identity poses - the best example here is the prosecution of gays via Grindr
- governments do not like anonymous commenting either, partially because they're oppressive, and partially because of the potential for hostile acts by enemy nations such as the Russian and Chinese "fake news" campaigns
Striking a balance between these points is very complex, and the fact that many politicians are frankly way too old (or incompetent) to understand what they are regulating doesn't make things better.
- the EU GDPR effectively demands that services can be used anonymously, and so did the old §13 TMG law in Germany.
This allows anonymity.
- service providers (Facebook most infamously) try to skirt these laws because they sell "authenticity" of users as part of their product appeal, and others to combat spam
Consumers/users are not forced to use these products... as with any other product, they are forced to balance the commercial offerings' pros and cons. If they value anonymity highly, they may choose to not partake.
- the people demand the ability to post on the Internet without having to reveal their identity - say, in customer or employer review sites, or when unionizing or protesting against the government
This allows anonymity.
- Employers and brands do not want anonymous reviews due to the libel potential
They can decide (or not) to require anonymity for their offering, with attendant effects on engagement and community trust.
- people wish to watch porn or sext anonymously, because of the risk that a link between their porn habits and identity poses - the best example here is the prosecution of gays via Grindr
This allows anonymity.
- governments do not like anonymous commenting either, partially because they're oppressive, and partially because of the potential for hostile acts by enemy nations such as the Russian and Chinese "fake news" campaigns
It seems that oppression is bad, so without a compelling reason, anonymity should be allowed. "Fake news": adults should be allowed to believe in or be exposed to the information of their choice.. particularly because no one can be trusted to be the arbiter of "fake."
The last six years should have proven that most adults are not capable of judging whether a piece or source of information is trustworthy or not, hence the call for government regulation in the face of digital warfare - and yes, what Russia and China did to Western populations would have been classified as an act of war some decades ago.
Should the government try to control what we can read, then under the concept of natural rights, it has no authority to do so. And we might even have an obligation to disobey the government - yes, civil disobedience, something that I strongly advocate for in that case.
Enough is enough with this censorship and thought control that has no place in a secular, tolerant and free society.
Do you have any examples? Everything I've heard claimed as a Russian psyop has later turned out not to be at all. I haven't heard any claims of Chinese propaganda gaining traction at all.
As for Chinese propaganda: TikTok. It has already been shown to engage in censorship e.g. against the LGBT community. This app is a direct wire from Beijing to the minds of our children.
[1] https://www.psiram.com/de/index.php/Ralph_Thomas_Niemeyer
And when I mean those in power, it's not just the government, it's those making the headlines in the newspapers, our managers in the workplace, and even our parents. All of them would, on some level at least, be against us having excellent critical thinking skills. Because to do so, is a threat to power in general, especially illegitimate power. And should be encouraged as much as possible.
100%. Happening in Canada right now too: https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2022/02/age-verification-require...
It's a concerted evangelical Christian campaign across the board. The lobbying groups for these policies - in the UK, Germany, Canada, etc - overlap a lot.
Enough is enough, we cannot have these unelected pressure groups dictating our laws. And whose views are in the minority. They do not represent the general public in any way at all.
We need to give these pressure groups as much publicity as we have given cults. To stop them from having a such a grip on our society, because they represent the opinions of a tiny minority. It is as if we have a second unelected government, because these pressure groups have so much power.
Giving these organizations a name, a word, a label, so that the general public can identify with the problem.
Maybe their actions are illegal in some way, just that they haven't been successfully prosecuted yet. This needs looking into.
And maybe their behavior can be rightly criminalized in some way I don't yet know about? So a new law could put a stop to them. Many are hiding behind registered charity status. If they could be stripped of that status...
Governments are afraid of the internet.
And they don't understand it. And thats pretty insane, imagine electing a new leader who says "why don't we just print more money?". We all understand its important to elect a leader who understands economics, because they're going to be regulating it, but for some reason tech illiteracy is given a free pass
They did _exactly_ that in my home country. You can guess how it went...
If a newspaper printed adverts to put your life savings into some NFT scam with a picture of Martin Lewis endorsing it, they would find themselves sued out of business very quickly.
That doesn't seem to apply to facebook though.
How much liability does a print newspaper have for its ad content?
But, I fear all this will do is make other countries double down on these laws. I have said this before, "what is wrong with English speaking countries?". It is like the language makes people try stupid fixes to problems that do not exist.
There should be no excuse to delete any comment that is not illegal (i.e. threatening or inciting violence), when you can just hide it, and those who want to see it can click to see it.
I am totally outraged, it is moral injury, from what has happened to the Internet in 2023, where people have just accepted routine censorship of legal speech, barely batting an eyelid to it when it happens.
If it continues at this pace, where will the people who still care fundamentally about freedom of speech, as I do, have a place to go to? I guess they will end up being branded 'free speech extremists' and be subjected to surveillance by state intelligence agencies....
The part of governing where you have to set up institutions that provide a service or material good for the voters is not their forte.
* Or had to. I dn't know if the VPN trick still works in China.
The major UK ISPs already log all DNS queries and a hell of a lot of TCP data and make it all accessible to authorities.
Worst part is I doubt we'll even see any opposition to this from, you know, the opposition. I doubt the tory leader-of-the-week will face a grilling on what encryption even means from Starmer, he'll want to keep his mouth shut whilst he figures that out himself
http://www.kuner.com/historical-materials-on/
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/web-security-privacy/05...