Relax. NATO countries pushing for war with Russia is a far right talking point. He assumed that this line of thinking was pushed.
There are so many Poles in Germany there is no way in hell Germans would as a collective actively sabotage any defensive war efforts if Poland got invaded. I honestly don’t see it with any EU member but I don’t think there is a seizable number of Germans that don’t know somebody from Poland or with family in Poland.
Ukraine before 2014 was just a smaller Russia to us. Barely a Ukrainian community in Germany, unable to tell the language apart, unable to even read the script. Poland was never that. In modern Germany, Polish people have always been our neighbors, friends, colleagues, care takers for our kids, the sick and the old, skilled tradesmen, owners of the good restaurants in town and many more things.
Even the jokes about thieves that were so popular when I was in school stopped.
Couldn't be further from the truth. Just look at how NATO countries have tiptoed around supporting Ukraine. Every major step (artillery shells, tanks, rocket artillery, air defense systems, and fighter jets) took ages of largely pointless discussion before the decision was made. Not to mention the very weak response to Russian military intelligence terror cells that have been caught red-handed across Europe in recent years while they were preparing attacks like smuggling incendiary devices onto DHL cargo airplanes. If this isn't an unbelievably unconfrontational reaction to Russia's actions, then what is?
Absolutely fair point, the response has been weak.
But here's the thing. The official action is slow, but the media stories about the threat are turned up to eleven, 24/7.
For a year & a half the story about the Nord Stream bombing was "Russia did it". End of discussion. Then it turns out it was probably some Ukrainian group, and everyone just shrugs and moves on. The original media-instilled fear doesn't disappear, though.
And that fear is what they use to sell us things like Chat Control.
So... when you mention "Russian military intelligence terror cells caught red-handed," my bar for skepticism is raised. I'm not saying it's impossible (on the contrary, militaries have been doing hybrid warfare for ALL of known human history), I'm just always failing to find the convictions that should follow someone being caught red-handed.
This is true of course but the counter argument is that running your own infrastructure is probably not a problem for international criminal gangs but your group chat with the boys is not gunna go through some AI garbage filter and in the end we are still going to get our cars stolen but now the police is knocking because I called Merz a fascist bastard and once the actual fascist win an election they are going to knock on everybody’s door who called Weidel a pick me girl in Turkish.
In summary, without stupid jokes about German politics, the actual stated goal is unachievable but the real world consequences in a Europe that is sprinting to the far right are incredibly dangerous.
I used to be on your side but now that I live as a minority where the locals are increasingly becoming hostile and their very abusive rhetoric is accepted on social media and forums like reddit I actually want them to face the consequences of such speech and be deterred from uttering anything like that with their devices. (They can do so privately at the bar I have no problem with that.)
Another example is the recent nepal protests.
More abstractly I think that a multi-cultural or multi-ethnic society at scale is not able to handle anonymous and private communication without collapsing. If we dont go in the direction of benevolent censorship like China and Singapore I think the west is going to see some dark times.
And how are you supposed to exist as any sexual, gender, religious, or political minority when Gestapo's listening in on every phone? And also, we were talking about private conversations, not Reddit, not any less private than what is spoken in your own home.
I am sympathetic to whatever made you believe that, but if you advocate for such evil, inhumane, reckless systems, you are not a good ally to anyone, including yourself or your community.
Honestly I am on the edge about this, but for the sake of argument how is it evil or inhumane to de-anonymize certain types of rhetoric from digital communication. I dont think freedom of speech includes anonymity in it.
> I used to be on your side but now that I live as a minority where the locals are increasingly becoming hostile and their very abusive rhetoric is accepted on social media and forums like reddit I actually want them to face the consequences of such speech and be deterred from uttering anything like that with their devices. (They can do so privately at the bar I have no problem with that.)
It's interesting that a member of a minority would not see that this is exactly how minorities get oppressed. Sure, let's make trans hate speech illegal (and completely fuck privacy online in order to make it so)... then we block criticism of Israel... then we block criticism of The Party... now let's block anything that might "corrupt our children"... Actually we don't need that narrative anymore; we just block whatever The Party says to block. I hope being trans stays socially acceptable!
To say nothing of the fact that one country fucking over privacy for its citizens means fucking over citizens of many other countries too, who didn't agree to it.
No to clarify I didnt say make it illegal, I said to de-anonymize it. If you are gonna say controversial things they just have to be tied to your name.
This just does not work and it has been tested in practice. I can't link studies right now, but as a simple example: How many of these horrible things were said by publicly known people (e.g. politicians, celebrities,...) and there were little to no actual consequences?
I fail to see how that makes it any less prone to abuse. And I don't see how it would help things. People say horrible shit all the time in person too.
An assumption I disagree with wholeheartedly. People say and do even more heinous shit in person all the time. You yourself said your locals have become more aggressive. Do you think that if we were like, "Hey, if you wanna continue to talk shit, you have to tell us your name" they'll just be like "oh okay you know what you're right I was wrong I love minorities" or do you think they'll just become even more aggressive? Do you think that'll lead to more understanding between people? Or just more violence against minorities?
If you deanonymise, you'll have to do it on a general basis. This would include investigative journalists, whistleblowers, protesters etc. Surely you can see the net-negative we'll get from that.
> More abstractly I think that a multi-cultural or multi-ethnic society at scale is not able to handle anonymous and private communication without collapsing. If we dont go in the direction of benevolent censorship like China and Singapore I think the west is going to see some dark times.
Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither and will lose both.
It works remarkably well at scale. In fact, this is the defining trait of all cities, states, and nations that became historical points of reference like Troy, Athens, Rome, Constantinople, Venice, London the US and possibly China in the future.
Each of them thrived because they embraced diversity and freedom, etc. giving themselves access to a much larger pool of skilled talent.
Venice offers the clearest example. At its height, they could appoint someone as unconventional as a sub-Saharan Muslim to command their fleet (think of Othello). But the moment they shifted to a locals-only approach for key positions, their dominance began to crumble.
The problem is that usually locals feel cast aside. And while they too get the benefits, they rarely see them as such… They feel entitled and screwed. Don’t care about the big picture.
Ps. Of course this is very high level as each of these cities / states / etc collapsed under slightly different circumstances.
I had that too but I think it’s kinda weird. Like, high readings should be followed up with long term blood pressure measurements. And maybe the recommendation to get your own device and check regularly at home.
At least that’s what happened to me.
To be fair though, this high readings problem at the doctors office went away when I lost weight (from a BMI of 25 to a BMI of 22. both in normal weight range).
Damn. When I had a child in Germany, our version of CPS came over and told me what fun things the city offers for children and asked me about my plans for day care and how I can get help to get a spot.
I once called them because the day care lady of a friend‘s kid is a bit of an idiot and kinda scared us about mass closure of day care centers and it was probably the nicest interaction I’ve ever had with a government agency.
But from what I’ve heard, America in general is a whole other beast both regarding expectations for parents, trust in the kids and the trouble you can get in for minor things.
I wouldn't be so quick to equate differences in personal anecdotes with stark country-level differences (though it's plausible that everything is worse in America as usual)
I grew up in a low income neighborhood in the Netherlands and many times saw people be utterly terrified of CPS. In many cases these were households where outside help could've been really useful, but even in the worst cases where heavy CPS involvement was the only option (real "take the child away" cases), the child's situation often unfortunately hardly got better, just different. In less intense cases CPS involvement often just seemed to thrust a compliance burden on households without offering much real support, mostly just leaving people feeling guilty and stigmatized. Overall still better for them to exist than not, and budget cuts and restructuring really hurt the situation later, but still an organization with very real odds of making the situation worse, sometimes catastrophically worse.
I think the only thing hat can save us is a jailbreak. Either for iOS or Android to let you sideload apps.
Alternatively, and that’s almost bullshit, the dumb phone trend continues and we might get devices like PDAs. Get a dumb phone and a small camera and then your PDA for everything that is essentially an app. Not sure what OS they’d run but I don’t see another way.
I think a big problem is that the users have been trained to accept the status quo. I mean back in the Feature phone days we would share Java phone games at school via Bluetooth. I’d assume kids these days generally don’t anymore.
Also, due to the cost of physical media piracy was rampant even amongst boomers. People knew and had the option to buy a dvd player that could play video cd because that’s how movies were ripped.
Even during the early iPhones we were so stripped of even basic features that a jailbreak was 100% required if you wanted to even basic things like taking videos or changing the Home Screen background.
None of this is necessary anymore. The users gets the phone and it just works from their perspective at least.
So who is going to try to run a business off of nerds like us who want to have this sort of control over our devices (I’d call it freedom but the average user doesn’t feel unfree)?
> we would share Java phone games at school via Bluetooth. I’d assume kids these days generally don’t anymore.
I am both happy (from a user-friendliness point of view) and sad (from a "works offline" perspective) that F-Droid's share button now shares a link that will show them info about the app with an option to install the software, instead of the share button directly giving you an APK file with no way to link someone to the 'store' page. I'd personally still know how to send people APKs via hotspot or bluetooth (such as for peer-to-peer voice/message apps) but a lot of people won't
This move from sending each other software to sending each other links to centralized platforms has been long ongoing. Most messaging systems don't allow you to send executable (.exe, .apk, .sh, etc.) files anymore. And I believe that virtually all of them individually do it for your own good, but the combined result is a societal shift
Not from the UK but in Germany we have the same issue where there is T-Mobile (best coverage), Vodafone (good coverage) and o2 (worst coverage) and there are simply some remote areas where anything but T-Mobile doesn’t have coverage.
And the easy answer is that T-Mobile, or rather the parent Telekom, is a terrible company best known for right now for getting the government to agree that they can cancel your existing internet contract to make switching easier when they want to catch you as a fiber customer but actually all they’re doing is sending a marketing company around Germany (Raider Marketing) to lie to your grandma to sign contracts for the Telekom or just cancel your existing internet contract because they think with a bit of pressure they can get you to sign up with them.
Alternatively, they are also known for the worst peering on existence because they have the crazy idea that they can charge tenfold what other ISPs take for peering because they are the Telekom…
In summary, the Telekom is such a terrible company that I’d rather not give them any money and if I needed T-Mobile coverage I’d rather get a foreign eSIM and rely on roaming than giving them a single cent.
I'm happy to give them (telekom) money because their service works. Vodafone was constantly inferior in my experiences (dsl vs cable as well as their mobile networks). At least i don't have to call vodafone every month like my neighbors do when the internet is down, worth every penny.
There are so many Poles in Germany there is no way in hell Germans would as a collective actively sabotage any defensive war efforts if Poland got invaded. I honestly don’t see it with any EU member but I don’t think there is a seizable number of Germans that don’t know somebody from Poland or with family in Poland.
Ukraine before 2014 was just a smaller Russia to us. Barely a Ukrainian community in Germany, unable to tell the language apart, unable to even read the script. Poland was never that. In modern Germany, Polish people have always been our neighbors, friends, colleagues, care takers for our kids, the sick and the old, skilled tradesmen, owners of the good restaurants in town and many more things.
Even the jokes about thieves that were so popular when I was in school stopped.