Trying to mass censor user generated content in real time and not causing censorship of speech from outside the UK isn't going to work. The only way they could stop anything they dislike is to abolish social media and implement a new internal national network that is wholly controlled by the state for residential use. We've seen the UK police website being blocked to those outside the UK. In the future, it could be physically blocked (making VPN's useless) and only available within a UK Intranet. Which I think they will do in the long term.
An update to a previous post I made also mentioned in the link, the first arrest for "inaccurate information" was made to a prominent critic of the UK Government, someone who was critical of vaccine mandates, lockdowns and face masks - Bernie Spofforth. From what I understand, she is just the first of many who face arrest as these plans will now make social and communication networks legally mandated to report what the state deems to be dissent, lies and harm to law enforcement.
This law introduced by the Conservatives will bite them in the backside as it will be used against those creating electoral communications that are critical of the ruling Labour Party. It's going to be very difficult for anything critical of Labour to be published as anyone who does faces arrest.
Labour will also likely make VPN use outside of business and Government illegal. They attempted to push an amendment to the Online Safety Bill to this end but it failed. Now they have a large majority and a new opportunity to ban them for good.
Another thing that came about in the last couple of days, the renamed Counter Disinformation Unit who targeted those critical of Government during Covid-19, the National Security Online Information Team, are now targeting those critical of Government who are on the right wing.
TL;DR - the UK now has a literal Ministry of Truth.
It's only been a few hours but already things have changed so much it'll need a new post rather than add three more ETA's and have this go potentially unnoticed in the original post.
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The current director of public prosecutions (Starmer's old job) is considering charging anyone involved under terror offences which could dramatically increase the prison terms for those involved.
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Extradition proceedings are being sought for those posting on social media from outside the UK. Predominantly focused on Tommy Robinson but could also be made against Elon Musk after he made several tweets critical of the UK Government (https://archive.ph/OjJ5s). This is in addition to earlier demands by the Government to boycott advertiser's and bring forward enforcement of ruinous fines to websites that allow such content to be published.
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A man has been charged with content posted online deemed "hatred" by the local police. The proceedings are now subject to a secret court where nothing about the case will be made public beside the sentence and no-one is to comment, speculate or discuss it.
Hopefully this will inform those overseas as to the current sit rep with the UK and the direction of travel the country is going.
The former head of UK counter terrorism policing is making demands via a direct competitor to self-generated social media.
He's made a number of demands:
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The violence from the "far right" (not other groups) and "lies" (also speculation and rumours, never mind fake news and disinformation) spread on social media should constitute terrorism and be treated as such. Naturally they deadname Tommy Robinson, declare him the leader of far right terrorism and demands his arrest.
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They want social media boycotts by advertisers, giving particular attention to Elon Musk's X (a.k.a. Twitter) in order to either shut them down or get them to tow the Government line (which will be impossible to do with user generated content). Also advocates for further laws regarding speech online, more on that imminently...
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And he also wants the bar of criminality for "hateful extremism" to be lowered. So that a lot more speech that may be, for example, not complementary of the Government, to be criminalised.
So the UK is now in a death spiral where terrorism and extremism are being watered down and will apply to a lot more people in the future if the Government caves in to his demands. All at a time where they don't have the prisons to house so many more people who now are law abiding citizens, will soon unwittingly find themselves criminals.
ETA - In the last hour, the Justice Minister on the BBC has called for Elon Musk to face potential criminal action for his "civil war" post on X, deeming it "deplorable" and "inflammatory", which the UK law will deem incitement (as Blackbelt Barrister detailed in a YouTube video last night). Stating that laws apply online to websites accessible in the UK. If a UK police force requests his arrest, the second he comes to the UK, he'll be arrested.
Archive: https://archive.ph/fOuAh
Starmer announced a new police unit to deal with "violent disorder". While the main focus has been on the rioting over the last couple of days, lesser known measures that have been introduced include:
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Mass surveillance including monitoring and facial recognition of all individuals to target anyone through special measures that could include banning of freedom of movement, freezing bank accounts and criminal behaviour orders imposed on anyone who is expected to dissent. Everyone will be subject to movement restrictions.
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Targeting of the "far-right" in a political and media sphere. Farage was singled out by the media. Martin Daubney who presents for GB News has been arrested.
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A legal request to shut down and remove all "speculation" or speech that could be deemed incitement or shutting down telecom networks in areas where people are protesting or trouble has broken out.
All police forces and the Government will implement these measures with immediate effect.
As usual, they start with the most egregious examples like Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action but that's to get the public on side. Eventually they'll work their way down to the individual level. We know there is a desire to deal with the likes of ULEZ critics, lockdown sceptics and those who have been vocal around grooming gangs. Maybe this is why Sunak is holding off until the last minute by law to hold an election, so he can push this through as his lasting legacy, an effective Lese-majeste law whose ultimate goal is to outlaw protest, dissent and criticism.
If you want to know why all the political parties form Labour to Reform are all in lockstep with the Conservatives, now you know. Step out of lane and you're finished.
The lack of the specific term "incel" and the insistence of him being single and misogynistic in the motive being mentioned by police and politicians is rather telling.
As far as the Australian authorities and Government are concerned, single men are just as much of a terror threat as other well known groups. They're also preparing to interview the perpetrators family as if they are implicit in this tragedy. Expect the Government to take action through new laws and measures considering their assumed background and majority of victims.
A contributor to the Hyprland project (a dynamic window tiling manager), Vaxry, who he and others on his Discord is critical and joking of pronouns (who/cares), does not care about the political background of contributors or users of Hyprland and is concerned about the creep of ideology into the free and open source ecosystem.
Background:
From his critic: https://archive.ph/Sfvlr And Vaxry's rebuttal: https://archive.ph/jMoKB
He called out the bad apples who wish to impose their purity testing onto projects and users:
Subsequently his concerns were dismissed as transphobia and national socialism by his opponents which led to a member of RedHat, FreeDesktop and Xorg to tell him via a RedHat email address that he is in violation of the Code of Conduct for behaviour outside of the project and if he continues he will be banned.
And subsequently calling this out publicly got him banned.
And the other side justifying this move for balance:
As a consequence, he can no longer contribute code to FreeDesktop including Xorg and Wayland, critical components for a tiling window manager. And there is now a push to banish the "deeply toxic" Hyprland project from distributions and deal with "problematic" users to purge them from free and open source software, including their forks.
It looks as if the purity testing in free and open source software is spreading. And there are increasing numbers of individuals drunk with power who wish to impose their values, beliefs and codes onto everyone else. The Linux Kernel already replaced its Code of Conflict with the Code of Conduct. Not just with FreeDesktop, I've seen the same principles being made within the Linux kernel, Gnome, KDE, RedHat and other important project contributors and users. Now we're seeing purity testing and gatekeeping in the same regard as we've seen elsewhere in proprietary software, gaming and other media.
https://reclaimthenet.org/the-uk-government-is-considering-a-new-looser-definition-of-extremism
I did post about this in the Tommy Robinson thread but wanted to leave that post to focus on him specifically (tl;dr - he's guaranteed to be labelled an extremist for being critical of Government and Islam). It however, has a much wider range of consequences if this goes ahead.
The current definition is the:
“vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.”
The new addition will be:
“The promotion or advancement of any ideology which aims to overturn or undermine the UK’s system of parliamentary democracy, its institutions and values; or threaten the rights of individuals or create a permissive environment for radicalization, hate crime and terrorism.”
The definition will be statutory - in other words, decided or controlled by law.
It will bring about the effective implementation of Blasphemy and Lese-majeste laws where protesting Government policies, criticism of the state, of certain foreign states, ideologies, religions, royalty and politicians will be defined within the new vague definition of extremism. Political opposition will also fall within the definition, the article gives an example of the Scottish National Party stance on nationalism. The Muslim Council of Britain, Palestine Action and Muslim Engagement and Development could also be defined as extremist under the new definition.
You may have notice in recent times that the Labour Party has turned into the Red Tories and the Tories are purging members who are on the right of the party, such as Suella Braverman and Lee Anderson. And why we've now got a Uniparty situation where the only thing that changes is the colour of the rosette and the ribbon.
Another few examples I could give will be JK Rowling, Graham Linehan and Sharon Davies MBE and their strong stance on biological sex in society and sport as well as acknowledging the biological reality of sexual dimorphism.
It will result in groups being required to be deplatformed, banks will have to debank them and funding will have to stop for those groups/individuals (think the Canadian truckers). The fear being is that people will be jailed, people will have to flee the country and claim political asylum or the Government could strip citizenship, even if it makes them stateless, from critics and dissenters.
We're also at a time where there is pressure to "protect the children" using the examples of Molly Russell and Brianna Ghey to push a new agenda to deal with American social media conglomerates broadcasting "hate" and "extremism" with the solution being lobbied being a national Intranet where you impose a Ofcom regulated and controlled walled garden with electronic border checks for data coming in and out of the Internet.
If you're outside of the UK in a western country, keep an eye on developments in the UK as early as this week. It is coming to you.
Archive: https://archive.is/MXNri
Piers can see the writing on the wall, the viewership is online for long, multi-hour content to compliment short form clips on TikTok, not broadcast media and their strict regime of schedules.
Have to say, I have also seen regular content creators on YouTube, Rumble, Odysse et al also move in this direction. Channels that used to put out 20-30 minute concise content are now expanding it to 1-2 hour live streams, if not longer on increasing occasion.
The days of 10-60 minute video and audio form content is dying. People either want long form or clip form content, nothing in between.
Archive: https://archive.is/qeL2G
For background, Ghey was a transgender teenager who was killed by two other teenagers. Both were sentenced last week to life imprisonment with a minimum of 22 and 20 years respectively. They formulated their plans to kill a number of schoolchildren by befriending them and using plans they researched.
Now Ghey's mother has spoken to the BBC (who else?) to denounce the Internet as the "wild west" and calling for the state to restrict what children can view online in a way that would only work by removing access to the Internet and implementing a UK style Intranet. She also claims that it is impossible for parents to parent their children - therefore the state must intervene - by requiring all technology and what citizens see to be restricted by the state.
As we live in a time where people are treated like children by default, you are assumed to be a child by default (the Online Safety Act requires different treatment for content not "safe for kids" as an example), the desire that people need to be protected from themselves and everything must be done "for the children" and "for your own good".
For example, in North Korea, the general public have no access to the Internet. They do have access to Kwangmyong, the heavily restricted Intranet where everything citizens see and the technology used to access it is wholly controlled by the state.
Another case of not letting a tragedy go to waste.
ETA: Education Minister just told the BBC that they will be expanding age verification to all content not "safe for kids", not just pornography. Their preferred option to be introduced by 2025 is both Government Photo ID and live, on-going facial recognition. They're also not ruling out implementing an Intranet and banning the possession of technological devices for children.