7 ms·

Patrick Breyer and Pirate Party Lose EU Parliament Seats

82 points by skilled 2y ago

Kelteseth 2y ago
That's sad to see. I was a member for about 4 years, but the party was more and more interested in arguing about distant things like basic income, than more relevant topics. Also, I really disliked that they voted against having a decentralized party conference and always required on site meetings.
- lofties 2y ago
  That sounds like it’s not so sad to see after all.
- trustno2 2y ago
  Frankly, most "pirate topics" are things that are distant for most people. People firstly care about migration, Ukraine war, things around energy, and secondly culture war topics. At least in my country, that stuff dominated the debates. (Especially the Ukraine war support.) People don't care that much about chat control, GDPR, cookie laws, file sharing (the original Pirate topic), or even USB ports on iPhones. They do care but not that much to vote for them.
  - consp 2y ago
    > People firstly care about migration Which I find hugely amazing since it's a boogeyman for other actual problems. Here the migrants are "taking our houses", but if you look at the actual statistics it's not even a drop in the ocean (there are some local variances but nothing significant). The main culprit is 15 years of no significant construction and hand waiving by those who already bought a house.
    - constantcrying 2y ago
      Here major cities would be shrinking without migration. Meaning that with zero new construction housing would become more available. It is self evidently true that the demand for housing migration creates increases prices and reduces availability for housing. Regardless what you think about migration policies, denying such an obviously true statement makes you look ridiculous.
      - ldng 2y ago
        Be serious 2 seconds ! They can't afford the housing you're referring to anyway and the city economy would shrink too and then you'd complain about that...
        constantcrying 2y ago
        >They can't afford the housing you're referring to anyway What? They live in the same type of building I live in. Their rent is paid by the government if they can't pay themselves. Have you never been to a major German city? Visit any part of the city which isn't for millionaires only and you will find it inhabited by locals and migrants. You are completely delusional if you think otherwise. >and the city economy would shrink too and then you'd complain about that... This is irrelevant to the economics of housing. Migrants drive up housing costs, that is the most basic economics.
Argonaut998 2y ago
Not one non-incumbent candidate that I talked to in my country was even aware of Chat Control, and the one incumbent (who was re-elected) responded with the typical “think of the children” spiel.
- consp 2y ago
  > responded with the typical “think of the children” spiel. The response to that is mentioning their children will become criminals by default.
sputr 2y ago
It's worse than that. Czech pirate party also lost most of their members. The other member states also failed to gain any new ones. As someone who ran a national party for a while, it feels like an end of an era. The generation that started the Pirate party is getting older (in our 30s or older) and we're loosing (realistically, lost it a while back) our energy. If we had managed to establish the Pirates as an established party, then that would be fine, but we didn't (except in Czechia). And now, even if you manage to give the Party to a new generation (as we did, before I left) the cultural moment is gone. Now it feels like people don't know or care about digital rights — even tho they affect them way more than they did 10 years ago when we were in our prime. If you'll allow me a hypothesis: everyone interested in IT got (financially) fat and lazy, and now we don't care anymore. In the words of Douglas Adams: "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish"
- lpcvoid 2y ago
  I think there's still people who care, I know I do and a lot of my peers in tech do too. The problem is, I guess, that in times of multiple crisis which only seem to get worse, people worry about other things. I am sad though that I agree, the fight for digital liberty and authority over your own data has largely been lost for the majority of people, and they don't seem to understand or care enough to change it.
  - sputr 2y ago
    The solution to "multiple crisis which only seem to get worse" is to go on the offensive, and lobby for laws that answer those questions in the way we like. Changing an established law is much different than adding a new one.
- xzjis 2y ago
  One possible solution would be that people who cares about digital rights and privacy would integrate a "true" leftist party, and advocate there for them to care about it. That worked in France with La France Insoumise, that voted against Chat Control, and they have 9 seats now.
andersa 2y ago
I checked out their program, but they were anti nuclear power, so there was no way to vote for those fools.
- chaoskanzlerin 2y ago
  An approach I've had to EU elections is that tiny, single-seat parties often do invaluable opposition work through parliamentary requests and access to internal documents. It's why it's sad to see Pirates lose their representation, even though their program isn't great.
- Kelteseth 2y ago
  Renewables + batteries scale way faster and cheaper than nuclear these days.
  - 76SlashDolphin 2y ago
    Battery plants at the scale of conventional nuclear power plants are very few so it's not as proven as a technology. Ideally we should build both since we don't want the EU to be dependent on a single material for its base load (i.e. lithium or uranium).
    - danhor 2y ago
      I really doubt that battery plants for longer duration storage will be lithium based, something redox-flox based will be the future. But with batteries (especially grid scale, where energy and power density matter much less) there are a multitude of feasible options, some more, some less economic, which means in case of material shortages we can switch in the medium term. I also think hydroelectric storage is an underappreciated opportunity, which, if there is a serious issue with chemical battery supplies, could be reasonably quickly expanded. It's also silly to use batteries as base load, as is the concept of base load in general in combination of cheap, but non-dispatchable, renwables, which is one of the things that hurts the economics of nuclear plants.
  - himinlomax 2y ago
copsith 2y ago
[flagged]
- agilob 2y ago
  To support the spirit of invigilation and no privacy, post this from your normal account please. Don't hide, you have nothing to fear.
uyzstvqs 2y ago
Their position on privacy was good, but a complete opposite to their other (disastrous) ideas. You'll find structural pro-privacy with parties like ECR.
- alexey-salmin 2y ago
  > You'll find structural pro-privacy with parties like ECR. Did they already express their position on Chat Control and Chat Control 2?
  - uyzstvqs 2y ago
    Not in specific. Most European parties (including ECR) have many national parties as members, and don't campaign on specific issues themselves. They have general principles they agreed upon. The relevant one here is "ECR Party understands that open societies rest upon the dignity and autonomy of the individual, who should be as free as possible from state coercion." You'd have to look at the campaign programs of the ECR-member national parties, and likely ask the MEPs directly. My experience is that they highly value privacy.
seydor 2y ago
It's a good thing, freedoms should be part of a mainstream party, not some fringe pirates.
- pineaux 2y ago
  I agree, IF the mainstream parties would give a flying fuck about any of these issues, which they don't really do.
  - vaylian 2y ago
    which means that it is actually not a good thing :-(
    - pineaux 2y ago
      Exactly.
fermigier 2y ago
The post claims that "the Pirate Party has lost its representation in the legislative body". However, I understand from a couple of posts that Markétka Gregorován(https://gregorova.eu/ https://gregorova.eu/ / https://x.com/MarketkaG https://x.com/MarketkaG) has been reelected. Marcel Kolaja, OTOH, hasn't. Here's a translation of his latest tweets: > I find the election result hugely disappointing. As the leader of the candidate, I take responsibility for it. > In the campaign, we failed to sell our work and explain the solutions we offer. I see it as a failure for us and other pro-European parties that the far right has grown so much in the Czech Republic. > Secondly, I am also quitting as an MEP. It has been an honour to represent you in the European Parliament for five years. My sincere congratulations to @MarketkaG on winning her mandate and my fingers are crossed. > She needs to work three times harder now in promoting pirate values. But I believe she can do it. From this tweet, and from https://eurovolby.pirati.cz/ https://eurovolby.pirati.cz/ (and a fair amount of automated translation), I understand that Marcel was the leader but he is leaving his seat to Marketa, and that she is the last representative of the PP in the EP, right? Marcel did great work for open source in the EP over the last 2 legislatures. Many thanks to him.
- dvdkon 2y ago
  It's a shame Kolaja wasn't re-elected, and it's not looking rosy for privacy and FLOSS in the EU. I'm disappointed the Czech Pirates didn't touch on these subjects at all in their campaign. The advertising I saw was basically just saying "we exist", and digital privacy was hidden in a broad and generic programme statement. All I could say to support Pirates when talking with friends and family was "I trust them for no particular reason, and Kolaja does good work in the areas I focus on". Not the most persuasive recommendation. I know it's hard to create an honest-but-captivating campaign for elections to what's really an "upper chamber", without the ability to propose its own legislation. But when you have a clear bogeyman like "Chat Control" or software legislation, you use it, damn it!
consp 2y ago
Around here they are non-electable even if they actually had a complete coherent program (which they had a bit more due to joining with a fringe green party), due to the electoral threshold. Fortunately due to the remaining votes system the votes from the PP will very likely go to a party which also votes against the forced chat control though it will not result in them getting another seat.
constantcrying 2y ago
From what I have experienced with the national pirate party is an extremely weird mix of a single issue digital rights party, coupled to a far left social activism group. For obvious reasons such a party doesn't do well. If you want to do left wing social activism, there are much broader, better organized groups and parties available. And if you are a long term employeed member of the middle class, potentially already with a family, the social activism can easily be very unappealing. Looking at their website you can quickly notice the soft contradictions. How can you have a party which theoretically is pro free-speech, but then the most recent issue on their website is about how people who are mean on the Internet should face legal consequences? (That the site is also broken, doesn't make them look any better) I do really believe that a single issue digital rights party could do good in the EU parliament. But certainly I wouldn't vote for the Pirate party.
noirscape 2y ago
The main problem with the Pirate Party is that they're a one-issue party: even if you agree with what Breyer is fighting for in the EU parliament (I certainly do), it's hard to vote for them when the real world unfortunately has more going on than just digital rights and other parties offer more complete goals on that end. The world is too much on fire right now to have the luxury of voting for a one-issue party.
- boxed 2y ago
  They're not single issue any more. But that has two issues: 1. people still think they are single issue 2. because they are not single issue, the people who find out they aren't anymore will be dismayed at something in their program that is stupid and rule them out Basically the worst of both worlds.
  - eterps 2y ago
    > people still think they are single issue Changing the name of the party would help a great deal IMO
    - boxed 2y ago
      That's even worse, then you have to start over with name recognition/PR. That is almost certain death.
- gergo_barany 2y ago
  The main problem with the Pirate Party is that they're perceived by many as a one-issue party. Here is their actual common EU election program, which includes much more than "just digital rights": https://european-pirateparty.eu/programme/ https://european-pirateparty.eu/programme/
  - account42 2y ago
    Or maybe their problem is that they no longer are a single issue party and many of their original supporters just object to the other goals they have added to their program.
nabla9 2y ago
Single issue parties can't live long. They can inject issues into discussion, but they can't grow an d eventually fail and that's not a bad thing. Patrick Breyer made allies in other parties. Pirate parties in EU have people with very different political views on every other issue. In Finland it was eventually taken over by weirdos who used the party to push other agendas and others dispersed. Now we have handful of people who take these issues seriously in Greens and at least 1 in left. Two on the National Coalition Party sometimes get it. Its better than it was with the Pirate party.
- VSerge 2y ago
  ^ This, exactly. In France, digital rights isn't at the forefront of people's worries either (environment, inflation and buying power, societal questions, security, etc). That being said, at least in France, they also stand for a more direct form of democracy, and they seem to apply internally what they preach, which if true would be a unique feature. Then again, I don't know for sure if this is really the way they operate or not. I was never part of this party, because although they know being called "pirate" party is a turnoff for voters, they don't seem able to take the logical step of changing it. They seem nice enough, with some interesting proposals, but what working adult has time for participating in self-defeating orgs?
- boxed 2y ago
  Can't live long.. because the voting system is specifically designed to keep it that way. We don't have to have voting systems like this though. For example, I would be a fool to vote for my preferred party if there's a 50-50 chance of it not going over the threshold for counting. If you do that you basically throw away your vote, and that's stupid. There is an easy fix though: if your party doesn't get in, you should be able to just write your backup choice on the ballot. Then I can vote for my niche party and still be comfortable that my vote will go somewhere useful when they don't get in.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - r721 2y ago
ohuf 2y ago
As a German citizen, the amount of times I heard from the "Piratenpartei" can be counted on one hand. In the early 2000s that party suffered immensely from being hijacked by Neo Nazis, losing a lot of support from voters. Since the Nazis went off and joined the AFD, the Pirate Party is more or less silent. The worst part was when they hardly commented on Edward Snowden and the NSA leaks!
- constantcrying 2y ago
  Weird, to me the Piratenpartei always appeared as being a single issue digital rights party mixed with very far left politics. Right now their most recent issue seems to be people being mean on the Internet, which certainly seems to be more in line with the SPD, who seek to punish people for even the most banal insults.
  - account42 2y ago
    Yeah, what policts of the pirate party is/was even remotely "nazi".
- typicalmindset 2y ago
  [flagged]
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
I will deeply deeply having someone so well connected to such incredibly complex contemporary digital rights issues in a place of power. Patrick Breyer's work in advocating & sharing what's going on has been such an incredibly high form of service, has illuminated such a dark & scary part of governance, and it's hard to imagine who else in the world is going to step up & be the light in Patrick's absence. Patrick, thank you for the many years of incredible service. Your writing online about what's happening is without peer. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=patrick%20breyer&sort=byDate https://hn.algolia.com/?query=patrick%20breyer&sort=byDate
account42 2y ago
Perhaps the German pirate party should have sticked to focusing on privacy and digital rights instead of becoming a second Green party with a far left bend. Really his snide at the right gaining traction in his posts shows that he still doesn't get it.

82 points by skilled 2y ago

That's sad to see. I was a member for about 4 years, but the party was more and more interested in arguing about distant things like basic income, than more relevant topics. Also, I really disliked that they voted against having a decentralized party conference and always required on site meetings.

lofties 2y ago
That sounds like it’s not so sad to see after all.
trustno2 2y ago
Frankly, most "pirate topics" are things that are distant for most people. People firstly care about migration, Ukraine war, things around energy, and secondly culture war topics. At least in my country, that stuff dominated the debates. (Especially the Ukraine war support.) People don't care that much about chat control, GDPR, cookie laws, file sharing (the original Pirate topic), or even USB ports on iPhones. They do care but not that much to vote for them.
- consp 2y ago
  > People firstly care about migration Which I find hugely amazing since it's a boogeyman for other actual problems. Here the migrants are "taking our houses", but if you look at the actual statistics it's not even a drop in the ocean (there are some local variances but nothing significant). The main culprit is 15 years of no significant construction and hand waiving by those who already bought a house.
  - constantcrying 2y ago
    Here major cities would be shrinking without migration. Meaning that with zero new construction housing would become more available. It is self evidently true that the demand for housing migration creates increases prices and reduces availability for housing. Regardless what you think about migration policies, denying such an obviously true statement makes you look ridiculous.
    - ldng 2y ago
      Be serious 2 seconds ! They can't afford the housing you're referring to anyway and the city economy would shrink too and then you'd complain about that...
      - constantcrying 2y ago
        >They can't afford the housing you're referring to anyway What? They live in the same type of building I live in. Their rent is paid by the government if they can't pay themselves. Have you never been to a major German city? Visit any part of the city which isn't for millionaires only and you will find it inhabited by locals and migrants. You are completely delusional if you think otherwise. >and the city economy would shrink too and then you'd complain about that... This is irrelevant to the economics of housing. Migrants drive up housing costs, that is the most basic economics.

Argonaut998 2y ago

Not one non-incumbent candidate that I talked to in my country was even aware of Chat Control, and the one incumbent (who was re-elected) responded with the typical “think of the children” spiel.

consp 2y ago
> responded with the typical “think of the children” spiel. The response to that is mentioning their children will become criminals by default.

sputr 2y ago

It's worse than that. Czech pirate party also lost most of their members. The other member states also failed to gain any new ones. As someone who ran a national party for a while, it feels like an end of an era. The generation that started the Pirate party is getting older (in our 30s or older) and we're loosing (realistically, lost it a while back) our energy. If we had managed to establish the Pirates as an established party, then that would be fine, but we didn't (except in Czechia). And now, even if you manage to give the Party to a new generation (as we did, before I left) the cultural moment is gone. Now it feels like people don't know or care about digital rights — even tho they affect them way more than they did 10 years ago when we were in our prime. If you'll allow me a hypothesis: everyone interested in IT got (financially) fat and lazy, and now we don't care anymore. In the words of Douglas Adams: "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish"

lpcvoid 2y ago
I think there's still people who care, I know I do and a lot of my peers in tech do too. The problem is, I guess, that in times of multiple crisis which only seem to get worse, people worry about other things. I am sad though that I agree, the fight for digital liberty and authority over your own data has largely been lost for the majority of people, and they don't seem to understand or care enough to change it.
- sputr 2y ago
  The solution to "multiple crisis which only seem to get worse" is to go on the offensive, and lobby for laws that answer those questions in the way we like. Changing an established law is much different than adding a new one.
xzjis 2y ago
One possible solution would be that people who cares about digital rights and privacy would integrate a "true" leftist party, and advocate there for them to care about it. That worked in France with La France Insoumise, that voted against Chat Control, and they have 9 seats now.

andersa 2y ago

I checked out their program, but they were anti nuclear power, so there was no way to vote for those fools.

chaoskanzlerin 2y ago
An approach I've had to EU elections is that tiny, single-seat parties often do invaluable opposition work through parliamentary requests and access to internal documents. It's why it's sad to see Pirates lose their representation, even though their program isn't great.
Kelteseth 2y ago
Renewables + batteries scale way faster and cheaper than nuclear these days.
- 76SlashDolphin 2y ago
  Battery plants at the scale of conventional nuclear power plants are very few so it's not as proven as a technology. Ideally we should build both since we don't want the EU to be dependent on a single material for its base load (i.e. lithium or uranium).
  - danhor 2y ago
    I really doubt that battery plants for longer duration storage will be lithium based, something redox-flox based will be the future. But with batteries (especially grid scale, where energy and power density matter much less) there are a multitude of feasible options, some more, some less economic, which means in case of material shortages we can switch in the medium term. I also think hydroelectric storage is an underappreciated opportunity, which, if there is a serious issue with chemical battery supplies, could be reasonably quickly expanded. It's also silly to use batteries as base load, as is the concept of base load in general in combination of cheap, but non-dispatchable, renwables, which is one of the things that hurts the economics of nuclear plants.
- himinlomax 2y ago

copsith 2y ago

[flagged]

agilob 2y ago
To support the spirit of invigilation and no privacy, post this from your normal account please. Don't hide, you have nothing to fear.

uyzstvqs 2y ago

Their position on privacy was good, but a complete opposite to their other (disastrous) ideas. You'll find structural pro-privacy with parties like ECR.

alexey-salmin 2y ago
> You'll find structural pro-privacy with parties like ECR. Did they already express their position on Chat Control and Chat Control 2?
- uyzstvqs 2y ago
  Not in specific. Most European parties (including ECR) have many national parties as members, and don't campaign on specific issues themselves. They have general principles they agreed upon. The relevant one here is "ECR Party understands that open societies rest upon the dignity and autonomy of the individual, who should be as free as possible from state coercion." You'd have to look at the campaign programs of the ECR-member national parties, and likely ask the MEPs directly. My experience is that they highly value privacy.

seydor 2y ago

It's a good thing, freedoms should be part of a mainstream party, not some fringe pirates.

pineaux 2y ago
I agree, IF the mainstream parties would give a flying fuck about any of these issues, which they don't really do.
- vaylian 2y ago
  which means that it is actually not a good thing :-(
  - pineaux 2y ago
    Exactly.

fermigier 2y ago

The post claims that "the Pirate Party has lost its representation in the legislative body". However, I understand from a couple of posts that Markétka Gregorován(https://gregorova.eu/ https://gregorova.eu/ / https://x.com/MarketkaG https://x.com/MarketkaG) has been reelected. Marcel Kolaja, OTOH, hasn't. Here's a translation of his latest tweets: > I find the election result hugely disappointing. As the leader of the candidate, I take responsibility for it. > In the campaign, we failed to sell our work and explain the solutions we offer. I see it as a failure for us and other pro-European parties that the far right has grown so much in the Czech Republic. > Secondly, I am also quitting as an MEP. It has been an honour to represent you in the European Parliament for five years. My sincere congratulations to @MarketkaG on winning her mandate and my fingers are crossed. > She needs to work three times harder now in promoting pirate values. But I believe she can do it. From this tweet, and from https://eurovolby.pirati.cz/ https://eurovolby.pirati.cz/ (and a fair amount of automated translation), I understand that Marcel was the leader but he is leaving his seat to Marketa, and that she is the last representative of the PP in the EP, right? Marcel did great work for open source in the EP over the last 2 legislatures. Many thanks to him.

dvdkon 2y ago
It's a shame Kolaja wasn't re-elected, and it's not looking rosy for privacy and FLOSS in the EU. I'm disappointed the Czech Pirates didn't touch on these subjects at all in their campaign. The advertising I saw was basically just saying "we exist", and digital privacy was hidden in a broad and generic programme statement. All I could say to support Pirates when talking with friends and family was "I trust them for no particular reason, and Kolaja does good work in the areas I focus on". Not the most persuasive recommendation. I know it's hard to create an honest-but-captivating campaign for elections to what's really an "upper chamber", without the ability to propose its own legislation. But when you have a clear bogeyman like "Chat Control" or software legislation, you use it, damn it!

consp 2y ago

Around here they are non-electable even if they actually had a complete coherent program (which they had a bit more due to joining with a fringe green party), due to the electoral threshold. Fortunately due to the remaining votes system the votes from the PP will very likely go to a party which also votes against the forced chat control though it will not result in them getting another seat.

constantcrying 2y ago

From what I have experienced with the national pirate party is an extremely weird mix of a single issue digital rights party, coupled to a far left social activism group. For obvious reasons such a party doesn't do well. If you want to do left wing social activism, there are much broader, better organized groups and parties available. And if you are a long term employeed member of the middle class, potentially already with a family, the social activism can easily be very unappealing. Looking at their website you can quickly notice the soft contradictions. How can you have a party which theoretically is pro free-speech, but then the most recent issue on their website is about how people who are mean on the Internet should face legal consequences? (That the site is also broken, doesn't make them look any better) I do really believe that a single issue digital rights party could do good in the EU parliament. But certainly I wouldn't vote for the Pirate party.

noirscape 2y ago

The main problem with the Pirate Party is that they're a one-issue party: even if you agree with what Breyer is fighting for in the EU parliament (I certainly do), it's hard to vote for them when the real world unfortunately has more going on than just digital rights and other parties offer more complete goals on that end. The world is too much on fire right now to have the luxury of voting for a one-issue party.

boxed 2y ago
They're not single issue any more. But that has two issues: 1. people still think they are single issue 2. because they are not single issue, the people who find out they aren't anymore will be dismayed at something in their program that is stupid and rule them out Basically the worst of both worlds.
- eterps 2y ago
  > people still think they are single issue Changing the name of the party would help a great deal IMO
  - boxed 2y ago
    That's even worse, then you have to start over with name recognition/PR. That is almost certain death.
gergo_barany 2y ago
The main problem with the Pirate Party is that they're perceived by many as a one-issue party. Here is their actual common EU election program, which includes much more than "just digital rights": https://european-pirateparty.eu/programme/ https://european-pirateparty.eu/programme/
- account42 2y ago
  Or maybe their problem is that they no longer are a single issue party and many of their original supporters just object to the other goals they have added to their program.

nabla9 2y ago

Single issue parties can't live long. They can inject issues into discussion, but they can't grow an d eventually fail and that's not a bad thing. Patrick Breyer made allies in other parties. Pirate parties in EU have people with very different political views on every other issue. In Finland it was eventually taken over by weirdos who used the party to push other agendas and others dispersed. Now we have handful of people who take these issues seriously in Greens and at least 1 in left. Two on the National Coalition Party sometimes get it. Its better than it was with the Pirate party.

VSerge 2y ago
^ This, exactly. In France, digital rights isn't at the forefront of people's worries either (environment, inflation and buying power, societal questions, security, etc). That being said, at least in France, they also stand for a more direct form of democracy, and they seem to apply internally what they preach, which if true would be a unique feature. Then again, I don't know for sure if this is really the way they operate or not. I was never part of this party, because although they know being called "pirate" party is a turnoff for voters, they don't seem able to take the logical step of changing it. They seem nice enough, with some interesting proposals, but what working adult has time for participating in self-defeating orgs?
boxed 2y ago
Can't live long.. because the voting system is specifically designed to keep it that way. We don't have to have voting systems like this though. For example, I would be a fool to vote for my preferred party if there's a 50-50 chance of it not going over the threshold for counting. If you do that you basically throw away your vote, and that's stupid. There is an easy fix though: if your party doesn't get in, you should be able to just write your backup choice on the ballot. Then I can vote for my niche party and still be comfortable that my vote will go somewhere useful when they don't get in.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- r721 2y ago

ohuf 2y ago

As a German citizen, the amount of times I heard from the "Piratenpartei" can be counted on one hand. In the early 2000s that party suffered immensely from being hijacked by Neo Nazis, losing a lot of support from voters. Since the Nazis went off and joined the AFD, the Pirate Party is more or less silent. The worst part was when they hardly commented on Edward Snowden and the NSA leaks!

constantcrying 2y ago
Weird, to me the Piratenpartei always appeared as being a single issue digital rights party mixed with very far left politics. Right now their most recent issue seems to be people being mean on the Internet, which certainly seems to be more in line with the SPD, who seek to punish people for even the most banal insults.
- account42 2y ago
  Yeah, what policts of the pirate party is/was even remotely "nazi".
typicalmindset 2y ago
[flagged]

jauntywundrkind 2y ago

I will deeply deeply having someone so well connected to such incredibly complex contemporary digital rights issues in a place of power. Patrick Breyer's work in advocating & sharing what's going on has been such an incredibly high form of service, has illuminated such a dark & scary part of governance, and it's hard to imagine who else in the world is going to step up & be the light in Patrick's absence. Patrick, thank you for the many years of incredible service. Your writing online about what's happening is without peer. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=patrick%20breyer&sort=byDate https://hn.algolia.com/?query=patrick%20breyer&sort=byDate

account42 2y ago

Perhaps the German pirate party should have sticked to focusing on privacy and digital rights instead of becoming a second Green party with a far left bend. Really his snide at the right gaining traction in his posts shows that he still doesn't get it.