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It's surreal, and dismaying, to contrast this surveillance push with recent Western reporting about North Korea digital surveillance[0,1]. Dismaying, because it

It's surreal, and dismaying, to contrast this surveillance push with recent Western reporting about North Korea digital surveillance[0,1]. Dismaying, because it shows (IMO) how our societal dialogues are helplessly stuck in a rut of doublethink—using one set of language to describe what the DPRK is doing, and entirely different language for the things the EU bureaucracy is doing, though they're the same things. There's no daylight between North Korea's "dystopian reality" [sic] of capturing random screenshots of user devices, and the EU's mandatory data retention concept. [0] https://www.techspot.com/news/108156-north-korean-smartphone-secretly-takes-screenshot-every-5.html https://www.techspot.com/news/108156-north-korean-smartphone... ("In North Korea, your phone secretly takes screenshots every 5 minutes for government surveillance") [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cewd82p09l0o https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cewd82p09l0o ("Inside a phone smuggled out of North Korea")

nickslaughter02 1y ago
> In North Korea, your phone secretly takes screenshots every 5 minutes for government surveillance Context: Under the EU's Chat Control proposal, your private messages (Signal, WhatsApp etc) will be scanned by an on-device AI agent. The current debate is around scanning images and videos but the original proposals called for analyzing all text too (I wish I was joking).
- amarcheschi 1y ago
  As far as I know, the latest draft of chat control doesn't include mandatory scanning anymore. I might as well be wrong though
  - nickslaughter02 1y ago
    It doesn't under the Polish presidency. Denmark is taking the lead from July and plans to push for the most extreme version (all scanning mandatory). https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer/114596587390684173 https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer/1145965873906841... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44168752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44168752
    - amarcheschi 1y ago
      That's interesting. And sad
    - HPsquared 1y ago
      I wonder if it's a gambit to push for too much and sink the proposal. A compromise is more likely to pass, no?
      - nickslaughter02 1y ago
        Even the original extreme proposal had wide support. The changes were offered only after Germany with Poland were against it IIRC. This is the state as of December 2024. https://www.patrick-breyer.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/signal-2024-12-11-152711-002-2.jpeg https://www.patrick-breyer.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/sig... I don't like that Opposed / Abstaining are both green. Abstaining means they don't care.
    - worldsayshi 1y ago
      I wish there was more potent ways to veto suggestions like this. Perhaps people should, in a democratic way, have the ability to ban representatives that are pushing these ideas, and many other, from politics for life. But perhaps there's no way to make that "democratic".
      - pmontra 1y ago
        Well, it's the core of democracy: the right of never ever voting for a given candidate again. What you are writing about is probably denying to some people the right of candidating themselves or even the right to vote. There are examples: one of them is Italy banning the fascist party after WW2 and the descendants of the royal family. Excerpts of Provisions XII and XIII of the Constituton, easily googlable: > It shall be forbidden to reorganise, under any form whatsoever, the dissolved Fascist party > The members and descendants of the House of Savoy shall not be voters and may not hold public office or elected offices I read that Germany banned a right wing party that recently won quite a large share of votes. I'm not sure about the extent of the ban and if it's a ban at all.
- rdm_blackhole 1y ago
  You forgot to mention the best part, LEOs and MEPs and all militarily personnel would be exempt from this proposal thereby creating a two tier society where if you end up in the wrong tier, all your conversations will be watched by the government and in the other where you are free to say what you want. This stuff is straight up out of 1984.
  - nickslaughter02 1y ago
    Naturally. They know the agents will make mistakes and send your image or video to some underpaid cop somewhere along with all your details. It will be extortion galore.
MaxPock 1y ago
Actually,reporting on NK or China's surveillance is usually because they are geopolitical adversaries not because they are dystopian. So to think that the EU cares about freedom or privacy is to be naïve
- chii 1y ago
  there's a chance that an EU citizen could fight back against these legislation. And it is encouraged to do so. Privacy is agency.
  - MaxPock 1y ago
    The system is designed to make you think you have a chance. Ask the 30 people arrested in the UK everyday for their social media posts what they think of this ability to "fight back".
    - nickslaughter02 1y ago
      It's not necessary to go outside of EU. "In a despicable attack on the freedom of speech, a German right-wing journalist has been sentenced to seven months’ probation for mocking left-wing Interior Minister Nancy Faeser." "The editor-in-chief of the news website Deutschland-Kurier was punished for sharing a satirical meme on his X account. The meme, which was posted by Bendels last February, shows Nancy Faeser holding up a sign, with the words: “I hate freedom of expression.”" https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/proving-the-point-german-journalist-convicted-for-free-speech-meme/ https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/proving-the-p...
      - account42 1y ago
        It's always funny (in a sad way) when a ruling should be admissible as clear evidence for the opposite ruling.
  - hulitu 1y ago
    > there's a chance that an EU citizen could fight back against these legislation. Just like in the scene in "Dumb and dumber" : " i would say ... like one in a million"
mqus 1y ago
If it helps: the EU ones are still just proposals (likely to ve struck down by courts), the north korean surveillance is already active(?)
- account42 1y ago
  And the EU ones will keep being proposals until they are implemented. They absolutely shouldn't just be proposals. They should be scandals that make anyone involved have zero chance in future elections and unemployable anywhere near the political sector.
  - nickslaughter02 1y ago
    Unless news like this are all over mainstream media it's not going to happen. It doesn't make it even to most "tech" media.
- rdm_blackhole 1y ago
  The last law that was deemed illegal (the data retention directive) took 8 years to be annulled by the courts. So the avenue of the courts is really not an option.
nabla9 1y ago
>There's no daylight between North Korea's "dystopian reality" [sic] of capturing random screenshots of user devices, and the EU's mandatory data retention concept. This is nihilistic BS and false equivalence. EU commission's retraction can be challenged in the courts if it's not allowed.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- impossiblefork 1y ago
  But you say 'if it's not allowed', but not allowed by whom? The courts aren't some kind of magic guarantors of justice and order, and something isn't okay just because the courts approve it. If this somehow is tolerated by the courts, the fact that we have them is irrelevant. It's the policy itself that determines whether we are like North Korea.
  - mazurnification 1y ago
    "But you say 'if it's not allowed', but not allowed by whom?" Not allowed by EU law obviously. Role of courts (in general) is interpreting law and thus deciding how said laws apply case by case. Law in EU flows down from EU treaties that where negotiated and signed by member countries. The big ones (treaties) needed also be "ratified" by country wide referenda.
    - impossiblefork 1y ago
      So laws are made by people, sometimes retired people, sometimes people. So it's just another thing allowed by a person. Law isn't something magical with capability to make something not okay okay. Law is just someone allowing or forbidding something, with this having been incorporated into a sort of system.
      - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
        That... is exactly what [democratic] law is...
riffraff 1y ago
Nitpick: doublethink is not about language, it's about keeping two contradictory ideas in one's mind and thinking them both true ("war is peace"). This is just plain "surveillance is bad when bad people do it, not when good people do".
- amiga386 1y ago
  Just rephrase as "surveillance is bad when bad people do it and surveillance is good when our guys do it" to get the self-contradictory doublethink. If you want nuance, say that surveillance harms a person's privacy, and mass surveillance harms _everyone's_ privacy. You can then think up scenarios where you deem privacy invasion acceptable - for example, if you have reasonable suspicion a crime is being commited by a specific person, but not to put fear into the hearts of citizens and to spy on and thwart any organised resistance to your grip on power. You might then conclude that you should not perform mass surveillance as it's in keeping with the totalitarian approach.
  - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
    > "surveillance is bad when bad people do it and surveillance is good when our guys do it" is not contradictory unless you assume everyone shares your premise that surveillance is intrinsically bad which, obviously, they do not.
    - amiga386 1y ago
      It's contradictory because it posits "X is Y and X is not-Y" simultaneously. Also, I did not say surveillance was intrinsicly bad. I said it harms peoples' privacy, which it does, even if you think that harm is justified or beneficial, even if you think privacy itself is harmful and people should have less of it.
      - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
        It is literally not contradictory. "Surveillance-by-bad-people is bad. Surveillance-by-good-people is good." We accept this for almost everything in society, FWIW. "Enslavement-by-bad-people is bad. Enslavement-by-good-people (i.e. of bad people) is good." The moral valence of almost everything is conditional upon who is doing the action and why they're doing it. You need better a better argument than that it's contradictory.
locallost 1y ago
It's not surreal, just human nature. Most people are not guided by principles. It might not even be that, but some people purposely have bad intentions and gaslight objections, and most of the rest are not interested to object and simply can't be bothered as long as their basic needs are met. If the answer to Stasi like espionage of citizens is outrage, but otherwise not because you have nothing to hide, then I conclude most people are content with living in a cage, as long as it's made of gold.
- p1dda 1y ago
  Not saying you're wrong but that is pretty bleak.
littlestymaar 1y ago
> for the things the EU bureaucracy is doing, While I agree with the rest of your comment, it doesn't make sens to talk about “bureaucracy” here, the Commission isn't a “bureaucracy” (which means unelected civil servants), and more like a government (the commission is proposed by head of European states and approved by parliament). That doesn't change anything to the problem though, Western democracies have been doing creepier and creepier stuff year after years when it comes to mass surveillance.
- stephen_g 1y ago
  You really seem to be reaching there. I think we should face it - the EC does anti-democratic stuff, and is appointed, not elected, and far enough removed from democratic control that it really can’t be (and shouldn’t have ever been) considered ‘democratic’. Having an actually elected body (the EU Parliament) and then not letting them initiate legislation is just a joke on top of that…
  - littlestymaar 1y ago
    > and is appointed, not elected Like in pretty much every democratic government on the planet. > Having an actually elected body (the EU Parliament) and then not letting them initiate legislation is just a joke on top of that… It is because the head of states kept that power for themselves (as the European Council). If this nightmare of a bill passes it will be: - 1. because the state leaders pushed for it as members of the European Council. - 2. Because ministers of the Interior of all member states approved it in the Interior meeting of the Council of the ministers of the EU (also called simply “Council”, it's a distinct body from the “European Council” which regroups the heads of states). - 3. Because the European Parliament approved it. In all cases it won't be the fault of “bureaucrates” but of elected politicians (like how the Patriot Act or DMCA were bipartisan pushes detrimental to everyone's freedom).
    - stephen_g 1y ago
      > Like in pretty much every democratic government on the planet What? Both houses of the Federal Government of my country (I’m not in the EU), as well as the state/province level and the local level are elected, and I know that is the case for many others…
ReptileMan 1y ago
You don't get it - in north korea is brutal dictatorship that oppresses their citizens. EU commission is fighting hate, discrimination, racism and disinformation. And protecting the children too.
- ChocolateGod 1y ago
  > EU commission is fighting hate, discrimination, racism and disinformation. And protecting the children too The ist and isms have been overused in both the media and social discourse to the point that they don't really mean anything anymore.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
    They still mean something in serious discussions. If you find that media use seems to dilute the meaning of a term so as to be uselessly vague, consider the likelihood that it is intentional. (Very high, IMO.) The critical-thinking-not-allowed topics are especially interesting to pay attention to: who is served by devaluing the term?
- nickslaughter02 1y ago
  Their greatest achievement is that enough people actually believe that.
- p1dda 1y ago
  LOL funny! You really should end statements like that with sarc to make sure everybody understands though
  - ReptileMan 1y ago
    Where is the fun in that. And in a way a lot of the EU elite will sign under this statement with a straight face.
- rdm_blackhole 1y ago
  You forgot "Freedom of speech" as well but only the speech that is allowed otherwise you end up with the cops at your doorstep like in the UK when you post the wrong thing on social media.
jmyeet 1y ago
I really feel like we'd all be better off if Manufacturing Consent [1] was required reading. The media is complicit in pushing domestic and foreign policy, is selective in what it covers and how it covers it and intentionally uses very different language to describe the exact same thing (eg [2][3]). I generally agree that what the DPRK does and what Europe (or the US) does isn't really that different. Dig a little deper and look at the role the West played in creating the DPRK and the intentional starving (ie economic sanctions) we enacted, just like in Iraq, Iran, Syria or Venezuela. European (and US) history of the last century is the neoliberals siding with fascists to quash anything communist or communist adjacent (eg labor unions). Germany might've lost the war but Nazism won. Whatever you do, don't look too deeply into the background of Adolf Heusinger [4] who was made the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent [2]: https://x.com/trtworld/status/1785959608168731091?lang=en https://x.com/trtworld/status/1785959608168731091?lang=en [3]: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-how-media-language-manipulated-justify-killing-palestinians-and-used-dehumanise-them https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-how-media-langua... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger
- f_devd 1y ago
  Just to confirm, you believe the local media as perceived by their population (& by extension social media) has the same power to push back on policy in the DPRK as the EU?
deleted 1y ago
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zx10rse 1y ago
There is this scene from the movie Dark Waters that stuck in my head [0] [0] - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Zoxxd6gM3oU https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Zoxxd6gM3oU
wewxjfq 1y ago
It's surreal and dismaying to see such a bogus comment at the top, especially since the BBC video about the North Korean phone is free of judgement, while they (and many other Western news) do report on Western surveillance critically, e.g. they called the Microsoft screenshots a "privacy nightmare" right in the headline...
deleted 1y ago
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nickslaughter02 1y ago

> In North Korea, your phone secretly takes screenshots every 5 minutes for government surveillance Context: Under the EU's Chat Control proposal, your private messages (Signal, WhatsApp etc) will be scanned by an on-device AI agent. The current debate is around scanning images and videos but the original proposals called for analyzing all text too (I wish I was joking).

amarcheschi 1y ago
As far as I know, the latest draft of chat control doesn't include mandatory scanning anymore. I might as well be wrong though
- nickslaughter02 1y ago
  It doesn't under the Polish presidency. Denmark is taking the lead from July and plans to push for the most extreme version (all scanning mandatory). https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer/114596587390684173 https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer/1145965873906841... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44168752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44168752
  - amarcheschi 1y ago
    That's interesting. And sad
  - HPsquared 1y ago
    I wonder if it's a gambit to push for too much and sink the proposal. A compromise is more likely to pass, no?
    - nickslaughter02 1y ago
      Even the original extreme proposal had wide support. The changes were offered only after Germany with Poland were against it IIRC. This is the state as of December 2024. https://www.patrick-breyer.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/signal-2024-12-11-152711-002-2.jpeg https://www.patrick-breyer.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/sig... I don't like that Opposed / Abstaining are both green. Abstaining means they don't care.
  - worldsayshi 1y ago
    I wish there was more potent ways to veto suggestions like this. Perhaps people should, in a democratic way, have the ability to ban representatives that are pushing these ideas, and many other, from politics for life. But perhaps there's no way to make that "democratic".
    - pmontra 1y ago
      Well, it's the core of democracy: the right of never ever voting for a given candidate again. What you are writing about is probably denying to some people the right of candidating themselves or even the right to vote. There are examples: one of them is Italy banning the fascist party after WW2 and the descendants of the royal family. Excerpts of Provisions XII and XIII of the Constituton, easily googlable: > It shall be forbidden to reorganise, under any form whatsoever, the dissolved Fascist party > The members and descendants of the House of Savoy shall not be voters and may not hold public office or elected offices I read that Germany banned a right wing party that recently won quite a large share of votes. I'm not sure about the extent of the ban and if it's a ban at all.
rdm_blackhole 1y ago
You forgot to mention the best part, LEOs and MEPs and all militarily personnel would be exempt from this proposal thereby creating a two tier society where if you end up in the wrong tier, all your conversations will be watched by the government and in the other where you are free to say what you want. This stuff is straight up out of 1984.
- nickslaughter02 1y ago
  Naturally. They know the agents will make mistakes and send your image or video to some underpaid cop somewhere along with all your details. It will be extortion galore.

MaxPock 1y ago

Actually,reporting on NK or China's surveillance is usually because they are geopolitical adversaries not because they are dystopian. So to think that the EU cares about freedom or privacy is to be naïve

chii 1y ago
there's a chance that an EU citizen could fight back against these legislation. And it is encouraged to do so. Privacy is agency.
- MaxPock 1y ago
  The system is designed to make you think you have a chance. Ask the 30 people arrested in the UK everyday for their social media posts what they think of this ability to "fight back".
  - nickslaughter02 1y ago
    It's not necessary to go outside of EU. "In a despicable attack on the freedom of speech, a German right-wing journalist has been sentenced to seven months’ probation for mocking left-wing Interior Minister Nancy Faeser." "The editor-in-chief of the news website Deutschland-Kurier was punished for sharing a satirical meme on his X account. The meme, which was posted by Bendels last February, shows Nancy Faeser holding up a sign, with the words: “I hate freedom of expression.”" https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/proving-the-point-german-journalist-convicted-for-free-speech-meme/ https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/proving-the-p...
    - account42 1y ago
      It's always funny (in a sad way) when a ruling should be admissible as clear evidence for the opposite ruling.
- hulitu 1y ago
  > there's a chance that an EU citizen could fight back against these legislation. Just like in the scene in "Dumb and dumber" : " i would say ... like one in a million"

mqus 1y ago

If it helps: the EU ones are still just proposals (likely to ve struck down by courts), the north korean surveillance is already active(?)

account42 1y ago
And the EU ones will keep being proposals until they are implemented. They absolutely shouldn't just be proposals. They should be scandals that make anyone involved have zero chance in future elections and unemployable anywhere near the political sector.
- nickslaughter02 1y ago
  Unless news like this are all over mainstream media it's not going to happen. It doesn't make it even to most "tech" media.
rdm_blackhole 1y ago
The last law that was deemed illegal (the data retention directive) took 8 years to be annulled by the courts. So the avenue of the courts is really not an option.

nabla9 1y ago

>There's no daylight between North Korea's "dystopian reality" [sic] of capturing random screenshots of user devices, and the EU's mandatory data retention concept. This is nihilistic BS and false equivalence. EU commission's retraction can be challenged in the courts if it's not allowed.

deleted 1y ago
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impossiblefork 1y ago
But you say 'if it's not allowed', but not allowed by whom? The courts aren't some kind of magic guarantors of justice and order, and something isn't okay just because the courts approve it. If this somehow is tolerated by the courts, the fact that we have them is irrelevant. It's the policy itself that determines whether we are like North Korea.
- mazurnification 1y ago
  "But you say 'if it's not allowed', but not allowed by whom?" Not allowed by EU law obviously. Role of courts (in general) is interpreting law and thus deciding how said laws apply case by case. Law in EU flows down from EU treaties that where negotiated and signed by member countries. The big ones (treaties) needed also be "ratified" by country wide referenda.
  - impossiblefork 1y ago
    So laws are made by people, sometimes retired people, sometimes people. So it's just another thing allowed by a person. Law isn't something magical with capability to make something not okay okay. Law is just someone allowing or forbidding something, with this having been incorporated into a sort of system.
    - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
      That... is exactly what [democratic] law is...

riffraff 1y ago

Nitpick: doublethink is not about language, it's about keeping two contradictory ideas in one's mind and thinking them both true ("war is peace"). This is just plain "surveillance is bad when bad people do it, not when good people do".

amiga386 1y ago
Just rephrase as "surveillance is bad when bad people do it and surveillance is good when our guys do it" to get the self-contradictory doublethink. If you want nuance, say that surveillance harms a person's privacy, and mass surveillance harms _everyone's_ privacy. You can then think up scenarios where you deem privacy invasion acceptable - for example, if you have reasonable suspicion a crime is being commited by a specific person, but not to put fear into the hearts of citizens and to spy on and thwart any organised resistance to your grip on power. You might then conclude that you should not perform mass surveillance as it's in keeping with the totalitarian approach.
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  > "surveillance is bad when bad people do it and surveillance is good when our guys do it" is not contradictory unless you assume everyone shares your premise that surveillance is intrinsically bad which, obviously, they do not.
  - amiga386 1y ago
    It's contradictory because it posits "X is Y and X is not-Y" simultaneously. Also, I did not say surveillance was intrinsicly bad. I said it harms peoples' privacy, which it does, even if you think that harm is justified or beneficial, even if you think privacy itself is harmful and people should have less of it.
    - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
      It is literally not contradictory. "Surveillance-by-bad-people is bad. Surveillance-by-good-people is good." We accept this for almost everything in society, FWIW. "Enslavement-by-bad-people is bad. Enslavement-by-good-people (i.e. of bad people) is good." The moral valence of almost everything is conditional upon who is doing the action and why they're doing it. You need better a better argument than that it's contradictory.

locallost 1y ago

It's not surreal, just human nature. Most people are not guided by principles. It might not even be that, but some people purposely have bad intentions and gaslight objections, and most of the rest are not interested to object and simply can't be bothered as long as their basic needs are met. If the answer to Stasi like espionage of citizens is outrage, but otherwise not because you have nothing to hide, then I conclude most people are content with living in a cage, as long as it's made of gold.

p1dda 1y ago
Not saying you're wrong but that is pretty bleak.

littlestymaar 1y ago

> for the things the EU bureaucracy is doing, While I agree with the rest of your comment, it doesn't make sens to talk about “bureaucracy” here, the Commission isn't a “bureaucracy” (which means unelected civil servants), and more like a government (the commission is proposed by head of European states and approved by parliament). That doesn't change anything to the problem though, Western democracies have been doing creepier and creepier stuff year after years when it comes to mass surveillance.

stephen_g 1y ago
You really seem to be reaching there. I think we should face it - the EC does anti-democratic stuff, and is appointed, not elected, and far enough removed from democratic control that it really can’t be (and shouldn’t have ever been) considered ‘democratic’. Having an actually elected body (the EU Parliament) and then not letting them initiate legislation is just a joke on top of that…
- littlestymaar 1y ago
  > and is appointed, not elected Like in pretty much every democratic government on the planet. > Having an actually elected body (the EU Parliament) and then not letting them initiate legislation is just a joke on top of that… It is because the head of states kept that power for themselves (as the European Council). If this nightmare of a bill passes it will be: - 1. because the state leaders pushed for it as members of the European Council. - 2. Because ministers of the Interior of all member states approved it in the Interior meeting of the Council of the ministers of the EU (also called simply “Council”, it's a distinct body from the “European Council” which regroups the heads of states). - 3. Because the European Parliament approved it. In all cases it won't be the fault of “bureaucrates” but of elected politicians (like how the Patriot Act or DMCA were bipartisan pushes detrimental to everyone's freedom).
  - stephen_g 1y ago
    > Like in pretty much every democratic government on the planet What? Both houses of the Federal Government of my country (I’m not in the EU), as well as the state/province level and the local level are elected, and I know that is the case for many others…

ReptileMan 1y ago

You don't get it - in north korea is brutal dictatorship that oppresses their citizens. EU commission is fighting hate, discrimination, racism and disinformation. And protecting the children too.

ChocolateGod 1y ago
> EU commission is fighting hate, discrimination, racism and disinformation. And protecting the children too The ist and isms have been overused in both the media and social discourse to the point that they don't really mean anything anymore.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
  They still mean something in serious discussions. If you find that media use seems to dilute the meaning of a term so as to be uselessly vague, consider the likelihood that it is intentional. (Very high, IMO.) The critical-thinking-not-allowed topics are especially interesting to pay attention to: who is served by devaluing the term?
nickslaughter02 1y ago
Their greatest achievement is that enough people actually believe that.
p1dda 1y ago
LOL funny! You really should end statements like that with sarc to make sure everybody understands though
- ReptileMan 1y ago
  Where is the fun in that. And in a way a lot of the EU elite will sign under this statement with a straight face.
rdm_blackhole 1y ago
You forgot "Freedom of speech" as well but only the speech that is allowed otherwise you end up with the cops at your doorstep like in the UK when you post the wrong thing on social media.

jmyeet 1y ago

I really feel like we'd all be better off if Manufacturing Consent [1] was required reading. The media is complicit in pushing domestic and foreign policy, is selective in what it covers and how it covers it and intentionally uses very different language to describe the exact same thing (eg [2][3]). I generally agree that what the DPRK does and what Europe (or the US) does isn't really that different. Dig a little deper and look at the role the West played in creating the DPRK and the intentional starving (ie economic sanctions) we enacted, just like in Iraq, Iran, Syria or Venezuela. European (and US) history of the last century is the neoliberals siding with fascists to quash anything communist or communist adjacent (eg labor unions). Germany might've lost the war but Nazism won. Whatever you do, don't look too deeply into the background of Adolf Heusinger [4] who was made the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent [2]: https://x.com/trtworld/status/1785959608168731091?lang=en https://x.com/trtworld/status/1785959608168731091?lang=en [3]: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-how-media-language-manipulated-justify-killing-palestinians-and-used-dehumanise-them https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-how-media-langua... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger

f_devd 1y ago
Just to confirm, you believe the local media as perceived by their population (& by extension social media) has the same power to push back on policy in the DPRK as the EU?

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

zx10rse 1y ago

There is this scene from the movie Dark Waters that stuck in my head [0] [0] - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Zoxxd6gM3oU https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Zoxxd6gM3oU

wewxjfq 1y ago

It's surreal and dismaying to see such a bogus comment at the top, especially since the BBC video about the North Korean phone is free of judgement, while they (and many other Western news) do report on Western surveillance critically, e.g. they called the Microsoft screenshots a "privacy nightmare" right in the headline...

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]