5 ms·

Too bad Briar and similar anonymous E2E messengers would be banned soon across the EU and UK.

joe_mamba 9mo ago
"We can't have the tax-cattle talking behind our backs about our failures and corruption that fucked up their living standards .. err I mean think of what the far right, pedos and russian spies could do with anonymous messaging, so we'll be banning it to protect our democratic values." - EU & UK leadership
- myrmidon 9mo ago
  I completely disagree with your base premise: I think EU leadership (national + EU) performed on an average level over the last three decades, and the EU as an insitution did even better than I would've expected given its limitations/constraints. If you could pick policies with the unfair benefit of hindsight (while staying somewhat democratically acceptable), what would a "perfect" government have done differently in the last twenty years?
  - joe_mamba 9mo ago
    I actually don't think they performed very well. I just look at the EU GDP that's now half the size of the US compared to bigger than US 20 years ago, and at standard of living of middle working class, which has slowly been going downhill in the last 15-20 or so years for a lot of people(worst of all southern europe) and at a more accelerated rate in the last 3-4 years. All due to their decisions and policies and I hold them accountable for it. Like you don't need the unfair power of hindsight to know that tying your energy independence to Russia (your military adversary and the reason NATO exists) was a bad decision back then, or that staying dependent on US military and tech was bad for sovereignty, or that pursuing unrealistic climate goals was a bad decision, or that opening your borders to millions of unvetted people from unstable regions with high crime and low education was bad, since many people have been saying all these were bad decisions 20 years ago but they were ignored because the gravy train was still running and the EU political elite never game much of a shit about what the peasants though anyway. And now that the gravy train has stopped and the piper has to be paid, our leadership class are trying to gaslight us and deflect the blame for their recklessness at best or just suppress voices of dissent at worst. And even if we were to assume they performed super well, that doesn't mean I should now swallow tyrannical laws designed to suppress our freedoms while they give themselves exemptions, just because different people from a different era who are no longer in power made some good decisions 30 years ago under the same umbrella of the EU since the EU-EC of today as an org is a vastly different beast than the EU of 30 years ago. There wasn't even a common currency and central bank 30 years ago.
    - myrmidon 9mo ago
      You are exactly not answering the question though. It is easy to complain about energy dependence, struggles with immigration/integration and precarious national budgets, but the conditions for those weren't caused by recent decision in my view (instead, namely, lack of local oil/gas, unstable north africa/middle east and bad demographics with too many old people). All those problems are really costly and difficult to solve. Sure, the EU could've tried a super-scale Messmer plan 20 years ago, and could then maybe rival current renewable power with nuclear output, but this would have been orders of magnitude more costly. Hard cutting immigration, Japan style, would probably have led to comparable economic stagnation from insufficient workforce (see post 1990 Japan). It is unclear to me if averting demographic change would've even been feasible at all, and even if it was, it would have come with a plethora of undesirable side-effects (e.g. insanely high youth unemployment). I personally think that environmental policies are the absolute bare minimum. If you want to prevent worst-case global climate effects (say, +4°C global average temperature rise within the century) then what we are doing right now is not even enough.
      - joe_mamba 9mo ago
        >You are exactly not answering the question though. WHich question did I not answer? >weren't caused by recent decision in my view No, but they could admit it was a fuckup of the political class, and tell us how they're planning to fix it, instead of gaslighting us for complaining about it and doing more mistake that further damage our economy. We can't stop the music chair song from playing just yet. Just one more round I promise. How about the recent EU Mercosur trade deal? They're fuckign EU farmers and makign us dependet on foreign food imports. This is a totally new strategic blunder, they can't keep blaming the past anymore. >Hard cutting immigration, Japan style, would probably have led to comparable economic stagnation from insufficient workforce (see post 1990 Japan). This is disproven and untrue but has been repeated so many time it became the poster child argument of pro-illegal immigration EU propaganda. That open borders will magically save our economy. It didn't. Case in point, Poland's economy has been growing like crazy so IT IS doable to grow your economy without importing illegal migration and associated issues. Regarding Japan's economy, is not fucked due to not importing millions of uneducated third worlders to live on welfare like Europe did, it got fucked starting from 1985 when the US forced them to sign the Plaza Accord in order to counter their massive trade deficit US had with Japan(and other powerful export economies), which increased the value of the Yen making Japanese imports suddenly expensive and uncompetitive. Then to combat this, the Japan central bank fucked up themselves by printing money like crazy with ultra low interest rates which instead of stabilizing the exports, caused a massive speculative real estate and golf membership(yes that's true) bubble which imploded in 1990, dealing the final blow to their economic growth since they ran out of levers to pull other than suppressing their labor into a losing race to the bottom with other low wage manufacturing economies of Asia. I recommend you read more on the Plaza Accord, it's pretty eye opening. Depressing economic situations is what leads people to stop having kids, not the other way around. Ever since the 1980s, Germany and other European models already knew population trends were gonna be fucked in the future, all the way back then. Did they take any measures and do anything to help the European population have more kids and prevent this? No. But they have the nerve to blame us for not having kids in a stagnating economy with crazy real-estate prices then gaslight us that salvation lies in illegal immigration instead of fixing the local issues preventing the locals from having kids, then introduce speech control laws for anyone who criticizes this. >It is unclear to me if averting demographic change would've even been feasible at all, and even if it was, it would have come with a plethora of undesirable side-effects (e.g. insanely high youth unemployment). Good point. If you already have high youth unemployment, why do you need to import illegal migrants? Just to lower their bargaining power further? >I personally think that environmental policies are the absolute bare minimum. If you want to prevent worst-case global climate effects (say, +4°C global average temperature rise within the century) then what we are doing right now is not even enough. yeah, the environment is important, but all economic sacrifices EU has made to combat climate change, are being absorbed by US, CHina and India to grow their economies, so the planet is still getting more fucked like before except now we made ourselves poorer for it. Great success. And even Europeans will stop caring about the environment when they won't be able to have a job, or afford to pay rent or heating anymore.
eqoram 9mo ago
Any source for this?
- miroljub 9mo ago
  > Any source for this? Ever heard about Chat Control and CSAM?
  - Alifatisk 9mo ago
    Chat Control and CSAM will not ban E2E messengers Mandatory client-side scanning of encrypted messages has been removed from the proposal following opposition from the European Parliament and several member states, preserving E2EE integrity https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/after-years-controversy-eus-chat-control-nears-its-final-hurdle-what-know https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/after-years-controvers...
    - miroljub 9mo ago
      And you believe they won't try again and again until they push it through? All of these have already been rejected multiple times, and yet some parts of it are already enacted, some will be soon, and the rest will come after a few more tries.
      - Alifatisk 9mo ago
        It's important to differentiate between speculation and facts, just because something is in our belief doesn't make it a fact.
        miroljub 9mo ago
        > It's important to differentiate between speculation and facts, just because something is in our belief doesn't make it a fact. It's called "opinion". You can also have one. Try it, it's liberating, even if it's not a fact.
Jigsy 9mo ago
Best to download the *.apks now so you can help others sideload them and stay safe.

"We can't have the tax-cattle talking behind our backs about our failures and corruption that fucked up their living standards .. err I mean think of what the far right, pedos and russian spies could do with anonymous messaging, so we'll be banning it to protect our democratic values." - EU & UK leadership

myrmidon 9mo ago
I completely disagree with your base premise: I think EU leadership (national + EU) performed on an average level over the last three decades, and the EU as an insitution did even better than I would've expected given its limitations/constraints. If you could pick policies with the unfair benefit of hindsight (while staying somewhat democratically acceptable), what would a "perfect" government have done differently in the last twenty years?
- joe_mamba 9mo ago
  I actually don't think they performed very well. I just look at the EU GDP that's now half the size of the US compared to bigger than US 20 years ago, and at standard of living of middle working class, which has slowly been going downhill in the last 15-20 or so years for a lot of people(worst of all southern europe) and at a more accelerated rate in the last 3-4 years. All due to their decisions and policies and I hold them accountable for it. Like you don't need the unfair power of hindsight to know that tying your energy independence to Russia (your military adversary and the reason NATO exists) was a bad decision back then, or that staying dependent on US military and tech was bad for sovereignty, or that pursuing unrealistic climate goals was a bad decision, or that opening your borders to millions of unvetted people from unstable regions with high crime and low education was bad, since many people have been saying all these were bad decisions 20 years ago but they were ignored because the gravy train was still running and the EU political elite never game much of a shit about what the peasants though anyway. And now that the gravy train has stopped and the piper has to be paid, our leadership class are trying to gaslight us and deflect the blame for their recklessness at best or just suppress voices of dissent at worst. And even if we were to assume they performed super well, that doesn't mean I should now swallow tyrannical laws designed to suppress our freedoms while they give themselves exemptions, just because different people from a different era who are no longer in power made some good decisions 30 years ago under the same umbrella of the EU since the EU-EC of today as an org is a vastly different beast than the EU of 30 years ago. There wasn't even a common currency and central bank 30 years ago.
  - myrmidon 9mo ago
    You are exactly not answering the question though. It is easy to complain about energy dependence, struggles with immigration/integration and precarious national budgets, but the conditions for those weren't caused by recent decision in my view (instead, namely, lack of local oil/gas, unstable north africa/middle east and bad demographics with too many old people). All those problems are really costly and difficult to solve. Sure, the EU could've tried a super-scale Messmer plan 20 years ago, and could then maybe rival current renewable power with nuclear output, but this would have been orders of magnitude more costly. Hard cutting immigration, Japan style, would probably have led to comparable economic stagnation from insufficient workforce (see post 1990 Japan). It is unclear to me if averting demographic change would've even been feasible at all, and even if it was, it would have come with a plethora of undesirable side-effects (e.g. insanely high youth unemployment). I personally think that environmental policies are the absolute bare minimum. If you want to prevent worst-case global climate effects (say, +4°C global average temperature rise within the century) then what we are doing right now is not even enough.
    - joe_mamba 9mo ago
      >You are exactly not answering the question though. WHich question did I not answer? >weren't caused by recent decision in my view No, but they could admit it was a fuckup of the political class, and tell us how they're planning to fix it, instead of gaslighting us for complaining about it and doing more mistake that further damage our economy. We can't stop the music chair song from playing just yet. Just one more round I promise. How about the recent EU Mercosur trade deal? They're fuckign EU farmers and makign us dependet on foreign food imports. This is a totally new strategic blunder, they can't keep blaming the past anymore. >Hard cutting immigration, Japan style, would probably have led to comparable economic stagnation from insufficient workforce (see post 1990 Japan). This is disproven and untrue but has been repeated so many time it became the poster child argument of pro-illegal immigration EU propaganda. That open borders will magically save our economy. It didn't. Case in point, Poland's economy has been growing like crazy so IT IS doable to grow your economy without importing illegal migration and associated issues. Regarding Japan's economy, is not fucked due to not importing millions of uneducated third worlders to live on welfare like Europe did, it got fucked starting from 1985 when the US forced them to sign the Plaza Accord in order to counter their massive trade deficit US had with Japan(and other powerful export economies), which increased the value of the Yen making Japanese imports suddenly expensive and uncompetitive. Then to combat this, the Japan central bank fucked up themselves by printing money like crazy with ultra low interest rates which instead of stabilizing the exports, caused a massive speculative real estate and golf membership(yes that's true) bubble which imploded in 1990, dealing the final blow to their economic growth since they ran out of levers to pull other than suppressing their labor into a losing race to the bottom with other low wage manufacturing economies of Asia. I recommend you read more on the Plaza Accord, it's pretty eye opening. Depressing economic situations is what leads people to stop having kids, not the other way around. Ever since the 1980s, Germany and other European models already knew population trends were gonna be fucked in the future, all the way back then. Did they take any measures and do anything to help the European population have more kids and prevent this? No. But they have the nerve to blame us for not having kids in a stagnating economy with crazy real-estate prices then gaslight us that salvation lies in illegal immigration instead of fixing the local issues preventing the locals from having kids, then introduce speech control laws for anyone who criticizes this. >It is unclear to me if averting demographic change would've even been feasible at all, and even if it was, it would have come with a plethora of undesirable side-effects (e.g. insanely high youth unemployment). Good point. If you already have high youth unemployment, why do you need to import illegal migrants? Just to lower their bargaining power further? >I personally think that environmental policies are the absolute bare minimum. If you want to prevent worst-case global climate effects (say, +4°C global average temperature rise within the century) then what we are doing right now is not even enough. yeah, the environment is important, but all economic sacrifices EU has made to combat climate change, are being absorbed by US, CHina and India to grow their economies, so the planet is still getting more fucked like before except now we made ourselves poorer for it. Great success. And even Europeans will stop caring about the environment when they won't be able to have a job, or afford to pay rent or heating anymore.

eqoram 9mo ago

Any source for this?

miroljub 9mo ago
> Any source for this? Ever heard about Chat Control and CSAM?
- Alifatisk 9mo ago
  Chat Control and CSAM will not ban E2E messengers Mandatory client-side scanning of encrypted messages has been removed from the proposal following opposition from the European Parliament and several member states, preserving E2EE integrity https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/after-years-controversy-eus-chat-control-nears-its-final-hurdle-what-know https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/after-years-controvers...
  - miroljub 9mo ago
    And you believe they won't try again and again until they push it through? All of these have already been rejected multiple times, and yet some parts of it are already enacted, some will be soon, and the rest will come after a few more tries.
    - Alifatisk 9mo ago
      It's important to differentiate between speculation and facts, just because something is in our belief doesn't make it a fact.
      - miroljub 9mo ago
        > It's important to differentiate between speculation and facts, just because something is in our belief doesn't make it a fact. It's called "opinion". You can also have one. Try it, it's liberating, even if it's not a fact.

Jigsy 9mo ago

Best to download the *.apks now so you can help others sideload them and stay safe.