Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - The UK Is A Dystopia, And We're Next

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

The UK is rapidly becoming one of the most aggressive surveillance states in the democratic world, and many don't even realize it's happening.Support my independent journalism:🙏 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/taylorlorenz     🗞️ Substack: https://www.usermag.co    [FREE SPEECH FRIDAY]The UK has officially slid into a dystopian surveillance state, and the rest of the world is next. On this week's Free Speech Friday The Kavernackle joined me to discuss the terrifying reality of the Online Safety Act, the push for mandatory Digital ID, and how the UK is leading the global charge toward authoritarianism and mass surveillance. From banning VPNs to arresting citizens for social media posts, the British government is dismantling privacy under the guise of "safety." We break down how liberals like Keir Starmer are spearheading these mass surveillance programs and why the "Blitz Spirit" mentality has altered the way so many in the UK understand nationalism and privacy. The mass surveillance framework being built in London is coming to the US, as the crackdown on free speech is spreading across the globe.Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz      https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0     https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz https://bsky.app/profile/taylorlorenz.bsky.social  https://twitter.com/taylorlorenz  In this video, we cover:The Online Safety Act: How the new laws can force you to scan your face to access basic websites.Why the UK is trying to ban VPNs and remove online anonymity.How "hate speech" laws are weaponized against political dissent and pro-Palestine protests.Why British culture is uniquely susceptible to authoritarian overreach.Why US Democrats are adopting the exact same censorship playbook as Kier Starmer and Tony Blair. UK surveillance lawsOnline Safety Act explainedDigital ID and age verificationFacial recognition onlineVPN bansFree speech crackdownsTech censorshipMass data collection

And it's definitely going to happen as well. Like, I have no doubt, like, we actually are going to have a fascist government at the next election. Funnily enough, they're the ones campaigning against all this shit at the moment, just to get into power. Every single day, I open up social media and I'm barraged by an endless stream of headlines about some terrible new surveillance laws the UK has enacted. For decades, the UK has been at the forefront of a global shift away from privacy as a default and become one of the most aggressive countries when it comes to enacting mass surveillance. The UK media has consistently put.

pushed moral panics about kids and online safety and threats of terrorism to manufacture consent for some of the most authoritarian and invasive surveillance schemes. Recently, the UK has sought to remove anonymity from the web, weaken encryption, censor speech, encourage mass data collection, and now they're even trying to ban VPNs. But why are things in the UK especially so awful?

And why aren't more British people fighting back against this type of authoritarianism? To discuss all of this, I have the Cavernacle, an amazing YouTuber and political commentator from the UK. Today, we're going to talk about how the UK slid into this dystopian hellscape, why liberals like Kier-Starmer are leading the way on mass surveillance, and what those of us based in the US and the rest of the world can learn from the UK's mistakes. Welcome to my show.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Hopefully I can provide some expertise on this topic. Well, I'm not really an expert in the UK, but I feel like lately the UK, the UK constantly comes up because I feel like they've just like been sliding faster and faster towards like the most dystopian surveillance state ever. I want to kind of like back up. When did you start to notice the UK's push into things like age verification and surveillance laws? So the thing with the UK is in terms of like CCTV cameras,

it's always been one of the most densely like populated for CCTV cameras. So having like this surveillance state in terms of just growing up with it, I'd say I first became aware of it with the war on terror, like with a lot of Americans. We had that, but I think for British people, it's also a carry-on from about 100 years of, like, fighting wars and incurgencies. So for me personally, it's so normalized. And I guess you don't really notice it until something drastic comes in, like the stuff last year, where it's like you actually have to start verifying your face to use DMs on Blue Sky or access your Reddit account and stuff.

So I'd say for a lot of people in the UK, so much of... this has been done by stealth that you haven't actually noticed it until this one big thing in 2025 where you can't even ignore it. It affects everyone's life. So I would say for me, I've been following it for a long time, but I'd say for a lot of people, maybe Cambridge Analytica, those types of stories make people aware of how their privacy is so, like vulnerable online, but I'd say for most British people, if you ask them about tech surveillance, they would pretty much only say what happened last year. I'm pretty sure most people are very unaware of the campaign that's been going on since the 1990s, but especially under Tony Blair, to really

place more surveillance just generally online. Yeah, I would say another difference between like people in the UK and maybe in America, although it's less and less when you look at young Americans, is their views on speech and free speech. My first media job was at the Daily Mail, which is so weird. Part of the reason the Daily Mail was opening this big US office was because of British speech laws and the like basically defamation laws. And I remember being like sort of horrified and being in London and talking to people about this. And like there's a lot of British people that don't, I mean, they don't have that you guys don't have the First Amendment.

So it just seems like people already have in mind that there should be restrictions on speech, whereas most Americans are like the First Amendment is our most core amendment. Yeah. And I think there is a fundamental difference in how the American state has formed and the British state where centralized authority has played such a big role in British lives or English lives, especially for hundreds and hundreds of years. And spy networks have been around for hundreds of years. It's just such a different context to America, which only you could probably say in the last 80 years has become very like more centralized and still not completely, especially not in terms

of like geography like the UK where it's all very, very close together. You can drive from one end of the UK to the other in like 10 hours. Like for Americans, you know, that's a light drive. for some of them. So it's like, it's just a very different context. Also, we don't have like a written constitution. We have certain elements of that, but it's not like you guys where it's like, here's the first, second, third. And you all know what that means. If you talk to people about the British constitutions or like are more vague, like, rights, I don't think people really understand that. Yeah. Well, I mean, I remember back in 2023 when the Online Safety Act passed, how horrible it was. And for people that follow tech policy, it was this terrifying moment where you were like, wow, I can't believe they passed that.

But as you mentioned, it didn't go into effect for a couple years. And that was theoretically to give these platforms like time to enact these verification systems, et cetera. And I think a lot of people, again, because especially people on the left don't pay much attention to tech policy, just kind of were going along as normal. I think they started to realize that last year, as you said, not just with the online safety act going to effect, but also the crack. down on pro-Palestine speech. It's interesting that OSHA passed in 2023. You know, we had similar things start to pass around that time because that's also when Israel started really escalating, you know, the genocide in Gaza. And I feel like I started to see things like in the UK where people were also starting to be arrested and they were terrorizing that ban kneecap and all of this

other stuff. But it seemed like the UK was also ahead of America in terms of cracking down on pro-Palestinian protests and speech. The thing with the UK is free speech laws are a lot more up to interpretation by the police. So there's stuff about like causing distress or public order offences. And what that means is the police at the scene can decide basically, is this going to incite something? Maybe there's similar stuff in America

with certain things you could say and be arrested for if you were saying them in public, but it's like saying, you know, from the river to the sea. If they're like this is in the public interest to get to arrest you for saying that, they will do it. So there's a lot more like, it's a lot more like, It's up to the police's discretion to do this stuff. And what often happens, and you're probably aware of this, they will arrest loads of people

and then let them go. And there won't be any follow up, there won't be any charges and stuff like that. So it's just things where you kind of are doing it as a deterrent. And you saw that a lot with Palestine action stuff where since they've declared that a terrorist organization, loads of people have come out in support of it. And they've arrested loads and loads of people for doing it. But it's very unusual that someone actually gets charged with an actual terrorist defense for supporting Palestine action.

at the moment. So it's kind of like just putting in so many of these things just to say to people that like we can't we can do this and we can arrest you and we can prosecute you. But it also makes people just basically too afraid to even say he's in the first place. Yeah. And I think all of that has a major chilling effect. So into all of this is the online safety act. That came into effect last summer.

I wrote about that for the guardian of just the fallout. I'm curious what your experience of that was. I don't know if you were around the UK at the time. time, but it seemed like suddenly overnight a lot of people in England started to realize, wait, oh, oh, I have to enter my, I have to scan my face or enter this info just to like use some basic service. Yeah, I was in the UK. And basically what I did when it came to an effect was start trying to access loads of different sites and see what the verification was like. And what was the worst part about it or the most like sinister part is every different site basically had a

different verification process with a different third party. So it's not as though. you're like entering your face into a government database which you know when we have in the UK we have this government portal where you can do your taxes and you can get your passport so there is like a centralized database with your identity in it it's not like a government thing it's like here's one third party on blue sky here's one third party on reddit here's one third party or maybe an adult film site and you're giving your face to all of these third parties just to verify that you are like above 18 and stuff so for me the most annoying thing was i i couldn't use blue sky DMs about VPN and I couldn't like access some political content on Reddit as well which is just like

feels like it's part of it and I made a video where I went through the terms of the online safety act and so much of it is focused on like Andrew Tay or adult films and stuff like that where in the actual terms of the online safety act a lot of it has to do with terrorism and Palestine action have just been declared a terrorist organization and it talks about things like maybe content that shows incitement for like maybe religious hatred. So when you start thinking so much of it feels like it's to do with censoring speech around Israel or maybe other groups in the future that the UK wouldn't want you protesting. And I feel like people don't like realize that part of it.

And also I feel like the reactionary impulse of the UK is when you focus it on adult films and stuff, they're like, oh, of course children shouldn't be watching that. And most people can agree, yeah, children shouldn't be watching that. But you have to realize what else is in the bill and also what it lays the foundations for later where they can just have a database of you or like restrict you from certain websites and with digital ID which thankfully they've backed down on if you incorporate all of this together it's just like an internet where you're not free to access what you want without the government constantly knowing what you're looking at or what you're reading and people should have more of a problem with that

and depressingly I mean you said that in the message to me about this the main political party that have taken a stand against the online safety bill is reform and it's such an easy win for them because they're not actually libertarian. Like, they supported, like, calling a Palestine action a terrorist group. They, Nigel Farage voted for that. But they come out, and because everyone can feel this affect their lives really quickly, someone saying, we will change this. It's such an easy political win for any party, but they're the strongest against it.

And you could talk about, like, maybe, you know, the anti-vax sentiment and the sovereign citizen movement and all this crazy shit that, you know, is wrapped up in the far right movement in the UK. But at the same time, it should be pretty easy to say to people that, yes, this. This stuff that children can access online is bad. There's also loads of regulations that parents can also put in on their children's content. And it's up to the parents more than the government to dictate this, especially when the government are using this and then bouncing off it

and changing loads of other shit, including, you know, adult film sites. But that's what they're focusing on. It feels like. If you're watching this video and you like my work, please support me on Patreon via the link below or buy a paid subscription to my tech and online culture newsletter at usermag.com. That's usermag.com. I don't have any long-term brand partnerships and a lot of my content is effectively demonetized. I've lost major brand deals for speaking out on certain issues and for challenging power.

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of everything that I'm seeing and reading and paying attention to online. You can also get my newsletter on Patreon. Once again, the links to everything are below in the description. Every dollar of your support makes such a difference. I think the moral panics are very similar, but also diverge a little bit between the US, Australia, and the UK,

all of which are sort of barreling towards authoritarianism. In the UK, it seems very focused on adult content, like you mentioned, and this moral panic about, like, young boys online. I was on the BBC or some UK news program, and it was about adolescence. And they were treating this Netflix show as a documentary. Like, they could not understand that this was not a real show. And I kept being like, this is a scripted show.

This is entertainment. But it was like, what are we going to do, you know, about this? And there is that moral panic here in the U.S., but the moral panic here in the U.S. is much more around, like, this concept of addiction and media addiction and kids can't stop watching it. I think any time you start regulating adult content, it's a problem because you see how they define adult content

is just any LGBTQ content or, you know, content that they don't like. As you mentioned, adult content under the Online Safety Act ended up, meaning the subreddit for war crimes, literally, which is blocked. But what you said is so true of like, It seems to be mostly liberals doing that. And we see that here in the U.S. too. It's the Democrats that are really leading the charge. I noticed this when I started following a bunch of U.K. accounts to get news and updates on this stuff.

And I realized that all of them are also ranting against vaccines and like 15-minute cities and stuff. Why do you think it is liberals that have embraced this stuff? And even Kirstarmer saying recently, I mean, he claimed to drop plans of digital ID, but now he wants to roll out blocking social media for under 16s, which would require digital. ID. Yeah. So you touch on something really interesting and I might need to just like like give the context for this. So what you don't understand I don't think about the UK, not you specifically, but like Americans generally is it's such an old country. And in terms of Uniparty, which we use for the UK and the Democrats, Unipati in the UK doesn't just mean two political parties that

basically serve the same masters is that they're so entrenched in the actual British state, which is like at least 800 years old. Like the Unipati is all of these political parties all agree. about online censorship. They all agree about like Palestine action being a terror group. They all agree on these things. They all agree about anything being a threat to the British state. They're all pro-police. And I think it's because, especially for the last 100 years, the British state has been seen as a force for good in people's lives. So you have maybe like going back to the start of the 20th century, the formation of like MI6 and MI5, they're called something different, but they were designed to counter German spies during World War I. Then in World War II,

we have obviously famously the inspiration for characters like James Bond, we have more spies. And they're so like treated as heroes in British society because they saved us from the Germans. And even from the 60s to like the 90s because of the IRA attacks in the UK, MI6 was involved in like stopping them or attacking them. So we've always seen that like spies surveillance are for the greater good going back to like World War II. And then during the war on terror, it was like, well, like in the US, what do you have to hide from the government? Like we have to stop this menace. together and it's this myth in the UK of it's called the Blitz spirit it's basically during the blitz we all came together to survive under constant bombardment from the Germans and you have so

many people it's a bit of a meme in the UK that people born in 1950 thought they personally fought in World War II it's like this mentality that boomers have I'm sure loads of people in the comments will know what I'm talking about and they just believe in the British state being like they call it nanny state and stuff because of the NHS and other things there's a positive opinion of the British state and even during COVID, the authority just dictated so much of how people felt and you might have remembered this with Eat Out to Help Out. In like the fourth or fifth month of the pandemic, they said, go back to restaurants and cafes and we'll give you half price. This is the UK government and people just did it. People just did it because the government

told them to do it and it was okay. But that's why I mean, we're so cut to authority in the UK. We're in the US, people rebelled against that stuff because of like the libertarian stuff. I'm not saying it's good, but they did. But we're in the UK, we all followed it to our detriment of like someone saying go to a restaurant during in april 2020 and we'll give you half price off the government will literally subsidize this restaurant and we'll and we'll go and do it we'll do it because we have no critical thinking skills and we're so like subservient to authority so when you say someone like keir stama is like a liberal i don't think that really does it justice because he's he was maybe a socialist when he was like 20 years old but he's worked for the crown prosecution service

he's worked in closely with my six his whole career and there's this uniparty belief between the Tories, Lib Dems, Labour, that the state is a force for good. Police are good. Intelligence is good. Surveillance is good. So when you go online, you see 15-minute cities, anti-vax. Jeremy Corbyn's brother is actually a leader in that movement. I don't know if you've heard of him.

He's called Pierce Corbyn. So he's against lockdowns. He's against, like, vaccines. He's against 15-minute cities, digital ID. So what you have is the whole of the UK society generally believes in like this stuff being a force for good, where you have the fringe all rebelling. for crazy reasons, like you were saying, like, that's why it's so hard to have these conversations in the UK, because it feels like all the oxygen in the conversation is taken up by, like,

basically crazy people, where everyone else is all, like, very proper. And they're like, we must protect children. And if you don't agree with this, like Kirstama's aide said to Nigra Farage, if you don't agree with this, you support Jimmy Saville, like, who was this notorious paedophile backed by the British establishment for the longest time. So I hope that's made it clear to people that like we don't have a strong element of people believing in like personal freedoms in the UK especially politically there's just this general acceptance that authority is good and combined with the classism of know your place who is someone who's grown up working class not or had a good education to challenge people who've all gone to the same school Eaton and then Oxbridge so

that's why like you were saying when you research this stuff you're not going to find maybe even the Green Party really staking their claim of like we must oppose you the online safety bill because they're so worried that it will be weaponized against them. So the only party doing it is reform. And then all the crazy people are going to support reform. That's basically how it works. It's kind of like how I feel like the concept of free speech has been so adopted and weaponized by the right.

Like people like Elon Musk, like these people don't care about free speech. They're the most authoritarian people ever. But they just repeat it so constantly that it's this right coded issue where I remember when I first started my like free speech Friday series, people were like, oh, she's grifting to the right, grifting to the right. And it's like, no, we should be against surveillance laws. And also we see how these laws are used. These laws are not even used against those people in reform or on the far right that are like countering it. They're used against leftists and progressives. And they're used to surveil and censor our speech always. So it's just kind

of ironic to like see the way that that issue has taken place. And I feel like because those people and those accounts, especially in the UK have been so like active and vocal. try to fight against it or try to explain, like, you know, why you don't want mass surveillance. You seem crazy because you seem like the same people that are also ranting about 15-minute cities and, like, the concept of, like, congestion pricing. It's a hard balancing act as well because, like, sometimes you need to ally with everyone against stuff, but then it feels like constantly you find allies in, like, bad places of people who want bad things.

And also, in terms of the hypocrisy, talking about Elon Musk, it's like, here you have something like Twitter, which is just, absolutely filled with like not just adult content but like actual abuse material of minors and that seems like a layup like why is the conversation let's ban the social media platform that doesn't follow the current regulations it's let's ban teenagers from using the social media platform that doesn't follow the regulations let's even to say like it's not even about speech it's about the material you can find on that that material is often illegal and it's like that is just accessible to everyone in the UK and you're not taking any action to block Twitter that's what I think the conversation about

free speech gets a bit skewed as like, oh, that's against free speech, but then banning children from social media isn't anti-free speech? I mean, this is also reminds me of the conversation around the TikTok ban here. I would probably not be for banning Twitter if it could be avoided. Like, I think he should take down CSAM. That should be what should happen. It's like he should take down the illegal material that his website continues to host. And if he failed to do that, then, yeah, you know, the platform did break the law.

Ultimately, you cannot have platforms that mass host this. material, but of course they don't take enforcement action against it. I think like when it comes to banning apps, like we saw with the TikTok ban, it was about censoring speech. I think actually if they had realized how successful they could be with this like identity verification stuff, maybe we wouldn't have the TikTok ban. But the TikTok ban was always about just making sure that US pro Trump, pro capitalism, pro-Israel like business forces took over that platform. And I think fundamentally Elon Musk, he's already captured. He's already cracking down on pro-Palestine and progressive speech. on the app. So they don't care to ban it because, again, he's not enacting these enforcements against

right-wingers. It's a hard one because it's like, in terms of Twitter, that's why it's so funny. They're not even making the case that it's like, it's Twitter. Like, that is such a good boogeyman if you wanted to actually enforce some of this stuff, but they don't even use it because they're all addicted to it as well. All the UK government ministers are on it. But the TikTok stuff, yeah, like it shows you that when it comes to these apps, it's not about free speech. It's about, is left-wing speech popular in one app. TikTok's a great example. It's popular, more popular on TV. So loads of Gen Z people are getting anti-Israel content or, you know, anti-Cathist content,

where they won't get that on Twitter. It's just pure, like, right-wing filth all the time. So it's like there's loads of incentive for the powerful to ban one and, like, no incentive for the powerful to ban another. And it just shows you, like, how, you know, like you were saying, people who have, like, kind of become the poster boys of right-wing free speech. Like, Elon Musk goes along with every Indian government censorship, like, request ever. So it's like, these people are totally complicit.

but the good thing in America now, I'd say, is kind of like with our online safety bill affecting people's lives. I saw even the Democrats who are, you know, complicit in doing this. They were trying to campaign on like, oh, TikTok has been censored now. I'm hoping, like, liberals take up that cause a bit more. I know the Democrats are actually responsible for doing that, but it's kind of like... But the Democrats, yeah, I feel I saw Bernie Sanders say that. And as I quickly pointed out in other people, whereas, like, you guys led the charge on it.

Joe Biden, you know, his administration wrote the TikTok ban, passed the TikTok ban and then defended the TikTok ban in the Supreme Court. Like the Democrats were responsible for the TikTok ban full stop, you know? So it's just so hypocritical. And then at the same time, yeah, they come out and they say like Ro Khanna today was like, I will defend free speech. It's like, but you support the Kids Online Safety Act. You support all this.

You support the App Store Accountability Act. You know, same thing with Gavin Newsom. So I think they talk out of two sides of their mouth so much. I was hopeful that seeing all the bad effects with what's going on in the UK and on Australia, et cetera, would give people pause before enacting those things here in America. But I think it's so hard to get people to care about tech policy because, like you said, it's all framed as protecting children. It reminds me of the 2000s terrorism stuff.

It's like, well, you don't support the Patriot Act. Like, are you not a patriot? You know? I said to you as well, I was grateful for some of your coverage because I think deep down, all of us have a bit of a reactionary impulse when it comes to social media, especially people who grew up on a different social media platform. So when I was younger, and I'm sure it's the same as you, as you, the early, versions of these apps was so much like better in many ways because there's no advertisements the

algorithm's more organic like when i think about myself using facebook as like a 13 year old it was just like a lot of fun to like talk with your friends after school and that still exists for people today but you kind of forget it and when you someone says to you we should ban social media for under 16s there's a part of you when you've used social media as an adult you're like maybe there's something to that maybe children shouldn't be watching brain rock content on tictor 24 or seven, but then that's why it's important to have that challenge of like, yeah, in a vacuum, maybe TikTok brain rot is bad for a child, right? But it's not about just that. And you can't even do these things in a vacuum. You can't just stop children from using social media and have the

positive effects without any of the negative effects on society. And that goes beyond like people who've, and so many social media platforms have thrived with this content, people who can't even be themselves to their parents, like people in the LGBT community, how much you like have sought community online and how much that's actually helped your life. And that's, that still goes on obviously massively today. So I'm not, you know, even my reactionary impulse when you first hear something, you have to really think about like even the good social media like experiences you had as a child or a teenager when it was less bad. They still exist for so many people. And it's important that like that still remains, even though you can say that yes, I wouldn't

like the idea of maybe a 14 year old me or 13 year old me using Twitter in the current day or going on TikTok and stuff. But that's just the world we're living in now. And you shouldn't just just because you live for a different time. It's like the boomer saying, well, I didn't have this when I was younger. And look at me. I'm so, and it's like, you have to appreciate you grew up in a different time. And you can't just pass all these laws or support these laws because you think it was better when you were younger and stuff.

It's literally boomer mentality. I think it's so reactionary. And also brain rock content is so, it's something that like, or short form video that gets this moral panic thing where it's like, you just think that this AI slap is like rotting people's brains. It's not. Like everybody watches slop adults do too. I don't like that stuff on the internet.

I wish that the platforms would get rid of a lot of AI content. I hate it. But it's not like altering kids' brain chemistry any more than cartoons or comic books, which were also considered they made all these same arguments about those things too. Like we're doing that. And you know, what's so funny to me about all this European panic, and I don't know if you saw this new social media app from Davos, like there's been this new push to like make social media European.

There's double you, this social media app for like European elites that you have to, you know, verify your identity to scan your face and supposed to have no dissoning no disinformation on it. There's Monit, which is another European social app. And to me, it's so clear that all of this stuff is in bad faith about like European control over social media. Like they just want the capitalist sort of tech machine to be under their control. Because guess what's based in Europe?

Mastodon, a truly global, decentralized social platform that's part of the Fedaverse where you can take your following with you, where you have this like, it's not for profit, it's community driven, it's community moderated. You can choose your feed. You can choose your algorithm. Like that has all the things that all these people say that they want social media to be. It's actually based in Europe. It's not a profit seeking endeavor.

And it's not as something that they can like profit off of or control. And so they don't want to support it. And so it just bothers me so much because I just think like if you do believe in a better internet and you do want that internet that we had like when we were growing up, it wasn't profit driven. It was much more something like Mastodon. And yet none of these people even use Mastodon. I am on Mastodon by the way. But like, they're not on there and they're not using it and they're not boosting it. Instead, they're boosting other money-making Twitter clones, et cetera,

that are just like under European control. But I also think that the really terrible part about all of this is how so much of social media is about individuals trying to make money and stuff. I mean, people often like romanticized the really early internet, like the 1990s and stuff. It was kind of in the era before all of this, let's say maybe 2015 or whatever. It's just like so many people, they'll never leave something like Instagram because of, businesses being tied up or even the potential that you could make money and stuff and there's no incentive for people to go to a different platform i mean i like blue sky i know it's not the exact same

thing i like blue sky because at the moment it hasn't suffered from insidification i can customize my feed i don't really go on twitter anymore apart from there's like a massive political event and i'll go check it yeah like with europeans you just drive yourself mad thinking about all this stuff because people who care about free speech other people who crack down on free speech people who are pretending they want a better internet actively making platforms that are even worse than what we already have I don't think there's really anything good coming in the future. But I mean, Blue Sky, not that it makes me hopeful because it has its own absolutely massive problems

with pro-Palestinian content and stuff, but I guess with Upscrowled and other things like that, maybe there is some alternative that can come in the future. But again, with all of these verification systems, the hard part is the UK government can just say to something like Upsrolled if it gets popular, all your users will have to verify their ID now. And then it has an option of getting massive fines

or not being in the UK market anymore. But that's the dystopian thing with digital ID or online safety bills is they essentially control what social media people will generally be able to access and that goes beyond you if we have a VPN ban as well.

Which is crazy. And I think also the inevitable outcome of a lot of this is to ban VPNs. They want complete and total control and surveillance of everything that you do and see online, which is crazy because there's no equivalent to that in the real world.

Like if you go read a book, the government does not know that you read that passage in that book and it is not tied to you for life where it can be brought up, you know, in 10 years for a domestic terrorism trial of like you consumed the cavernacle videos like you are a radical or something. And that's something that the UK actually passed about a decade ago is that I don't you think you need a warrant sometimes to search up people's internet history and you

can bring this up in like an actual prosecution without even having a warrant from a judge where you can tie them to like, oh, you read, I don't know, there's loads of crazy books about like serial killers or people who've done bombing. and shit. Like, you read all that, or you read a book by someone who used to be a terrorist or something, and then you've said this, so you're actually like a threat to the British state and stuff. Well, in the UK especially, and that's why I wasn't making the point that, like, Democrats are good, but I'm hoping something like that can be a cause, maybe more even liberal people in the US can get on board with, of like,

look how the 1% and our censoring everything we do. We're in the UK, we've slept walked into this, where most people really couldn't tell you anything about online surveillance or censorship and there's just something in the UK brain that has just developed over the centuries. We're just so apathetic to authoritarianism in our country. Like we've really slid into it and it's really depressing and you feel absolutely mad because in the US it feels like everyone's so politically engaged in a really stupid way. Like everyone has really stupid opinions but they're actually politically engaged.

In the UK, like depressantly, I suppose someone the other day, they said the only time they read the news about the interest rates from the Bank of England meaning how much they'll pay in their mortgage, right? That is way more common than someone actually caring about things like surveillance or anything like that. So that's how we're going to have like a reform government because the right wing have become so radicalized. They actually care and they'll go out and vote where everyone else is so apathetic and hates politicians and hate politics. They'll stay home and that's how we'll get like an actual far-right government. And it's definitely going to happen as well.

Like I have no doubt like we actually are going to have a fascist government at the next election. And funnily enough, they're the ones campaigning against all this shit at the moment just to get into power. Yeah, just to get into power because we. know that you know like winter like trump is in office now and we're getting mass surveillance I think both political parties in the US and I don't I know there's like a million political parties in the UK but it seems like they all just kind of want to censor each other like when conservatives talk about free speech they mean conservative free speech they don't want liberals or progressives to have free

speech and same thing with frankly a lot of people that are centrist liberals here like you mentioned Andrew Tate like I hate what he says I you know I think if he violated terms of the platforms sure he could be banned but like I think they do also want to censor a lot of really bad speech, and you have to actually be able to defend speech that you find a warrant if you truly want to defend free speech, or defend people's right to say it, rather. But yeah, I don't know.

I think also the British media is crazy, and every time I read articles about this, like I feel like I'm losing my mind a little bit because they, like, frame it in the most unhinged way. Another thing that people don't realize, if you're not from the UK, like generally Americans, being a journalist, a politician, and a banker is basically the exact same job in the UK.

I'm not joking. Boris Johnson was two. The guy who ran the BBC under Boris Johnson was a banker, then a journalist, and they all go to the same schools. They all know each other. Like, it's so incestuous in the UK. So when you're reading the news

about, like, these people who write the news, you know, they might have been bankers or politicians, and often they are. So they're so in bed with the current governments, and that's why you'll read this stuff and it will be so much like what the politicians say. And it's basically just like a, I feel like when we talk about dystopian or like, you know, even authoritarian, having a news media that is just literally a reflection of the political class and the elite in this country, I don't think it's discussed enough. Where in the US context, it's more about like sucking up to the 1% where in the UK context, no, the journalists are often part of the 1%.

Like George Osborne ran the evening standard. And even like with Rupert Murdoch, you said, you know, you work for Daily Mail for a little bit. He's so influential in British politics. you have to basically get his help to win. And that's just like something that has been so bad about British politics for even longer than American politics. I know there's always been problems with like elites running newspapers and shit like that. But that's why when you see coverage of this,

it'll be the most sensationalist crap ever to melt people's brains. And the Daily Mail is so responsible alongside a few other things. And now we have like our Fox News equivalent as well for just rotting people's brains where even you saying something like Andrew Tate's speech is bad, but we have to defend like speech, right? That would just like be horrifying to someone who just consumes the daily mail and stuff.

And like you were saying with adolescence, even the reaction to that blew my mind in terms of it's not real. It's a fictionalized version, maybe based on current events and stuff, but it's not real. And here's the prime minister saying, everyone in school should watch this.

But in my mind, it's also saying, okay, so you're telling parents to watch this and make their own minds up about children's safety online. We'll also say, actually, no, you don't get to make that decision. and I'm just going to ban them all anyway. It's just like catering to like the worst boomer mindset in the UK of like the boomers have all watched Netflix

and now say this shit about the show they watch and maybe they'll like you for it. Like the UK is so stupid. I'm getting so wound up even talking about this. UK is such a fucking stupid country in a way that is just so unique. But it actually drives you insane. The best way I could describe it,

living in the UK as a left is like being gaslit every second of every day by like nearly like the whole population. I feel crazy just looking at it. It seems like this like bizarre country where you're like, this is like a warped version. Obviously, like Australia kind of too, where it's like these are English speaking countries. We have so much in common with them. A lot of our like media is intertwined. But then you see what's happening and you're like, oh my God, like please don't let that happen here. Like this is, it's out of control. And so I hope that

people kind of wake up and look at what's happening. Because what's so crazy is so many activists in America have spent so long years, you know, anti-surveillance activists saying like, hey, by the way, if you pass these like child safety things, here's what we know will happen. And speaking of gaslit, for honestly, until last August, like, you would just have these people like sending no, no, no, no, that's not. And even today still, we have Jonathan Haidt and all this stuff, like saying, no, no, that's not what's going to happen. But now we know, actually, it is what's happening. It is literally what has happened in the UK and Australia as well. So I hope people stop supporting this stuff. And really, like you said, like left is start fighting against it. I know nobody cares

about tech policy. But you have to get the right. about tech policy so much. Like, I really hope that they start caring. We'll have to see because we're getting to like the central Western Europe type of politics where it's just going to be like far right. And then we have like an actual leftist party, hopefully after the next election. And I think we're just going to have to suffer in terms of having like a fascist government like Italy did or the Netherlands kind of have had as well in Austria and stuff. And we're going to have to kind of suffer. And maybe leftists will take this up. But that is the most like annoying thing with a lot of.

liberal doing this or a supposed liberal like Keist d'armah, he's rolling out the red carpet. So when the fascists come in, just like with Joe Barden and the TikTok ban, they're just going to be like, yeah, that's great. Let's make this even worse. But you've already surrendered to them before they've even taken power. You've just laid the blueprints out for them. It's the same with like George Bush and, you know, creating ice and creating the Patriot Act. And then Obama comes in, he uses it, makes it worse.

And they just keep it around. Like we're talking about even like banning ice at the moment. They've been maintained for decades. by liberals and then suddenly like you know people have had enough and that's just the sad part about this is because of the power in the UK and how it's centralized there's just no real opposition and there's just no party it's going to get in and spend the political capital stripping things like the online safety bill because the attack from the media the daily mail is let's say Zach Polanski the leader of the Greens becomes prime minister is he supports

child abuse or some shit like that and that will work and it will work because we're so controlled by a certain media narrative in this country so yeah don't listen to me if you want about this stuff changing. But I feel like that's just what's going to happen, to be honest. It never goes back. Once it's in, it never goes back. You're not going to get more privacy from the government once they've invaded it.

That is why hopefully, I mean, these laws, they're passing in the states. We have 25 states in America where identity verification laws have passed or about to pass. But we don't have federal laws, and so we still can fight back. And I think when we have the midterms, these are things that should be brought up.

And these, like, Democrats like Rokana and Gavin Newsom and stuff, shouldn't be allowed to escape by and claim, oh, yeah, I'm for a free speech when, no, no, you're not. And I think that's the main thing of free speech has been made to seem like in the U.S. context, it's not in the UK context, that you can say what you want, but you can't post what you want. So you can go out on the street corner and rant like a madman, but if you post that online, then suddenly it's not free speech anymore. In the UK now, it's like with the Palatine action stuff, it's like, no, it's literally

like, you can't say anything and you can't post anything. And like you were saying, I, you hope Americans look at that, and J.D. Vance has criticized UK free speech. I saw recently the Trump administration actually criticized the Palestine action classification as terrorism. So I'm hoping there's something in the American brain that's like, don't become like us. Like don't become like us and don't become like Australia. Don't become like all these British territories or former British territories. It's a real hard one. And like you were saying, maybe there's some hope of America with the federalization and how like different states are different laws.

But yeah, it's pretty bleak at the moment. I don't know what's in the American brain, but a lot of Greece. Well, thank you so much for joining me and chatting. today. Yeah, thank you for having me and let's hope maybe some Americans watching this take the warning from the, from the bleak future of the UK. And people in the UK, I hope they speak out more. There's not that many people in the UK speaking out against the stuff. So, I don't think so. All right, that's it for the show. If you like my work, please, please subscribe to me on Patreon via the link below or buy a paid subscription to my substack newsletter at usermag.com. That's usermag.

where I send a bi-weekly roundup of everything that I'm reading and following online. You can also get my newsletter on Patreon, again, via the link below. On Patreon, I also do bonus episodes, monthly Q&A live streams, and more. I rely so much on your direct support to produce these videos, so I cannot thank you enough for every single dollar that you're able to spare. I'll be back next week with a brand new episode of Free Speech Friday. See you then.