We did something similar with eglasovanje.si (currently only in Slovenian). Our idea is that secret online elections do not need a technological solution, but a procedural one.
It's worse than that. Czech pirate party also lost most of their members. The other member states also failed to gain any new ones.
As someone who ran a national party for a while, it feels like an end of an era.
The generation that started the Pirate party is getting older (in our 30s or older) and we're loosing (realistically, lost it a while back) our energy. If we had managed to establish the Pirates as an established party, then that would be fine, but we didn't (except in Czechia).
And now, even if you manage to give the Party to a new generation (as we did, before I left) the cultural moment is gone. Now it feels like people don't know or care about digital rights — even tho they affect them way more than they did 10 years ago when we were in our prime. If you'll allow me a hypothesis: everyone interested in IT got (financially) fat and lazy, and now we don't care anymore.
In the words of Douglas Adams: "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish"
In my country the pirate party demolished itself when it spread into other political fields. A lot of idpol imported from the US took over net policy issues, freedoms and rights were completely secondary.
The whole understanding about digital freedoms and rights changed. It was like they changed their values over night and appealed towards completely different issues. Some even demanded more surveillance because "hate speech" was all the rage in this changed party. This new outlook was not only not attractive, it suddenly became quite repulsive.
While a party like the pirate party probably has difficulties to consolidate opinions in other fields than net policy, it wouldn't have been impossible. But it was done with a strange fervor around sometimes completely arbitrary and artificial issues not related to net policies.
Quite a few parties suffered from either takeovers and the "crazy people magnet". Everyone with fringe views on ... anything ... decided that the Pirates were the place to be.
Which, fine happens, the problem we had was, that the core ideology was very anti-censorship, so much so, that in the end those fringe groups dominated the discussion.
In my country it might have been the same. Although the anti-censorship positions quickly evaporated and were replaced by something completely different. Freedom of speech became a far right dog whistle to some and hate speech was all the new rage and state surveillance a must to combat unsanctioned opinions.
On the other side, you had ideologues promoting strict libertarian positions, which were also quite repellent because they were inflexible about their own belief system and their policy suggestions crude at best, completely anti-social at worst.
Overall there was no discussion on which positions the party should take on specific issues and instead it was mostly prescribed top down. I believe people just noticed that they don't share the same values as the party anymore and so they left.
I was never a member, but followed their developments for a time.
The alternative is being a single-issue party which people will only vote for when there is nothing more important on their minds. IMO it is good for a party to have a clear profile on most important issues, and digital rights fit into the overall progressive ideology. Another possible direction would probably be libertarian profile for techbros, but that would be a different party.
Except there are already other much bigger progressive parties here. Really most major parties tend to err on the progressive side these days. So they both alienated people that don't agree on their new focus whiile failing to convince the progressives to vote for them instead of the larger parties.
I think there's still people who care, I know I do and a lot of my peers in tech do too.
The problem is, I guess, that in times of multiple crisis which only seem to get worse, people worry about other things.
I am sad though that I agree, the fight for digital liberty and authority over your own data has largely been lost for the majority of people, and they don't seem to understand or care enough to change it.
The solution to "multiple crisis which only seem to get worse" is to go on the offensive, and lobby for laws that answer those questions in the way we like. Changing an established law is much different than adding a new one.
One possible solution would be that people who cares about digital rights and privacy would integrate a "true" leftist party, and advocate there for them to care about it.
That worked in France with La France Insoumise, that voted against Chat Control, and they have 9 seats now.
In my not so humble opinion, Czech Pirate Party went to shit because the saint trinity of Bartos, Michalek & Ferjencik decided that the party must look "professional", which means most competent millenials around me felt that they'd not be able to contribute to "such a competent organization" despite party lacking competent people.
Then Ferjencik spent a shitton of part money as the head of PR promoting his sister Olga in order for the party not to look so sausage-festy without disrupting the power balance instead of concentrating on mobilizing more people to come help out.
All that combined with internal populism and push to accept more and more members who were not even remotely Pirates besically turned it into a right leaning liberals with basically only the EU bunch staying true to the original idea of general populace being able to hold those in power accountable.
One of my latest acts as a member, I've moved to cancel accepting a new member who literally told us that he hopes he'd be promoted in the public company since Pirates have the Mayor, that he is against legalizing recreational drugs, insisted on sterilizing trans people "to prevent genes to spread" and wanted to keep harsh copyright around teaching materials because "those are important, right?"
And I had to fight HARD to revoke his acceptance as a member.
I checked their EP members' activity briefly prior to election, and that seemed to match their program and my expectations. Good.
But locally, it's indistinguishable from the outside from any other right wing party, anymore. I've lost trust in their transparency spiel/program, too. Their foreign minister is insufferable, and the rest are pretty much invisible. No idea why they wanted this ministry. It's the most visible ministry they have, but irrelevant to pirate program of transparency/anti-corruption. Foreign policy is set by the government as a whole anyway. Probably a ministry where they can have the least effect.
And execution by the ministry seems to be according to true old school piracy, rather than modern political one - proudly aligning with extreme anti-human rights fringe depending on context - while proclaiming care for human rights, and equal and just treatment of issues.
The actual outcome is, from my experience, that tracking has reduced, a lot. When this law was enacted, *we all removed "like on Facebook"* buttons. Remember those? Yeah, we don't see them anymore. Google Analytics also was forced to change, at least a little.
Is there still tracking? Sure. But it's not so blatant anymore. There are hoops one needs to jump through. And that was the point - to make tracking a harder.
None of my projects have cookie banners. Why? Because I use a first party tracking system (Matomo), I anonymize all visits and I respect DNT. It's that easy.
It’s not the difficulty level that people object to.
It’s a combination of two things:
1) the law comes to the rest of the world from Europe. We (rest of the world) didn’t vote in the people who brought it. We’ve had quite enough of Europeans making rules for the rest of the world in the past few centuries thank you very much.
2) GDPR encodes an expectation that may or may not be common in the EU, but certainly isn’t common elsewhere. I don’t have any expectation of privacy when I walk in public or when I give any information at all to a business. My solution to this is: a) I wear pants outside, and b) I don’t give out private information. Whether the business ecosystem knows their age and purchasing patterns is largely immaterial to virtually everyone I’ve ever met.
And don’t show me a survey showing people don’t like it - if you prime people with the question, of course they will respond that way. They know their info is being gathered, and they just don’t think it’s as big a deal as GDPR would like it to be.
So, I get your point. I can see how (1) can be aggravating. Can't really say anything to defend it, that's the Brussels effect for you. From the point of view of your own sovereignty, it's a bad thing, period. From the point of view of an effect on the lives of average people, I'm not so sure, it's so cut and dry.
Now, point (2) is, unfortunately, in the same vein as smoking, pollution, seat belts etc. Uninformed people (uninformed because they have better things to do) are not protected from their lack of knowledge. They suffer the consequences just the same.
And while I agree that and informed person, making a self-destructive choice has (in most cases) the right to do so, there is something to be said about the very, very powerful exploiting the uninformed. And this is where GDPR comes into play. It's protecting normal people, from a very, very big threat, that is not that obvious and is being wielded by the powerful.
GDPR is one of those laws restraining western corporations from going full dystopian future on us all. I said restraining, to be honest, I think it's just slowing them down.
And as far as surveys go - it used to be the same here. Europeans didn't care and said exactly the same things (i.e. the famous "i didn't do anything wrong, so I have nothing to hide") and then activists worked for years to educate them that, at the very least, it's leading them to buy things at higher prices. Now most people are extremely sensitive to their data.
With all due respect, you're speaking on behalf of 1 person here, not an entire country of people, and certainly not the entirety of the non-E.U. world. "We" can speak for ourselves, and don't all agree with the views you're ascribing to us. And "I" don't agree with the sort of stereotyping I'm responding to.
I'm personally glad someone is doing something for my privacy here. My own government, due to regulatory capture, is unlikely to act in my best interests here.
The article elaborates on this point: There Is No Cookie Banner Law. Only bad website operators choosing to abuse their users with annoying consent dialogs.
Nobody in Europe is issuing "diktats", meaning citizen-supported legislation I guess, or affecting your business, unless you're trying to deal with their citizens' data. Just don't process EU citizen data and it's not an issue. Better yet, just don't track users.
In any case, your disagreement only serves to underscore that you were speaking on behalf of 1 person, not any country or countries. Otherwise, we wouldn't be disagreeing!
I actually self-host all my web assets and use Matomo already. So I do actually agree with the premise.
What I object to strenuously is someone dictating terms to the world from distant shores, especially since they seem not to get how the internet works (it’s all funded by ads, online sales, and ads for online sales, all of which involve metrics and tracking!)
The diktats I mentioned include a ruling that Google Fonts are illegal now. So if I’m using those, or I’m using Google Analytics, and a European happens across my site, I’m now a criminal? Fuck that.
The consequences of contravening the GDPR are uncertain but sounds scary. This is terrible for the open and free internet.
Please tone down the hyperbolic rhetoric and FUD. Consider how strongly you can make your point without them.
To the point: Nobody in Europe is "dictating terms to the world", or "issuing diktats", meaning passing citizen-supported legislation I guess, or affecting your business, unless you're trying to deal with their citizens' data.
> The diktats I mentioned include a ruling that Google Fonts are illegal now. So if I’m using those, or I’m using Google Analytics, and a European happens across my site, I’m now a criminal?
No, because website operators have at least 4 more options:
1. Don't process EU citizen data (block them).
2. Don't track users, period (host the font on the site instead).
3. Don't track users until they log in (convert them).
4. Get users' informed consent (let them know that they'll be tracked on the site due to the choice of google fonts instead of hosting a font).
Wow, that wasn't scary at all! The general attitude I'm getting from some folks, though, is that they want to do anything they want to users without consequence and never change. This attitude is going lead to a lot of anguish. Others have rights, too, and they override our right to do whatever we want to them, in many cases.
Many webmasters have neither the time nor inclination to read up on EU law. So blocking is the easiest and safest solution to minimize our legal risks. This is absolutely terrible - I grew up dreaming of an internet that is really humanity's network; not islands separated by political allegiance.
I agree that I can tone it down, but 99.99% of the FUD around is directly the fault of the EU for not making it crystal clear what the theory and practice around their internet laws will be.
Luckily that's just 1 of the 4 options, and those 4 options are just 4 of many options, so no need to focus on 1 of many and say you don't like it: you can just choose another! Or you can choose to create the islands. I don't see what's so terrible about that.
Did website operators think they could keep violating the rights of EU citizens indefinitely? I mean, based on enforcement capacity, chances are most operators can, but it'd be good to stop. IMO, A network for humanity should prioritize humans and their rights, over tracking and ads, and the lack of respect for those rights is what I find terrible.
Real talk: if you have questions about the GDPR, ask them, and I'm sure the smart folks at HN will be able to help you find answers and overcome obstacles. You can build and not break laws, whether GDPR or ITAR, we can help. Nobody's saying it'll be zero work, but nobody's entitled to run a business doing whatever it wants with zero work, either, and shouldn't expect to.
You keep missing my point, possibly on purpose, so I'll end this here.
The EU and the US and China disagree about what user rights are and what reasonable behaviour for a website is.
If one of those parties enforces their vision onto their traffic, it has a chilling effect - splittig the net into federations. By making GDPR super vague, the EU just makes everything worse, including for Europeans. If you disagree that the rules are vague, I'll refer you to the rest of this thread. Nobody knows what's being enforced or what the penalties are.
As far as the GDPR goes, only webmasters choosing to ban entire countries of users out of greed (wanting to unfairly profit off users) or laziness (not caring enough about the privacy of their users) or spite (punishing users because you don't like the GDPR) can achieve the splitting you describe. If it happens, it would be their decision, and thus their fault.
Real talk though, again: you say you personally feel the GDPR is vague. If you have questions about the GDPR, ask them, and I'm sure smart folks at HN will be able to help you find answers and overcome obstacles. You can build and not break laws, whether GDPR or ITAR, we can help. If you have troubles building, share them with us, let us advise you. Nobody's saying it'll be zero work, but nobody's entitled to run a business doing whatever it wants with zero work, either, and shouldn't expect to.
Lobbying is a core pillar of democracy. Yeah, I know, I dont like it either. But that's reality and no amount of prohibition will stop humans from being human.
The solution is clear: everyone needs to lobby for their interests and the people should all fund (crowdsourcing) organizations that lobby for politics they want done.
Transparency of lobbying, while benefitial is not a solution.
The way lobbying is done in the US ensures that the rich and powerful will always have a greater say than everyone else. It's not unlike a bribery scheme in that sense.
Normal people don't have the time, money, or connections to effectively lobby. The best that you can do is kick a few bucks to some NGO that seems to be in line with your stance on whatever issue. But that's really just making the whole problem worse rather than working to having a government that is better at representing the people.
I'm good at reaching out to my representatives. I consider it a civic duty. But I don't for a moment think that doing that is "effective" when compared to the massive amount of corporate lobbying.
I can't wine and dine them, kick large amounts of money to their favorite charities, take them on expensive "junkets", etc.
This seems like a tautology, if they didn't have a greater say then they wouldn't qualify as 'rich and powerful' in the first place, but as average people.
You realise that lobbying is literally sitting down for a cup of coffee with "a friend", right?
It's a whole different world of probal that would require an authoritarian state with an absolute control over people's lives... And at that point it becomes moot.
Remind me of the last time corporations got a Constitutional amendment passed?
Have you met a lawmaker, or been involved in the passage of a law? The state of civics education in America is such that a minority of folks understand the first rule of politics: showing up is half the battle. Unfortunately, pitching nihilism is a good way to keep the other side from bothering.
Why do you assume I live in the USA? No, I haven't been part of any legislation process in the USA because I do not live there.
No need for Constitutional amendments when the healthcare and insurance industry in the USA (the biggest spenders in lobbying afaik) can lobby politicians to block legislation setting caps on drug prices paid by the government through ACA, or to keep the dysfunctional system of health insurance you live under.
Let me know when citizens can spend some US$ 8-10b on lobbying for universal healthcare, just like the combined spending of healthcare + insurance industries...
And just a quick edit: setting the NRA as an example of citizens' association lobbying is a bit tone deaf given what they do for the weapons industry, it's another very good case for how lobbying can be detrimental to society by hiding big corporations interests behind what is seemingly a citizens' association.
Edit as a form of last reply since I got rate limited:
You edited the comment to remove the sentence saying "state or federally" which implied to me you were talking about the USA. A bit of a dishonest response after such edit...
I have in America, a few European states and India. The people who benefit from restrictions on lobbying are those with personal access to power. Because the lobbyists let the little people and those faraway get the access they believe they earned, bought or were born into.
There are tons of (non-rich) lobbying groups like this, for things like climate action, labour rights, consumer rights, etc.
Of course, it's probably correct that lobbying is probably skewed towards the rich. And maybe we need to correct for that. But then the question becomes "should we correct the influence of money in lobbying, and if so, how?"
Lobbying is not "the rich". It's large economic sectors that account for many jobs and economic activity. It is right that they be allowed to make their views and interests known in a transparent way. They will anyway as they have the resources and contacts, so we might as well have an official, transparent channel.
> Lobbying is not "the rich". It's large economic sectors that account for many jobs and economic activity. It is right that they be allowed to make their views and interests known in a transparent way. They will anyway as they have the resources and contacts, so we might as well have an official, transparent channel.
Corporations aren't citizens though. Politics exists to represent the people, not the corporations. They shouldn't have any influence over politics. The economy is not a goal on its own, it's only there for the benefit of the citizens.
And they already have a really heavy influence in favour of their goals in terms of all their employees, shareholders etc who can vote. They already have adequate representation that way.
We're not as bad as the US yet with all the heavy campaign contributions with strings attached, but we don't want to end up there either. So I'm very happy the huge multinationals get some pushback.
They should just tell the offended individual that if they get MS or a different serious disease (and, with MS, usually disability) they get to have special treatment.
Great for them. The mobile app, at least for me, is getting unusuble. I have a crappy phone and reopening a page takes 3x the time opening a new tab and writing the url does.
Even then it's still significantly slower than chrome, even with ads.
I think it's time I find a different mobile browser with adblocking.
Funny how they recognize a cause of decrese (easy and affordable licensed access) but don't recognize it's becoming less easy and less affordable.
They also recognize a cause of increase (less disposable income due to inflation) but don't recognize the solution (reduce prices, increase value) instead threaten with increasing prices which will just cause a negative feedback loop.
But I'm sure they'll soon demand the "big government" to "meddle in the free market" by implementing freedom and privacy distroying monitoring and evforcement in order to protect their government enforced monopoly.
Or, you know, they could just do what the music and game industries have done (offer convinient, affordable access) and stop being assholes.
Seems like that from your description the turbo roundabout is only a problem for people who do not know it or know where there are going.
We have both types here. And now that I think about it, the turbo trades a bit more stress on first usage or a lot less every time after that. While the standard 2 or 3 lane is always similarly stresfull.
We do have a partially soft design of turbo roundabouts with phisical deviders and designated places where you can change a lane.
I don't think this is exactly the workflow you're asking for, but there exists an extension that creates a folder structure that you can interact with using OS tools such as bash.
We wrote a whole bunch on the topic here (again, use automatic translation) https://eglasovanje.si/vsi-clanki