The Private Citizen

Is the so-called TikTok law a tool to enable the US President to censor apps and websites at will? Yes and no. One thing is certain: This law isn't about TikTok; that's just a smokescreen.

Political scientist Brian Klaas looks into why we talk so much about politics, but never actually discuss any actual policy. My critique of his analysis is rather predictable.

Revisiting the idiotic decision to ban Donald Trump off Twitter and what it means for the future of democracy that private companies started to influence public discourse like that and got away with it.

I explain why this show went on an unplanned hiatus and once again vow to get back into the swing of things.

In my annual recap episode, I am looking back at the topics that I've covered this year and forward to the changes that 2024 will bring for the podcast.

The reporters from the Twitter Files project just won the Dao Prize for excellence in investigative journalism. Could there be a better time to dive back into these stories?

What do Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, John Cleese, Yanis Varoufakis, Richard Dawkins and Walter Kirn have in common? They are all, despite holding very different political beliefs, very concerned about the future of political discourse in Western democracies.

EU bureaucrats maintain that the Digital Services Act is not a censorship regime, but is meant to save people from misinformation by deleting it from the internet or hiding it from view. Which, in fact, is the very definition of censorship. Welcome to the Cardassian Union.

It turns out, that the EU's push to completely abolish digital privacy might not actually be an altruistic move to save children from abuse. Several tech companies, including one headed by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, stand to profit substantially from the decision. Which is why they massively influenced it.

How following the exodus of Germany's worst YouTuber to TikTok opened a private hell of lolcows for me. To a point where I don't think I understand society as a whole anymore. What is this shit? And where is it all going to end?

The EU wants to establish universal client-side scanning for text messages and photos on citizen's phones. With other words: All cryptography would be useless and hence, nobody would have any privacy in the digital realm anymore.

Germany tried to make its laws against child pornography stricter and it backfired spectacularly. Now, lawyers and judges are desperately trying not to enforce these laws as the government scrambles to fix them.

I'm back in the saddle. Well, at least partially. An explanation of what happened and some new developments in the Modern Solution case from a few years ago.

The podcast returns with more coverage of The Twitter Files. On this episode, I am discussing how the US government used the FBI to exert censorship control over Twitter and many other tech companies to reinforce government narratives and silence critics.

Many people seem to think that the democratic system of government extends beyond how the state is run and into civil society. In this episode, I advance the theory that this has caused a lot of people to fall prey to propaganda and misunderstand how journalistic reporting and scientific enquiry should be done.

The Danes say they have proof that the Russians blew up Nord Stream. But the fact that they want to keep this proof secret makes me think it does not exist and the whole thing is another attempt to distract people from Seymour Hersh's original reporting.

Instead of working with him to uncover hidden government secrets about the US proxy war in Ukraine, The New York Times and Bellingcat sold out Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira to the authorities. The kid's now facing a lifetime in prison.

When Substack launched what Musk interpreted as a Twitter competitor, the billionaire tried to force journalist Matt Taibbi to leave the publishing platform behind in favour of Twitter. When Taibbi declined, Musk declared The Twitter Files to be done and dusted.

During the pandemic, Twitter and other social networks censored dissidents and suppressed factually true stories to reinforce government propaganda and the interests of multi-billion-dollar companies with respect to SARS-CoV-2 and vaccines to combat it.

To cover up Seymour Hersh's report, the CIA planted a fake story about the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage with the press. Chancellor Scholz might even have discussed this cover-up with President Biden in person.