I feel it's the same vibe with return to office policy in Canada.
These things seem like they come from absolutely no where with no legitimate reason and then all of these executives are on board making it happen.
Like what the fuck is going on
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2025
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Privacy
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If you're talking about Toronto and Ottawa, as far as I heard, a huge part of the reason is Downtown businesses are struggling now that way fewer people are commuting Downtown.
But the solution to this is not RTO. If your DOWNTOWN of all places isn't self sufficient I don't know what to tell you other than your municipal policies are failing. Just let people live in the office buildings. "Oh they're too wide and you'll have to make the units narrow strips that only have a tiny sliver of window on one side" Do that then. Tons of people would still live in those because Downtown should be the most desirable place to live.
Ok so how exactly have all these companies all agreed to do this at the same time. That's not strange to you?
In the worlds of the immortal George Carlin: it's a big club, and you ain't in it.
I don’t want to just dismiss this as “business as usual.” What stands out to me is how coordinated the return-to-work push was. Sure, we know there’s a “big club” of elites who share similar goals. But sharing goals isn’t the same as acting in lockstep.
Think about it: I can join a fitness club, but that doesn’t mean all of us show up on Wednesday wearing the same outfit. There’s a difference between belonging to a group and receiving instructions that lead everyone to move together.
That’s why I think this deserves more attention. The inference here isn’t just that the wealthy share values or face the same incentives it’s that they communicate and coordinate globally in ways that go far beyond coincidence. And that, to me, is a much bigger story than just “rich people doing rich people stuff.”
Do you think the ultra wealthy don't associate and communicate with each other? Why wouldn't there be private Signal chats composed only of billionaires? It's not about shared incentives. The "club" part is very literal.
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The Internet has become popular enough that governments care about what happens on it. And it's not just European countries, US states too (at least for age verification).
More specifically for your two points:
Encryption
It used to be that very little Internet traffic was encrypted, much less end-to-end encrypted. After 2013 (Snowden revelations), this changed, e.g. messengers started to E2EE, many more websites than previously started to use HTTPS. So all we are seeing now is the reaction to those positive changes...
Age verification
This has to do with mobile devices more than anything else. I think a lot of parents now just hand their children smartphones or tablets and may then be surprised that their children can then access things they don't want their children to access. This was less of a thing in the desktop era because it was easier to see what children were doing online if it was happening on a huge computer in the living room...
Now personally I don't think anyone (including young people) should ever be prohibited from watching or reading anything they actively want to see. For preventing young people from accidentally accessing porn, an "are you over 18" banner ought to be enough... I don't think people who want to prevent that kind of access want anything legitimate. But you asked about why it's happening now and not at another time and I think this is the answer.
Sidenote: I remember reading that when television was newly introduced in East Germany, it was still able to be somewhat critical of the regime; after some years, this stopped because a lot more citizens were able to watch it. The equivalent of that is currently happening to the Internet.
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More than one European prime minister spoke loudly about a coming war. Whether they mean it or it's an excuse to do fascist stuff is another topic. There's also the Russian sabotage going on.
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It's not new. Maybe it's new to you but European conservatives always tried this, at least in Germany. They never missed a chance to try to implement harsher and broader surveillance and have many times had their laws repealed by the federal constitutional court.
Also the chatcontrol laws have been in the making for years in the EU, but over those years they have been reworked or not gotten enough votes again and again.
Now why do conservatives want surveillance? I think it's about control. Just like they believe a father should have ultimate control over his children (be allowed to hit them etc), they think that police shouldn't have to stop at anything while researching a matter.
Also there probably is lobbying by state agencies and those selling surveillance tech and whatnot.
Sports rights holders ~~are bleeding money due to IPTV~~ got even more greedy and they own the politicians.
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A lot of good points here, but I'd also like to bring forward another hypothesis which partially explain the incredible speed at which this is moving forward in the last few months (even though things have been brewing back and forth for years, decades).
The US has become a hostile state. For Five Eyes, Six Eyes, Nine Eyes, and Forty Eyes that means much less domestic intel since all the Eyes were sharing domestic intelligence to circumvent stronger protections on their own citizens. Canada would spy for the US and the UK, and vice versa, which was a neat way of getting rid of pesky rights afforded to citizens.
Hmm, that actually sounds pretty plausible. I think it's also being propped up and bought (read: corruption) by Thiel's fascist company.
Totally, Thiel, and the GAFAM are foaming at the mouth.total identity makes lusers far more valuable to them.
This has been ongoing for decades now, nothing new. They try every other year or so and they only need a single win
Google wants to be the go to for age verification so they can sell it to other websites. They'll also coincidentally control a lot of information on every user. They are fighting for these age verification laws.
They try to push Chat Control every year for some time now...
Had to scroll too long for this. Exactly, they have been trying for years, this time they are getting further with it.
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Because people aren't supportive enough of Ukraine and 
, and they blame the phones
The USA will go to war with China to keep them in line. My assumption is that like Afghanistan it will be presented as an attack on NATO so the EU will be involved.
People may question the validity of that war which is ok as long as the sentiment doesn't spread. With age verification those critical voices can be silenced easily.
Their paid right wing politicians are getting the upper hand so they are preparing to go full Fascist again. The Liberals are paving the way so the Fascists have everything set for authoritarianism when they win the election.