• 0 Posts
  • 177 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 10th, 2023

help-circle


  • I still find it crazy. I was watching a show with a friend that displayed where people were from and one guy was from Canada, specifically Alberta. Being Canadian myself, I had the legal requirement to point out another Canadian and said “Hey, that guy’s from Alberta!” To which my friend said “I’ve been to Alberta.” I replied “I haven’t.” That was that. A few minutes later he’s scrolling through social media and tells me he’s getting a bunch of tourism ads for travelling to Alberta. He thought it was funny but honestly that just creeps me out.

    What if we had said something we didn’t want everyone to know? What if we were from a country where being gay was illegal, and we mentioned something gay in the presence of a phone, and now we’re flagged as gay by these companies. The government then demands consumer information from them and now they have a list of gay people. It sounds paranoid, but the current US government really shows how quickly things can go from being socially acceptable to criteria for being sent to a concentration camp.









  • I don’t understand why there’s such a hyperfocus on petitions. The only thing being attempted is signing petitions in various countries. Every country has declined to do anything and the last hope is the EU parliament which is being treated like some all or nothing final bet. Why just petitions?

    Why not directly put pressure on some of the worst offenders like Ubisoft? Lots of people are saying they’re not buying another Ubisoft game again. Cool! Start an official boycott. People who cant sign the EU petition can sign a boycott promise. It wouldn’t be binding or anything but it could create more solidarity around not purchasing their next big release. Companies care about their bottom line.

    You know the hate campaign against piratesoftware? Why not do that to the official Ubisoft account instead? They’re the company that is actually causing the problem. You might not like piratesoftware but he’s not the enemy. He hasn’t killed any of his own games. He didn’t make the decision to shut down the Crew. The offical Ubisoft account shouldn’t get to post a single thing without pressure from the movement. Critical memes should be made about the company and shared on social media. The CEO shouldn’t get to speak to an audience without being booed. Companies cave to negative PR all the time.

    These things can be done in addition to the petitions. Personally, I don’t think any petitions are going to bring about the change people are looking for. Governments rarely listen to them and the EU isn’t much better. There are just 10 citizens initiatives that have passed and all their responses have been pretty lack luster. Even if the EU enacts the exact laws people are hoping for, what about everywhere else? The idea seems to be that other countries will get trickle down consumer protections. Americans are pushing Europeans to petition the EU parliament to make law changes hoping it will cause American companies to change how they sell products to Americans. It’s just such an odd strategy to me. Again, it can be done, but there’s no reason more direct action can’t be taken in tandem with the petition.

    I get lots of downvotes and angry replies for this take which I’m not sure why. I can only assume people don’t like hearing that petitions are largely useless.






  • A boycott of the worst companies. I’ve seen lots of people commenting they’re never buying an Ubisoft game again under pretty much every article in relation to them. Perhaps boycotts haven’t worked in the past but this seems to have enough support and momentum that it could have a real direct impact. Recently, boycotts have been pretty impactful as the world has stopped buying US products and within the US, conservative groups have influenced many companies with boycott and social media campaigns against companies. It’s also something that all supporters globally can participate in rather than everyone just hoping a European law might affect products purchased elsewhere.

    The petition was a great way to gauge support, but I feel like people are going all in on its success and when the EU parliament likely issues its “we take consumer protection seriously which is why we already have the best laws in the world and don’t need to change anything” statement, people are just going to act defeated. There’s going to be a doomer post about how the EU parliament is corrupt and piratesoftware is the devil that gets 1000 upvotes and then that’ll be it instead of using the support and momentum in a more direct and impactful way.

    There are lots of ways to make a change. It shouldn’t be all in on a single petition and that’s it. That’s not how social and political changes happen.


  • Most of those resulted in “the laws in place are already good enough” responses. From your links

    The EU response to stop vivisection:

    The Commission considers that the Directive on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes (Directive 2010/63/EU), which the Initiative seeks to repeal, is the right legislation to achieve the underlying objectives of the Initiative. It sets full replacement of animals as its ultimate goal as soon as it is scientifically possibly, and provides a legally binding stepwise approach as non-animal alternatives become available. Therefore, no repeal of that legislation was proposed

    The EU response to Save the Bees:

    In its reply, the Commission underlined that rather than proposing new legislative acts, the priority is to ensure that the proposals currently being negotiated by the co-legislators are timely adopted and then implemented, together with an effective implementation of the CAP.

    The EU response to Stop Finning:

    the Commission commits to better enforce the EU’s already strong traceability measures by strengthening the enforcement of EU law that applies to the entire value chain - control of fishing at sea, full traceability of shark products from landing to consumer, consumer information, and prevention and redress of illegal trade - and ensuring the collection and reporting of complete and reliable information by fishermen and Member States’ authorities on all these aspects.