Democracy is not a joke. The title aims for a framing moving the overton window to a place where our democracy is no longer a given. I resent this, and I distance myself from this attempt.
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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Always vote pirate party in all elections! I even want to join, but have to focus on my own projects to get some moneys running first.
Doesnβt that take votes away from the larger parties that have a chance of keeping out the conservatives (or liberals, whichever it is for you)?
Any in the UK? Also can y'all help us In unBrexit?
Nothing screams "democracy is a joke" more than voting on things, amirite guys?
Voting again within a month because you don't like the result is a bit of a joke though. Nothing has changed in the last month to warrant another vote, so if it swings the other way this time, then democracy really is a joke.
Ah, so what you meant to say is not "democracy is a joke" but rather: "people's awareness of what's going on is a joke", I got it.
They're not voting on the same thing they voted just recently. "Chat control 1.0", as it is sometimes called, was passed 6 years ago - it was the voluntary monitoring that vendors were allowed to do. That law has just ended. The conservatives want to extend it. This is the current vote.
What they voted on a month ago was the "2.0" version, where monitoring would've been mandatory.
That is like the fourth time in the past six month they try to implement chat control. It really gets tiring.
Luckily this is about the rollback of 1.0, we've actually made progress.
Those votes were about mandatory chat control, 1.0 is about opt-in chat control for companies, which was passed 6 years ago, but the EP let it expire now.
Conservatives want it back.
From the other side of the pond.. Be careful y'all, these bastards are global, well organized and hell bent on pushing this dystopia at any cost necessary.
Fuck them conservatives. All they do is lobbying for bug corpos, voting for oppression and conserving feudalism.
Yes, voting on things is the end of democracy.
To me it looks like the democracy is working. Imagine if it was for a cause you are for. Then itβs nice to know you can have more than one attempt to get your cause implemented. That said, there probably should be a limit to how many times the same issue can be pressed before it has to be put in a sort of quarantine period for an agreed upon number of years. Maybe they already have that. I donβt know. Iβm no expert on the matter.
AXEL VOSS YOU LITTLE SHIT STAIN!
EU "Democracy" is a joke
I don't much think that Chat Control is desirable as a policy, but I suspect that you won't find many democracies out there where passing legislation wasn't tried again after failing. If that alone makes a democracy a joke, I think that there wouldn't be many non-joke democracies.
I think that the anti-democratic impulse here is that they are trying to get this by any means possible. They were refused by the elected parliament and they are still trying to get their chat control by trying it in other legislation, other channels and so on. That means that they are just using the democratic process and are not accepting that elected representatives refused their proposal. That is antidemocratic.
the anti-democracy wave is crazy right now. This is exactly what all of these dictators and wannabe dictators want us to do - give up.
If that alone makes a democracy a joke, I think that there wouldn't be many non-joke democracies.
Which would be a correct statement. There should be at least a timeout before a legislation can be proposed again, with changes substantial enough to justify the new vote.
That's a thought, though that'll also introduce some new political strategies that one might not want, like making poison-pilling legislation a much-more-powerful move or immediately proposing and voting down legislation just before a given legislature departs to kill the ability of the incoming legislators to pass that legislation.
It also may be hard to draw that "substantial enough" line. Similar problem to determining what qualifies as a rider.
Single issue voting
we are round 4 with chat control, maybe even more, also the voted parlament is only one of 3 instances who work on laws and has no right to peopose them themselves, both the council and the commission are not elected and have no legitimacy given by the people I'm being generous by calling the EU a Democracy at all. The EU is a Democracy like Fetterman is a Democrat
I think this should be somewhat discouraged in a democracy, though. Decisions have to be binding in some form. You can't just do 5 and then randomly discard 4 and go with the one result you like. And for some reason that's supposed to be the binding one. I mean it's a bit tricky. But ultimately it's the same kindergarden game like you'll ask your mom to allow something and after she says no you'll go to your dad and ask him, then your grandparents, uncle... and at some point some adult is busy with other stuff, doesn't pay attention and you get your "yes" and you'll do it. It's a weird thing kids do, not a feature of a democracy.
And in democratic systems it leads to the same discussion blocking the agenda again and again because of some people's dispute. And other weird things like in the USA, where the first official act of a new president is, to cancel as much bills from the previous administration as possible.
I mean there's reasons to do it. But I still think it's mostly a dark procedure within a democratic system.
And other kind of law has it covered. For example court rulings. You'll need substantial new evidence. Or a changed situation to re-do their binding decisions. And that's for good reasons.
Decisions have to be binding in some form. You canβt just do 5 and then randomly discard 4 and go with the one result you like.
Funny how that works though. As long as something doesn't pass, you can try again as many times as you want but the moment something passes its a "done thing" and can't be undone. Brexit is the example of the latter. Obviously a stupid and damaging decision that cannot be voted on again because "we already voted once."
Yes and no. Sometimes good legislation fails too, and needs a repeat vote.
The important thing is that wildly unpopular laws should be directly vetoable by the population - threatening to vote out a legislator has never been a sufficient threat to make them accountable.
I vote for "expands rights? Can repeat. Reduces rights? Has to wait".
Is there precedent for this in Europe? I can't remember good things which were repeated. They tend to either succeed or fail but that's basically it. Or political parties rallye to do something but then they don't. Or can't agree within the coalition. Or there's other pressing issues after the election and it gets postponed... But they don't really say, that's what we promised and we'll put it on the agenda again 5 months later?!
In Switzerland we rejected women's right to vote in 1959 and then it passed in 1971. I am certain that we have many such examples.
Isn't Chat Control about scanning E2E encrypted messages on users device? What Gmail has to do with it? They are and will keep scanning your email on servers as those are not encrypted and you agree to it in T&C. Does Linkedin have E2E encrypted messenger? AFAIK their chat is not E2E encrypted. If they are fighting against Chat Control they could at least understand what it is and use valid examples.
The title of this post is one more pebble on the mountain of attacks against democracy and the rule of law in Europe. Sure, the EU could be improved a lot, but declaring it a joke and tearing it all down is certainly not going to make anything better; except maybe for authoritarian leaders in countries outside of the EU who want to go back to being able to bully around all those smaller nations individually.
I never had the option to vote for something that fulfilled my needs. Tell me again of the power of abstracting needs away into an average of the people. The only power I see in that is keeping more or less the same people at the steering wheel.
In face of this I just posted an update on the chat control issue here.
TL;DR ; Not happening for now.
" The extension of the voluntary monitoring of private communication on the internet by online platforms in the EU has failed. Negotiators from EU states and the parliament could not agree on a compromise, as a spokeswoman for the Cypriot Council Presidency announced on Monday."
Doesn't mean it won't come back on the agenda But MEPs and a couple of memberstates have never been on board. So democracy works fyi.
Lastly, chatcontrol 1.0 was the very first iniative from years ago . Then we had 2.0 and afterwards it was again ammended to chat control vs.2.5 or something. So the post by OP must be quite old.
Kudos for the Fight Chat Control initiative! But I wonder, if providing a template ready to be sent to MEPs isn't counterproductive?