WithBritishCharacteristics @ASystemNoName

In 2014 I photographed a flyer at Shanghai University. The student club had given itself a name, and helpfully translated it into English: the Propaganda Department. Nobody on campus thought that it was strange to publicise the Propaganda Department. 宣传 just means publicity, it's what every Chinese organisation calls the people who run its posters and its feeds, from a university society right up to the Party's own Central Propaganda Department. The word carries none of the underlying menace it does in English. I kept the photo because it's the argument of my article in one image. What China names plainly and clearly, Britain maintains a masquerade using nicer gentler words: "communications", "behavioural insight", "BBC Verify". They've the same function, but better branding. This weeks article covers news at the weekend about the plan to compel social media platforms to push BBC content to your social media feed, whether you want to read it or not. I trace the state's coercion through to the Nudge Unit and the Home Office's secretive RICU, and ask why it all seems just so Chinese.

This then can be further expanded in scope by OFCOM, whereby websites that are not deemed conducive to the public good are blocked at a device level. This removes the issue of websites being wilfully non-compliant (4Chan) and imposes the obligations and consequences on Apple or Google

@SamCKx You're not looking at the second order effects Sam, by mandating the age verification at device level, the government can quite easily move from requiring website to verify age from the device, to mandating that the device manufacturers block websites unless age verified

@Panagiotou90St Manure is called brown gold for a reason

@thisisyourparty The parallels between the state surveillance powers of the United Kingdom and China are growing bit by bit with every legislative instrument. The UK like China will arrest you for holding a blank A4 page, so further criminalising political expression is not something new

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@PeteBritish The UK like China will arrest you for holding a blank A4 page

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@KirstieMAllsopp No Kirstie, it’s about the tools being implemented to enforce this and the second order consequences, which can potentially be systemic censorship driven by ofcom that even a VPN will struggle to circumvent

@derekmross They’re copying the surveillance regime from China, with the Data Use and Access Act enacted last year being the primary instrument.

open.substack.com/pub/withbritis… I’ve written an article about how the British implementation of a social media ban is not like Australia’s but rather much more similar to China’s censorship.

@SamCKx @BramhamAlex Frankly Sam it’s because the parents are not looking at the bigger picture

@ATabarrok China's also making it next to impossible for foreign biotechs to carry out trials in China without being in breach of data protections laws. Chinese sites have an industry wide aversion to putting transfer agreements in place to allow sponsors get the clinical data out of China

@Landeur It will be quite difficult to circumvent if they can actually go ahead in the manner they are proposing with on device verifications. I just wrote an article on it, and how the UK is essentially copying China's methodology. open.substack.com/pub/withbritis…

I just started a Substack! You can subscribe to it here …thbritishcharacteristics.substack.com/?r=8gk49k&utm_…

“What’s my approval rating?” - It’s bad Mr Prime Minister. It’s -43. It’s…it’s in the mud. “Could it get lower?” - I mean anything COULD happen but realistically- “Kill the ponies.” - Wha- “The ponies. The cute little ponies. Kill them.” - Sir, they’re endangered “Fuck ‘em. Make the call.”

Steven Swinford @Steven_Swinford

3 weeks ago

Exclusive from @oliver_wright Dartmoor ponies could be subject to mass culling to reduce the impact on biodiversity after a controversial ruling by the government’s environmental quango Natural England has demanded that all livestock grazing on the moor is reduced by about 75

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@songpinganq @elonmusk Except as you can see they got him with other charges. I’m not saying they don’t have politically motivated prosecutions, I’m saying the social credit system as described does not exist yet. The only fully implemented system is the bad debtors and the unified enterprise system

@songpinganq @elonmusk This isn’t true, the social credit system has not been implemented yet to this degree. It undermines your point by spreading misinformation.

13 years ago this month, the Guardian broke the Snowden story...the biggest mass surveillance exposé in history. Today it calls your concern about ID-linked browsing, spyware in your photos and messages, and broken encryption, "fake outrage" while Starmer's government demands backdoors into your iCloud and calls for people to be arrested for tweets. The watchdog became the lapdog.

Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot

3 weeks ago

You’re going to see a lot in your X timeline about how the social media ban is unworkable and illiberal - and it will be one the most obvious examples of how social media skews debate. But it will be one of the most popular things the government is doing theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/j…

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@JessBrownFuller You realise that these controls go further in restricting the internet than the controls which have been copied from China? That this is the largest subversion of autonomy of British citizens to engage in political speech on the internet on the targeted website? It’s shameful

@lewis_goodall Unrealised gains are not real Lewis

@D0rkerDevil It’s honestly piss, I work in data protection for life sciences, can’t get it to do a single fckin thing. Can’t even identify it’s reviewing a contract without throwing up barriers