> What about going out in front of your city hall with a poster saying no-chat-control?
Unorganized, individual acts cannot change anything in the EU.
> You risk nothing, do you?
Given the legislative maze the EU has become, you can't be sure of that, but you surely gain nothing.
The conditions in Europe are quite specific, and in that environment, pan-EU legislation (except the customs union) should be optional for individual members, anything else can and will be used against the people.
Individual acts can actually have more resonance, if carried out with conviction and commitment (and if the cause is just).
See Greta Thunberg; she might not have managed to save the planet yet, but she sure got the attention of the world (of course, however big a problem chat control is, climate change is a much bigger issue)
Greta Thunberg achieved nothing useful in practice and if the best mascot for a movement is an autistic teenager it bodes poorly for that movement's chances.
She personally is perfectly successful, but in terms of political effectiveness people should model themselves off movements that achieved something.
To me it seems that she achieved a lot, compared to the rest of the activists.
The opposite forces were too strong in the end, but that doesn't mean that she didn't do a lot.
I'm not sure I see any problem with an autistic teenager as a "mascot"; I know how much a political area despises her, but if they treated a child like that, they would probably have done much worse with a normal adult.
But of course she's not enough, and expecting that she on her own will solve climate warming is delusional.
If we're talking about the scale of reforming the EU, I'd say the basket of things to look at are things like the rise of capitalism, liberalism, major religions, spread of democracy, the Enlightenment. There are a lot of smaller examples of polities reforming too but those are some nice big ones. The smaller ones tend to be quieter, less flashy affairs where someone organises people together to try and make life better.
> I know how much a political area despises her, but if they treated a child like that, they would probably have done much worse with a normal adult.
I like to believe the adults are more likely to run the numbers and say "hang on, rolling back industrial society for no obvious reason is a terrible idea and I'm probably going to fail anyway with these stupid tactics - progress is hard to stop".
> I like to believe the adults are more likely to run the numbers and say "hang on, rolling back industrial society for no obvious reason is a terrible idea
I guess you're a climate change denier, there's little to discuss then
> of course, however big a problem chat control is, climate change is a much bigger issue
Not quite "of course" in my opinion. An even bigger problem than (and a major cause of) climate change is how information flows to people. Or how it does not flow. Private conversations are part of that flow, I wouldn’t take that lightly.
It's hard to rank these problems; I consider both disinformation and chat control very big issues, and it's true that disinformation might be the main cause of climate change, but stopping chat control won't guarantee that we'll limit climate change as much as possible.
If for some weird reason I was forced to choose between stopping chat control and stopping climate change, I'd sure, regrettably, have to choose the latter...
and yet there are countless examples of the causes of protestors winning long-term victories
usually the people who choose not to protest for/against issues they care about do so for fear of police, fear of embarrassment, and/or laziness, not because they don't believe the countless sociological studies which have shown protest to be an effective form of political action
You risk nothing, do you?