Released on Thursday:

→ The Private Citizen 166: The Twitter Files, Part 6

Revisiting the idiotic decision to ban Donald Trump off Twitter and what it means for the future of democracy that private companies started to influence public discourse like that and got away with it.

It has been way too long since I’ve recorded a podcast episode. So here’s an episode of The Private Citizen explaining why this has happened. Here’s to hoping I can get back to regular releases!

I just released a final episode of The Private Citizen for this year:

→ Episode 164: The Year 2023 in Review

In my annual recap episode, I am looking back at the topics that I’ve covered this year and forward to the changes that 2024 will bring for the podcast.

Ah, I forgot to post about this as I was busy with deadlines and the like, but I released this podcast episode last week:

→ The Private Citizen 162: The Westminster Declaration

What do Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, John Cleese, Yanis Varoufakis, Richard Dawkins and Walter Kirn have in common? They are all, despite holding very different political beliefs, very concerned about the future of political discourse in Western democracies.

Sometimes, I get the feeling I’m not living in the European Union, but the Cardassian Union … Is this still a democracy? Is the rule of law still in effect? Why is Gul Dukat smiling all the time?

Answers to these, and many other, questions on this week’s podcast:

→ The Private Citizen 161: The EU’s Ministry of Truth

EU bureaucrats maintain that the Digital Services Act is not a censorship regime, but is meant to save people from misinformation by deleting it from the internet or hiding it from view. Which, in fact, is the very definition of censorship. Welcome to the Cardassian Union.

The EU wants to pass a horrible law and anybody who actually understands the technology involved thinks it’s a bad idea. And now it’s become obvious that this is because the lawmakers didn’t listen to experts on technology, but to experts on cashing out. My latest podcast episode:

→ The Private Citizen 160: The Lobbyists behind Chat Control

It turns out, that the EU’s push to completely abolish digital privacy might not actually be an altruistic move to save children from abuse. Several tech companies, including one headed by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, stand to profit substantially from the decision. Which is why they massively influenced it.

While I’m sitting here, working on my preparation of episode 160 of The Private Citizen, it occurs to me that I haven’t posted the previous episode from last week yet. So here goes:

→ The Private Citizen 159: Society Is Going to Hell in a Handbasket

How following the exodus of Germany’s worst YouTuber to TikTok opened a private hell of lolcows for me. To a point where I don’t think I understand society as a whole anymore. What is this shit? And where is it all going to end?

This week’s episode of The Private Citizen is out. Get it while it’s hot!

→ The Private Citizen 158: The EU Wants to Abolish Digital Privacy

The EU wants to establish universal client-side scanning for text messages and photos on citizen’s phones. With other words: All cryptography would be useless and hence, nobody would have any privacy in the digital realm anymore.

With the release of today’s episode, The Private Citizen will hopefully return to weekly episodes, released every Wednesday. The podcast returns with an example of what happens when well-meaning, but clueless people get to decide how to run a society.

→ The Private Citizen 157: When Well-Meaning People Make the Laws

Germany tried to make its laws against child pornography stricter and it backfired spectacularly. Now, lawyers and judges are desperately trying not to enforce these laws as the government scrambles to fix them.

I finally got around to uploading the video for last week’s episode of The Private Citizen to YouTube. So I thought I’d better tell you about it on here, too. In this episode, I finally continue my long overdue coverage of the Twitter Files.

→ The Private Citizen 155: The Twitter Files, Part 5

The podcast returns with more coverage of The Twitter Files. On this episode, I am discussing how the US government used the FBI to exert censorship control over Twitter and many other tech companies to reinforce government narratives and silence critics.