Instinct/for change

We carry an instinct in us to keep fighting.

I don’t know if anyone else has seen recently the things the UK and Australia are implementing in regards to the internet, and which will soon be forced upon the U.S. and the European Union.

If you are unaware, a multitude of sites will start/have started requiring people to upload their ids in order to verify their age, so they can access those sites. Like, reddit, youtube, discord…

They claim it’s under the guise of “protecting children,” by preventing kids from accessing adult-only content, but in no world does preemptively using AI to guess people’s ages, then, if the AI believes they’re under 18, blocking their access to anything until they prove they’re over 18 (by sharing personal information), protect anyone, much less children.

Data breaches. Government censorship. Surveillance capitalism. Greedy corporations tracking you all across the internet. “George Orwell’s 1984 was a warning, not a guide.” These are all things I’ve been hearing lately, and I don’t like any of them.

I don’t want to live in a dystopia. I don’t think anyone does–unless they believe they can set themselves up at the top of it (forever). But more and more, the good in the world seems to shed its crumbling facade in favor of steeply tilted odds.

The issue is, it’s so easy for me to feel powerless. When democracies are keeling over to the whims of the rich, how is your voice supposed to be heard? When asking nicely (or firmly) for boundaries doesn’t work, how do you take care of the things you love?

When you connect to other humans through the internet, and the internet’s sabotaged, how are you supposed to not feel alone?

Maybe I’m just being dramatic, and this will blow over. One can hope so.

But this is really just another thing in a string of terrible things.

Because I don’t want to be living in a world where generative AI is shoved in my face all the time, birthed out of artists’ work without their consent.

I don’t want to be living in a world where greedy corporations collect data on what I do online, and know where I am by the location of my phone.

I don’t want to live in a world where humans extort and kill other humans for profit (or for anything).

I don’t want to be living in this world. I want to be living in a better one.

I carry an instinct in me to keep fighting even when I don’t know if or how my fight will change anything. Because I have to do something, right? I will not keel over; my voice sustains me, demands better, more. I won’t give up the people I care about, because I love them. They matter. We matter.

We have to.

Since that’s the way we grow a better world. We strengthen each other, instead of take only for ourselves. We build each other up. Sustain the fires that keep us all warm.

We don’t make it out of dystopia if we don’t do it fighting for each other.