I’m a apprehensive about the loss of (future) open podcasts to walled gardens but that looks to be the most popular route to improving the monetisation of the format.
I've never understood this argument. Surely all you have to do is write a law that says: in the absence of British law, default to EU legislation. That's the essence of the great repeal bill, is it not?
My understanding of one of the big issues with defaulting to EU law is that disputes under EU law are settled by the ECJ and EU regulatory bodies (which are governed by ECJ rulings). This is not suitable for post-Brexit Britain's red lines. Accommodating this requires revisiting and rewriting the law to use British equivalents and I suspect this is a more time consuming process than a simple find-replace job.
This is also why Theresa May plans to use the 'Henry VIII clauses'[1] which allows the Government to amend laws (in this case, the Great Repeal Bill) without further scrutiny from parliament. This is potentially problematic as those amendments can include pretty much anything.
The follow up argument is the government has the power to amend the constitution but it currently has no interest in doing so. If Catalans want to secede they must first convince their (national) politicians to amend the consitution to make secession legal and then hold a referendum on secession itself.
If the people cared about individual liberty they'd vote outside the big two parties (Tories and Labour) and take a look at the Lib Dems who have promised to repeal the Investigatory Powers Act rather than enhance it. The fact that the electrate doesn't care about these issues (and that the Lib Dems are on track to lose vote share) means they'll end up with the politicians they deserve.
I appreciate the issues FPTP presents and that people need to assess party platforms as a whole but the truth is most people don't care enough about privacy to make it a priority and so the UK will continue to get a bit more authoritarian every election.
The trouble is that we only get one vote at each general election, and those normally only happen once every few years. That isn't even close to enough to express any sort of nuanced view on important issues like civil liberties. It's not even enough to express a clear view on headline issues like economic policy or the NHS. And yet politicians produce these gazillion-page manifesto documents and the winners then claim a public mandate to implement the policy mentioned vaguely in the footnote on page 87.
Our political system is fundamentally broken, and it's not (only) because of FPTP. In many cases, there may not be any potential representative you can vote for who is even close to your own position on even most issues.
Saying that people "don't care" about an issue because they don't vote for a party that opposes the problem on that one issue makes no sense. For example, in the case you mentioned, the Lib Dems have essentially made themselves a single-issue party this election. By your own reasoning, should someone who supports their stance on civil liberties but disagrees with their headline position on Brexit vote for them?
I was hoping to capture your last point when I said people need to assess party platforms as a whole. I understand that most people who voted Leave cannot really vote Lib Dem in good conscience. I hate to see parties lock up single issue voters into electoral blocks like that but that's what happens under our current (broken) system.
Having said that, I don't think any of that detracts from my point - the electorate don't care enough about privacy to make it their hot-button issue. The people have chosen to prioritise the NHS, Brexit, Immigration and the War on Terror over privacy. All of those are important and the politicians up for election respond accordingly to their priorities. If a UKIP-like party that focused on civil liberties started hoovering up votes then the main parties would also respond; unfortunately I don't see that happening due to voter apathy on the topic.
>The fact that the electrate doesn't care about these issues..
Might have something to do with the absurd level of right wing control of the popular media. The Daily Mail preaches it's daily diet of,'jail em, hang em, deport em' for everything it doesn't care for. The snoopers charter achieved almost zero coverage during its final stages. All the papers were discussing was Brexit.
Believe me that I would vote lib dem, if they had stances I agreed on outside the issues of personal freedoms, and even some of those they aren't willing to stick up for. I am much more sympathetic to more of Labour's policies.
I feel like your second point was a missed educational opportunity for users. Ad views are worth a lot more to advertisers (and consequently, publishers) than what you are willing to pay - 'free content' isn't free and if you as a user aren't willing to pay for it then it's probably not fair to complain about the ads. The thing that upsets me is when I am willing to pay for content (Washington Post, The Economist, FT, etc.) and I still get served ads.
Online advertising reminds me of airline travel in the sense that people complain about the low quality service but are only willing to purchase the cheapest flights. The industry has shifted to accomodate what people actually want, not what they say they want.
I dislike the hyperbolic way this is portrayed in the article but anything that makes funding harder for the UK tech scene can't be a good thing, even if it's not official policy for these instituitions.
