use your voice

If you are concerned about people being influenced by Russia, the US, and China, be it via Facebook, Reddit, TikTok, local ads, or whatever else, if you are concerned about that friend who suddenly started spouting anti-EU rhetoric from Youtube, if you’re unhappy with how the EU and member states have handled it so far, this is for you.

EU citizens anybody can respond and it would be in our interest to do so too.

It will take 10 minutes if you’re quick, longer if you want to leave comments on each point. There are 4 points with up to 4 sub points, each comment can be 3500 characters long.

You can respond in any of the 24 European languages, so if English is not your preferred language, use your mother tongue.
If you are part of a community in your EU mother tongue, share a link to this in your mother tongue.

Here are the supported languages:

  • bg български
  • cs čeština
  • da dansk
  • de Deutsch
  • el Ελληνικά
  • en English
  • es español
  • et eesti
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  • fr français
  • ga Gaeilge
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  • hu Magyar
  • it Italiano
  • lt lietuvių kalba
  • lv latviešu valoda
  • mt Malti
  • nl Nederlands
  • pl polski
  • pt Português
  • ro română
  • sk slovenčina
  • sl slovenščina
  • sv svenska
  • @[email protected]
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    1012 days ago

    Taxing the rich out of existence is the number one way of protecting democracy AND combatting misinformation AND improving your standard of living.

    It’s the most important thing everyone should be pushing all of their political representatives to do. Tax wealth, remove the ultra wealthy.

  • @[email protected]
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    913 days ago

    The investment in a social democracy/ social safety it ultimately what is safeguarding Europe, because it precludes the motivations/ grievances which create surface area for misinformation to operate on. Its not that it isn’t possible, it just has a much more difficult time taking hold.

    The UK is a great example of this, where they seem religiously committed to austerity as the approach for addressing most issues; this gave rise to grievance politics because, well, austerity does hurt people; grievance politics gives misinformation something to operate on (its the continents fault); brexxit happens; life gets worse; misinformation gains an even further foothold because now its premise has been validated, and there is even more grievance to operate on.

    Grievance is the scar tissue which misinformation operates upon. Misinformation is the bacteria which spread and cause death, but without the wound of grievance, there is nothing to do. Creates strong mechanisms for grievances to be addressed (engaged democratic processes; responsive governance).

    • @[email protected]
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      12 days ago

      The investment in a social democracy/ social safety it ultimately what is safeguarding Europe, because it precludes the motivations/ grievances which create surface area for misinformation to operate on. Its not that it isn’t possible, it just has a much more difficult time taking hold.

      The UK is a great example of this, where they seem religiously committed to austerity as the approach for addressing most issues; this gave rise to grievance politics because, well, austerity does hurt people; grievance politics gives misinformation something to operate on (its the continents fault); brexxit happens; life gets worse; misinformation gains an even further foothold because now its premise has been validated, and there is even more grievance to operate on.

      Grievance is the scar tissue which misinformation operates upon. Misinformation is the bacteria which spread and cause death, but without the wound of grievance, there is nothing to do. Creates strong mechanisms for grievances to be addressed (engaged democratic processes; responsive governance).

      Whatever actual or perceived grievances a person may have (even though merely being born in Europe already constitutes winning the global class lottery) - that only ever causes vulnurability. That person then turning to actively undermining democratic systems and the international community is something that only happens if some con artist uses that vulnurability to convince the person that it constitutes a solution to their problems.

      Universal wealth and happiness are nice, but the immediate, separate and and more solveable issue is not continuing to give microphones and political offices to con artists. Letting folk get scammed out of their vote is just as detrimental to a healthy society as letting folk get scammed out of their life savings - if not more.

      • @[email protected]
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        112 days ago

        Whatever actual or perceived grievances a person may have (even though merely being born in Europe already constitutes winning the global class lottery) - that only ever causes vulnurability. That person then turning to actively undermining democratic systems and the international community is something that only happens if some con artist uses that vulnurability to convince the person that it constitutes a solution to their problems.

        I mean I 100% agree. I’m not justifying them in their perceived grievance, rather, I’m offering a mechanism in “how things come to pass”. My assessment is that if you can make the grievances minor/ absurd, you remove any leverage for the conman.

        • @[email protected]
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          112 days ago

          I mean I 100% agree. I’m not justifying them in their perceived grievance, rather, I’m offering a mechanism in “how things come to pass”. My assessment is that if you can make the grievances minor/ absurd, you remove any leverage for the conman.

          Sure! But, again, why let conmen walk around in the meantime? That seems like an entirely unnecessary and easy-to-tackle problem.

    • atro_cityOP
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      413 days ago

      The investment in a social democracy/ social safety it ultimately what is safeguarding Europe

      For now. Right-wing parties are gaining ground and it’s helped a lot by US media that’s being abused by Russia. A lot more has to be done.

  • Sunshine (she/her)
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    1413 days ago

    Europe is definitely more resilient in protecting democracy as they have countries using proportional representation.

    • NoneOfUrBusiness
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      413 days ago

      That’s certainly nice, but it’s mostly irrelevant in the long run without a more serious remedy to the issues the far right uses to gain legitimacy.

      • Sunshine (she/her)
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        513 days ago

        I beg to differ. Countries that use pr have much higher voter turnout and perform better on every issue thus reducing the chances of the people feeling frustrated and voting in fascists in hope of change.

        • NoneOfUrBusiness
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          113 days ago

          That’s definitely true, but then again AfD got the highest number of seats in Germany’s last election for example. PR is nice but not much more than a bandaid if your politicians are crooks, which let’s face it they are.

          • Sunshine (she/her)
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            13 days ago

            People in Germany need to vote for better parties and the centre and left parties need to make better decisions when in power, however that is not the fault of pr. It is one of many important reforms democracies need to make. One reason why the AfD has gotten so far is because of the Germans’ reliance on Twitter with Elon Musk manipulating the platform to give AfD artificial public support in the election thus reinforcing the band wagon effect.

            At least in Germany you can see how much popular support the AfD have instead of them lurking behind the 2 big parties and that’s great transparency to have in democracy. Also the people have more viable choices on the ballot instead of just having 2 choices.

            • NoneOfUrBusiness
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              213 days ago

              People in Germany need to vote for better parties and the centre and left parties need to make better decisions when in power, however that is not the fault of pr

              I’m not saying it’s the fault of PR, but rather that a good voting system alone will not stop fascism. As you said non-right parties need to make better decisions when in power, but also the people themselves need to be more civically engaged outside of elections.

    • Snoopy
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      13 days ago

      Well sadly not France. Boloré hold medias and is converting people to far right. The fifth republic in france has problem and lack democracy… :(

        • atro_cityOP
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          413 days ago

          For presidential elections, yes. For other elections it is proportional. They should use ranked choice for presidential elections but that’s not going to happen in the 5th republic. It’ll need another revolution or constitutional change to fix their system.

    • @[email protected]
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      213 days ago

      enforce the disinformation fines first and force corrections with the same impact on the same publishing media

      • atro_cityOP
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        213 days ago

        Do leave a comment about that. Make your opinion heard officially too.

    • atro_cityOP
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      213 days ago

      If you’re a European, do fill in the questionnaire and make that comment! The more the merrier.

        • atro_cityOP
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          113 days ago

          Someone reported that they could fill in the thing with a random email and name. You might be able to leave a comment regardless. Kinda weird, but if it’s possible…

  • FundMECFS
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    413 days ago

    To have true democracy, we need bans on coorporate lobbying and coorperate financing of campaigns. Until then, nearly every major party will be bought up by corporate interests.

    • atro_cityOP
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      113 days ago

      Do leave that as an official comment! It’s valid feedback.

  • @[email protected]
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    12 days ago

    The page layout is soo confusing.

    The PDF and “go to consultation” are the primary elements, but that was not obvious to me at all.

    Why is “Give Feedback” above all of those? :-/

    /edit: Looks like when you reach the questionnaire the intro means you don’t even need to read the pdf beforehand.

    • atro_cityOP
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      213 days ago

      “Give feedback” takes you to the form and “Go to consultation” takes you to a page about the questionnaire and more information, then you can click on “Respond to questionnaire”. Both paths get you there.

      The questionnaire says the same as the PDF document.

      • Comtief
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        213 days ago

        Yeah I figured it out eventually. My dumb ass thought initialIy that i need to write into that comment box on the initial page.

    • @[email protected]
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      12 days ago

      Took me about 30 min to fill out (:

      not counting the time of confusion before that - I was also very confuse by the page layout and content and give feedback section and form.

  • Steven McTowelie
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    112 days ago

    Hey can someone put in a good word for Canada on a Canadian’s behalf? Cheers

    • atro_cityOP
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      212 days ago

      I just noticed that it’s not just for EU citizens! Non-EU citizens can also fill in the questionnaire a comment!

  • @[email protected]
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    112 days ago

    I filled it out. Did have some additional comments I added. In the conclusion I raised two other related points not referenced in the questionaire.

    I think the most efficient (considering effectiveness, viability, and implementation effort) approaches would be

    • Require transparency of curation and promotion algorithms of big platforms
    • Teach literacy, critical thinking, and risk awareness in schools from a young age
    • Hold politicians accountable for claims and deliberate lies
    • Reduce social inequality
    • atro_cityOP
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      313 days ago

      Because they need to create an account tied to an EU identity?

      • @[email protected]
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        413 days ago

        I just registered with random email and password and can fill the survey. So how it’s tied to EU identity ?

        • atro_cityOP
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          113 days ago

          Oh, that wasn’t the case for me. Were you forced to use two-factor authentication?

  • @[email protected]
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    512 days ago

    „In order to contribute you’ll need to register or login using your existing social media account.”

    Well that’s exactly what I wanted to talk about.

    • atro_cityOP
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      212 days ago

      Where are you getting that from? This is what I’m seeing:

  • @[email protected]
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    213 days ago

    The head of the commission have her appartment inside the commission building, which means she enjoy extraterritoriality and is protected from her multiple bribery scandal.