Logged In

We’re online all the time. Nobody thinks about it anymore, just the baseline. So when the UK government decides to keep a year of your browsing history, your messages, who you talk to—the whole map of your digital life—it doesn’t feel like surveillance anymore. It’s just how it works. Theresa May figures security beats privacy. That’s the trade we made, whether or not anyone asked.

Then there’s Mark Zuckerberg making the media rounds, saying Facebook didn’t really help spread election lies. Which is absurd enough that you stop being angry and just kind of accept it. Everyone knows what that platform does. The real strangeness is how we’ve all settled into a world where the lies are public, everyone sees them, and nobody does anything about it. It’s just part of the background now.

Germany’s setting up an agency to crack encrypted messages. The one place you thought was private gets a backdoor. Same story everywhere—governments pushing for access, companies handing it over, all of it technical enough that it becomes invisible. In Berlin the coalition government at least tried to push back. They protected whistleblowers, got open source funding, killed some of the worst overreach. Small victories against the trend.

The trend is everything. More watching, less privacy, total surveillance dressed up as security. It doesn’t feel dramatic because it isn’t anymore. It’s just the air we breathe online. You know you’re being logged. Everyone does. And you keep using it anyway because what else are you going to do, go offline? That’s not an option. That’s the design. The trap is cozy. Depressing in how normal it is.