Something has happened in Serbia that, for now, we can only dream of here. The website ocisti.net has exposed a system of organised online commenting which, according to Serbian investigative journalists, is linked to Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). No, this isn’t a handful of people with too much time on their hands venting their political frustrations on social media. It is an organised system with assignments, coordinators, shifts and even performance assessments.

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The Serbian weekly Vreme analysed the exposed database linked to the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and found that it contained more than 7,300 users, over 32,000 X accounts and almost 395,000 assigned tasks. The tasks were simple. Like. Share. Comment. Attack an opponent. Create the impression that masses of people agree with what those in power are saying.

Even more interestingly, the investigation found that 1,241 users had logged into the system from the networks of 231 public institutions. As many as 94 per cent of those log-ins took place during working hours, between 7am and 4pm.

Imagine working in the public sector. Your salary is paid from public funds, yet during working hours you help manufacture artificial support for a political party. If the investigative journalists’ findings are correct, the Serbian story is far bigger than ordinary online trolling.

Now we come to Slovenia. Do you remember Kopriva? Alenka Jeraj, who accidentally revealed in 2021 that, alongside her official account, she also used an anonymous profile? At the time, we got a fairly vivid insight into how a politician can appear online as an allegedly entirely ordinary citizen.

Before that, Pod črto and Danes je nov dan investigated a network of fake profiles that spread messages supporting SDS and attacked its critics. They uncovered patterns of coordinated activity, and Twitter later suspended 12 of the prominent profiles. I wrote about it in 2023, when a list of more than 14,000 alleged bots emerged in Serbia. At the time, I wondered how many similar profiles existed here. And who was really behind them.

There is another Slovenian story worth noting, one I came across yesterday and which prompted this piece. National television published an interesting report in which Kristina Hacin plays the leading role. The former journalist and editor of the Svet na Kanalu A programme began working in public relations for SDS in 2023, and is now a public relations adviser in Prime Minister Janez Janša’s office. She shares content in a group of supporters which they are expected to share, like and comment on.

These are not “normal” comments. This is the absolute dregs. The sort of slurry you want to avoid, yet cannot if you are on the opposite side from these patriotic idiots and you use social media.

I am not claiming that Slovenia has the same system as Serbia. Such a claim requires evidence. But I do know that Slovenia needs its own ocisti.net. A platform that would use evidence to expose organised political manipulation, fake identities, links between accounts, as well as information about where these people work and their full names. If they are anonymous online, let them have their five minutes of fame in the real world, so that we at least know who is insulting us, who is threatening us and where that person works.

Because there is a considerable difference between freedom of expression and threats and incitement. Everyone has the right to a political opinion. Everyone has the right to support their party. But the public also has the right to know whether it is reading the genuine views of citizens or coordinated messages from a political propaganda machine.

Above all, it would be interesting to find out who is behind the profiles that, day after day, insult, threaten, try to discredit and try to silence anyone who disagrees with their political agenda.

When you read hundreds of almost identical comments on social media, you are right to wonder how many people genuinely think alike and how many are simply carrying out their daily task. That is precisely the question we should get an answer to. With evidence. Not speculation.

Objava Slovenia needs its own ocisti.net to expose inciting trolls, following Serbia’s lead originalno objavljena na had blog.

Shame. I can barely find another word for Slovenia’s decision today at the United Nations General Assembly. For the first time in our history, we voted against a resolution calling for the US economic embargo on Cuba to be lifted. 130 countries voted in favour, 17 against. And Slovenia was among the latter. Under Janez Janša’s government.

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• Janša’s speech in Koper: Sovereignty Day or a day for old grievances?
• Hats off, Nataša Pirc Musar! A state ceremony is not a right-wing party rally

For more than three decades, Slovenia supported lifting the embargo. Regardless of who was in power. This time, however, we stood alongside the US, Israel and Hungary, as well as several other countries that voted against it. Why? What interest does Slovenia have in supporting economic pressure on Cuba that has lasted for more than six decades? What benefit is there for people facing shortages of food, medicine, fuel and electricity?

Let there be no misunderstanding. The Cuban regime deserves criticism for its human rights violations and restrictions on freedoms. But opposing the regime is not the same as supporting measures whose consequences are felt above all by ordinary people. The European Union understands that too, warning of the embargo’s negative humanitarian consequences.

Clearly, however, Janša’s government has different foreign policy priorities. Instead of continuing Slovenia’s long-standing position, we have had a U-turn. Without any convincing public explanation of why this reversal was necessary. Janez Janša and Foreign Minister Tone Kajzer should explain to the Slovenian public why Slovenia changed its position. Above all, they should explain who exactly benefits from such a decision.

Where is this kind of foreign policy taking us? Towards a country that bases its foreign policy decisions on independent principles, or one that simply bends to the wishes of more powerful allies? Slovenia voted differently today than it ever has before. It is a decision for which Janša’s government must take political responsibility. To me, this is a shameful foreign policy reversal, and I am ashamed! Truly ashamed.

Objava Slovenia votes against lifting the Cuba embargo for the first time originalno objavljena na had blog.

Students in Serbia have defeated Vučić’s political machine. The student list won more than 52 per cent of the vote and an outright parliamentary majority. After many long years, Serbia has a chance of a different future. So what did Janez Janša do? Did he congratulate the students? Did he welcome democracy’s victory? Did he express hope that Serbia might finally take a different path? No. Janez dusted off the UDBA.

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• Janša’s speech in Koper: Sovereignty Day or a day for old grievances?
• Hats off, Nataša Pirc Musar! A state ceremony is not a right-wing party rally

“We will not give our consent to any progress until Serbia hands over to Slovenia all the archives of the UDBA, SDV, JLA, ZSNZ and other former SFRY services relating to Slovenia,” he wrote on X.

How convenient. While Vučić’s political machine was firmly in power, Janez spoke of the importance of European Union enlargement. As recently as November 2023, he backed Serbia’s EU membership in an interview. They even boasted about it on the SDS website. There was no talk then of any UDBA archives ultimatum.

Now that Vučić has suffered an electoral defeat, Janez has suddenly discovered conditions without which Serbia must not be allowed to take a single step forward. A coincidence? Of course. With Janez, things like that are always merely coincidences. Let’s be clear. The archives of the former Yugoslav secret services must be opened. All of them. To historians, researchers and the public, not merely to those who would piece together their own political truth from individual documents. Under the SFRY succession agreement, Slovenia already has the right to access certain archives, while access to the records of the former intelligence services remains a problem.

But why has this suddenly become a condition for Serbia’s European future? Why was there no such ultimatum while Vučić was in power? More interesting still, Janša attached to his post a piece by Igor Omerza, who immediately linked the story of the Serbian archives to European Commissioner Marta Kos.

This is where we get to the heart of it. Apparently, not even historical archives can escape domestic political score-settling. What exactly is Janez afraid of? What might the documents of the former services reveal? Who might appear in them, and in what roles? Perhaps it would be interesting to read the whole history, rather than only the few pages that suit the current political agenda. Or would Janez like to interpret this part of history in his own way too? So that everything that fits his truth is sacred, while everything else is a communist conspiracy?

The saddest thing about all this is that young people in Serbia spent almost two years fighting for a different country, for those in power to be held accountable and against corruption. When they finally managed to defeat Vučić’s political machine, Slovenia’s prime minister greeted them not with congratulations but with a threat of a blockade.

Janez clearly cannot stomach even democracy’s victory in a neighbouring country without trying to turn it into his own domestic political war. If he is so interested in the UDBA archives, he should work towards opening them completely. Without selection, concealment or politically rewriting history. Perhaps then we will all learn something interesting. Even about those who are loudest in demanding the truth today. The only question is whether Janez will like that truth.

Objava Janez would block Serbia’s EU accession unless he gets the UDBA, SDV, JLA and ZSNZ archives originalno objavljena na had blog.

1,300 kilometres. Verona, Lake Garda – Sirmione, Bergamo – Città Alta, Genoa, Portofino, Brescia and Lake Iseo. Three days in Italy, quite a few kilometres, countless beautiful views and, above all, stress-free driving. Then you come back to Slovenia, where someone nearly runs you off the road within five kilometres of joining the motorway. Welcome home!

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Italy is one of those countries I always enjoy returning to. Not just for its cities, architecture and food, but also for that sense that nobody is in any great hurry to get anywhere. Which is a rather odd thing to say about a country whose drivers clearly have an innate ability to communicate using the horn. Well, they did. Times are obviously changing, and “vafankulo” is no longer part of the Highway Code.

This time, I covered around 1,500 kilometres, roughly 1,300 of them in Italy. In a Tesla. When I used to travel, I calculated how much I would spend on fuel. Now I mostly calculate how much the Italians are going to charge me in tolls. The difference is almost absurd. €44 for electricity and €107 for tolls. Yes, you read that correctly.

First stop: Verona. A stop at Flower Burger. Vegan burgers in Italy? Yes, please. Flower Burger is one of those places that proves vegan food stopped being just salad and a few vegetables on a plate a long time ago. Colourful burgers, interesting combinations and a concept that shows fast food can work without animal ingredients. To me, it is a far more interesting culinary stop than yet another classic Italian pizzeria. And worth driving 350 kilometres for a burger.

From Verona, on towards Lake Garda. Lake Garda and Sirmione. If there is a place that looks like the set of a romantic Italian film, it is Sirmione. That is why I am such a frequent visitor to this little town on a narrow peninsula reaching deep into the lake, with its Scaliger Castle, narrow streets and no tourists at night.

Then Bergamo. Or, more precisely, Città Alta. For me, one of the most beautiful parts of this trip. The old town high above modern Bergamo, surrounded by Venetian walls and narrow cobbled streets. A city with huge numbers of tourists, but well worth visiting.

Genoa is completely different. A large port city, a little rougher, less polished and far more authentic. Proper Italian city life, where narrow streets, imposing palaces and the port all come together. A city with character. You may not like it at first sight, but it has something that makes you remember it. Above all, it is not sterile.

Portofino. A postcard that someone forgot to print. A small bay, colourful houses, the sea and yachts. The sort of place where you get the feeling everything has been arranged precisely to look perfect in a photograph. The price of every square metre is probably suitably perfect too. But it is wonderful for a walk and for enjoying the views. Once you look past all the glamour it has acquired over the decades, there is a beautiful stretch of Italian coastline left.

Brescia is far less famous as a tourist destination, which is precisely why it has its own charm. A historic town centre, squares, Roman remains and that feeling that you are not merely another tourist delivered by coach. Italy has countless cities like this, which most tourists simply pass by on their way to better-known destinations. And they are often the best surprise.

Finally, Lake Iseo. A lake that receives far less media attention than Garda or Como, but is no less beautiful for it. Water, hills, small settlements and a much quieter world. The part of Italy where you want simply to sit beside the lake and stare into the distance. No phone. No notifications. No need to post anything on Instagram. If Garda is a tourist magnet, Iseo is its much quieter relative.

There were a couple of outlets along the way too. For the soul. Because that is just the time we are living in. Then the drive home. 1,300 kilometres of Italian motorways and roads, without traffic jams, without any particular stress and without needless irritation. Even though Italians have a rather different relationship with traffic rules than we do. Traffic flows on the motorways, drivers move over, and apparently it is possible to cover huge distances without feeling as if you are in the middle of a battle for survival. The only weak point is the toll booths, because people do not seem entirely sure what they are meant to do there, and it takes forever.

A word about electricity too. Because I know there will always be someone who starts explaining that electric cars are not suitable for long journeys. That you constantly have to look for charging stations. That you have to wait. That driving an electric car is stressful and diesel is still king.

Well, my experience is completely different. 1,500 kilometres and €44 for electricity. If I calculate current fuel prices and the consumption of a “fossil-fuelled” vehicle, the cost would have been around €250. Still less than a four-star hotel on Lake Garda costs at this time of year. Or a visit to a Michelin restaurant.

€107 for Italian tolls is another story. Italian motorways are not cheap and, when you add up all the sections, you realise you paid more than twice as much for tarmac as for the energy that got you to your destination. Which is actually rather funny. Driving an electric car is so cheap that tolls become the biggest direct cost of the journey.

Italy reminded me once again why I enjoy travelling there so much. The cities, the people, the sea, the lakes, the architecture, the loud people and that feeling of freedom when you do not necessarily have a fixed destination and can change your mind about which way to turn. Because the idea was to visit Bologna. And after five kilometres on the motorway, Slovenia reminded me why it can sometimes be very pleasant to cross the border.

Objava 1,300 km through Italy, €44 for electricity, €107 for tolls originalno objavljena na had blog.

Yesterday was clearly a bad day for politicians convinced that power belongs to them. Forever. In Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić admitted electoral defeat after more than a decade of political dominance. In Brazil, Lula defeated Flávio Bolsonaro. Two countries, two different political systems, yet much the same story of power refusing to accept that it is not eternal.

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In Serbia, the students started the change. Young people who, following the tragedy in Novi Sad, demanded accountability, transparency and an end to corruption. Nearly two years of protests, pressure and persistence. Vučić could not stop them. In the end, voters decided his political future.

In Brazil, the story is slightly different. Jair Bolsonaro already lost to Lula in 2022, and now his son Flávio has also been defeated. And what followed? Instead of conceding defeat, a demand for the election to be annulled. Apparently, democracy is acceptable to the Bolsonaro family mainly when it delivers the desired result.

It is ironic how often politicians who swear by freedom understand that freedom rather selectively. Freedom of speech, as long as you speak in their favour. Freedom of the media, as long as it does not criticise them. Democracy, as long as they are winning. When they lose, though, elections, judges, journalists or foreign conspiracies suddenly become the problem.

Of course, not all right-wingers are the same, and the left does not have a monopoly on democracy either. But in political movements that place power above institutions and the leader above citizens, the ideological label is no longer important. Yesterday’s events primarily showed that even long-standing political dominance is not untouchable. That protests can have political consequences. That voters can replace those in power even when they have all but convinced themselves that the country is their private property.

Perhaps the title No room for the right is therefore a little too simplistic. More precisely: there is no room for power that promises people freedom but demands untouchability for itself. Because freedom is not a privilege of those in power, and democracy is not something that applies only when our side wins.

Objava No room for the right / Vučić and Bolsonaro defeated originalno objavljena na had blog.

Janez Janša spoke about freedom, unity and Slovenia’s future at the Sovereignty Day state ceremony in Koper. Yet he devoted a substantial part of his speech to communism, red stars, the Erased, migrants, Palestinians and his political opponents. As though, 35 years after independence, we still cannot celebrate our own country without reopening every ideological front. Janez has clearly lost his way in time and space somewhere around 1991.

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He began almost poetically. Seagulls, the sea, Slovenia’s free coastline and memories of 1991. Then, rather quickly, we landed in Janša’s familiar world, where there are two Slovenias. One supposedly deserves credit for independence, while the other allegedly never truly embraced an independent Slovenia.

It is quite something to hear a prime minister speak about the harm caused by exclusionary politics while himself linking some of his fellow citizens to the erosion of the values of Slovenian independence. That is the central contradiction of his speech. The section on the Erased particularly bothered me.

Janša spoke about people who did not want Slovenian citizenship and later declared themselves to be among the Erased. But erasure is not a matter of self-declared identity. In 1992, 25,671 people were removed from the register of permanent residents. The European Court of Human Rights found that their rights had been violated, and Slovenia was required to establish a compensation scheme. Those are not ideological opinions, but court findings.

The economic part of the speech also deserves some attention. Janša explained that in 2008 we stood at 91 per cent of the European average for GDP per capita in purchasing power terms, and that today we are roughly back where we were. That, had we kept up the pace of the time, we could be almost like Switzerland. But a relative indicator does not mean the country made no economic progress in the intervening period. It is also interesting that, when listing the lost years, he gives considerably less space to the fact that he himself led the Slovenian government several times during that period.

The Palestinian flags formed a chapter of their own. He linked them to communist symbols and violent protests across Europe. But a flag in itself is not proof of support for violence, still less proof of opposition to Slovenian independence. Equally simplistic was the explanation linking the Srebrenica genocide and Russia’s aggression against Ukraine to uncondemned communism. Historical connections can be analysed, but events that complex cannot be explained by a single cause. But that is enough for his voters. They understand simple things.

Janša concluded with the thought that we must leave future generations more freedom, security, opportunity and peace. That is an aim one can agree with. But how are we meant to build a shared future when we are still arguing over who deserves enough credit for our shared past and who has the right to its symbols?

Slovenia became independent in 1991. It was an achievement of people with different political convictions, not the property of one party or one man. Sovereignty Day should be an opportunity to remember that. Not yet another chance to prove who alone has the right to interpret Slovenian history.

Objava Janša’s speech in Koper: Sovereignty Day or a day for old grievances? originalno objavljena na had blog.

Hats off, Nataša Pirc Musar. I believe the decision not to attend the state ceremony marking Sovereignty Day cannot have been an easy one. But in doing so, you showed integrity and proved that the office of President of the Republic still carries weight in Slovenia. You could have given in, stayed silent and sat through the ceremony on Sunday, pretending everything was perfectly fine. But you did not. And rightly so.

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First, you had to agree to Janez Janša’s demand to be the sole speaker at the ceremony, although the original arrangement had been different. Then they added the 35th anniversary of Slovenia’s liberation to the Sovereignty Day invitation. Because, apparently, independence is not a good enough word. Next, they decided there was no room at the ceremony for the Association of Fighters’ standard-bearers with their red stars. And finally, they removed from the programme the traditional inspection of the guard of honour, carried out by the President of the Republic as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Clearly, this is a right-wing “party rally”, where other people are not welcome. Another piece in the ever-growing mosaic of division among Slovenians.

Kacin is the chair of the Coordinating Committee for State Ceremonies and Events. A man who ought to ensure that state ceremonies bring people together rather than divide them. Instead, he explains to the public why there is no place at the ceremony for flags bearing red stars. Because the JLA attacked Slovenia under that symbol. Seriously, Jelko? Are we now going to equate the partisans of the Second World War with the aggressor JLA of 1991? History evidently becomes remarkably flexible when it has to be squeezed into a current political agenda.

And then these clowns are surprised the President had enough? I completely understand her decision. And I respect it. Above all, I hope it sends a message to others who do not want to take part in this kind of celebration. Let them have their party rally. Let them have their speakers, their standard-bearers and their audience. If they want military parades for flexing their muscles, let them organise them for themselves. Just do not sell it as a celebration for all Slovenians.

We saw a similar story during Covid. In 2020, we had an official and an alternative ceremony, while in 2021 the Association of Fighters’ flags were unwelcome. Apparently, every time Janša comes to power, we have to decide all over again who the real Slovenians are and who deserves to take part in celebrating our shared country.

Enough of this shit. Enough of the perpetual return to the past, counting partisans and Home Guard members, and deciding who may stand beneath the Slovenian flag and who may not. Slovenia did not become independent so that, 35 years later, we would still be hostages to the same politician and the same political score-settling.

A state ceremony should be a place that brings people together. But if those in power turn it into an event where certain symbols, people and institutions are no longer welcome, then it is no longer a celebration for everyone. It is merely another display of political power.

That is precisely why Nataša Pirc Musar’s decision matters. Because she showed that the office of President of the Republic is not merely a ceremonial decoration expected to keep quiet and nod along. Sometimes absence can say far more than another grand speech.

Once again, hats off, Nataša Pirc Musar. The greatest patriotism is refusing to take part in the division of your own nation.

Objava Hats off, Nataša Pirc Musar! A state ceremony is not a right-wing party rally originalno objavljena na had blog.

The AI Cluetrain Manifesto is a contemporary response to The Cluetrain Manifesto, published online in 1999 by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger. Its 95 theses began with a simple idea: networked markets are human conversations, not audiences, segments or corporate communication channels.

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A quarter of a century later, the internet is changing again. Search is becoming an answer. People are talking to language models. Agents are beginning to communicate with agents. Content can be produced at industrial scale, while authenticity, attention, trust and human experience are becoming more valuable precisely because they are harder to produce.

These 95 new theses are not a replacement for the original manifesto, and the project is not affiliated with its authors. It is an attempt to pose a similarly uncomfortable question at a different technological moment: when machines enter the conversation, how do we make sure people do not disappear from it?

Markets are still conversations. The only question is who is really talking. The internet was meant to connect people. Somehow, we managed to connect bots to bots.

AI Cluetrain Manifesto

1. The internet is becoming a conversation with machines.
2. Machines learned our language before we learned what to ask them.
3. AI does not understand the world. It understands our descriptions of the world.
4. A confident answer is not the same as a true answer.
5. Fluent speech is not intelligence.
6. Scale is not wisdom.
7. Prediction is not understanding.
8. Automation does not remove responsibility.
9. There is always a person somewhere behind the machine.
10. And usually someone else paying for the whole thing.
11. AI will create more words than humanity could ever read.
12. The problem is no longer creating information. The problem is deciding what deserves attention.
13. Attention is becoming more valuable than information.
14. When everything can be created, authenticity becomes scarce.
15. Scarcity creates value. The human voice will become scarce.
16. Perfect language is becoming suspicious language.
17. Typos may soon be proof of life.
18. The web once rewarded publishing. AI rewards being cited.
19. SEO wanted clicks. AI wants answers.
20. AEO, GEO and whatever acronym comes next will not fix bad content.
21. Writing for algorithms eventually makes everything sound the same.
22. When everyone optimises for machines, people lose interest.
23. The best optimisation may once again be having something to say.
24. You cannot create an original thought by stuffing in keywords.
25. AI can imitate a voice. It cannot live a life.
26. Experience remains stubbornly human.
27. A machine can describe heartbreak. It cannot miss anyone.
28. A machine can describe hunger without ever having been hungry.
29. That difference matters.
30. The web is filling up with content nobody wanted to write for people who never wanted to read it.
31. Publishing because you can is not the same as publishing because it is worth it.
32. Cheap content is becoming infinitely cheap.
33. An infinite amount of content creates a finite amount of patience.
34. AI slop is not a technological problem. It is an incentive problem.
35. Platforms demanded engagement. Machines gave it to them at industrial scale.
36. Be careful what you optimise for.
37. Metrics lose meaning when machines can produce them.
38. You can generate followers. You cannot generate trust.
39. You can buy traffic. You cannot buy credibility.
40. Reach is not a relationship.
41. Engagement is not affection.
42. Virality is not significance.
43. Popularity is not truth.
44. A consensus created by machines is still a manufactured consensus.
45. The dead internet theory was more entertaining before companies started making it real.
46. Bots talking to bots are not a community.
47. An AI agent buying from another AI agent is still spending someone’s money.
48. Delegation requires trust. Autonomy requires even more.
49. Convenience always sends someone the bill.
50. If AI decides for you, you should know whose interests shaped that decision.
51. Recommendation systems are opinions dressed up as maths.
52. Algorithms are not neutral just because they contain numbers.
53. Training data contains history, prejudice, genius, stupidity and us.
54. AI inherited the internet. The internet should be worried about that.
55. Garbage in. Confidence out.
56. Being cited is becoming a form of power.
57. Absence from machine knowledge will soon resemble absence from the web.
58. If machines mediate knowledge, whoever shapes the machines also shapes reality.
59. We once feared gatekeepers. Now the gatekeeper answers us.
60. A search engine showed us ten links. AI gives us one sentence.
61. That sentence has enormous power.
62. Sources matter most precisely when users see them least.
63. Transparency is not a footnote.
64. AI said so is not an argument.
65. The algorithm decided is not an argument either.
66. People built these systems. People can question them too.
67. The right to ask why becomes more important as automation grows.
68. The right to say no matters too.
69. Not everything needs AI.
70. If you add AI to a bad product, you get a bad product with AI.
71. A chatbot is not a strategy.
72. A button labelled AI is not innovation.
73. If we call everything AI, the term will eventually mean nothing.
74. Artificial intelligence has created a surprising amount of artificial marketing.
75. Companies that say AI-first should explain the problem first.
76. Technology should solve problems, not justify pitch decks.
77. The future does not need another AI wrapper.
78. Sometimes a database is still just a database.
79. Sometimes one if statement is enough.
80. Sometimes a person is a better API.
81. AI should remove tedious work, not meaningful work.
82. Productivity is not measured by the number of words produced.
83. Speed does not improve a bad decision. It only delivers it sooner.
84. Automating stupidity produces stupidity faster.
85. Efficiency without purpose is merely acceleration.
86. We will use AI to become more human or less human. That choice remains ours.
87. The most valuable skill may be knowing when not to ask the machine.
88. Thinking is slower than generating. Think anyway.
89. Doubt is a feature, not a bug.
90. Curiosity must survive convenience.
91. Creativity begins where autocomplete ends.
92. The internet of the future will contain more machines. It must not contain fewer people.
93. We do not need machines that sound more human. We need people to stop sounding like machines.
94. Markets are still conversations. The only question is who is really talking.
95. The internet is ours only for as long as we act as though it truly is.

This is not anti-AI nostalgia. It is not complaining about the future, and it is not a marketing stunt. It is a human-scale manifesto about language, trust, authorship, attention and responsibility in a web increasingly shaped by machine-generated speech.

Source: https://www.had.si/cluetrain/

Objava AI Cluetrain Manifesto: 95 theses for the internet after AI originalno objavljena na had blog.

When I protested outside the Israeli embassy in Ljubljana a month ago, I had the chance to speak to someone from France who had joined the protest. What fascinated her most was how calm and non-violent our protests are. No cars set alight, no smashed shop windows, no clashes with the police. Smiling, she remarked that, where she comes from, a protest without all that is not a real protest. The French have rebellion against authority written into their history.

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Watching the scenes from France over the past few days brought that conversation back to me. Burning cars, smashed shop windows, looted shops, attacks on public buildings and clashes with the police. Scenes which, thankfully, are rare here. I’m glad that protests in Slovenia do not generally mean destroying cities and putting people’s lives at risk.

But why is France different?

The French have a long history of defying authority. In 1789, Parisians seized the Bastille, a symbol of royal arbitrariness, setting in motion one of the most recognisable events of the French Revolution. They did not simply burn the Bastille down: they captured it and later demolished it. This was followed by the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, the bloody Paris Commune of 1871, and the student protests of May 1968, which grew into mass workers’ strikes. In 2018, the Yellow Vests took to the streets over rising fuel prices, and the protests quickly expanded to encompass social inequality and the cost of living.

Time and again throughout history, French society has seen political change happen only when people occupied the streets in large numbers. That is why protests there are not merely an expression of discontent, but an important part of the country’s political culture. Of course, that does not mean all French protests are violent. Most people protest peacefully there too. But French history has been far more marked by barricades, clashes and violent state responses.

The state plays its part, too. The French police have a long tradition of fairly heavy-handed crowd control. Tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades are part of their response to protests. Such conduct can intensify public anger still further, creating a vicious circle of violence between the police and the most radical protesters.

What is happening today?

The current protests began in September 2026 among secondary school pupils, who drew attention to the shortage of teachers, poor conditions in schools and an uncertain future. The discontent quickly spread to questions of the cost of living, wages, pensions and cuts to public services. Trade unions, students and other citizens joined the protests.

On 17 October, around 550,000 people protested, according to the French Interior Ministry. Most did so peacefully. But smaller groups turned the protests into violent unrest. Limoges town hall was set on fire, while in other cities people smashed up shops, set cars alight and attacked police officers.

Who is actually responsible for the violence?

The fact is that the protests were not organised by violent people. Still less has anyone been proven to have planned all the violence. The protests have very concrete social causes, while violent groups exploited the events for their own ends. Investigations are still under way into who was responsible for individual acts.

We have seen something similar in Slovenia. Remember the violent protests in Ljubljana on 5 November 2020, when masked groups clashed with the police. The organisers of the Friday cycling protests publicly distanced themselves from that demonstration at the time. Yet the violent scenes still became part of the wider political debate about protests. And the right exploited them. How convenient, isn’t it?

That is precisely the danger. When someone joins a protest for better living conditions, higher wages or in opposition to war, a few hundred violent people can completely drown out the message of hundreds of thousands. Instead of talking about the reasons for the protests, we talk about burnt-out cars. Instead of citizens’ problems, we talk about smashed shop windows.

French protests have historical roots, but history cannot be an excuse for violence today. I understand resistance to authority, I understand discontent, and I understand people demanding change. But I do not understand how setting fire to the shop or car of someone with nothing to do with political decisions can contribute to a better society.

That is why, after that conversation outside the Israeli embassy, I am even more convinced that it is right for Slovenia to preserve a different protest culture. Loud, determined and persistent. But without destruction. Because the power of a protest lies not in the number of cars set alight, but in the number of people prepared to take to the streets and demand change.

Objava French protests have always been violent originalno objavljena na had blog.

A story is spreading across social media about a “French left-wing activist” who supposedly spent her whole life defending migrants, only for those same migrants to loot her shop, beat her, spit on her and trample her. The post comes with a photograph of a distraught woman and, of course, a caption tailor-made for sharing. But before you share stories like this, at least check them. I know it is much easier to click “share”, especially when the story perfectly matches your political beliefs. But that is precisely why we ought to be even more careful.

So what actually happened? Mass protests have taken place, and are still taking place, in France, accompanied by violence, smashed shop windows and looting. One video shows a woman trying to stop looters and pleading with them to stop. That part is real. Reuters, Le Monde and other French media outlets have reported on the unrest. Everything else in the viral post is an entirely different story.

• The woman is a member of a French left-wing party and an advocate of migration.
  There is no evidence for this. No party is named, nor is there any verifiable statement or document confirming such involvement.
• She owns a prestigious boutique that was looted.
  The footage shows the looting of a Franprix supermarket, and the woman does not own it.
• She told the attackers that she supported asylum, and they spat on and trampled her.
  The report on the footage describes her intervention and calls for them to stop, not the alleged conversation, spitting or trampling.
• She lost her life’s work because of the migrants she had defended.
  The looting is real, but her ownership, personal loss and the migrants’ status of the perpetrators have not been established.

What did Le Monde establish? Journalist Raphaëlle Bacqué describes the scene outside the looted Franprix supermarket on Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple. She reports on Emma Kunstlich, a 24-year-old acting student who tried to stop the looters and criticised their attacks because they had no political message and could help the far right come to power.

The story had already circulated in almost identical form in English, including on Twitter. Now some people here are simply translating and spreading it as though it were an established fact. Interesting, isn’t it? Someone takes real footage, adds a politically convenient story to it, and suddenly we have proof that left-wingers are themselves to blame for everything that happens to them.

That does not, of course, mean that the violence and looting did not happen. They did. The perpetrators must answer for their actions, regardless of where they come from or what their political beliefs are. But there is no need to embellish real violence with invented details in order to prove that your politics are right.

What fascinates me most about posts like this is how quickly people will accept anything, as long as it confirms their beliefs. No questions. No checking. Not a shred of doubt. Then we wonder why society is becoming ever more divided.

Perhaps, to begin with, it would be enough to engage our brains for a minute before the next click on “share”. Yes, that bit underneath the hair. Because the photograph may be real, the event may have happened, but the story attached to it may be entirely made up. Just because you read something on Facebook does not mean it is true. Not even if the post has a thousand likes and five hundred shares.

Objava Fact check / check the story about the French left-wing activist before sharing it originalno objavljena na had blog.