#tech platforms

Nigel Farage and Reform UK have made illegal migration the centrepiece of their campaigning, weaponising it as a major political strategy. Their messaging around illegal migration is deliberately constructed to evoke threat, urgency, and moral panic. The party’s proposals—mass deportations, detention centres on military bases, withdrawal from human rights treaties—are framed as necessary to prevent Britain from being “overwhelmed”.

Lets assume Farage’s policies work.  What will he have achieved?

He will have stopped between 100,000 and 120,000 illegal migrants a year (including small boats, overstayers, and other irregulars) from living in Britain.

What will Nigel Farage not achieve by concentrating all of his efforts on illegal migrants?

He will not stop Britain from being one of the lowest wage economies in the developed world.

He  will not stop the growth of child poverty

He will not stop the cost of living crisis

He will not stop growing homelessness.

He will not stop the crisis in the NHS

He will not stop private water companies from continuing to pollute our waterways

He will not stop massive regional inequality.

He will not stop the effects of climate change – floods, fires, and drought.

He will not stop the greedy financial and banking sector continuing to rip people off due to weak oversight and regulation.

He will not alleviate food insecurity and the growth of food banks

 He will not make the social care sector either affordable or fit for    purpose.

 He will not reform the weak regulation of tech platforms or protect our children from online harm.

Facebook is full of lies about abortion.

We looked at top-engaged U.S. abortion-related coverage on Facebook in the month of April and found that 63% of links with the most Facebook interactions came from right-leaning websites, and 72% of the Facebook page posts with the most interactions came from right-leaning pages.

Dance to Someone's Tune

The groups that currently shape the moral norms most people end up obeying are the ones that control attention, incentives, and coordination. These aren’t good or bad; they’re simply the functional centers of norm-generation. But they dictate what you should do, what you should be happy about, how you should live, how you should look. They decide whether you are happy or not.

Big Tech platforms They set behavioural norms by designing the attention economy. What people consider acceptable speech, identity, interaction, outrage, and virtue is filtered through their algorithmic choices.

Global entertainment industry (Hollywood and streaming giants) They industrialize narratives, exporting models of “the good person,” “the bad person,” “the desirable life,” and the emotional tone modern humans internalize.

Financial institutions and megacorporations They dictate norms around productivity, self-worth, success, and the structure of life, time discipline, ambition, “hustle ethos,” and acceptable forms of striving.

State bureaucracies and legal systems Not politicians but the administrative frameworks that define rights, obligations, acceptable speech, public behaviour, and collective procedure.

Medical and psychological institutions They standardize what counts as healthy, unhealthy, normal, disordered, responsible, or risky. They define the boundaries of acceptable self-understanding.

Influencer ecosystems (online micro-elites) They create micro-moralities, aesthetic norms, lifestyle ethics, purity codes, identity performances. These spread faster than any traditional institution.