The reason
You were born into a system you never chose
It gave you a number before you could walk. It reads what you say, watches what you spend, and asks you daily to tick a box proving you are not a robot. Governments call this safety. We remember that we are human beings, not entries in a register, and when the people in charge choose surveillance over trust and control over care, one word remains that is entirely ours. Not me.
#notme is a hashtag, a network and a staircase. As a hashtag it lets anyone say in public that the machinery of control does not act in their name. As a network it connects the people who say it, across every border and every conviction. And as a staircase it climbs, step by chosen step, toward the better arrangement described in our manifesto, a life among chosen communities where every person can come into full bloom.
Level 1 · Speak
Say it to something real
What the hashtag means. #notme belongs to everyone, everywhere, and it needs no membership and no permission. Post it whenever a government treats people as numbers instead of human beings, whenever surveillance gets sold as safety, whenever control gets dressed up as care. It says one thing, calmly and clearly. This is not done in my name. Attach it to your own story, to the news that angers you, or to one of the cards below.
Every card below is a real decision, happening now, with a date on it. Read why it matters, then say it where you already are, in our words or your own. Every visible refusal makes the next one easier.
I was born a human being, not an entry in a register. #notme
July 2026 · Message scanning survives a majority
A majority of the European Parliament voted against scanning our private messages. The scanning stays anyway. My messages are letters, not evidence. #notme
Why this matters
Private conversation is where people think out loud, doubt, vent and change their minds. A scanner in every pocket changes what people dare to type long before anyone gets arrested, because whoever knows they are watched starts editing themselves. That is the real product of message scanning. Not caught criminals, but quieter citizens. And once the pipeline exists, widening it from one category of content to the next is a policy update rather than a debate. In July 2026 the European Parliament voted on ending it, 314 against 276, and the scanning stayed because rejection required 360 votes.
End of 2026 · Every EU state must issue a digital identity wallet
One app to be my passport, my permit and my permission slip, checked at every door of daily life. I am a person, not a credential. #notme
Why this matters
One app that is your passport, your diploma, your prescriptions and your login sounds convenient, and it is. It is also a single switch. Whoever controls the wallet controls whether you can rent, bank, travel and log in, and a switch that exists will one day be used on someone. From 2027 banks, telecoms and the biggest platforms must accept it, which quietly turns an option into the default, and the default into the requirement. A person should be able to walk through an ordinary day without showing a credential at every door.
July 2027 · Cash above €10,000 banned EU-wide, ID checks from €3,000
Cash asks no permission and keeps no diary. That is exactly why they are phasing it out. My money is not their logbook. #notme
Why this matters
Every payment you make is a sentence in your biography. Where you sleep, what you believe, what medicine you take, which causes you support. Data at that scale does not need to read your mind, because your payments are your mind, written down. Today the promise is that nobody looks, but infrastructure outlives promises. In 2022 Canada froze the bank accounts of protesters and their donors without a court order, and a judge later ruled it unlawful. The accounts were frozen all the same, at the moment it mattered. Now build that power into the money itself, with the digital euro scheduled right behind the cash limits. Cash never needed your permission slip, and that is exactly why it is being retired.
January 2026 · Germany registers every 18-year-old man, lottery on standby
They are rehearsing conscription by lottery, and young men now report their travels to the army. My body is not state property. #notme
Why this matters
Conscription is the state’s oldest claim, the claim on your body. A questionnaire today, a medical examination from 2027, a lottery whenever the volunteer numbers disappoint, and since April 2026 young German men must even report long trips abroad to the army. Defending the innocent can be a duty freely taken, and many will take it freely. The lottery is something else. It is the register deciding who stands in the fire, and the register never asks.
April 2026 · 925 movement obstacles restrict 3.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank, behind a wall ruled unlawful by the International Court of Justice in 2004
A child born behind a wall, with a permit for every road and a checkpoint for every day, is still a child. Humanity has no exceptions. #notme
Why this matters
This movement picks no side in any war, and it needs none here, because the permission machinery speaks for itself. Millions of people need permits to travel, to work and to build, permits that are hard to obtain and easy to revoke. The UN counted 925 checkpoints, gates and roadblocks across the West Bank in late 2025, 43 percent above the average of the past twenty years. The International Court of Justice ruled the wall unlawful in 2004 and the occupation itself unlawful in 2024, and the wall stands. Even now, with the guns quieter since the ceasefire of October 2025, most people in Gaza still face acute hunger while the walls and the permits remain. Wars pause. The machinery does not. Whatever you believe about the conflict, the children behind the wall never chose it, and neither did any child or hostage on any side. Humanity that allows exceptions is not humanity.
July 2025 · Britain demands face scans or ID for the ordinary internet
First they demand your face to read the internet. Then one help desk leaks seventy thousand IDs. Proving I am human is not the price of being online. #notme
Why this matters
Every ID you upload has to live somewhere, and the storage keeps failing. A dating safety app spilled thirteen thousand verification selfies onto an anonymous forum, and months later a chat platform lost seventy thousand identity documents to blackmailers through a single support desk. The pattern is structural. A law forces millions to hand over their most sensitive papers, a contractor stores them, a breach follows, and the papers trade on the dark web forever. The state demands the proof, the platform keeps the proof, and the criminal ends up holding it.
January 2026 · 2.8 million signatures, and a government retreats
2.8 million Britons said no to a mandatory digital ID, and their government blinked. Saying no works. #notme
Why this matters
Nothing about the machinery of control is inevitable, and Britain just proved it. In September 2025 the government announced a digital ID that would be mandatory for work. A petition reached 2.8 million signatures, members of every party pushed back, and by January 2026 the plan was watered down toward voluntary. No court, no violence. Millions of ordinary people said no in public, and a government changed course. That is the entire method of this movement, made visible once at national scale. Every #notme is a signature on the next retreat.
Sources for the facts above: the July 2026 chat control vote, the EU digital identity wallet timeline, the EU cash limits under Regulation 2024/1624, the frozen accounts in Canada, 2022, the German military service act, UK age verification with the Discord ID breach, the BritCard retreat, the rulings of the International Court of Justice, and the UN OCHA movement and access report of April 2026.