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Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

foundation.mozilla.org

181–190 of 276 posts

Re: Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. Much as I despise Meta, I have to admit I have been pleasantly surprised by their hardline stance in defending WhatsApp's e2e encryption.

Me too but after talking to my MP about it I do wonder how much of it is because they (Meta) fundamentally support privacy and everything that comes with that or if it's just a convenient way to deny having any responsibility towards safety on their platforms. It's possible to be right, but for the wrong reasons. I'd like to think it's for the right reasons, but I'm not sure. If users really cared about privacy they'…

> I do wonder how much of it is because they (Meta) fundamentally support privacy

Meta and the like absolutely do not fundamentally support privacy. Their entire business model depends on users not having privacy.

But Meta and the like does support privacy protections from entities that aren't them.

Re: Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

#182

Someone please explain: if I fork Firefox or Chrome and delete the censorship code, then I publish it online (eg. in github with a download link), then next time I go to France I will get into trouble?

This is why computers should only be able to run government-approved software acquired from government-approved repositories. :)

This is far too possible to be funny.

Re: Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

#183

How should it work, every browser has to download a list with forbidden sites from the french government first? Like a public open "bad sites" list?

The technology already exists based around hashes rather than a list of actual sites. As with encryption bans, to stop this requires a political effort, not technological sneering and naysaying.

A list of hashes instead of hosts would be even worse, as it the blocking would be the same, just with reduced transparency. Every time they would add new hashes, people would need to investigate which websites they correspond to.

Quite evil.

Re: Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... or to the benefit their friends owning private companies. Yup this one in France is really a big problem. The public sector spendings officially represents something like 58.1% of the french GDP (official "Insee" numbers from 2023, for 2022)... France is not far from a planned economy and, unsurprisingly, it's a particularly harsh environment for real small private SMEs (i.e. those without friends at the state)…

France is really far from a planned economy. Marseille's worst neighborhoods are really chill compared to the bad parts of any American city. The streets are pretty safe. Your comment is kinda ridiculous, stop watching TV. Yeah there are lot of taxes, but those taxes come in handy when you can get 2 years of unemployment benefits when starting a company. Or when you know, get a cancer that would cost a few millions t…

In Marseille, 68 shootings and 30 deaths in six months. There are worse cities in America, but not many.

https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2023/08/17/a-marseill...

Re: Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s absurd that an article exists to allow French govt agents to display messages in my browser. How is that even enforced?

Rules exist to require messages be shown on phones - for example the emergency alert system for hurricanes. Doesn't seem unreasonable that computer OS's and/or web browsers be required to support the same.

[deleted]

Re: Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

#186
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2023/06/26/france-browser...

> government being able to mandate that a certain website not open at all on a browser/system is uncharted territory and even the most repressive regimes in the world prefer to block websites further up the network (ISPs, etc.) so far. Repressive government's don't do their blocking at the browser level because it is completely ineffective. Anyone who wants to access the forbidden websites will be able to do so anywa…

I can confirm.

The French government censors websites by forcing ISPs to delist stuff from their DNS servers. It's trivial to bypass simply by setting alternative DNS providers like Cloudflare.

Re: Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

#187
post #13

The French government's approach to modern tech is similar to the UK and Germany in some ways. They seem to be advised by a bunch of decrepit dudes who stopped learning about computers before the OSI model was created.

> They seem to be advised by a bunch of decrepit dudes who stopped learning about computers before the OSI model was created.

Isn't that the same law that understands and bans cloud providers egress fees? Seems they have a good understanding of current state of technology, citing credible sources like Cloudflare.

https://www-senat-fr.translate.goog/rap/l22-777/l22-77720.ht...

Re: Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "misinformation" that is blocked might be just of a type that is politically convenient to be blocked for those people.

all the way until it isnt. I strongly think that many people are cheering for the pendulum to be pulled sooo far to one direction, that they will have a total chock when it inevitably goes the other direction again

I wish, but every totalitarian government in history has had plenty of citizens supporting it, many supporting it simply wanted their fellow citizens to feel the same pain they are forced to feel. "If I had to live this way, so do you". Human instinct.

In our society, a divide is forming between the "knowledge" and the "labor". Why should a laborer need unfiltered knowledge? And why does you and your family deserve to be in the "knowledge" group anyways?

Re: Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

#189
lol Korea achieved government censorship by blocking certain websites by sni headers without any announcement. I wish we had those dumb politicians like France does. It is actually a good thing that old dudes who are clueless about tech are high up.

This kind of meager understanding of tech in especially in Europe make me wonder how the life of those old politicians would be like. They are still living in pre tech-boom era, where rich people paid someone else to do the chores for them. They don't even need to know the latest tech advancements because they have so much "old-money" to live like in 90s, which means they were born rich european and will remain rich european for rest of their lives.

Re: Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

#190
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ofcourse for the rest of Europe this is a good thing For the kings sure… for the people much less. Imagine england being defeated and india being free of colonialism.

Almost no part of the world was free from European colonialism. France was one of the largest colonial powers. If England lost to France maybe India would be speaking French instead of English now.

And we can all agree that french revolution values are much better than whatever crap the rest of europe was pushing?
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