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US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

reuters.com

171–180 of 1001 posts

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#171

What content bans does Europe have? /Confused European

There's a hate speech / violence law in the UK that is getting some people arrested for saying things like "round up all people of race X, put them into a hotel, and burn the hotel down." People like Joe Rogan and his ilk are re-packaging those examples as "people being arrested for just sharing their opinion."

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#172
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What limits? You can do pretty much what you want but make sure you can defend yourself in the court. I feel there is a bit of a disconnect in terms where people get the news where in US you kind of expect biggest news providers to be biassed, eg Fox, hence reliance on social media. In Europe gov media is quite strong and objective, and the idea that it restricts something is odd. A great example is the banning of RT…

Thousands of people in the UK have been arrested for social media posts, some for speech recognized as protected by international organizations. Germany is currently actively campaigning to force everyone to use their real names on all social media and force ID checks to do so, a clear chilling effect for free speech. Macron has been railing against free speech specifically in recent months, calling it "bullshit". Eu…

> some for speech recognized as protected by international organizations.

Can you share some concrete examples from reputable sources that show these? Every examples I've seen have been clear-cut calls for violence, or unambiguous harassment.

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Never tapped a port, eh? I have. I have a background in high speed networking. Have you ever paused for a moment to consider how much infrastructure would be required to send 80% of data on the internet across the country and into a single datacenter in Virginia? If you've worked in HFT, you can probably at least start to imagine the scale we're talking about.

It’s not a single data center, it’s about 200 of them.

Just minutes ago you said this:

> Almost 80% of communications go through a data center in Northern VA

Where are you getting this new 200 numbers? Share a source please.

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#174
post #64

Sad that western Europe is pushing so hard for limits to free speech & privacy. I'm not surprised given their history, but it's sad nonetheless.

What limits? You can do pretty much what you want but make sure you can defend yourself in the court. I feel there is a bit of a disconnect in terms where people get the news where in US you kind of expect biggest news providers to be biassed, eg Fox, hence reliance on social media. In Europe gov media is quite strong and objective, and the idea that it restricts something is odd. A great example is the banning of RT…

Concrete examples - in Germany you are not allowed to insult politicians or the government in social media. In Italy, people have faced criminal charges for simply criticizing the prime minister.

When the government does not allow its population to freely speak against it, it's just waiting to be abused by one bad leader.

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#175
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might do that too , but access to information is just so utterly critical, and exponentially moreso in circumstances where government brutally cracks down on it, as we saw in Egypt during the Arab Spring and we're seeing in Iran presently.

Then again, Egypt was definitely driven by Western agitators, as was the case Iran recently. Iran probably got Russian tech to trace starlink users during the blackout which put a target on many Western assets in Iran. I'm not saying the Iran government didn't also kill and torture independent actors nor that I support state violence (against its citizens, in this case). Just saying that any government will use viole…

The claim that Iranian protesters were western agitators is a pernicious lie.

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes deeper than that. The U.S. Government funds it, discourages other nations from using it, and spies on all web traffic as a result of it. Almost 80% of communications go through a data center in Northern VA. Within a quick drive to Langley, Quantico, DC, and other places that house three letter agencies I’m not authorized to disclose.

> Almost 80% of communications go through a data center in Northern VA Nobody who understands the scale of the internet could possibly believe this is true. Routing internet traffic through a geographical location would increase ping times by a noticeable amount. Even sending traffic from around the world to a datacenter in VA would require an amount of infrastructure multiple times larger than the internet itself to…

Just because your client is in Switzerland and your data center is in Germany, doesn’t mean a data center in Virginia doesn’t have a copy.

https://youtu.be/JR6YyYdF8ho

That was 14 years ago…

We have MUCH more capabilities today.

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes deeper than that. The U.S. Government funds it, discourages other nations from using it, and spies on all web traffic as a result of it. Almost 80% of communications go through a data center in Northern VA. Within a quick drive to Langley, Quantico, DC, and other places that house three letter agencies I’m not authorized to disclose.

> Almost 80% of communications go through a data center in Northern VA Nobody who understands the scale of the internet could possibly believe this is true. Routing internet traffic through a geographical location would increase ping times by a noticeable amount. Even sending traffic from around the world to a datacenter in VA would require an amount of infrastructure multiple times larger than the internet itself to…

He was likely referring to the claim that 70% of the internet flows through Loudon County, Virginia, where AWS us-east-1 is located, although the more accurate number is probably somewhere around 22%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudoun_County,_Virginia#Econo...

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fundamentally you lack understanding of how this happens. Yes, there is some port duplication. Yes it costs money. But it is not anywhere near as onerous as you assume No, I understand networking hardware quite well actually. I'm also familiar with Room 641A. Room 641A did not capture 80% of internet traffic. If you think 80% of internet traffic could be routed through Room 641A you're not thinking about the infras…

While the most well known, there are other points of presence doing the same thing. Easy and trivial to duplicate traffic at line speed. It doesn't affect the traffic flow itself.

They will never believe you until you show them and that requires a clearance.

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#180

Then won’t foreign governments just ban freedom.gov? This problem has already been solved with networks like Tor and I2P. It seems like it would be more strategic to fund those projects instead.

It's a propaganda maneuver. And it's obviously just as critical of China as it is of Europe. The State Department's public voices may be immersed in the culture war but there are probably a few cooler heads left who have learned to keep out of the spotlight.
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