191–200 of 292 posts
Eliminating anonymity should be done through measures that amount to enforcing traceability at fundamental technical levels - that will affect everything from spam to fraud. But simplistic things like this just require people to identify themselves, which is just a form of social control.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Putting 2 innocent people through systems designed to assume they are guilty is worse than 1 guilty person being able to be anonymous. Look at what the TSA has done. They’ve wasted so much time and created a massive invasion of physical privacy (i.e. someone touching your private parts in public) and not only did they never catch anything, they fail 90% of penetration tests. There is some positive intent here but in…
> Putting 2 innocent people through systems designed to assume they are guilty is worse ... This is not about being guilty, it's about being accountable for your actions, just like you are everywhere else. In Austria and Germany, people riding bicycles are considered the rudest on the streets. Everybody is anonymous to other participants until an accident happens, but only bicycles have no number plates, so they usua…
That is to say, consideration and respect goes both ways.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Describing the current government in Austria as center-right is a bit ridiculous (to say nothing of putting words like centrist or left anywhere near descriptions of that government). Austrian politics have been moving further and further to the right and the FPÖ (junior coalition partner) is a xenophobic far-right party with authoritarian streaks. I’m really not comfortable in describing a government where such a pa…
I think the wrong words were chosen by the parent. For many decades politics in Europe were dominated by traditional globalist governments, which I would describe as "centrist". For many people those governments are failing and voters are moving to the left and the right, depending on the country of course. Centrist governments are trying to use "hate speech" laws as a way of curbing their loss of control of the medi…
I think it's pretty universal across Europe that people are moving more to the extremes. But that doesn't make the original parties suddenly "centrist" -- they're just status-quo, "old school".
Centrist governments are trying to use "hate speech" laws as a way of curbing their loss of control of the media
I'm sorry, but this just sounds like populist propaganda. There hasn't been government control of the media like you suggest; instead, the media used to be civil. The current "popular" channels do away with civility, and any voice critical of that tone is immediately discarded by playing the victim, like you are doing here.
The establishment, still representing the civil masses, is perfectly within scope to try and curb uncivility. Whether their methods are effective is up for debate, but the goal isn't -- we all know what happened last time Europe went uncivil (80 million premature deaths).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You need almost no data to register an account.
You need passport or local id for prepaid purchase, at least in the EU countries to which I've been.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Roaming costs are basically non-existant these days in the EU. For me it is cheaper to use internet through roaming than buying local plan.
> Roaming costs are basically non-existant these days in the EU. Data plans can be limited for other countries, even within the EU (and frequently are), i.e. if your prepaid contract allows 5GB monthly data transfer for free, the provider might limit this to 500MB for roaming and beyond that limit, you can pay a hefty fee per MB. In general, prepaid cards aren't famous for having a generous data plan...
To preserve the anonymity of the source of my own ideas, I might write every tweet/post like so: “A friend of mine says, ‘Woke politics are getting absurd.’” I wonder if this would be violation of the law...
Identification is on demand, not mandatory.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The OeVP current platform is to curb rights of immigrants, to reduce social support systems, lowers corporate tax rates, introduces laws to restrict social housing to non immigrants, reduces child support payments for children in other EU countries, continues the policy on border controls in Schengen, restricts skilled immigration, sets a maximum limit of 1.5 euro per hour income for asylum seekers when doing social…
Almost all your points are about immigration. Yes, they have certainly moved to the right on immigration. Even the centre-left social democrates have moved right in this regard. But that still doesn't make the conservatives a right-wing party. Compared to the past they have also moved left on other topics: e.g. by not touching pensions. "restricts skilled immigration": Funny, since they have also been criticized for…
Who criticised them for that? The only thing they did was introduce low skilled immigration (eg: fruit pickers, cooks and other people in the tourism industry).
> "reduce social support systems": Well, they mostly retargeted social support. All polls showed that a large majority of the people supported these changes. People thought the old system enforced the wrong incentives.
"retarget" just means to reduce support for foreigners and low income families with many children (which correlates to families of Turkish background). Yes, many people think the system enforces the wrong incentives but none of the proposals to improve the incentives where even considered. For instance Nostandshilfe is not being touched because it's predominantly Austrians that are hanging in it.
> Also let's not forget that they reduced taxes on salaries specifically for working-class families substantially.
Even after the tax cuts Austrians pay more in taxes and social contributions today than they did before. The reason for this is that DG/DZ and social contributions increase automatically every year.
None of your examples demostrate how this party would be in the center. They are significantly more to the right than the population is.
> Are some people so upset that for once the chancellor is not a social-democrat?
No, many people are upset because they worry about the future of the country. I for instance worry a lot because the policies set in place in the last few months are dangerous. We already have a very unstable system in the past with very little transparency into what the government is doing (eg: no freedom of information) but how they are from a central position controlling some of the entities that were at least somewhat impartial (like the central bank, the statistic agency etc.).
I don't care who controls the country, I want that the government is transparent and does not get too much power. They are putting more and more powers in place, they are enacting unconstitutional laws and are overwhealming the courts which are busy shutting these things down but it takes time. They are also completely eroding the public discourse with their framing.
Any hope that Austria would have a path towards social liberties and a more business friendly environment were completely scattered since the last election. It's a coalition that blames everything on foreigners and puts laws in place for large donors of the parties.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This will just put foreign platforms, who will ignore the law, into an advantageous position compared to local platforms. Users might switch to foreign platforms that don't require identification. Doesn't really matter, as those things move the Overton window. Tomorrow, when the US, China, and EU adopt similar laws, there wont be any "foreign services" to use.
Yeah, the US will never adopt a law like that. Anonymity is extremely protected by the Supreme Court, because the founders wrote and distributed pamphlets anonymously in support of the Revolution.
So, it wouldn't surprise me, if the current administration would at least attempt such ideas.