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Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

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Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#241

Post by mantas »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #235
mantas wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why pay attention to this if you can simply blame another state actor? And German federal government have a history for covert shitposting.

And German federal government have a history for covert shitposting. Wow, I never heard this before. Can you provide some examples famous examples?

I remember there was a series of articles several years ago that German intelligence officers generated a lot activity in far-right websites. To the point that frequently it was mostly undercover „extremists“ discussing between themselves.

The closest article I can quickly find is about Germany intelligence informants doing the same in meatspace though.

> There was a "risk that sources of the intelligence service (Office for the Protection of the Constitution) could goad each other on to undertake bigger actions;" in other words, the system threatened to create an "incendiary effect."

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-police-d...

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#242

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

I'm not sure who titled this post, but the word "drastic" isn't found in the target web page. And as a native English speaker, "drastic" feels wrong for this usage. I would say it's an inadvertent swap of meaning with the term "dramatic" which would make more sense.

"Drastic" has a negative connotation of intent behind it. For example, "drastic increase in police enforcement of laws in Germany" would make sense. In the case of the headline, it just rubs me the wrong way.

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#243

Post by usr1106 »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #242

I'm not sure who titled this post, but the word "drastic" isn't found in the target web page. And as a native English speaker, "drastic" feels wrong for this usage. I would say it's an inadvertent swap of meaning with the term "dramatic" which would make more sense. "Drastic" has a negative connotation of intent behind it. For example, "drastic increase in police enforcement of laws in Germany" would make sense. In t…

Probably submitted by a Genglish speaker? The German word is drastisch. Dramatisch also exists, but as a native speaker I would say drastisch is the better choice here. Dramatisch would suggest that there a serious consequences like e.g. bringing Tor to its knees.

What English word would fit best I leave native speakers to comment.

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#244

Post by nebalee »

systemvoltage wrote: post #227
nebalee wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Germany is blocking news from French riots. What are you on about? The riots in France are on pretty much every news site in Germany.

More here: https://www.reddit.com/r/2westerneurope4u/comments/14nx7v5/t...

There is one single post about German media in that thread and it states the same that I did.

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#245

Post by lkadv »

gmerc wrote: post #106
nbryc wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hoyerswerda was in 1991, please look at the election results: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_German_federal_election No radical party was of any significance. If they were all Nazis, why didn't the NPD have 20%? You are the one who rewrites history.

Because at the time that SED follow up was still binding the Nazi vote.

And it bound the "Nazi vote" from 1990 until 2015? And they still don't vote NPD in 2023?

They vote AfD because the traditional parties have failed them and keep doubling down. The AfD would probably also fail them if in power, but that is the nature of protest votes.

Same story in France where Le Pen is currently leading the polls.

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#247

Post by flangola7 »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #240
flangola7 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more defensible! Propaganda is far, far, less effective as a blind radio broadcast or air pamphlets than micro-targeted interactive sessions intricately engineered to maximize neurological reinforcement loops. Absolutely insidious.

No, it's far less defensible, because people have the internet to look up and verify things as needed. This kind of censorship is just nannying, which I'm generally against. Then again, given how inept people are at thinking for themselves, maybe a nanny state is what's best.

> No, it's far less defensible, because people have the internet to look up and verify things as needed.

Actual it is far more defensible, as I already clarified earlier. Propaganda remains effective regardless if there is the ability to verify it or not - and that is assuming everything can and will be checked by every person, which isn't realistic.

> This kind of censorship is just nannying, which I'm generally against.

It's not nannying at all. It's basic national self defense. Pen is mightier than the sword and all that. Brainworms are an insidious contagion.

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#248

Post by redprince »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #233
tw04 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off the top of my head - Germany hosts a disproportionate amount of sensitive data because it's the location of choice for cloud providers storing things for EU member countries. They have lots of fiber, lots of ISPs, plenty of datacenter space, a stable government, and data security laws that meet or exceed everyone else in the EU.

Germany hosts a disproportionate amount of sensitive data because it's the location of choice for cloud providers storing things for EU member countries. Hat tip to this. My German teammate and I have discussed exactly this point. The Microsoft Azure cloud has a German specific cloud that targets exactly this market. Some marketing genius made billions for Microsoft with that idea. One weird thing to me: You are righ…

> Why does non-urban, non-commercial (retail) Internet access suck so hard in Germany?

To cut a very long story short, what should have happened a long time ago in Germany is to treat internet access at a reasonable speed (however that is determined) like access to electricity or the plain old telephone system: It's the law you get connected like everyone else at the price everyone else pays, even when you are in a very rural setting. Leaving that decision to commercial interests, has lead to very slow or unavailable rural internet infrastructure because either the price would be ridiculously high to become connected or the companies would lose money.

It's political failure, plain and simple.

Looking back in time, the original sin was committed in Germany in the early 80s when the SPD run government understood that fiber optic networks were the future for the telephone system and television distribution. They had a 30 year plan to convert West-Germany's telecom infrastructure to fiber. That was way before the internet, but would that plan have been enacted, Germany would have sat on a high speed fiber infrastructure in the 90s when the Internet exploded onto the scene.

Unfortunately the conservative CDU government under Kohl immediately scrapped that plan when they came into power and went for cable as the distribution medium for TV and the telephone system continued to operate on copper at least on the last mile. So here we are in the 2020s with crappy cable modems and crappy DSL connections. (Where available.)

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#249

Post by PrimeMcFly »

flangola7 wrote: post #247
PrimeMcFly wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's far less defensible, because people have the internet to look up and verify things as needed. This kind of censorship is just nannying, which I'm generally against. Then again, given how inept people are at thinking for themselves, maybe a nanny state is what's best.

> No, it's far less defensible, because people have the internet to look up and verify things as needed. Actual it is far more defensible, as I already clarified earlier. Propaganda remains effective regardless if there is the ability to verify it or not - and that is assuming everything can and will be checked by every person, which isn't realistic. > This kind of censorship is just nannying, which I'm generally aga…

> Actual it is far more defensible, as I already clarified earlier.

You didn't clarify, you just gave your opinion. One I disagree with.

> Propaganda remains effective regardless if there is the ability to verify it or not

So you claim. Even so, the correct approach is for the government to fight propaganda with corrective disclosures. Censorship is not the answer.

> It's not nannying at all. It's basic national self defense.

It is certainly the former, even if it is the latter also, something I'm skeptical of. The two are not mutually exclusive.

> Brainworms are an insidious contagion.

You fight them with truth, not censorship.

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#250

Post by t0bia_s »

chronicsonic wrote: post #140
wood_spirit wrote: post #83

Clicking around and looking at the chart for random other countries shows a spike for Sweden too, whereas Finland has a different but interesting pattern all of its own.

Wonder if the fact that they’re related to NATO, who is at war, have anything to do with it.

Don't know how Finland's government deal with Ukraine/Russian agenda, but here in Czechia, government acts like totalitarian authority. Blames Putin for every economical problems (there is official guide how to propagate problems with food shortage [1]), they block on DNS level (cz.nic) some websites that, according to government, spread Russian propaganda [2] and also announced that supporting Russian invasion is crime by law and Russia is terrorist state.

No wonder, that Tor users in Czechia rised over 60% since 2020, when government use totalitarian practices like state that they trying to fight against.

Also overall trust in government is historical low here. 74% citizens disapprove what government does here. [3] Which does not mean that we approve invasion on Ukraine at all. We host far more Ukrainian refugees as we should - over 500 000 which is 5% of Czechia population [4].

[1] https://www.mvcr.cz/soubor/krit-memo-putin-hlad-komunikacni-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_survei...

[3] https://pro.morningconsult.com/trackers/global-leader-approv...

[4] https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine

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