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

reuters.com

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

#291

Post by seattle_spring »

stinkbeetle wrote: post #258
seattle_spring wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

I don't know what Joe Rogan says or who his ilk are, but this is a pretty extreme characterization of the situation that I don't think is accurate. For example, UK police track what they consider to be undesirable " non-crime " speech, build databases of people, and intimidate them for these non crimes (knock on their doors, invite them to come to police station, advise them not to say such things, etc). This is quit…

> There have also been other high profile cases of people being arrested for posting things that were not like that burn the hotel down case

Such as?

> Is nobody allowed to be concerned about any of this without being some horrible underground extremist, in your opinion?

Horrible underground extremist? Not so much. More likely just someone who consumes a very particular slice of media that puts a dishonest (at best) spin on situations like this.

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

#293

Post by whattheheckheck »

ceteia wrote: post #276
NuclearPM wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Access to information is dangerous when the information is controlled propaganda.

Would educating people instead and giving them more options for information, not be better than banning access to information?

For real... the species is not going to last long if a subset of it gets to control the information flow of the other part... literally unsustainable

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

#295

Post by bzhxb45 »

schoen wrote: post #38

I just chaired a session at the FOCI conference earlier today, where people were talking about Internet censorship circumvention technologies and how to prevent governments from blocking them. I'd like to remind everyone that the U.S. government has been one the largest funders of that research for decades. Some of it is under USAGM (formerly BBG, the parent of RFE/RL) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agen…

[flagged]

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

#296

Post by shakna »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #232

I'm guessing China will simply block it at the firewall. It would be hilarious to witness the US Gov validating The Pirate Bay's hydra domain approach. Maybe some squatting isn't a bad idea: freedom.live freedom.xyz freedom.space etc.

I wonder of China can pay Trump with a golden limosuine to get backdoor access to it.

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

#297

Post by ffsm8 »

ceteia wrote: post #276
NuclearPM wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Access to information is dangerous when the information is controlled propaganda.

Would educating people instead and giving them more options for information, not be better than banning access to information?

Intuitively yes, but it's possible that this is one of our biases speaking

From my memory (might be mistaken) there have been attempts to somewhat study this via polls etc, and determined that coverage via propaganda (specifically Fox News) is less helpful then randomly guessing what actually happened...

But ymmv, social studies are always hard to trust, because it's borderline impossible to prove cause and effect

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

#298

Post by Mikhail_Edoshin »

Waterluvian wrote: post #41
schoen wrote: post #38

I just chaired a session at the FOCI conference earlier today, where people were talking about Internet censorship circumvention technologies and how to prevent governments from blocking them. I'd like to remind everyone that the U.S. government has been one the largest funders of that research for decades. Some of it is under USAGM (formerly BBG, the parent of RFE/RL) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agen…

It’s a clear way to project soft power: make sure your message and culture can get through.

And lies.

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

#299

Post by handoflixue »

amarant wrote: post #268
pembrook wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spain 1) Catalan Referendum Website Seizures (2017) Spanish courts ordered ISPs to block dozens of pro-independence domains and mirror sites during the referendum. Civil Guard units physically entered data centers to seize servers tied to the Catalan government’s digital voting infrastructure. 2) GitHub Repository Takedown (2017) Spain obtained a court order forcing GitHub to remove a repository that mirrored referen…

Can you filter the ones that aren't obviously harmless like laws banning Nazi salutes or agitating violence against people based on race?

See, the problem is, "obviously harmless" varies by person: if you think it is obviously harmless to ban an entire political party, which ostensibly won a legitimate election, and certainly had a lot of popular support... well then, of course we should also ban whichever current political party you consider most evil, right? And then the next most evil political party, and so on, until people have the freedom that comes from knowing only Good, Proper, State-Sanctioned Political Parties exist!

And of course, once it's illegal to agitate against violence, we just have to redefine violence: for instance, posting about Nazis puts them in danger, and they're all white, so clearly you're a racist for opposing Nazis.

These aren't hypothetical examples: the people defending Free Speech have watched these slippery slopes get pulled out again and again. Misgendering a trans person is a "hate crime", reporting on the location of gestapo agents is "inciting violence", protesting against the state is "terrorism"

And fundamentally, this is a lever that gets wielded by whoever is in power: even if you agree with the Left censoring Nazi salutes, are you equally comfortable with the Right censoring child mutilation sites (also known as "Trans resources")?

SURELY "child mutilation" is "obviously harmless" to ban, right?

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

#300

Post by pornel »

kulahan wrote: post #212
copperx wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which soft power are you talking about?

Sure, it's decreasing under Trump, but to pretend the richest, most militarily powerful, most culturally influential nation on the planet somehow doesn't have any soft power is... certainly a choice.

Republicans are spending all of US's remaining soft power on stealing Greenland.

If it ends with the Navy showing its non-soft power, Europe won't have any fucks left to give about some website.

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