Iran's government moves to criminalize VPNs (2021) • Hacker News Board

Re: Iran's government moves to criminalize VPNs (2021)

#41

Post by jay_kyburz » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 6:57 AM UTC

bigDinosaur wrote: post #24

jay_kyburz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

The greatest damage ever done by speech (i.e. motivation to start wars, genocides) has been done by fully identifiable people. Anonymous online speech is a total red herring. All current major threats are due to fully non-anonymous people doing bad things (e.g. Putin, heads of cartels, the current head of $terrorist_group), not anonymous online commenters. Conversely, one of the greatest threat to authoritarians is s…

You could tell the "investigators" directly and anonymously. That way if your comment about police corruption was not true, nobody would be fired for no reason. That is precisely the point.

No point discussing the speech of criminals like Putin, lies are just the tip of the iceberg.

Re: Iran's government moves to criminalize VPNs (2021)

#42

Post by jay_kyburz » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 7:11 AM UTC

djbebs wrote: post #40

jay_kyburz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say for example, false accusations were made against somebody and they were fired. Any place a lie is told, and somebody losses money or is otherwise harmed by that lie. I'm not talking about peoples feelings being hurt.

Was the harm "being fired" or was the harm the "false accusation"? Because I can think of plenty of things others do that get people fired, without any falsity to it. Should we prosecute calling up someone's employer and urging them to fire them?

Yeah, I was thinking about this when writing a comment above. If somebody outted you as Gay and you were fired from your job in a Catholic School, I would say the speech has harmed you. It might be true, but still harmful.

I guess it gets a little muddy because the speaker could claim they made the world a better place by revealing your secretes, that the lie told to the school in the first place makes revealing the lie justified.

Re: Iran's government moves to criminalize VPNs (2021)

#43

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 7:19 AM UTC

api wrote: post #8

Barrin92 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people are and always have been accountable for their actions both online and offline, that's how things are done in any country with the rule of law. The issue is of course what activities and what content and whether lawmakers are accountable to the people. The internet is not a magical land of anarchy.

The Internet has magical lands of anarchy like the dark web, but the fact that the security and anonymity are fairly symmetrical adds a layer of protection for the one visiting these lands. There's also an awareness that the information in these regions is even less trustworthy than random stuff from the clearnet since you know literally nothing about it.

[deleted]

Re: Iran's government moves to criminalize VPNs (2021)

#44

Post by jay_kyburz » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 7:20 AM UTC

ta8645 wrote: post #4

There are similar moves to "make people accountable" for their online actions in the west as well; only the details differ, the motivation is the same -- structural control of online activities and content.

I don't know if somebody is being funny, but I think it's cool that my post on free speech was flagged and censored.

Re: Iran's government moves to criminalize VPNs (2021)

#45

Post by sofixa » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 8:21 AM UTC

bigDinosaur wrote: post #24

jay_kyburz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

The greatest damage ever done by speech (i.e. motivation to start wars, genocides) has been done by fully identifiable people. Anonymous online speech is a total red herring. All current major threats are due to fully non-anonymous people doing bad things (e.g. Putin, heads of cartels, the current head of $terrorist_group), not anonymous online commenters. Conversely, one of the greatest threat to authoritarians is s…

> The greatest damage ever done by speech (i.e. motivation to start wars, genocides) has been done by fully identifiable people

I think your information might be out of date. The Rohingya genocide is a good example of a modern genocide incited on Facebook by regular humans and bots.

In modern cases such as Brexit, Trump, various far right candidates (Zemmour, Bolsonaro), a massive amount of people/fake people on social media talking about them, their talking points (ludicrous and false as they are) have brought them their success, despite the obvious massive red flags.

Re: Iran's government moves to criminalize VPNs (2021)

#46

Post by stunt » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 8:34 AM UTC

When I was reading about Internet censorship in Iran and what they have done in recent years, it made me think of WhatsApp.

They have blocked most of the popular messaging platforms including Telegram long time ago but for some reason they have not blocked WhatsApp.

Since the current round of protests in Iran started in mid-September, they also blocked WhatsApp, but only because they don't want people organizing, discussing and sharing in groups. Basically everything is blocked now and this new development is most likely a temporary thing until they can handle the protests.

But isn't the fact that they haven't blocked WhatsApp in these years suspicious? Maybe they have access to NSO's Pegasus spyware or something similar. I don't think NSO would sell it to Iran considering NSO is an Israeli company, but they could still do it by using a middleman and not letting NSO know who the real customer is. Or maybe they developed a similar tool themselves because they have the motivation and the money to buy the information even if they are not capable to find it themselves.

Re: Iran's government moves to criminalize VPNs (2021)

#47

Post by w1nst0nsm1th » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 11:43 AM UTC

jay_kyburz wrote: post #44

ta8645 wrote: post #4

There are similar moves to "make people accountable" for their online actions in the west as well; only the details differ, the motivation is the same -- structural control of online activities and content.

I don't know if somebody is being funny, but I think it's cool that my post on free speech was flagged and censored.

5 days ago, HN admins have removed a post about the desastrous effects of liberal policies (shock doctrine) on Kirghistan economy and societal fabric adopted after the collapse of Soviet Block.

I only had access to it because my rss reader had already saved the link to the blog post in its internal database. But there wasn't any reference of it anymore on HN when I wanted to reach the comment page.

Beside that, the rumors of journalists being fired from english media sphere for their coverage of the recent Nord-stream sabotage and the self-censoring (kind of olympic level mental gymnastic) of some other reporters about the event is mind-bogging.

Re: Iran's government moves to criminalize VPNs (2021)

#48

Post by OrderlyTiamat » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 3:35 PM UTC

w1nst0nsm1th wrote: post #47

jay_kyburz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if somebody is being funny, but I think it's cool that my post on free speech was flagged and censored.

5 days ago, HN admins have removed a post about the desastrous effects of liberal policies (shock doctrine) on Kirghistan economy and societal fabric adopted after the collapse of Soviet Block. I only had access to it because my rss reader had already saved the link to the blog post in its internal database. But there wasn't any reference of it anymore on HN when I wanted to reach the comment page. Beside that, the r…

Political articles that are very likely to devolve into mudsling fests are regularly nuked from hn, as I'm sure you and everyone who uses the rss feed knows. I'm frankly fine with that. It's not the focus of this site. Occasionally those articles are pretty interesting, and then I'm happy I see them from the rss, but usually I can see why they were removed.

Re: Iran's government moves to criminalize VPNs (2021)

#49

Post by dustyharddrive » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 11:26 PM UTC

stunt wrote: post #46

When I was reading about Internet censorship in Iran and what they have done in recent years, it made me think of WhatsApp. They have blocked most of the popular messaging platforms including Telegram long time ago but for some reason they have not blocked WhatsApp. Since the current round of protests in Iran started in mid-September, they also blocked WhatsApp, but only because they don't want people organizing, dis…

If they use Pegasus, the messaging app doesn’t matter.

Re: Iran's government moves to criminalize VPNs (2021)

#50

Post by dang » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 5:59 PM UTC

w1nst0nsm1th wrote: post #47

jay_kyburz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if somebody is being funny, but I think it's cool that my post on free speech was flagged and censored.

5 days ago, HN admins have removed a post about the desastrous effects of liberal policies (shock doctrine) on Kirghistan economy and societal fabric adopted after the collapse of Soviet Block. I only had access to it because my rss reader had already saved the link to the blog post in its internal database. But there wasn't any reference of it anymore on HN when I wanted to reach the comment page. Beside that, the r…

What was the post? It was most likely flagged by users, not admins.