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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

#401

Post by roenxi »

ch4s3 wrote: post #175
jasonvorhe wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

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

#402

Post by generic92034 »

raincole wrote: post #359
shevy-java wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not compute.

It computes quite well. > It was a 2021 case involving Andy Grote, a local politician, that captured the country's attention. Grote complained about a tweet that called him a "pimmel," a German word for the male anatomy. His complaint triggered a police raid and accusations of excessive censorship by the government. A police raid for calling a politician a dick. Let it sink. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/germany-onlin…

That was a overall very rarely occurring abuse of power of a politician in charge of leading local law enforcement. It was declared illegal later. And you take that as a proof for what about the whole of Germany?

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

#403

Post by randomNumber7 »

ruszki wrote: post #399
randomNumber7 wrote: post #381

Personally I think the EU goes too far when I'm not even allowed to access books on the internet where the author died more than 100 years ago. So I like it xD

Which book is that?

Gutenberg.org was DNS blocked for a very long time. Now it's not DNS blocked anymore but I think it will detect your IP and restrict access for some books if you are in the EU.

Of course very easy to circumvent if you know s.th. about tech.

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

#404

Post by microtonal »

sssilver wrote: post #395
micw wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be a good reason for the EU to start a 200% tariff for US software and cloud services then.

How would this work? Wouldn't a reciprocal tariff with identical parameters by the US against EU tech companies completely obliterate EU tech landscape?

Most EU tech companies probably have primarily European customers (given that services export from the US to the EU is much larger than the other way around). Second, all those EU customers are looking for EU alternatives that do not have a huge tariff.

Reciprocal tariffs would (for the EU) hurt export of goods much more, since that is where the EU has a large surplus.

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

#405

Post by exe34 »

nomilk wrote: post #94
Waterluvian wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Will it work when the US government is the one cracking down, banning interviews, etc?

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

#406

Post by jeroenhd »

xp84 wrote: post #398
syspec wrote: post #344

Meanwhile, you can't even go on pornhub in certain states in the US, but yes let's let people go on X and engage in hate speech. In fact I'm sure bad actors will use that site FROM the us, to anonymize their hate speech from Russia/China

> let people go on X and engage in hate speech So interesting to see it become a popular opinion that we should "not let" people say certain things. Like, if necessary, we should jail people for speaking. I remember learning about the ACLU[1] as a teen, 25 years ago, and how they took a lot of flak for defending people who said things we all agreed were gross, which at first glance seems disgusting. But the lesson we…

American free speech laws are the exception, not the rule. All European free speech laws have always been balanced and weighed up against other laws. This is hardly anything new. If anything, the internet has brought forth a short time period where everything goes and the status quo is now recovering.

The legal definition of hate speech (or rather, its local equivalents) is not just "any ideas counter to beliefs I hold dearly".

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

#407

Post by microtonal »

polski-g wrote: post #305
copperx wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which soft power are you talking about?

Anyone who wants to trade in USD. Protection of maritime trade routes. Nuclear shield. Netflix, YouTube, Nvidia, OpenAI, Amazon.

To be honest, only the last few holdouts in Europe still believe in the US nuclear shield. The fact that Germany is trying to make a deal with France should tell you everything.

Netflix, YouTube and OpenAI are completely meaningless and we could drop it tomorrow. NVIDIA and AWS are a different story. The only problem is that once things become transactional (as opposed to mutually trusting allies), Europe can leverage ASML and possibly ARM. So it doesn’t bring much soft power anymore, only mutually assured economic destruction.

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

#408

Post by jeroenhd »

gpt5 wrote: post #161
nomilk wrote: post #89

Can someone ELI5 how it actually works? Say I'm a UK citizen with advanced glioblastoma (implying loss of faculties, seizures, and pain; no cure, and things to worsen before eventually passing away, possibly some time from now). Suppose I wish to view websites on euthanasia options, but am blocked from doing so by the UK's Online Safety Act. How does/will Freedom.gov help? (is it essentially a free VPN?) Also, as oth…

According to Reuters, it will essentially be a free VPN. https://www.reuters.com/world/us-plans-online-portal-bypass-...

That may be pretty useful for torrenting, actually.

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

#409

Post by NewJazz »

drnick1 wrote: post #339
sublimefire wrote: post #111

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…

> A great example is the banning of RT, they lost licenses IMO in multiple countries, but the agency was spreading a lot of lies. IMO what we all want is objective news reporting. You shouldn't need a "license" to publish a website.

They had TV licenses. Also they are the state media arm of a country that is in a proxy war with the EU and NATO. I don't think that situation would even pass muster in the US.

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

#410

Post by mesk »

Manuel_D wrote: post #390
mesk wrote: post #380

Cool, so the US students will be able to read school banned books ? Or US state banned research papers ? Or US state banned historic books or photos ? Or soft banned late night shows - so Colbert will continue ? Kimmel ? Or domains of shadow book libraries banned by FBI/corporate requests ? And it will circumvent geoblocking enforced mostly by US companies ? Cool, such a heroic effort to remove censorship from theint…

When has the US ever banned students from reading certain books or research papers? What research papers can I not legally read? The domains of shadow libraries are banned for copyright infringement, you can still read the books legally by purchasing a copy.

Here you can find short sample of those `dangerous` books: https://pen.org/banned-books-list-2025/

And https://climate.law.columbia.edu/content/cdc-orders-retracti...

And, I know those shadow libraries are banned because of copyright, but that's just an excuse. If someone pushes such a broad understanding of Freedom as US does, than copyright should maybe not be the one exception that's ok. People should have freedom to publish anything and other should have freedom to read/play/watch anything. If US can ban something because of so abstract as copyright, why can't EU ban something because of so abstract as `its all lies and state sponsored propaganda` ?

NOTE: just playing devils advocate here, to show the hypocrisy of it all...

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