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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

#631

Post by pms »

jbstack wrote: post #482
pms wrote: post #434

It's a waste of resources, but please do it! The entire "European Union censors" narrative is a hoax [1], so the portal will achieve nothing, but you've got to do what you've got to do! [1] First, the EU countries have much higher World Press Freedom Index than the US. Second, once you start reading how little there is of the alleged "censorship" in the EU, you realize it's a no-brainer aiming to protect people.

As someone living in an EU state who has to regularly turn my VPN on and off to have full internet access, I can't agree with you that it's a "hoax". It's inconvenient enough for me that I'm looking into having a custom router that will switch between VPN destinations depending on what site I'm accessing. Also "EU countries have higher press freedom than the US" is a strawman argument. We're not talking about press f…

I really hope they go ahead and create the portal. I mean it.

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

#632

Post by stinkbeetle »

oezi wrote: post #419
LAC-Tech wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you come from a German context the concept of free speech is probably strange to you in general - because no one in living memory has ever had it. Not in Weimar, not in the Nazi period, not in East Germany and not in the Federal Republic. Unless you understand concepts like "Natural Rights" the idea of a government not being able to curtail what you say will remain completely foreign to you.

That isn't really what we perceive (at least if educated). We see that Free Speech is not an absolute right, but is secondary to the most important right which for Germans is Human Dignity. It might be foreign to you because your constitution and history doesn't put the same value on it than our history taught us.

I'm not American but I similarly don't care for the meek subservience to the government which characterizes European attitude on this.

Human dignity is not foreign to me at all, I just don't believe a life where the state protects your feelings from words, and that dictates what you may and may not talk about is not a dignified one.

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

#633

Post by jwarden »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #481
b112 wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And truth.

You don't have to worry about projecting truth. The truth gets through. This is about projecting lies.

What if the truth is that something is a lie?

Promoting truth and opposing lies are the same thing.

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

#634

Post by reactordev »

cookiengineer wrote: post #313
Aurornis wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost 80% of communications go through a data center in Northern VA Nobody who understands the scale of the internet could possibly believe this is true. Routing internet traffic through a geographical location would increase ping times by a noticeable amount. Even sending traffic from around the world to a datacenter in VA would require an amount of infrastructure multiple times larger than the internet itself to…

> Nobody who understands the scale of the internet could possibly believe this is true. Neither would anybody have believed that 8 out of 10 hard drive chips can contain any rootkits. Yet, here we are, and the insanity of it is that we've found lots of malware attributed to EQGRP, and the Snowden leaks (from the perspective of Booz Allen) have confirmed it. You should read up on quantum routing. They don't have to ro…

I wish I could upvote this more than once.

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

#635

Post by eagleal »

tantalor wrote: post #218

That's not very "America First" Why are my taxes paying for benefits for Europeans? They already killed USAID.

This is a valid tool for intelligence and propaganda operations, for both USA and Israel (since they have access to whatever.

In this age this is akin to funding and arming a militia in a foreign country, or what would've been on old times preemptive land operations.

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

#636

Post by reactordev »

ta20240528 wrote: post #443
reactordev wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will never believe you until you show them and that requires a clearance.

No need for a clearance, merely explain that 1. fibre-optic traffic is a beam of light 2. this beam can be passed through a glass prism… 3. the prism splits off say 20% of the light by intensity 4. this 20% is identical to the 80% 5. both the 20% and 80% component are 'bright' enough to be used 6. the 80% continues on its merry way, the 20% is redirected for 'other' uses.

That is simplifying it to the point of a lab experiment. It’s a bit more complicated but yes, you can split light and route that light anywhere you want.

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

#637

Post by mapontosevenths »

lucasRW wrote: post #554
shevy-java wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not compute.

It does. That's why GrapheneOS left France; Signal is considering doing so to if ChatControl passes. Von Der Leyen and Breton clearly mentioned the possibility of banning X. And there are many other "signals". But yeah we get it, there's bad censorhip (Iran, China, Russia), and there is the good censorhip, sorry, i meant "protection of children", when it's the EU. :o)

> there's bad censorhip (Iran, China, Russia), and there is the good censorhip

I understand that you're being facetious here, but this is literally true.

Words kill people sometimes, and in the same way that my right to swing my arm stops where your nose begins your right to say whatever you want stops where my safety begins.

Or to rephrase it, nobody can have free speech at all if others are allowed to threaten your health and safety for it, which automatically implies that violent and hateful speech must be curtailed. It is a variation on the paradox of tolerance.

Yes, there is room to debate exactly where the line is, but the fact that there is a line is fairly well settled except amongst the rabid.

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

#638

Post by flawn »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #616
pms wrote: post #434

It's a waste of resources, but please do it! The entire "European Union censors" narrative is a hoax [1], so the portal will achieve nothing, but you've got to do what you've got to do! [1] First, the EU countries have much higher World Press Freedom Index than the US. Second, once you start reading how little there is of the alleged "censorship" in the EU, you realize it's a no-brainer aiming to protect people.

[flagged]

So you're telling me, the landlord of a burning house starts to put out the (smaller) fire next door in a self-less act of virtue?

There is some other incentive here other than supposedly restoring "freedom of speech", don't you agree?

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

#639

Post by mortarion »

kjksf wrote: post #563
larholm wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of speech is not absolute anywhere, not even under the 1st amendment in the USA. Death threats are illegal whether they happen offline or online. Yelling "I HAVE A BOMB!" in an airport comes with consequences. I believe we can agree on these two examples.

Yes, we can. But that's not what "hate speech" is code word for. At this point in time any opinion to the right of extreme leftist ideology is considered by said leftist to be "hate speech". Examples of "hate speech": criticism of muslims (but jews are ok), or minorities, or men playing in women's sport or breast amputation of 15yr olds, or immigration. Nick investigating Somali fraud is racist and hateful. The "hate…

Countries in Europe (and most of the world) have positive constitutions, which defines what the government "must do" (for its citizens), whilst the USA has a negative constitution that defines what the government "cannot do" (against its citizens).

What constitutes hate speech is carefully defined in the constitutions of EU countries. Politicians can't just amend or extend the definition at will, except in the UK which has a strange system of laws and not a constitution like you're used to in the USA or in the EU.

In Europe we recognize that Hitler came to power by abusing free speech, which is why using the same rhetoric now can land you in trouble with the law. We also recognize that the pen is mightier than the sword and that unfettered speech can be used to persuade groups of people to use violence against other groups of people.

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

#640

Post by _heimdall »

intended wrote: post #607
aarroyoc wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Spain many parts of the Internet are shut down when there's a LaLiga match to "prevent piracy". They usually block Cloudflare as a whole but also Vercel, GitHub,... had issues. For example last Sunday I couldn't access some of the stories submitted here. I could also not access the documentation of hledger, a FOSS contability tool.

Piracy would be IP protection, not censorship / stopping dissidents/ controlling ideas. Plus this wouldn’t be an EU wide policy.

Blocking huge swaths of the internet skips right past IP protection in my opinion.
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