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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

#641

Post by frumplestlatz »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #637
lucasRW wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You’re advocating for a censorship regime that would put me in jail for words that you happen to think are dangerous.

Ergo, your words threaten my safety.

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

#642

Post by roenxi »

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.

No, it is censorship. IP protection would be punishing the pirates after they do something illegal. I think what you're sensing is that it is censorship in support of intellectual property rather than censorship aiming at political repression.

There's something similar in RealityVoid's comment where it is identified that EU law promotes censorship, but that is discounted because the understanding is it in aid of privacy rather than politically motivated. Although given Europe's rich history of sliding into authoritarianism that does seem like an optimistic take on where the European elite are heading. A part of political censorship is making it hard for people to realise that popular political viewpoints are being censored and providing cover by claiming the censorship is for some good cause would be pretty routine.

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

#643

Post by antonyh »

Aloisius wrote: post #96
alistairSH wrote: post #31

Won't those other nations just ban freedom.gov?

Nothing stops them from hosting it on fbi.gov, state.gov, etc. It's one thing to block some random .gov site unused for anything else, it's another thing to block a domain used for, say, filing flight plans.

As a Brit/European, would I notice or care if fbi.gov was blocked via consumer internet providers? I'd probably not notice if *.gov was blocked. I'm fairly sure government-level internet provisioning has a very different set of restrictions to the general population for those who need access to US Gov services, in the same way that I'm sure the Chinese state itself isn't subject to the rules of the Great Firewall.

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

#644

Post by carlosjobim »

warkdarrior wrote: post #369
carlosjobim wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that's the purpose? Pushing European and global "allies" to show their cards. Some citizens will support more censorship, while some will start questioning. It's good to know where your rivals stand. Also it is cheap, easy, non-controversial domestically in the US, and ethically coherent with American values.

> Pushing European and global "allies" to show their cards. Some citizens will support more censorship, while some will start questioning. It's good to know where your rivals stand. I don't think European countries have been shy or sneaky about their restrictions on online content.

That's a good point.

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

#645

Post by Etherlord87 »

throwaway140126 wrote: post #622
hananova wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) Is also because it's literally vandalism. (2) Also points out that there were posts of holocaust denial, which has been illegal in most of europe for literal decades. (3) Is an article about an investigation into whether or not the cart was protected by freedom of expression or whether there would be grounds for further trial. Nobody is in trouble yet. Isn't it convenient how all posts that say something that rhy…

(1) Calling a politician a dick is vandalism? That's nonsense. (2) The corresponding prosecutor made clear that his house was raided for calling the politician stupid and NOT for anything else. You would have known that if you would have read the document I linked to. To quote it: Wegen des Tatverdachts einer gegen Personen des politischen Lebens gerichteten Beleidigung gem. §§ 185, 188, 194 StGB erfolgte am vergange…

(1) - there's a photo of a graffiti in the article. But the translation of the article to English doesn't mention the insult was actually painted on a wall...

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

#646

Post by carlosjobim »

amarant wrote: post #282
carlosjobim wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One is Russian media, just as Russia bans European media. Also the world's largest library is banned in Germany.

The first one I'm ok with, the second one I'm not sure what you're saying? Google suggests the largest library in the world is the US Congress library, but I couldn't find any sources saying it's banned in Germany? (Also, it's a physical place in the US... What?) Closest thing I could find to library banned in Germany was a collection of pirated material, which was blocked at a DNS level, meaning many users bypass th…

Yes, I'm referring to the pirate site, which is the largest collection of books in the history of mankind. Of course it is a bit fringe to talk about censorship when it comes to piracy, but I would say that it is. While noting that the US also censors pirate websites.

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

#647

Post by antonyh »

josefrichter wrote: post #347
drnick1 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Porn (now requires age verification), online libraries, movies, some news websites, sports (because of obscure copyright laws) and countless other things.

I’m in the EU and haven’t encountered any of these, except the copyright restrictions - which is really a different matter.

I'm in the UK and can't access https://imgur.com/ - an American service that now refuses to serve content to Britain because "On September 30, 2025, Imgur blocked users from the United Kingdom in response to a potential fine from the Information Commissioner's Office regarding its handling of children's personal data". I presume that means OSA.

It does lend credibility to the blocks when it's US companies trying to dodge fines while mishandling PII. The suggestion of using a US freedom gov to dodge US-based self-censorship is as ironic as it is stupid when the real solution is pay the fine and handle the data properly.

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

#649

Post by throwaway140126 »

Etherlord87 wrote: post #645
throwaway140126 wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) Calling a politician a dick is vandalism? That's nonsense. (2) The corresponding prosecutor made clear that his house was raided for calling the politician stupid and NOT for anything else. You would have known that if you would have read the document I linked to. To quote it: Wegen des Tatverdachts einer gegen Personen des politischen Lebens gerichteten Beleidigung gem. §§ 185, 188, 194 StGB erfolgte am vergange…

(1) - there's a photo of a graffiti in the article. But the translation of the article to English doesn't mention the insult was actually painted on a wall...

(1) That is just a symbolic image. The person answered „Du bist so 1 Pimmel“ (english: „You're such a dick“) to a post of the politician on twitter.

According to Wikipedia it was an answer to the following tweet https://twitter.com/AndyGrote/status/1399001436973899780

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

#650

Post by joe_mamba »

generic92034 wrote: post #402
raincole wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>It was declared illegal later.

You're missing the point. That's exactly how democratic governments cloak fascist behavior everywhere: The punishment IS THE PROCESS.

People in Germany (and the UK and other places) have to self censor because they don't want to be visited by the police and then dragged through courts for months/years, even though it eventually gets thrown out and you get to walk away innocent, you still had to suffer the entire prosecution process, which nobody wants to, so they keep their mouth shut.

The stress toll of having to go through all that annoying grind through the legal system, even though you did nothing wrong and what the government is doing will be considered illegal, is how the government preemptively keeps people in line.

>That was a overall very rarely occurring abuse of power

Very rare?! Unless there's direct consequences with actual punishment on government officials for illegally abusing the legal system on citizens just because they hear stuff they don't like, then they will keep throwing prosecutions at innocent people just to keep them in check since currently they have nothing stopping them from this abuse turning from rare to being the norm.

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