Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hitler was literally banned from public speaking for two years. The Nazis came to power through widespread normalized political violence, not speech, and banning Hitler from speaking did nothing but further undermine the legitimacy of the government’s mandate to rule.
Joseph Goebbels would have been disappointed to learn that his office was superfluous and irrelevant!
US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere
751–760 of 1001 posts
Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere
#752Earlier quoted context omitted.
And/or propaganda. Everyone can feel censorship, everyone can learn what they're punished for saying. Propaganda, though, that can feel like learning, like personal growth and development. If censorship comes with a stick, propaganda is a carrot. And today, we have as much of a problem with metaphorical obesity as with literal obesity.
Propaganda works when it's the only source of information. This situation is created by censorship, especially in internets, where you don't need to walk to open a distant site.
One way is simple repetition of the exact same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
Another is to have many different lies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_the_zone and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood
Taking a step back, there is another way for propaganda to function that doesn't even require being the main source, but simply to make the lie so huge that people can't process the idea someone would be *that* level of dishonest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
Consider your own previous comment:
> you get one half truth from one source, another half truth from another source, then two halves make whole truth.
What happens when one source says that the Alpha Party* consists of child-eating devil-worshiping lizards from Alpha Ceti 5 who caused the 9/11 attacks to cover up how the mind-control chemtrail fluid they were making in the WTC burned hot enough to melt steel beams, and the other source says the Alpha Party is standing on a platform of reducing the tax burden on hard-working families?
The latter can be a half-truth, but you don't get even a little closer to a full truth by adding any part of the "other side".
* A made-up party, any similarities to actual persons is coincidence and all the usual disclaimer.
Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere
#753I 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…
This is somewhat counterintuitive: The US is the only country I know where most newspapers and government services use strict geoblocks to prevent me from accessing US sites in Europe. Conversely, I've never had any problems accessing European sites from the US. I know this is for a different set of reasons (likely GDPR cookie law or similar), but it's funny that anyone thinks blocks like this are relevant. Most peop…
The search AIs tell me it's around a third of people.
Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere
#754Earlier quoted context omitted.
> > And lies. > And truth. In short, propaganda. Propaganda (noun) : Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented…
This definition is so broad it basically encompasses all communication.
Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere
#755Earlier quoted context omitted.
First off, the UK isn't in the EU, and 2nd, not a single website is blocked for me here in the Netherlands, quite literally none. I can access Discord without an ID, I can watch all the porn I want, I can pirate anything I want from anywhere etc. How many states require IDs to go to porn sites, again? How many journos is it now that Trump blacklisted from the White House? Yeah, lotta freedoms over there...
> First off, the UK isn't in the EU I would guess that is why the GP said "EU and UK" > ot a single website is blocked for me here in the Netherlands, quite literally none One EU country. At the very least I know you have censored search results as that is an EU wide requirement of the right to be forgotten. > I can pirate anything I want from anywhere etc. Multiple EU countries are blocking pirate sites. https://tor…
How is the right to be forgotten a bad thing exactly? You can't request a news article be deleted if you're a prominent public figure for obvious reasons, but if you're a random Joe Schmoe then being able to force companies to take down things they've collected about you is a good thing.
And are you implying search engines in the US don't have things "censored" all the time anyway? If you look up basically any form of media on Google, at the bottom will be a large list of links removed due to DMCA takedowns. Hell, Youtube literally steals all ad revenue from creators hit with DMCA takedowns, even falsified ones, where's your complaint about Google censoring its own creators?
> Multiple EU countries are blocking pirate sites
And that's idiotic, but definitionally not the case in "The EU" as can be seen by my country which is part of The EU, the Netherlands, not blocking access to any pirate sites. I would know, I pirate media quite literally every single day of my life, both private and public trackers without even having a VPN or anything of the sort. I'm sure it's not the only EU country to not block anything, even though corrupt idiots in Spain and Italy also exist.
> There are definitely American sites that block EU visitors because of the cost/risk of GDPR compliance.
I mean, good? If business are so incompetent/malicious that they can't even comply with the GDPR, which just states that users have to be informed and have to give explicit consent to companies harvesting their data, then they can fuck off. If your company goes bankrupt because the GDPR makes it impossible to earn money, good riddance to that parasitic business model I say, maybe get a real revenue stream that doesn't rely on fucking over every single one of your users instead? The people who are against GDPR are really telling on themselves and how little they respect their own users.
But anyways wtf does the GDPR have to do with "censorship" or hate speech? If anything this sounds like you're arguing that the US companies are the ones doing the censorship, considering they're the ones blocking it for EU users (apparently, I've literally never come across a blocked page due to GDPR, and it's not like California doesn't have similarly stringent regulations either like the CCPA).
Next you're going to tell me HIPAA is censorship as well.
Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere
#756Maybe the EU can open a book portal for the US. https://pen.org/report/the-normalization-of-book-banning/
The whole book banning thing is a little weird in 2026, IMO. It's exciting to think about, we all liked Fahrenheit 451, but a book not being bought for elementary schools doesn't really make it "banned" IMO. There are a lot of books which probably shouldn't be in schools. I don't think children should be given copies of Mein Kampf or Camp of Saints, nor the random dark fantasy novels which are so popular today. It fe…
Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere
#757Earlier quoted context omitted.
Joseph Goebbels would have been disappointed to learn that his office was superfluous and irrelevant!
Goebbels and his office represent the direct opposite of freedom of speech, just to counter your Reddit-inspired mic-drop hot take comment.
Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere
#758Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you're not paying for it? In corporate america how is that going to be moneytized?
VPNs are in no way secure. I'm sure they will be taking all your data and using it.
Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere
#759Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you're saying my french ISP tunnels all traffic from my hotel to my office through to America? Or are you saying that the NSA has a hidden tap on the equipment without my ISP knowing. How does that traffic get from the ISP router to the NSA?
I’m saying your ISP isn’t being entirely forthcoming about what goes on on their networks… take that as you will.
I can believe IXPs in many countries will send netflow data to their state's intelligence org, but that's a long way from what was being suggested.
Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere
#760Earlier quoted context omitted.
> not even bothering to dogwhistle So, basically, you are saying that they are openly racist? Is there any evidence of this? > If you need a source for that you haven’t been following the news. Nice deflection. You are the one making outlandish claims, so the proof is on you and not the “news” that someone is supposed to follow.
You want concrete proof? Vasquez Perdomo v Noem is your proof. The Supreme Court effectively legitimised racial profiling.
Yes.
> Vasquez Perdomo v Noem is your proof.
This court case has nothing to do with the claim made that US government explicitly stated that they want to promote racists and fringe-right ideology among our allies.