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I’m Danish and in our very recent election we voted the authoritarians and populists out, by a large margin. Margrete Vestager is from a very liberal (as in fre
by moksly 7y ago
I’m Danish and in our very recent election we voted the authoritarians and populists out, by a large margin. Margrete Vestager is from a very liberal (as in free) Danish party, and she’s pushing some of the toughest regulations on big tech companies that we’ve seen in years.
So I’m not convinced it’s really authoritarian. We have a big scandal right now in Denmark, because a company secretly sold jet-fuel to Russians and that’s been illegal since sometime during the Cold War. Because other industries have been regulated on what they could trade with our “enemies” for decades. The tech sector somehow snuck under the radar on this, but that sneaking has certainly ended, and it’s now being regulated like any other industry.
I mean I could certainly be wrong, but I really do see it as governments being governments. When I was a child there weren’t seatbelts or airbags in cars. Automakers didn’t suddenly start putting them there because it was the right thing to do, or because it’s sell more cars. They did it because regulation forced them to do it and then they later turned safety into a marketing point.
- dngray 7y ago> Margrete Vestager is from a very liberal (as in free) party, and she’s pushing some of the toughest regulations on big tech companies that we’ve seen in years. Then it's the illusion of freedom. Free when they declare freedom, but not when they don't. Code doesn't have color, race or politics. It is something that brings us together and we have common ground over. We argue over whether it is good code or bad code. The fact is embargoes do nothing to benefit anyone here. All it results in is less code being available. Also it is the very thought control, ie a Government telling me how I will make my code available that annoys me. I didn't vote my government in, and I don't particularly like it when that Government tells me I cannot communicate, or express my intellectual creations with the people that I want, just because I was born within it's borders.
- programmarchy 7y agoCode is political, to the degree it matters. See: Bitcoin, Stuxnet, Intel ME, Facebook, Google, missile guidance systems, the Enigma machine, etc.
- skocznymroczny 7y agoI don't think things like censorship are restricted to authoritarian, populist, or right-wing parties. It's just the reasons differ. Right-wing parties will censor the internet to "stop terrorism" and "protect families and children", left-wing parties will censor the internet to "fight hate speech", but the end result is the same.