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What stops governments from just passing this legislation now if they're so inclined? It's not like China hasn't already pioneered the technology. They're even

What stops governments from just passing this legislation now if they're so inclined? It's not like China hasn't already pioneered the technology. They're even happy to sell it. It's not even particularly hard, just the same type of internal corporate firewall system scaled up to cover the entire country. I don't see how Apple doing it now with a privacy focus does anything to change or realign government incentives to do it later.

Mindwipe 5y ago
> What stops governments from just passing this legislation now if they're so inclined? It's not like China hasn't already pioneered the technology. They're even happy to sell it. It's not even particularly hard, just the same type of internal corporate firewall system scaled up to cover the entire country. Broadly cost. China's moderation and censorship of the internet is very expensive, and requires significant scale, and only works because most of the companies involved are at least partly state owned in the first place. The more you have a small amount of centralised points you can target, the lower the costs to implement sweeping measures against all traffic and the higher the technical possibility. The UK already has a draft law on the table that will effectively ban any sites that do not meet the requirements of the state regulator, and the legislation notes that a useful way of forcing sites to comply is that the Apple App Store and Google Play mean that if you can force them to delist applications then you've done 95% of the job. They are centralised points that make bad legislation more plausible. We don't want that to get even worse than it is.
- naravara 5y ago
  > The more you have a small amount of centralised points you can target, the lower the costs to implement sweeping measures against all traffic and the higher the technical possibility. I don't buy it. The points are already pretty centralized. We only have, like, 4 big telecom companies and they already make usuriously fat margins that can absorb the cost. You also don't really need to cut things off at the App Store level, as SESTA/FOSTA has shown, to push activity too deep underground to be found on mainstream services. Just ad hoc enforcement and a pervasive climate of fear is enough.

Mindwipe 5y ago

> What stops governments from just passing this legislation now if they're so inclined? It's not like China hasn't already pioneered the technology. They're even happy to sell it. It's not even particularly hard, just the same type of internal corporate firewall system scaled up to cover the entire country. Broadly cost. China's moderation and censorship of the internet is very expensive, and requires significant scale, and only works because most of the companies involved are at least partly state owned in the first place. The more you have a small amount of centralised points you can target, the lower the costs to implement sweeping measures against all traffic and the higher the technical possibility. The UK already has a draft law on the table that will effectively ban any sites that do not meet the requirements of the state regulator, and the legislation notes that a useful way of forcing sites to comply is that the Apple App Store and Google Play mean that if you can force them to delist applications then you've done 95% of the job. They are centralised points that make bad legislation more plausible. We don't want that to get even worse than it is.

naravara 5y ago
> The more you have a small amount of centralised points you can target, the lower the costs to implement sweeping measures against all traffic and the higher the technical possibility. I don't buy it. The points are already pretty centralized. We only have, like, 4 big telecom companies and they already make usuriously fat margins that can absorb the cost. You also don't really need to cut things off at the App Store level, as SESTA/FOSTA has shown, to push activity too deep underground to be found on mainstream services. Just ad hoc enforcement and a pervasive climate of fear is enough.