5 ms·
Unless you are physically present in the UK or do business in the UK, just tell them to screw off. Treat their demands the same way you would an Iranian or Russ
by pseudo0 3y ago
Unless you are physically present in the UK or do business in the UK, just tell them to screw off. Treat their demands the same way you would an Iranian or Russian government bureaucrat demanding that you compromise the rights of your users. If they want authoritarian control over the internet, make them build their own great firewall.
Big tech companies are vulnerable to financial pressure, but a one admin Matrix server or XMPP server hosted in the US has no reason to comply.
- meheleventyone 3y agoBut no one cares about your server anyway let alone nation states so it’s not a realistic worry anyway at that level. Once you’re at the point of having relevance then you’ll probably find nation states have levers to pull.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoMan, one day there's gonna be a news article on the front page of HN about a hobbyist or medium sized forum admin in the US being sued in federal court by the UK government (that's a thing now BTW) for not blocking UK IPs. Before that there's going to be one about a FOSS chat app maintainer from somewhere getting in trouble even though he runs no infrastructure that UK citizens use. I don't want to fly under the radar with an ambiguous sense of my own safety.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoUnfortunately that's not true. "Do business in the UK" means that a single British user has an account on my server. All the western nations have mutual agreements to enforce their civil laws in each others jurisdictions. Look at Kim Dotcom. I feel the same way as you: make them all build their own firewall. But unfortunately these governments don't see it that way anymore.