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… while every other country waits to see how it goes while drafting plans to emulate this

by weikju 9mo ago

ajsnigrutin 9mo ago
I mean... EU already blocks eg. some russian sites (some countries more effectively than others)... plus all the chat control pressures every year. Spain is blocking whole blocks of internet during football matches. UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off. But every such country likes pointing fingers at others, "hey, our censorship is not bad, they have more of it!". edit: considering the downvotes, HN is not bothered by our censorship either
- buzzerbetrayed 9mo ago
  Why during football matches?
  - ajsnigrutin 9mo ago
    So people wouldn't stream the games ilegally... the private entity that owns the rights to broadcasting the games can arbitrarily ban whole subnets. the end result is well... not good: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45323856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45323856
    - sigmar 9mo ago
      A company using legal action to protect their IP rights is so different from a theocratic dictatorship shutting down the entire Internet to prevent their overthrow. Perhaps you don't follow the news about Iran but these comments are incredibly daft.
      - ajsnigrutin 9mo ago
        But that's even worse... Iran is a stuck up country with huge political issues, internal and external pressures, outside countries attacking it while internally they're at the cusp of a civil war. Of course they'll shut down the internet, what else do you expect them to do? It's not like they have many options, nor the government trying to stay in power and crush a coup, even if that means blocking the internet, nor the people who are protesting against it and risking their lives. But EU countries should be a bastion of freedom, free speech, free access to information, democracy, human rights, rights to this, rights to that... Why do we, the EU countries have to use the same playbook? Yes, banning the whole internet is in one way worse and in other easier, than just banning a list of sites where people can find a way around it, but again, the difference is just in the quantity, the censorship factor is the same. The government gets scared people will see some other propaganda from the other side, and censors it... and even that is done very selectively (daily mail is still accessible from over here, so are fox news and cnn) With spain it's even worse, because it's not even the government doing it, but the government giving the right of censorship to a private company which clearly abuses that right and the government tolerates this... no court orders, no judges, no way to complain, no fair use, no nothing, a private company decides and the government gives them a blank stamped paper to aprove that. Yes, i know iran has it much worse, but there's nothing we can do about it here, assuming the internet is banned for iranians and they can't read this or comment here. But EU is doing the same, and we've been tolerating it for years... a site here, a site there,... not everything, but censorship is still censorship, no matter how many sites are censored, and there are people from EU here that should argue against censorship, even if it's just a few sites and not all of them.
        squidbeak 9mo ago
        > It's not like they have many options, nor the government trying to stay in power and crush a coup [..] You are joking: a 'coup'? The protest movement was so large, the government's attempt to crush it killed 30,000 people in 48 hours. https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-senior-officials/ https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-...
      - FilosofumRex 9mo ago
        [flagged]
        breppp 9mo ago
        A republic with a supreme religious leader who actually decides everything, that fakes elections and has a council of religious leaders that can disqualify any candidate that's without even talking about killing 30,000-40,000 citizens for wanting their rights > It subsidize basic needs of its poorer citizens, such as fuel, bread, housing, education and healthcare. I'd start with supplying basic needs like water and electricity. The actual subsidizing is for the IRGC which steals whatever they can get their hands on so they can be counted on to mass slaughter the people
        21asdffdsa12 9mo ago
        Do not forget funding widespread proxxy wars and terrorism in the region, although that game has many players: Qatar, UAE, Turkey, Egypt..
        FilosofumRex 9mo ago
        [flagged]
        FilosofumRex 9mo ago
        Subsidies are enacted and approved by Parliament and enshrined in the law. IRGC has nothing to do with approval or distribution of subsidies.
        FilosofumRex 9mo ago
        you're absolutely "Right". Iran should hold as many elections as Saudis or UAE, have as many coups by generals as in Egypt and Pakistan, or build as many American military bases as Jordan and Turkey to be considered a republic by your types.
        ThePowerOfFuet 9mo ago
        >Iran is not a dictatorship lmao
      - freetanga 9mo ago
        The problem itself is not IP protection…. They tried that, and were always chasing behind - servers changed week after week, ban after ban. So, misteriously (suspicions of bribery abound) now they block full blocks of internet preventively, bringing down innocent and paying customers with them. From Law Enforcement to privatized Minority Report. Thats what people dislike. If you are a private entity and loose money to piracy, use the legal framework to solve it. Don’t override it with lobbying
      - lukan 9mo ago
        You don't see a problem if private companies get the right to decide who to block from the internet, without any process?
        direwolf20 9mo ago
        That's freedom of market. You need to sue your ISP for contract breach, they said they'd provide internet access and didn't.
        lukan 9mo ago
        That market is not really free, but government regulated and mandated and the government says they are fine to do this (as far as I know, I do not live in spain).
        marrs 9mo ago
        If you have to sue your provider just to get a normal service then society has already failed. I can only imagine you're an American for litigation to be your go-to solution.
        direwolf20 9mo ago
        I rarely encounter a company that doesn't scam me to the maximum extent it thinks it can get away with. That extent is determined by how many customers sue them.
        mrguyorama 9mo ago
        Note, litigation being the "go to" solution of the American system is intended. The civil courts were basically supposed to solve all problems. Which is why they work great for rich people. All the memes about America being "litigious" are intentional. It is incredibly difficult to seek preventative justice in the US. The intent is that you must be harmed first and then be made right. It's a system dreamed up by wealthy aristocrats who were openly against slavery but owned people anyway and assholes who had the audacity to claim the constitution was "We the People" even though it excluded most people and was drafted entirely without authority to do so (defensible, the articles of confederation were utterly failing) and purposely built a system where people didn't vote for representation (because they didn't want a society representative of average people) and the few idealists who were far too stupid or gullible to go along with all of this. Tons of them were lawyers. We don't, for example, have an ombudsman I can go to and complain about a business maybe not following the law and get the government to essentially be my advocate. We instead are forced to sue that company, and prove in court, with vastly unequal resources, that we deserve remedy. Our judicial system is also clearly preferential to corporations over people, and refuses to hold corporations to justice, even when they have been objectively found wrong! The jury of her peers awarded the McDonalds hot coffee lady $2.7 million (explicitly "two days of coffee revenue") because there was clear negligence and refusal to act safely after burning tens of other people and being outright warned about their coffee temperature, and the judge decided to unilaterally reduce that payout to half a million! He said the payout "must be reasonably related to the injury" and admitted Mcdonalds had acted recklessly and caused the injury and acted with "wanton and callous behavior" and the judge STILL reduced the clearly valid jury verdict by a huge amount! God forbid a company actually pay for their clear and reckless disregard!
- 31337Logic 9mo ago
  Yeah, you're right. It's totally fair to compare how the EU treats its people to how Iran is treating its people right now. Good job. :-/
  - ajsnigrutin 9mo ago
    I live in EU and I oppose internet cenorship, privacy invasion and many other bad things the governments have been doing for years now. I can't do anything about iran, i don't live there, neither does anyone else commenting here it seems... but many of us do live in EU, and are bothered by EU doing the same thing as iran, even if it's on a smaller scale (for now). You can't support censorship at home and then act outraged when someone else just implements more of it... even though some do, as long as the censored things are the things they personally don't like. To be fair, i'm more worried about UK, since it's a "test ground" to see how things work before the bad thing are implemented elsewhere, but either way, in my small country we have a saying, that "people should first sweep infront of their own doorways", and yeah, EU and our censorship is my doorway in this case. TLDR: if we're bothered by internet censorship, we should first stop at 'at home'.
    - Flatterer3544 9mo ago
      If not for EU there would already be multiple states with privacy invasive systems seen in UK.. We are close of getting there and they keep on trying, but so far the blocking states are enough as majority. Sure EU has some fkn horrible sides to it, such as the anonymous vote to get big stuff through when a majority should be enough as democracy depicts, but currently 2 states out of all EU states can block the big decisions...
    - ericmay 9mo ago
      > I can't do anything about iran, i don't live there You also don’t live in the United States, or in Israel or Palestine but folks tend to forget that it seems. But you can do something anyway which is to be aware of the atrocities committed by Iran’s regime, make sure your government is aware of your opinion, you can protest outside the Iranian embassy in your country, help Iranian dissidents, help Iranians find sneaky ways to get internet access, &c. I’m not expecting anyone to do those things but I find this “I don’t live there” argument continue to creep up whenever it comes to Iran but it never enters conversation when it comes to specific other countries. > TLDR: if we're bothered by internet censorship, we should first stop at 'at home'. Sure but you don’t have to focus on one issue at a time. Honestly resorting Internet access in Iran is probably more important than whatever rules and things the EU is implementing because in Iran people are actually dying and you can always change the EU rules back through democratic processes.
- walletdrainer 9mo ago
  > UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off. There are no ID cards in the UK, so you actually have to get a special jerking off loicense.
  - lifestyleguru 9mo ago
    What if someone is not a certified wanker?
    - reactordev 9mo ago
      Head down to your local Tory office and prove it.
      - keysersoze33 9mo ago
        If all else fails, ask for BJ
        pixelpoet 9mo ago
        They referred me to the BBC
        reactordev 9mo ago
        Old FM department or Business Development & Social Management?
      - jamesbelchamber 9mo ago
        The wanker licensing board defected to Reform last week
  - isoprophlex 9mo ago
    I remember giggling at those "oi you got a loicense for that m8??!" memes. Funny, maybe, but not to be taken seriously. Fast forward less than ten years, and here we are.
- wartywhoa23 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - wewxjfq 9mo ago
    Your upvotes are issued by sheep and wolf in sheep's clothing telling you to not censor propaganda from a country that's been waging war against you.
- otherme123 9mo ago
  > Spain is blocking whole blocks of internet during football matches. Lets make this clear: "Spain" is not blocking, some ISP companies which have many users ask the judge for permission to block IP ranges because they are streaming football matches. The judge agrees (they don't seem to know how Cloudflare works), so the ISPs are the ones that are blocking their own users to access sites behind Cloudflare. As they have millions of users, the block feels huge, but it is not issued by the government. I am not a customer of those ISP, so my internet isn't disrupted at all during football matches. Some services, like annas-archive and torrent sites, are intermittently blocked, but you can easily avoid the blocks just by switching DNS server to 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8.
  - pezgrande 9mo ago
    The fact they allow this sh*t even when it is widely know that is happening and being abused, makes the government also responsible because inaction.
    - otherme123 9mo ago
      One thing is that they facilitate, not by inaction but by allowing judges to allow the blocks, and another different thing is saying that is the state the one who issues the block.
  - JasonADrury 9mo ago
    This is not even close to true. The Spanish state is mandating that ISPs implement these blocks or face significant penalties, up to and including imprisonment of responsible individuals. Yes, technically "Spain" is not blocking. ISPs are. It is however the armed agents of "Spain", who will come and violently lock you in a tiny room if you refuse to do as you're told. If you try to resist hard enough, they will simply execute you on the spot.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - otherme123 9mo ago
- perihelions 9mo ago
  An even more apt analogy is France in New Caledonia. Back in 2024, the French territorial government used an anti-terrorism law to enforce DNS blocks in that overseas territory, for the express purpose of suppressing political protests (by New Caledonians angry at the French mainland government). > "Philippe Gomes, the former president of New Caledonia's government, told POLITICO the decision aimed to stop protesters from "organizing reunions and protests" through the app." [0] https://www.politico.eu/article/french-tiktok-ban-new-caledonia-overseas-territory-dangerous-precedent-macron-eu/ https://www.politico.eu/article/french-tiktok-ban-new-caledo... This is the only example I'm aware of (are there others?) of a Western government effecting internet censorship to suppress protests. (Though the article also mentions Macron considering (but rejecting) the same idea in France, to suppress protests following a police shooting. See also[1]) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36599726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36599726 ("Macron floats social media cuts during riots", 105 comments) edit: There was also an incident in San Francisco way back in 2011, [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2879546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2879546 ("San Francisco Subway Muzzles Cell Service During Protest", 113 comments)
  - sofixa 9mo ago
    > for the express purpose of suppressing political protests (by New Caledonians angry at the French mainland government). No, to stop the spread of targeted disinformation by foreign actors stoking those protests to turn into riots. (and if you need any proof, check out the protestors with Azeri flags, in New Caledonia. Azerbaijan's tinpot dictator hates France because France supported Armenia, so he's been trying various ways to undermine France because he's that fragile: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/17/new-caledonia-riots-explainer-azerbaijan-flags-noumea-link https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/17/new-ca... )
    - perihelions 9mo ago
      "aimed to stop protesters from "organizing reunions and protests"" is a direct quote from one of their top politicians. I'm not going to pretend I didn't read it. There's foreign bad-actor misinformation in every country (Iran too!)—it's cynical, and specious, to say that excuses governments who take away their citizens' internet access. New Caledonia admitted specific intent to target "organizing protests". That's exactly the reason why they shouldn't have the power to cut off their internet (though really, no one should). They shouldn't be in that position of power over the protesting faction, because their disagreements are so strong that they can't help but abuse that power. They've delegimitized the protestors; by censoring them, they're not "protecting" them from foreign actors in some well-meaning paternalistic way (their rationalization), they are rather continuing their political battle by other methods. It's an anti-pattern, all over the world right now, that groups of people who start off with irreconcilable political differences, devalue the legitimacy of the other group's speech and their right to speak it. One group calling another "mislead by propaganda" is an aspect of that delegimitization. This pattern needs to be called out and pushed back against, when it's used to rationalize silencing dissent.
- ajjahs 9mo ago
  [dead]
- baxtr 9mo ago
  Downvotes might happen because your comment reads one-sided. What about Russia blocking sites? As of late 2025 and early 2026, Russia has blocked numerous foreign communication, social media, and information services, restricting platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram (partially), Signal, Viber, FaceTime, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Many independent news, VPN services, and foreign websites (e.g., Chess.com) are also inaccessible
  - ajsnigrutin 9mo ago
    But that's my point exactly.... do you consider this to be a good thing? Should EU behave the same as russia or iran? Should those two countries be an "excuse" for us to do it too (hey! russia does it too!)? Should the police in eg. Brussles start shooting at protesting farmers and say "what about iran, they're killing their protesters too!"? If we consider russia bad for doing those blocks above, then we should consider EU being bad when they do it for us.
    - baxtr 9mo ago
      Then it's a misunderstanding and I had misread your original comment. Of course we should not ban anything in the West.
- bananasandrice 9mo ago
  [flagged]
- expedition32 9mo ago
  The difference is that people in my country get to vote. A lot. In the Netherlands GOVERNMENT=THE PEOPLE to a rather problematic degree (if only you knew how bad things really are). If you want to start an argument "the Netherlands is just like Iran" I challenge it with 20 political parties in Parliament. Including a pro Kremlin party lol.
- traceroute66 9mo ago
  > UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off. If you are going to post shit like that, at least get your fucking facts right. Namely that you are three weeks out of date sushine. The idea has been dropped: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3385zrrx73o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3385zrrx73o
  - acka 9mo ago
    Reading comprehension, my friend. The article you linked to is about the dropped plan to require ID for permission to work in the UK. The parent commenter is referring to age verification for accessing adult content using "highly effective age-assurance systems" (such as photo ID cards, biometrics, etc.) under the Online Safety Act 2023, which is still very much in effect.
    - traceroute66 9mo ago
      > under the Online Safety Act 2023, which is still very much in effect. To which I say, the people of the UK are not stupid and know what a VPN is. Its not rocket-science to bypass the ID check requirement.
      - ajsnigrutin 9mo ago
        First you're going to insult me, call me a sunshine, and defend what the UK government is doing, because there's currently a way to bypass a restriction that shouldn't exist implemented this way in the first place? So, by your logic, russian censorship of media is ok too, just use a vpn, right? Chinese firewall? Just use a VPN! Turkey social media blackouts? VPN!
dybber 9mo ago
That would really boost productivity! Not gonna happen.
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  Which country cares about productivity, besides China?
dragonelite 9mo ago
The global cybersphere will split up, the west and other parties have shown they will use social media networks to organize regime change and take over legitimate protests. Especially now that China is taking an ever increasing share of the global information streams. Given the increased panicked the US had about tiktok. Showing the result of the western sponsored genocide in Gaza. They had to enforce ownership handover of tiktok US to a group of US based entities. So i wouldn't be surprised US internet sphere will shrink over time now that China can go on the offensive in the cyber-realm.. The components are already in place just pull the switch so cloudflare has to regulate who gets in and who gets out.
- jimbohn 9mo ago
  When it comes to the internet, it seems to me that "the other parties" here carries a lot of weight when it comes to disinfo, polarizing propaganda, etc.
  - throw310822 9mo ago
    Why, do you think that the US, where all the giant social network companies are based, isn't doing this on a massive scale, much larger than anything Russia or Iran (and probably China for now) could ever hope to do?
    - sofixa 9mo ago
      Because if it did, we'd know about it. If we can get researches from Russia to expose their country's nefarious dealings, at the threat of death, we could easily get French, or German, or Canadian, or British, or American, or Czech researchers or whistleblowers exposing American propaganda campaigns. Hell, look at Twitter/X. It got acquired by a mental guy who was screaming about government propaganda and censorship (while doing Nazi salutes). Do you really think that if there was any government mandate to do anything like what the Russians are doing, he wouldn't have exposed it as "SEE, I TOLD YOU BIG GUBIMNT BAD!!" ?
    - jimbohn 9mo ago
      Because most propaganda I see online seems to have a clear direction, and because of some not-so-recent "scandals" where a bunch of American influencers/grifters were discovered to be paid by russia to incite civil war.

… while every other country waits to see how it goes while drafting plans to emulate this

by weikju 9mo ago

… while every other country waits to see how it goes while drafting plans to emulate this

I mean... EU already blocks eg. some russian sites (some countries more effectively than others)... plus all the chat control pressures every year. Spain is blocking whole blocks of internet during football matches. UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off. But every such country likes pointing fingers at others, "hey, our censorship is not bad, they have more of it!". edit: considering the downvotes, HN is not bothered by our censorship either

buzzerbetrayed 9mo ago
Why during football matches?
- ajsnigrutin 9mo ago
  So people wouldn't stream the games ilegally... the private entity that owns the rights to broadcasting the games can arbitrarily ban whole subnets. the end result is well... not good: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45323856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45323856
  - sigmar 9mo ago
    A company using legal action to protect their IP rights is so different from a theocratic dictatorship shutting down the entire Internet to prevent their overthrow. Perhaps you don't follow the news about Iran but these comments are incredibly daft.
    - ajsnigrutin 9mo ago
      But that's even worse... Iran is a stuck up country with huge political issues, internal and external pressures, outside countries attacking it while internally they're at the cusp of a civil war. Of course they'll shut down the internet, what else do you expect them to do? It's not like they have many options, nor the government trying to stay in power and crush a coup, even if that means blocking the internet, nor the people who are protesting against it and risking their lives. But EU countries should be a bastion of freedom, free speech, free access to information, democracy, human rights, rights to this, rights to that... Why do we, the EU countries have to use the same playbook? Yes, banning the whole internet is in one way worse and in other easier, than just banning a list of sites where people can find a way around it, but again, the difference is just in the quantity, the censorship factor is the same. The government gets scared people will see some other propaganda from the other side, and censors it... and even that is done very selectively (daily mail is still accessible from over here, so are fox news and cnn) With spain it's even worse, because it's not even the government doing it, but the government giving the right of censorship to a private company which clearly abuses that right and the government tolerates this... no court orders, no judges, no way to complain, no fair use, no nothing, a private company decides and the government gives them a blank stamped paper to aprove that. Yes, i know iran has it much worse, but there's nothing we can do about it here, assuming the internet is banned for iranians and they can't read this or comment here. But EU is doing the same, and we've been tolerating it for years... a site here, a site there,... not everything, but censorship is still censorship, no matter how many sites are censored, and there are people from EU here that should argue against censorship, even if it's just a few sites and not all of them.
      - squidbeak 9mo ago
        > It's not like they have many options, nor the government trying to stay in power and crush a coup [..] You are joking: a 'coup'? The protest movement was so large, the government's attempt to crush it killed 30,000 people in 48 hours. https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-senior-officials/ https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-...
    - FilosofumRex 9mo ago
      [flagged]
      - breppp 9mo ago
        A republic with a supreme religious leader who actually decides everything, that fakes elections and has a council of religious leaders that can disqualify any candidate that's without even talking about killing 30,000-40,000 citizens for wanting their rights > It subsidize basic needs of its poorer citizens, such as fuel, bread, housing, education and healthcare. I'd start with supplying basic needs like water and electricity. The actual subsidizing is for the IRGC which steals whatever they can get their hands on so they can be counted on to mass slaughter the people
        21asdffdsa12 9mo ago
        Do not forget funding widespread proxxy wars and terrorism in the region, although that game has many players: Qatar, UAE, Turkey, Egypt..
        FilosofumRex 9mo ago
        [flagged]
        FilosofumRex 9mo ago
        Subsidies are enacted and approved by Parliament and enshrined in the law. IRGC has nothing to do with approval or distribution of subsidies.
        FilosofumRex 9mo ago
        you're absolutely "Right". Iran should hold as many elections as Saudis or UAE, have as many coups by generals as in Egypt and Pakistan, or build as many American military bases as Jordan and Turkey to be considered a republic by your types.
      - ThePowerOfFuet 9mo ago
        >Iran is not a dictatorship lmao
    - freetanga 9mo ago
      The problem itself is not IP protection…. They tried that, and were always chasing behind - servers changed week after week, ban after ban. So, misteriously (suspicions of bribery abound) now they block full blocks of internet preventively, bringing down innocent and paying customers with them. From Law Enforcement to privatized Minority Report. Thats what people dislike. If you are a private entity and loose money to piracy, use the legal framework to solve it. Don’t override it with lobbying
    - lukan 9mo ago
      You don't see a problem if private companies get the right to decide who to block from the internet, without any process?
      - direwolf20 9mo ago
        That's freedom of market. You need to sue your ISP for contract breach, they said they'd provide internet access and didn't.
        lukan 9mo ago
        That market is not really free, but government regulated and mandated and the government says they are fine to do this (as far as I know, I do not live in spain).
        marrs 9mo ago
        If you have to sue your provider just to get a normal service then society has already failed. I can only imagine you're an American for litigation to be your go-to solution.
        direwolf20 9mo ago
        I rarely encounter a company that doesn't scam me to the maximum extent it thinks it can get away with. That extent is determined by how many customers sue them.
        mrguyorama 9mo ago
        Note, litigation being the "go to" solution of the American system is intended. The civil courts were basically supposed to solve all problems. Which is why they work great for rich people. All the memes about America being "litigious" are intentional. It is incredibly difficult to seek preventative justice in the US. The intent is that you must be harmed first and then be made right. It's a system dreamed up by wealthy aristocrats who were openly against slavery but owned people anyway and assholes who had the audacity to claim the constitution was "We the People" even though it excluded most people and was drafted entirely without authority to do so (defensible, the articles of confederation were utterly failing) and purposely built a system where people didn't vote for representation (because they didn't want a society representative of average people) and the few idealists who were far too stupid or gullible to go along with all of this. Tons of them were lawyers. We don't, for example, have an ombudsman I can go to and complain about a business maybe not following the law and get the government to essentially be my advocate. We instead are forced to sue that company, and prove in court, with vastly unequal resources, that we deserve remedy. Our judicial system is also clearly preferential to corporations over people, and refuses to hold corporations to justice, even when they have been objectively found wrong! The jury of her peers awarded the McDonalds hot coffee lady $2.7 million (explicitly "two days of coffee revenue") because there was clear negligence and refusal to act safely after burning tens of other people and being outright warned about their coffee temperature, and the judge decided to unilaterally reduce that payout to half a million! He said the payout "must be reasonably related to the injury" and admitted Mcdonalds had acted recklessly and caused the injury and acted with "wanton and callous behavior" and the judge STILL reduced the clearly valid jury verdict by a huge amount! God forbid a company actually pay for their clear and reckless disregard!
31337Logic 9mo ago
Yeah, you're right. It's totally fair to compare how the EU treats its people to how Iran is treating its people right now. Good job. :-/
- ajsnigrutin 9mo ago
  I live in EU and I oppose internet cenorship, privacy invasion and many other bad things the governments have been doing for years now. I can't do anything about iran, i don't live there, neither does anyone else commenting here it seems... but many of us do live in EU, and are bothered by EU doing the same thing as iran, even if it's on a smaller scale (for now). You can't support censorship at home and then act outraged when someone else just implements more of it... even though some do, as long as the censored things are the things they personally don't like. To be fair, i'm more worried about UK, since it's a "test ground" to see how things work before the bad thing are implemented elsewhere, but either way, in my small country we have a saying, that "people should first sweep infront of their own doorways", and yeah, EU and our censorship is my doorway in this case. TLDR: if we're bothered by internet censorship, we should first stop at 'at home'.
  - Flatterer3544 9mo ago
    If not for EU there would already be multiple states with privacy invasive systems seen in UK.. We are close of getting there and they keep on trying, but so far the blocking states are enough as majority. Sure EU has some fkn horrible sides to it, such as the anonymous vote to get big stuff through when a majority should be enough as democracy depicts, but currently 2 states out of all EU states can block the big decisions...
  - ericmay 9mo ago
    > I can't do anything about iran, i don't live there You also don’t live in the United States, or in Israel or Palestine but folks tend to forget that it seems. But you can do something anyway which is to be aware of the atrocities committed by Iran’s regime, make sure your government is aware of your opinion, you can protest outside the Iranian embassy in your country, help Iranian dissidents, help Iranians find sneaky ways to get internet access, &c. I’m not expecting anyone to do those things but I find this “I don’t live there” argument continue to creep up whenever it comes to Iran but it never enters conversation when it comes to specific other countries. > TLDR: if we're bothered by internet censorship, we should first stop at 'at home'. Sure but you don’t have to focus on one issue at a time. Honestly resorting Internet access in Iran is probably more important than whatever rules and things the EU is implementing because in Iran people are actually dying and you can always change the EU rules back through democratic processes.
walletdrainer 9mo ago
> UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off. There are no ID cards in the UK, so you actually have to get a special jerking off loicense.
- lifestyleguru 9mo ago
  What if someone is not a certified wanker?
  - reactordev 9mo ago
    Head down to your local Tory office and prove it.
    - keysersoze33 9mo ago
      If all else fails, ask for BJ
      - pixelpoet 9mo ago
        They referred me to the BBC
        reactordev 9mo ago
        Old FM department or Business Development & Social Management?
    - jamesbelchamber 9mo ago
      The wanker licensing board defected to Reform last week
- isoprophlex 9mo ago
  I remember giggling at those "oi you got a loicense for that m8??!" memes. Funny, maybe, but not to be taken seriously. Fast forward less than ten years, and here we are.
wartywhoa23 9mo ago
[flagged]
- wewxjfq 9mo ago
  Your upvotes are issued by sheep and wolf in sheep's clothing telling you to not censor propaganda from a country that's been waging war against you.
otherme123 9mo ago
> Spain is blocking whole blocks of internet during football matches. Lets make this clear: "Spain" is not blocking, some ISP companies which have many users ask the judge for permission to block IP ranges because they are streaming football matches. The judge agrees (they don't seem to know how Cloudflare works), so the ISPs are the ones that are blocking their own users to access sites behind Cloudflare. As they have millions of users, the block feels huge, but it is not issued by the government. I am not a customer of those ISP, so my internet isn't disrupted at all during football matches. Some services, like annas-archive and torrent sites, are intermittently blocked, but you can easily avoid the blocks just by switching DNS server to 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8.
- pezgrande 9mo ago
  The fact they allow this sh*t even when it is widely know that is happening and being abused, makes the government also responsible because inaction.
  - otherme123 9mo ago
    One thing is that they facilitate, not by inaction but by allowing judges to allow the blocks, and another different thing is saying that is the state the one who issues the block.
- JasonADrury 9mo ago
  This is not even close to true. The Spanish state is mandating that ISPs implement these blocks or face significant penalties, up to and including imprisonment of responsible individuals. Yes, technically "Spain" is not blocking. ISPs are. It is however the armed agents of "Spain", who will come and violently lock you in a tiny room if you refuse to do as you're told. If you try to resist hard enough, they will simply execute you on the spot.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - otherme123 9mo ago
perihelions 9mo ago
An even more apt analogy is France in New Caledonia. Back in 2024, the French territorial government used an anti-terrorism law to enforce DNS blocks in that overseas territory, for the express purpose of suppressing political protests (by New Caledonians angry at the French mainland government). > "Philippe Gomes, the former president of New Caledonia's government, told POLITICO the decision aimed to stop protesters from "organizing reunions and protests" through the app." [0] https://www.politico.eu/article/french-tiktok-ban-new-caledonia-overseas-territory-dangerous-precedent-macron-eu/ https://www.politico.eu/article/french-tiktok-ban-new-caledo... This is the only example I'm aware of (are there others?) of a Western government effecting internet censorship to suppress protests. (Though the article also mentions Macron considering (but rejecting) the same idea in France, to suppress protests following a police shooting. See also[1]) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36599726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36599726 ("Macron floats social media cuts during riots", 105 comments) edit: There was also an incident in San Francisco way back in 2011, [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2879546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2879546 ("San Francisco Subway Muzzles Cell Service During Protest", 113 comments)
- sofixa 9mo ago
  > for the express purpose of suppressing political protests (by New Caledonians angry at the French mainland government). No, to stop the spread of targeted disinformation by foreign actors stoking those protests to turn into riots. (and if you need any proof, check out the protestors with Azeri flags, in New Caledonia. Azerbaijan's tinpot dictator hates France because France supported Armenia, so he's been trying various ways to undermine France because he's that fragile: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/17/new-caledonia-riots-explainer-azerbaijan-flags-noumea-link https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/17/new-ca... )
  - perihelions 9mo ago
    "aimed to stop protesters from "organizing reunions and protests"" is a direct quote from one of their top politicians. I'm not going to pretend I didn't read it. There's foreign bad-actor misinformation in every country (Iran too!)—it's cynical, and specious, to say that excuses governments who take away their citizens' internet access. New Caledonia admitted specific intent to target "organizing protests". That's exactly the reason why they shouldn't have the power to cut off their internet (though really, no one should). They shouldn't be in that position of power over the protesting faction, because their disagreements are so strong that they can't help but abuse that power. They've delegimitized the protestors; by censoring them, they're not "protecting" them from foreign actors in some well-meaning paternalistic way (their rationalization), they are rather continuing their political battle by other methods. It's an anti-pattern, all over the world right now, that groups of people who start off with irreconcilable political differences, devalue the legitimacy of the other group's speech and their right to speak it. One group calling another "mislead by propaganda" is an aspect of that delegimitization. This pattern needs to be called out and pushed back against, when it's used to rationalize silencing dissent.
ajjahs 9mo ago
[dead]
baxtr 9mo ago
Downvotes might happen because your comment reads one-sided. What about Russia blocking sites? As of late 2025 and early 2026, Russia has blocked numerous foreign communication, social media, and information services, restricting platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram (partially), Signal, Viber, FaceTime, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Many independent news, VPN services, and foreign websites (e.g., Chess.com) are also inaccessible
- ajsnigrutin 9mo ago
  But that's my point exactly.... do you consider this to be a good thing? Should EU behave the same as russia or iran? Should those two countries be an "excuse" for us to do it too (hey! russia does it too!)? Should the police in eg. Brussles start shooting at protesting farmers and say "what about iran, they're killing their protesters too!"? If we consider russia bad for doing those blocks above, then we should consider EU being bad when they do it for us.
  - baxtr 9mo ago
    Then it's a misunderstanding and I had misread your original comment. Of course we should not ban anything in the West.
bananasandrice 9mo ago
[flagged]
expedition32 9mo ago
The difference is that people in my country get to vote. A lot. In the Netherlands GOVERNMENT=THE PEOPLE to a rather problematic degree (if only you knew how bad things really are). If you want to start an argument "the Netherlands is just like Iran" I challenge it with 20 political parties in Parliament. Including a pro Kremlin party lol.
traceroute66 9mo ago
> UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off. If you are going to post shit like that, at least get your fucking facts right. Namely that you are three weeks out of date sushine. The idea has been dropped: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3385zrrx73o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3385zrrx73o
- acka 9mo ago
  Reading comprehension, my friend. The article you linked to is about the dropped plan to require ID for permission to work in the UK. The parent commenter is referring to age verification for accessing adult content using "highly effective age-assurance systems" (such as photo ID cards, biometrics, etc.) under the Online Safety Act 2023, which is still very much in effect.
  - traceroute66 9mo ago
    > under the Online Safety Act 2023, which is still very much in effect. To which I say, the people of the UK are not stupid and know what a VPN is. Its not rocket-science to bypass the ID check requirement.
    - ajsnigrutin 9mo ago
      First you're going to insult me, call me a sunshine, and defend what the UK government is doing, because there's currently a way to bypass a restriction that shouldn't exist implemented this way in the first place? So, by your logic, russian censorship of media is ok too, just use a vpn, right? Chinese firewall? Just use a VPN! Turkey social media blackouts? VPN!

dybber 9mo ago

That would really boost productivity! Not gonna happen.

direwolf20 9mo ago
Which country cares about productivity, besides China?

dragonelite 9mo ago

The global cybersphere will split up, the west and other parties have shown they will use social media networks to organize regime change and take over legitimate protests. Especially now that China is taking an ever increasing share of the global information streams. Given the increased panicked the US had about tiktok. Showing the result of the western sponsored genocide in Gaza. They had to enforce ownership handover of tiktok US to a group of US based entities. So i wouldn't be surprised US internet sphere will shrink over time now that China can go on the offensive in the cyber-realm.. The components are already in place just pull the switch so cloudflare has to regulate who gets in and who gets out.

jimbohn 9mo ago
When it comes to the internet, it seems to me that "the other parties" here carries a lot of weight when it comes to disinfo, polarizing propaganda, etc.
- throw310822 9mo ago
  Why, do you think that the US, where all the giant social network companies are based, isn't doing this on a massive scale, much larger than anything Russia or Iran (and probably China for now) could ever hope to do?
  - sofixa 9mo ago
    Because if it did, we'd know about it. If we can get researches from Russia to expose their country's nefarious dealings, at the threat of death, we could easily get French, or German, or Canadian, or British, or American, or Czech researchers or whistleblowers exposing American propaganda campaigns. Hell, look at Twitter/X. It got acquired by a mental guy who was screaming about government propaganda and censorship (while doing Nazi salutes). Do you really think that if there was any government mandate to do anything like what the Russians are doing, he wouldn't have exposed it as "SEE, I TOLD YOU BIG GUBIMNT BAD!!" ?
  - jimbohn 9mo ago
    Because most propaganda I see online seems to have a clear direction, and because of some not-so-recent "scandals" where a bunch of American influencers/grifters were discovered to be paid by russia to incite civil war.