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Comment by ascendantlogic | Hacker News Reader

Politicians do not care about the ramifications of this. They only care about granting themselves power over who sees what when through the guise of combating hate speech, terrorism, child porn, etc. Posting a blog about this will change nothing.

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It’s really hopeless each time one realizes how French and German politicians perceive the internet. For them the internet is not synonymous with the freedom of creativity and expression, but with the freedom to restrain and to control.

Germany is ruled by liberal conservatives for well over a decade. While there is some maliciousness and desire to expand control, I see mostly the lashing out in an attempt to retain the control the state used to have. The internet brings an unprecedented amount of freedom, and that weakens the state. Where previously you could wiretap the phone of a criminal, today you have no way to read his whatsapp. They don't know how to deal with that. Being a conservative party with a lot of old voters they try to slow the change down, but their failure to understand the internet leads to ridiculous attempts.

Just as a reminder, the ruling party, specifically our chancellor Merkel, said: "the Internet is Neuland (uncharted territory) for all of us". And that was only 6 years ago.

Was she wrong? The "modern" internet (fast, for everyone, modern sites) was only about a decade old at the time. That's a mere moment in Germany's history

Many EU countries with much younger democracies behave much more mature regarding the internet. Some silly slogan is a miserable explanation of the state of affairs.

It's the voters will that allows them to use the guise of comabting hate speech, terrorism, child porn etc. Blogging about the negative repercussions of this behaviour help inform the opinions of voters and is exactly what you should do in a democracy.

I am sorry but thanks to our love of social media being a 'platform of all' they are able to dictate what is a 'credible/trusted source'

https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/trusted-sources/

This is a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.

A social media monopoly cannot be a "platform for all", by definition.

But that's an argument against monopolies, not against social media per se.

EU population does not feel the EU is their government, therefore they don't vote in the elections, therefore effectively leaving that government to do what it wants.

The EU is a large and diverse place, implying that there is such a thing as an "EU population" and that you can judge them as a group is not a good way to start a cohesive argument.

This is not a judgment nor an implication. It's a widely reported fact that turnout is low. So the 'the EU population' can indeed be characterized in this way.

https://www.politico.eu/interactive/voters-turnout-in-the-eu... I can't get this to work but I gather the figures are not impressive.

So do you think none of those people actually care about combating hate speech, terrorism, child porn, etc? Or do you think they just see these things as usual tools to get power - and to what end exactly?

No, there are definitely people who care about those things and those are things that should definitely be cracked down on. But human nature always prevails and the power hungry always want more power. "Won't you think of the children" is sort of a punchline for any sort of barely-masked power grab legislation that has gone through in the last few decades.

I suspect laziness is a major factor. Half assed keyword searches and threatening emails are easy to implement. A real process with reasonable review and court oversight would take a lot of work.

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