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Comment by DarkWiiPlayer | Hacker News Reader

Over the years I've come to believe that an overwhelming amount of people would actually prefer a censored internet. Some might want "obscene" material gone, others would love to eradicate "fake news" and a few people might still be around that would instantly jump at any chance to purge the internet of blasphemy against their sky-daddy of choice.

I used to think censorship was really just an instrument of the few to control the masses, but I'm starting to believe that we who just don't want a censored internet are the minority.

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I support the tiktok ban because it’s about economic fairness. American tech companies can’t fairly compete in China. But until now, Chinese tech companies _can_. This gives inherent advantages to Chinese tech companies.

It's a complicated situation in this case. My comment was more about censoring the internet in general, as that seems to be the more important part, with the individual case being more of an excuse to address this issue yet again.

I mostly think the tiktok ban is justified, for one because china has been playing unfair for ages now and because it is a national security problem when the chinese government could, at any moment, give itself access to this much information that could be used to blackmail large numbers of people.

You're absolutely right. Just think what havok China could wreak, with access to all those millions of duck-pouting orange-faced selfies and stultifyingly illiterate vacuous conversations, conducted entirely through the medium of txt spk and emojis.

It doesn't bear thinking about!

The problem is them having access to e.g. location data of everyone with TikTok installed.

Why is that a problem? Is tracking orange-faced empty-headed narcissists an essential military strategy now?

But they don't. TikTok doesn't request or require location access. I know, I use it.

> American tech companies can’t fairly compete in China.

They absolutely can if they adhere to the law. LinkedIn and GitHub are thriving in China. Google and Facebook voluntarily pulled out.

Well, the law in China makes things pretty unfair from the start.

The point is that there is a law that you can try to adhere to. Not the case here, where Trump is just doing a straight-up ban.

China doesn’t have rule of law. They have rule by law, but that’s quite different: as long as google or Facebook can’t impress the official class, the officials will find a law to keep them out. They can’t actually go to court and dispute the decision (which doesn’t officially exist anyways), and I’m sure Tiktok and Tencent are going to court over this (and they even have a good chance of even winning).

Let’s put it this way: the Chinese Constitution makes strong guarantees about freedom of speech and press. But it doesn’t matter since there is no court to enforce any of that, China lacks any checks and balances and officials mostly rule by fiat and hierarchy.

You could just as well be describing DC, except FAANG have 100x more power Inside The Beltway than inside First Ring Road.

When understanding the government never look at what they say only look at what they do.

They say it's about the Chinese invading privacy and giving them selves an unfair advantage.

They could act like it and promote American encrypted chat apps like Signal but they fund the NSA to undercut American tech, encryption and privacy apps like Signal and resort to the same tyranny as china, the very thing they claim to be trying to prevent.

It was never about the Chinese it was always about justifying their current tyranny.

That's what they're saying to justify it. That and the evergreen appeal to "security reasons". But these are the same people who, every few years, try to ban strong encryption. The next time they bring that up — which you'd better believe they will immediately the next time the right news story presents itself — they're going to use this as precedent. "See, we've been banning technology for all these reasons, what's one more little step? It's for national security."

Forget economics or national security in the traditional sense of data privacy or anything like that.

We can not have a major social network that is algorithmically driven controlled by a hostile foreign power. Full stop. Imagine if this were 40 years ago and tiktok was owned by the Soviets. Completely absurd.

I agree. Facebook/Instagram/LinkedIn etc should not be controlled by the US in the EU.

That doesn't even say why - just appeal to tradition essentially and past sentiments. Frankly it applies equally to gay marriage and adoption.

This. I also am old enough to remember when people were upset at the web giants replacing the old decentralized internet- "what will happen if one day they'll start censoring stuff?". And now all you hear is people getting mad at internet giants because they don't censor enough.

Internet habits also changed from an active research to eating from the table that someone prepared for you. Even if you do active research now, you inevitably end up on prepared and diversity-mixed pages. Crowd and free write access spoil everything, not platforms themselves. In a sense, the old internet had less free speech, as you couldn't do off-topic and not be fined.

>>Some might want "obscene" material gone, others would love to eradicate "fake news" and a few people might still be around that would instantly jump at any chance to purge the internet of blasphemy against their sky-daddy of choice.

It worked exactly like that before. It is our nature. We want to believe in different/opposite things and we are fine with chatting on opposite topics without going to do a real harm. That's psychology of escape, like an evening boxing or walking alone makes you calmer at the morning. You cannot make everyone happy in a single overpopulated diverse group, because it is much easier to fall into -isms and blow off the steam at the world instead of doing that at your gym. Free speech in www is basically moot.

I wonder to what extent it's just new people joining the internet, where late-adopters are more likely to be more risk-averse by nature.

US Internet penetration was only 50% in 2000, now up to 78%: https://www.statista.com/statistics/185700/percentage-of-adu...

In 1995 it was less than 10%.

We already had that with AOL. You could still access the regular internet but at the time a lot of people stayed around the AOL homepage and AOL sites. It was great for older people and children.

The difference between censorship and elective filtering involves choice and power.

>I'm starting to believe that we who just don't want a censored internet are the minority.

Condolences on your epiphany. Now you realize that common people are the problem, not the rulers who are just being opportunistic.

Well said. I once heard it described that, as a parent, having a home with open access to the Internet is like unscrewing the hinges and removing the door to your child’s bedroom, removing the front door to the house, and leaving the lights on all night.

I don’t want racists to have free reign on Facebook, and I don’t want Presidents to arbitrarily ban social networks they don’t like.

And if you say it’s impossible to have both: until 24h or so ago, we did have it both. And in 24 weeks, we will have it again.

I have jet to see any politician voluntarily give away power.

Other presidents might not use it or abuse it as much as Trump, but you are kidding yourself If you think that genie is getting back in the bottle.

PS: I am not US citizen so just observer in this shit show that will affect us all.

I have jet to see any politician voluntarily give away power.

It's good thing that more than just the US presidency is up for grabs in November then! To those who can vote in that election, find out where your potential legislative representatives stand on issues related to executive power. They have the ability to limit it, whether the president volunteers or not.

> I don’t want racists to have free reign on Facebook

And who says they should?

1. You can just argue against them, that's how free speech ideally works.

2. Being technically allowed to say anything online does not and should not imply any legal immunity. Beyond that, if they're not committing any crimes, racists are allowed to express their opinions online, whether we like it or not.

3. Facebook, so long as they admit they're not a neutral platform, are allowed to enforce their own community guidelines. If they, without government intervention decide to ban racists, that's on them. Unless the government prevents you from building an alternative service, of course.

> And in 24 weeks, we will have it again.

We will not, because such a move will be seen as pro-China and it’s not worth the political risk as the American population is fairly xenophobic.

The Democrats, if they win, will almost certainly quietly ignore this legislation.

Of course most people will ask for more protection against fears that propaganda distilled in their mind, that's precisely its point.

The world is a scary place I think a lot of people would accept prison openly if it gave them freedom from their responsibility and safety from the real world. I see this constantly every where people will stick with an abusive partner because of fear they will find no one better. Trump will win the election because people are scared of corona and will want to support the status quo or normalcy no matter what the normalcy is.

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