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Comment by 827a | Hacker News Reader

The UK government just demanded Apple to disable Advanced Data Protection, globally, in order to backdoor the iPhone; and Apple has at least compiled with it for UK users; but no, for sure, its the US Clouds that are unsafe, not because of specific laws or executive orders, but just... vibes. "The vibes are off, we're done" get real.

Romania just annulled a democratic election because of supposed interference from Russia. Some would say that by doing so Russia won anyway, but democracy doesn't seem to be a priority for some European countries. But, sure: Its the United States that presents the greatest danger.

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Only one half of your comment is true.

Election interference does occur, and to protect democracy, courts must act where there is clear evidence.

Or are you referring to Hungary in your second paragraph?

No; Romania [1]. But yes, Hungary also has its own set of problems; Europe has always been allergic to democracy, and its no surprise that allergy would keep rearing its head in the 21st century.

[1] https://theloop.ecpr.eu/the-cancelled-elections-and-the-main...

I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with this reasoning, if it wasn't for the fact they only get involved when it's Russia trying to push the election in a certain direction.

There's countless examples of countries trying to influence the elections of others. I'm from the UK and a notable example that comes up here was when the US president threatened Brits that the UK would be put on the bottom of the list of trade talks if they voted Brexit.

And just recently nearly 100 staff from the UK government were supporting Harris in the US presidential election.

I'd also argue that propagating this idea that people are too stupid to see through the lies and interference in an election undermines the point of democracy. If we cannot trust people to make sound democratic decisions, then why do we even support democracy as a political system? In a democracy sometimes people will be misled. You need to trust that people will ultimately make the right decisions.

People discussing ideas freely on social media isn’t “election interference”.

It actually is in this case, unless you’re using doublespeak.

One thing is for sure: Annulling the results of an election is definitely election interference, unless you're using doublespeak.

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