"Police state" search got censored in Italy | Hacker News Reader

"Police state" search got censored in Italy

28 pointsrichsnipe11 comments

Hello,

In recent years, the Italian government has been applying laws "to ensure security" considered by many different methods to restrict the freedom of citizens, easily condemn at will people considered hostile (as with the new law that allows to arrest anyone who tests positive for substances in the table of illegal substances while driving in any case, without the person being actually altered or alterable) and in fact making Italy more and more a police state. Until some time ago, in fact, searching for "police state" in Italian on Google (and also Bing) you could find pages and articles about it, while today the reference is timid on the part of Wikipedia, for the rest it refers to the concept of "police state" as "state's police", with a subtle but fundamental exchange of meaning.

I cannot interpret this story if nothing else as an act of censorship in the search for a concept online.

"stato di polizia" search: https://ibb.co/20G57Qqr (There is also a strong reference throughout the results to the concept of immigration, a topic dear to the current Italian government)

"police state" search: https://ibb.co/gL2Vp21x

"stato di polizia" news: https://ibb.co/wN4zGGdx

"police state" news: https://ibb.co/SwvQLqXV

We Italians have also lost many possibilities of defense against police abuse, after the elimination of the law against the crime of abuse of power.

I have no idea how to effectively bring this issue to everyone's attention.

> as with the new law that allows to arrest anyone who tests positive for substances in the table of illegal substances while driving in any case, without the person being actually altered or alterable

I think you should also link to something like this to draw a full picture: https://tg24.sky.it/politica/2025/05/07/codice-strada-sostan...

Which says:

> Now, the circular in question has, in fact, disavowed the previous version and clarified that that principle is worthless. In fact, in order for a person to be punishable for driving under the influence of drugs, there must be “a temporal correlation between the intake and driving, which takes the form of an enduring influence of the narcotic or psychotropic substance capable of exerting negative effects on driving ability.”

you can check "Italia è uno stato di polizia" on google, bing and all others search engine, and check the "news" section and you'll find plenty of articles, links, and information. There is no difference in doing it with or without a vpn. I suppose that search is not censored at all. I understand anyway your worries and I share part of them.

> I have no idea how to effectively bring this issue to everyone's attention.

Start an Italian-language blog/Substack about it and promote it to the right audience. If the past 15 years of politics have taught us anything, it's that, for better or worse, citizen bloggers can become quite influential.

Another thing you can do is find an attorney and contact Google's EU office, requesting clarification.

But consider the possibility this this is not a conspiracy. It could just be generic enshittification, as is known to have affected Google in recent years. If you search with quotes, you'll find that you get different and better results.

It's just a turf war, the mafia are loosing relavance so they bought off the seach engine companys, well of course you cant prove that, but sufice it to say that they know some low people in high places, the last thing they need is people running to the police when they need something fixed.

Got a problem, go to the Police. Now you got 2 problems :)

Yes, if you use the quotes you get the old results. But this is the point: many users are unaware of this possibility and take this result for granted, especially if they do not know that until recently, instead, search engines understood the request well without inverting the words. I know it seems like a paranoid conspiracy, but also the fact that it makes reference to immigration seems to me a very tendentious answer, in addition to the fact that the news contains articles ONLY from police stations (very strange indeed, not even a newspaper).

Incidentally, we also know from Google and Apple emails that some Italian journalists critical of the government have been reported to have been infected with high-level government spyware (Paragon), so it's not that unthinkable.

Finally, I wouldn't know how to consistently run a solely political blog, I would just like citizens to discover by experimenting for themselves with the search for this change and take note of it.

Thank you

> I would just like citizens to discover by experimenting for themselves with the search for this change and take note of it.

I'm not sure that's reasonable. People's situation, skills, and interests vary.

I just know that people are so scared of losing democracy that they can't accept when they have the loss of their freedom in front of them. And even posting about it is difficult, now all the forums work like reddit, you talk about flowers and the moderators delete your post. I just want to not feel complicit in all this by watching.

And I thought they made sure to not end up being a police state after they made sure Le Pen wouldn't be able to hold a public office for some time.

The award for confusing Italy with France goes to...

You can say "It's the EU, it's all the same!" in your acceptance speech.

Le Pen is french. She lives in France. She is in a French political party. France is not Italy. Paris is french and Rome is Italian.

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