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Comment by xorvoid | Hacker News Reader

"oh the indignity of not having internet for 118 hours, personally didn't have it for much of my childhood"

I understand what you're trying to say and I agree with that, but this is actually different. This is not an inconvenience as much a state censorship. It's the state literally disallowing people talking to each other. It's Orwellian: "we don't like what you're talking about, so we're going to make you completely unable to"

It's not the 80s or 90s anymore. The internet is rhe global backbone of how people communicate with each other. Shutting down access is a clear action of censorship and oppression.

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> This is not an inconvenience as much a state censorship

To wit: notice how few pictures we're seeing from there (a few were trickling in before the crackdown).

US also censors information and also cancel and ban free speech. Of course US is a lot more subtle as it’s not the government directly controlling media but a group of very influential and wealthy people that usually have the interest of the capitalist class.

The US does this a bit, but even with that suppression of free speech, even with most mass media outlets being owned by oligarchs that are subservient to the President, the internet is still going. Europe has penalties for Nazi speech, yet the internet is still going there.

There's no comparison to what's going on in these countries to what's going on in Iran. Trying to "what about" with the US censorship of, say, the majority political opinion in a city by cutting off all federal funds that were previously flowing to the city is not very relevant. Yes, it's bad, but here we are talking about it on the Internet!

Every actor have it’s own means and tools, Iranian regime is weak and don’t have the capability to stop foreign influence effectively as US or China and other state so they use the crude methods at their disposal.

If US government was in weaker state it would take more radical measures.

As person who was in blackout in Jan 2022 in Kazakhstan, I’ll say it’s very unpleasant situation when you known that some people go into protests. Some security service building was looted of arms. Police nowhere to be seen. No communications and you don’t know if should you do some limited self protection available in form of running or not. So even if government control what they say, it does not control your ability to find out what’s going on via other people. That’s big deal for your physical security and wellbeing

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