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Comment by josefrichter | Hacker News Reader

I’m in the EU and haven’t encountered any of these, except the copyright restrictions - which is really a different matter.

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I'm in the UK and can't access https://imgur.com/ - an American service that now refuses to serve content to Britain because "On September 30, 2025, Imgur blocked users from the United Kingdom in response to a potential fine from the Information Commissioner's Office regarding its handling of children's personal data". I presume that means OSA.

It does lend credibility to the blocks when it's US companies trying to dodge fines while mishandling PII. The suggestion of using a US freedom gov to dodge US-based self-censorship is as ironic as it is stupid when the real solution is pay the fine and handle the data properly.

Why would Imgur cave in and pay the fine when it's easier to block UK users? This is political battle for you to fight or sooner than later all you will be able to access is BBC state propaganda.

Imgur self-blocking is nothing to do with propaganda, but it does make the internet worse for it with all many image now not showing. In any case, why should I go to bat for Imgur if they are mishandling the PII of children? The fact that so many images are centralised in a single (now unreliable) service is a prime example of the enshittification of the common web. Services should be hosting their own media files not relying on a third party.

if you are in Germany, try opening ria.ru. It’s not like we are deprived of something worthy - it is Russian propaganda after all, but it tells enough about freedom of speech.

I am. It just opens. But I can't read russian ^^

Looks like German firewall has more holes than Russian or Chinese one. Are you using VPN? It’s still blocked for me.

Germany uses DNS blocks.. So you can circumvent the censorship by using a DNS provider different than the DNS provider of your ISP.

There is no such thing like a German firewall.

I'm in Czechia, next to Germany. Just opened Ria Novosti and Russia Today in two other tabs, nothing blocked here.

With the German border maybe 10 minutes to the east of me, I can open that website just fine. Seems like an exclusively German problem, not a European one.

I don't think foreign propaganda was ever exempt from freedom of speech here in Europe (except the countries and regimes which lacked free speech, of course), it just wasn't much of a problem before the internet made opinions so easy to broadcast.

Unfortunately EU is now developing practice of extrajudicial sanctions on EU and national level, targeting both media and individuals expressing points of views alternative to position of Brussels or Berlin. Vance was surprisingly right back then in Munich.

It’s not just Russian propaganda, but now it is conveniently used as a blanket cover to sanction even EU citizens (see case of German journalist Hüseyin Doğru, whose only connection to Russia was a hosting of his pro-Palestinian outlet on a platform affiliated with RT).

These are very broad generalizations and accusations based on very few individual cases, each of which has its own specific context. And "expressing points of view alternative to position of Brussels and Berlin" sounds like typical propaganda nonsense. Vance couldn't be further from truth, and his remarks sound even more ridiculous in the light of what's happening on US soil.

Do you have any specific argument about why that specific context matters and how it can justify violation of basic human rights? or it is just a dismissal with „broad generalization“?

Works for me.

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