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Comment by NooneAtAll3 | Hacker News Reader

the goal was to publicly display european censorship and to take down its moral "high ground"

it succeeded

It failed. The outcome was europeans see “yet another nonsense” coming from the US. Also, it barely made the news because of other nonsense coming from the US and generally that’s limited to “international news”.

Also, we don’t actually have censorship in Europe, not in the way the US is trying to suggest.

Yet, your ISPs don't give you access to the full Internet. First it's porn (age verification), then it's soccer, then it's social media (ID verification), then it's libraries. Soon, you even stuff that you take for granted, such as playing an online game, may require age/ID verification. At this rate, all you will be able to access soon will be center-left Euro propaganda.

The ISPs do what our elected governments direct them to do. It’s how democracy works. If you don’t like what people are voting for, get into politics and talk to your community. Or at least email your MEP. There is no conspiracy here.

Cute that you think that's how it works. I guess you're also thinking everyone that voted for the current administration agrees with them on everything they do and voted them in exactly for that. I am at least glad you didn't say if you don't like how it works, move elsewhere.

I know that’s how it works and I also know it’s not a zero sum game. That’s why every law or policy gets time for comments and debate and sometimes policy gets revised. It’s how governance works.

But if you feel you have the perfect solutions, then by all means get yourself on the ballot so we can finally see the light.

Sorry you have to deal with our culture warriors, cheers. It's funny to watch someone get a 1st grade instruction in civics while raving.

What websites a person is allowed to access should not be a matter of debate, it is for the individual to decide. Other people's opinions are not relevant. Even if 99% of people think a person should not be able to access a website, it is still their right to do so and they have no need to justify it.

Democracy is for deciding what to do with taxpayer money. It shouldn't be a mechanism by which people can vote to take away other people's freedoms.

Does that apply to websites full of CSAM, or that sell for-hire animal torture real-time streaming services, or that provide hitman hiring services, or...

I think your view on how government and the internet works is somewhat outdated. Social media is not just "what websites a person is allowed access to" and government is so much more than what we do with taxpayer money.

The US is evidently a poor example of what a fully formed government is so I wouldn't use that as a basis for one's world view.

> Democracy is for deciding what to do with taxpayer money. It shouldn't be a mechanism by which people can vote to take away other people's freedoms.

This is a child-like argument. Pretty much every law such as requiring you to wear a seatbelt takes away your freedoms.

Are you forgetting how the Americans blocked Stormfront and Silk Road? They don't have full access to the Internet either, they're just not so obviously totalitarian about it as the Europeans.

Stormfront was deplatformed, not blocked by ISPs. Silk Road wasn't deplatformed or blocked, the owner got his ass arrested and thrown in prison.

Many parts of the US require age verification for porn as well.

It's only UK that does that, and they're not in the EU. Many us states do the same, and the administration wants to ban porn completely and jail those who make it.

You talking about Texas right? Half the states in the us block and age gate those sites.

"The situation for free speech in Europe is even worse than I thought"

https://eternallyradicalidea.com/p/the-situation-for-free-sp...

I read through this drivel and it's nothing more than conjecture and anecdotes from someone who seems never to have been to Europe. Nearly every example of his critique is of the UK, not Europe as a whole, and each of them has plenty of counterexamples of the same thing happening in the US.

In short: nonsense. Completely made up narrative filled with quotes from same-belief people, claiming moral outrage about issues they either don't understand or wilfully misrepresent.

I'm pretty sure the President and CEO of the leading free expression organization today understands what he's talking about and is fully aware that there are bad things happening in this vein in the US.

The guy who literally actively helped to create the current USA situation? Yeah. All the while he pointificated about free speech, he had clear favorites whose speech mattered and who should shut up.

When the left is censoring more (as was true in the run-up to Trump's election), of course a free speech organization will be opposing left-wing censorship more frequently.

Censorship doesn't help your team, just the opposite. https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/wo...

Trump's election was a reaction to left-wing cancel culture. If people had listened to FIRE, and refuted bad ideas instead of censoring them, maybe Trump wouldn't have been elected: https://qr.ae/pYCVXO

Do you have any specific disagreements you can share with the criticism of the actual content that the parent comment gave, or do you think that the author's job title is more important than whether what they said is actually correct?

The parent comment in question has essentially zero in the way of supporting evidence. The author's first claim happened to be verifiable. I attempted to verify it, and it was pretty clearly false.

What's asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

I guess I might not have been clear. I'm specifically wondering about this part, which is what I was referring to about the critique they gave of the actual content:

> Nearly every example of his critique is of the UK, not Europe as a whole, and each of them has plenty of counterexamples of the same thing happening in the US.

Separated from the ad hominems on both sides, it seems like a pretty reasonable criticism to me. It doesn't seem obvious to me that it should be dismissed as irrelevant.

Well, I mean, I think it's pretty obvious that when someone claims that the author is "claiming moral outrage about issues they either don't understand or wilfully misrepresent" then what he does for a living matters.

Sure, but if I'm trying to verify the accuracy of their claims, their job both giving them potential subject expertise but also potential bias towards making the exact claims that are being criticized, it doesn't really clear anything up, so I'm back to trying to understand if there's any counterargument to the criticism other than their pedigree.

>Nearly every example of his critique is of the UK

I just used a word count tool to sanity-check this claim. It said there are 1061 words about the UK and 1684 words about non-UK countries.

You appear to be fibbing about easy-to-check facts. Anyone who trusts you on your harder-to-verify claims is a fool.

There seems to be a bit of a pattern I've noticed with Europeans on HN. They criticize the US constantly, yet flip out instantly when their countries are criticized, to the point of reflexively lying about stuff which is easily checkable.

I can sorta understand lying about claims which are hard to verify. It's distasteful, but I can understand why a certain type of person would do it. But, why lie about stuff which takes under 60 seconds to check? What are you trying to accomplish?

BTW, I hope you aren't in Germany. It's a crime to insult someone or spread malicious gossip online in Germany. Your usage of "drivel" might be considered an insult which could get your phone confiscated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bMzFDpfDwc#t=3m

Do Europeans see "yet another nonsense" coming from the US or coming from the EU?

The US.

> Also, we don’t actually have censorship in Europe

Of course you do. If you think it does not exist the brainwashing has worked on you.

There was a comma, after which it said "not in the way the US is trying to suggest." You evidently missed that part, or are you saying that it is in exactly the way the US is trying to suggest?

I do not see it succeeding. I genuinely see it as an attempt to make child porn more available and to promote nazi. And considering the latter is basically official usa policy, europe still keeps high moral ground ... despite its own actual faults which are not this.

Maybe in the US. In Europe it never convinced anyone, as it never would since anything minimally related to Trump is discarded automatically.

Also because internet censorship and censorship in general has largely become normalized in Europe.

US is infinitely worse than EU but selectively based on what ruling party wants you to both see and post. try to get some coverage from gaza or west bank and/or post something slightly critical of israel and see how that works out for you. EU, China… are at least up front about what they want to censor and why, US censors every fucking imaginable thing while people are too stupid to see it and go “oh my, look how bad EU/China are…”

US censors every fucking imaginable thing while people are too stupid to see it and go “oh my, look how bad EU/China are

No, we do not. You've been lied to. You should go back to whoever told you that, ask them why, and ask them not to do it again.

I mean there are an increasing number of states that are requiring age gating for pornography access for sites like PornHub. It's only a matter of time before that age gating expands to non-pornographic entities, which is the ultimate goal of the plan.

Unfortunately you're probably not wrong, but the fact remains, none of this is happening at a national level. Yet.

shit is and has been happening at the national level for a while. gave you an example you can take for a spin (would not advise you do though)

If you're not in the US, you probably don't understand how our system of federalism works. We have 50 different states, some of which are basically run by the Christian equivalent of the Taliban or the Shiite mullahs of Iran. These state governments often come up with goofy, performative laws such as age verification that are normally set aside by higher courts as First Amendment violations.

I say "normally" because the same religious factions are rapidly expanding their dominance over those very courts. Absolutely no historical freedoms can be taken for granted in the US right now. Nevertheless, the fact is, there is no national Internet censorship regime including age verification. No such laws are currently under consideration at the national level.

(Yes, you can be prosecuted for downloading or distributing child pornography, but that is not an Internet-specific issue, and there is no other country I'm aware of where such laws are not also on the books.)

Edit: if you are willing to move the goalposts that far, there is probably no way to convince you that the facts are as stated. Nevertheless... those are the facts. For further reading, look up the term "prior restraint." That's what's actually different in the US versus other countries that use technical means to enforce legal restrictions on Internet speech.

What are you smoking? Access to porn has been legally restricted in every state to 18+ for decades. Adding the Internet only made things easier because nobody enforced it the same way they were already enforcing brick and mortar stores that had the exact same materials.

Likewise, there are plenty of rules and regulations around adult content on broadcast airwaves managed by the FCC.

Challenging adult content as "free speech" has happened and already settled precedent at the Supreme Court.

Yes, individual states are still trying to figure out how to actually best enforce the laws on the books at the Internet level, but there's no pretending that it is just a few states that actually have those laws.

I AM in the USA. And yes, we are heavily censored, but not simply in content. Its a financial censorship, or cut off from banking, or payment processing. And being the "Home of the (everything costs so damned much) Free", starves all initiatives that threaten companies or government.

Wikileaks is one such. Operation chokepoint, another. OFAC sanctions. Holder v Humanitarian Law Project. Knight First Amendment Institute.

But thats the point - USA speech says you can say "Hitler did nothing wrong" and its legal. But you infringe on Powers that Be, and money is involved, your speech via money will quickly be eliminated.

It is hard to discuss these things with people that post such comments as the one you replying to... off the deep ledge where there is no coming back from

(Shrug) If you're not already posting from some Eastern European or Russian hellhole, you need to spend some time in places such as those to gain some perspective.

Or, in general, any other country that people die trying to get out of, as opposed to trying to get into.

keep shrugging but your mind has been totally polluted to think you live in some "free" society where you have "rights and shit" and oh other countries don't have that. but this is good training you went through, you have been told these lies all your life and you believe in them strongly - and that is fine, it is what it is.

the truth of course is much harsher and hopefully you'll never run into it but you absolutely do not live in a free society, the censorship is all around you (if you care to look deeper), the freedoms you think you have are daily being taken away, you can't carry a bottle of water or a f'ing toothpaste onto the airplane (and apparently we have 4th amendment?)... - this is all normalized in the US but we still think we are "free" and your best is "see how many people are flocking to come here, we must be great..."!!!! :) quite something...

Not since the Biden administration, anyway. During covid they made sure social media site black-holed information they didn't want people to see.

Another lie. The government has the same right to politely request sites to remove disinformation as you and I do. No one "made sure" of any such thing.

Eh. Asking sites to remove information while concurrently litigating against them is very "nice site you have there, shame if something were to happen to it."

The real issue here is that accusations of hypocrisy are misdirection. Two wrongs don't make a right and it's not a competition to see which government can screw people worse.

If your murder rate is up 300% and your defense is "well what about the murder rate in <other country>", the most conspicuous thing about that response is that it contains zero absolution from your murder rate being up 300%. The same is true of the censorship rate.

Just like someone walking into a bank with a shotgun can politely ask for money?

A nation whose public health agencies don't fight the deliberate spread of disinformation is a very sick nation, or soon will be.

The problem is any mechanism you put into place to fight "disinformation" will be used to suppress information the government doesn't like.

Covid is a great example, since most of the disinformation was coming from public health authorities, and people who were skeptical about vaccine safety and effectiveness were ruthlessly suppressed online. People who turned out to be right.

People who turned out to be right about jack shit.

When you peddle horse paste during a pandemic, you can expect some pushback. It's part of what my taxes pay for.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. You're confidently calling Ivermectin, a drug that's been used in human medicine for decades, "horse paste". You're just ingesting propaganda without putting any thought into it.

That's kind of a juvenile view of how power works.

but is prevalent in the America... that is what our society is going down the path it is going...

Da, tovarisch.

You'd almost be better off in Russia (since you already speak the language) - a lot more freedom there than here with us

no one told me silly :)

> try to get some coverage from gaza or west bank and/or post something slightly critical of israel and see how that works out for you.

On a US ISP aljazeera.com loads right up, as does The Guardian and RT.

No it isn't. For example in my EU country I can see the list of all websites blocked, and all of them are for piracy/copyright infringement and illegal betting (legal betting is allowed, but must register and pay taxes). That and rt.com. I can also say/post whatever I want in social media except stalk and harass individual people. There is no "censorship" at all compared to virtually anywhere else in the world, US included.

That's normalization.

> That and ...

lenta.ru ? (aha, management personnel has been replaced 2014 [1])

[1] https://t.me/systemasystema/89 [RU]

Blocking RT is not censorship?

Nor is sanctioning your own journalists? Or a former intelligence agent, a Swiss national who worked for NATO, and now lives in Belgium?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46969722

You link to a comment which lists a number of russian-paid propaganda actors spreading lies and hate. They have not been censored by a government but by courts which based on evidence identified breaches of law. It's something very different from censorship.

RT was not censored by any courts of law. It was censored by an unelected executive branch.

Also it's not "censored in Europe" I am in Switzerland and can still access it

So say when China censors USAian and European sites, that's authoritarian, but when Europe does it it's very different from censorship.

Got it.

Col Jacques Baud is the exception to your rant. He's a retired swiss intelligence officer who served with NATO.

He didn't even quote a Russian source in his books, has refused to appear on any Russian media channel.

Now explain why he's sanctioned.

Pensioner called Merz "pinoccio," now faces police investigation.

Even our "authoritarian" PM Modi ignores petty nonsense like this. You people need to wake up.

https://www.stimme.de/heilbronn/stadt-heilbronn/friedrich-me...

Blocking someone who's sole purpose is to destabilise your region is wrong? You are an idiot if you think that one should let them spread their lies and anti EU propaganda freely.

Imagine what the Russian government tells its citizens about (blocked) European and American foreign news, and then you will see why this is a terrible argument. The mark of a free country is that nothing is blocked, because the citizens can be trusted to think.

And y64 can see where that th5n25ng br64ght the us. Rampant Russian disinfo helped push them into the mess they are in. No thanks, I still stand by that some things needs to be banned, be it foreign disinformation campaigns or nazis eg.

> No it isn't.

Yes it is.

> For example in my EU country I can see the list of all websites blocked, and all of them are for piracy/copyright infringement and illegal betting (legal betting is allowed, but must register and pay taxes). That and rt.com.

You provided a counter-example that disproves your claim in the next sentence. I'm just flabbergasted.

Blocking a propaganda outlet by a hostile foreign government is not censorship and certainly not "general censorship that is normalised."

If you know that a foreign actor intentionally tries to undermine your government you honestly think the right course of action is to just relax and let it happen? Absurd.

Europe has seen it's share of dictators and knows that a democracy needs to also protect itself.

A regime dictating what its people may and may not read about is exactly censorship.

> all of them are for piracy/copyright infringement and illegal betting

Does that include all of the sites that share the same IP addresses as those sites?

For that matter, you're posting a reply to an article about a European country blocking the website of a generic US government VPN service, and the service isn't even operating yet. So not only have they graduated to censoring VPNs, they're now censoring a website whose only content is political criticism of their other censorship.

There are no IP bans ...

Well apparently there are, because huge swaths of CDN PoP IPs are getting banned/blocked in Europe especially during La Liga matches. How are we explaining this?

They explain it by plugging their ears, chanting "LA LA LA LA", rocking back and forth, and telling themselves (and everyone else) that the US is worse.

I'd love to see the link to your country's blocklist.

Not op, but here: https://www.gespa.ch/en/fighting-illegal-gambling/access-blo...

Let's be real, this is just protectionism. The most popular prediction market in the world is DNS-blocked, in the hopes of redirecting you to some crappy online casinos instead.

Good lord. Your response only proved his statement. Blocking rt.com glaringly showcases the eye-rolling, ridiculous and "moving to dangerous-territory" censorship that the EU is performing - my opinion as a citizen of an Asian nation.

How much dangerous censorship does your Asian nation carry out? India, for example, blocks thousands of websites - no sex work for them - and regularly shuts down the Internet entirely.

Why else do you think I mentioned that the EU is on a dangerous path ? I utterly stand against govt censorship.

But corporate censorship by companies larger and more powerful than most countries with no democratic accountability is ok?

Govt is far worse since Corporates can't throw you in jail for social media posts - which is what is happening.

Why is the response to all of this a giant ad hominem. “Oh but <region> does it too!” - how does this help me as an European?

Ah yes, there is a foreign government sponsored campaign to deligitimise and spread lies about your country and government. And because you are a democracy you should just accept it and let lies and propaganda flood your country? Can't even make these entities follow the law as they operate outside your legal framework. So let them lie and manipulate people while claiming to be "news.l".

This is how democracy dies - when we stop caring about truth. This is how fox ruined the US, when lies becomes fine just because they are "opinion" or "entertainment".

Hate to break it to you, but European countries have equivalent foreign news propaganda services: Deutsche Welle & France24, for example. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If European countries weren't such nanny states, they would trust in their populations' critical thinking skills.

Not true. Going to assume you are from Spain. Try posting a recording of the police. Try posting something praising terrorism. Try a joke about victims of terrorism. A humour magazine called Mongolia has been fined with 40,000€ for publishing a joke about Ortega Cano. Try offending religion publicly. All of that is allowed in the US.

Every country in Europe has some restraint to freedom of expression (lots of them ban either nazi or communist symbols, for starters). US has none.

"censorship" (aka not allowing hate speech from Nazis)

While conveniently ignoring or gaslighting everyone about this admins own censorship.

>ignoring or gaslighting everyone

Where's the "gaslighting"?

implying that the EU is currently worse on censorship when this admin is utilizing their power to silence critics.

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