Traditionally in the west, censorship was through copyright rights. It wasn’t considered censorship if you do it for money and business.
Fast forward to today, Americans are pushing you for self censorship through force and denial(if you don’t speak in line with the admin, you will have hard time in your US public sector job or if you want to travel to US) and Europeans find all kind of other ways.
Tough new world order. I used to be advocating for resolution through legal/political means, but now I'm inclined to believe that the solution must be technological because everybody wants security and control. Nobody wants loose ends. Everyone is terrified of some group of people will do something to them, freedom is out of fashion and those claiming otherwise want freedom for themselves only. The guy who says want to make humans interplanetary species is posing with people detained for traveling on the planet without permission. Just forget about it.
So this website itself is about censorship, therefore people interested in this shouldn’t be using websites. New tools are needed, the mainstream will be controlled the way the local hegemony sees it fit.
> I used to be advocating for resolution through legal means, but now I inclined to believe that the solution must be technological because everybody wants security and control.
I came to a similar conclusion, what happened in the 90s and early 2000s is since the govs had restricted freedom in the physical/real world a lot of young people took refuge in the Internet.
It became harder for an individual to build his own house or start a business, but you could make a website pretty much free from regulations and impediments.
But governments and a lot of interested parties slowly invested the Internet and now we are complaining it sucks. The common Internet and web suck anyway now because it is full of bots, AI generated content, hard to search and you need to prove you are a human every 5 minutes.
We need to create new networks and places just because it is fun and it will take some time for the govs to follow us there: freenet, yggdrasil, alfis, gemini, reticulum, B.A.T.M.A.N, etc.
I'll have to check out gemini again sometime. I tried it out a couple of years ago and really liked how it had that wild west feel of the old-web.
I’m in the U.S. and am not aligned with what’s happening to freedom.
Taking a step back, I support the ideals (the good ones at least) of what I’d perceived that our country was founded on. I also support the individual people in our police and military, but not the fascist orders that they’re having to fulfill. I think the majority of these people joined to uphold law and order or to protect all people in-general, I don’t think they want to be doing these things some of them are being ordered to do, and I think that continuing to do bad things is how fascists are able to take hold.
This is a predicament, because it’s like you’re driving the bus and a fascist jumps into your lap with a gun to your head and takes the wheel, while he has others put guns to the head of your family and others on the bus. No one asked for this, and I still feel like there are many that believe that there is nothing we can do and that it will take care of itself. But the gerrymandering law that just passed in Texas, on top of everything else that was already in place, is another warning that this won’t go away on its own.
I get what you’re saying about sending people to space, but I think that being able to get off our big rock if we can do so without destroying other life and other places in the universe is worth time and effort. Even natives that lived with the land and life that existed had to move sometimes, life and all that exists physically that has space is to some degree nomadic.
I doubt a lot of the individuals doing these actions, like police or ICE, don’t believe in this. They signed up for these jobs, and votes last year show many of them heartily endorse and believe in these policies.
The national guard, though, probably didn’t sign up to be the backdrop for political ads and a lot of FBI, DEA, etc. agents signed up to work on major crimes rather than busting someone’s landscaper.
Folks doing those duties and jobs should know that these organizations are parts of the executive role and remit of the president. They signed up to do whatever the president orders them to do. Officers have a somewhat different oath, but the chain of command is still abundantly clear to all involved.
Yes, they should know that now, in 2025. But last year, or 10, 20, 30 years ago? Nobody joined a federal law enforcement agency expecting the president to utilize them for political goals. And for sure nobody joining the national guard was expecting that.
I hope that someday we will put this genie back in the bottle and return to the previous normal.
> Nobody joined a federal law enforcement agency expecting the president to utilize them for political goals. And for sure nobody joining the national guard was expecting that.
I don't buy this. These folks literally swear an oath. National Guard troops are literally flag bearers. Those US flag patches on their uniforms mean that they don't get to decide that an order that is otherwise lawful is "political" in nature and therefore invalid. If they don't want to do their jobs, as ordered, they should resign. These are not private employees, they are public servants.
I agree with you that they swore to uphold lawful orders. Yes, that is drilled into us from the first day of bootcamp, over and over and over and over. But you were saying they signed up with the expectation of being political pawns. That is not the argument you seem to be making now.
> But you were saying they signed up with the expectation of being political pawns. That is not the argument you seem to be making now.
I am still making that argument. They don’t have the authority to decide if they’re pawns, political or otherwise. They’re part of an unbroken chain of command. I don’t see the contradiction that you are implying, as I’m not trying to change my position to my reading.
I can’t speak to realities perhaps as you can if you have served, as I have not served, though I am seeking to do so. No disrespect to you or to any service member intended by anything I have written.
I'll take one last shot at clarifying my viewpoint, but then we'll just have to let this one rest ;-).
I think people who joined the military, or the FBI, or some other federal agency, expected to be serving their country, not the whims of the sitting president. They went in to catch criminals, or defend the nation in combat, etc. Of course they know that orders are orders, but it's perfectly reasonable, before 2025, to assume that the commander-in-chief is generally working in the best interests of the country, and what you will be ordered to do will therefore be serving that interest.
I don't get how knowing that they could be ordered to do something legal-but-blatantly-political means that they should have expected that eventuality. That has not been broadly true in the recent history of this country; the military I was in considered itself a professional organization and we hated politics.
I agree with your post, but this part is kind of wishy-washy.
> I don't get how knowing that they could be ordered to do something legal-but-blatantly-political means that they should have expected that eventuality.
Most folks who are in the military or are considering it have heard of the honor guard. This is the most obviously political post one can have, but it is arguably one of the most important, due to the virtues such a post embodies, and the highly visible, public nature of the post.
Many folks would leap out of their seat to have such a post, though I can see how some would rather decline if given the option, due to the importance of the job and perhaps their own feelings of unsuitability, or desire to not interact with the public, or whatever.
I think it's an inherently political job, and everyone should know that going in. What you do in uniform reflects directly on the nation whose flag your uniform is emblazoned with.
> I don’t think they want to be doing these things some of them are being ordered to do, and I think that continuing to do bad things is how fascists are able to take hold.
Check out "Ordinary Men" by Christopher R. Browning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_R._Browning#Ordina...
Also check out this one, written to counter Ordinary Men.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler%27s_Willing_Executioner...
It's not well-regarded, but I think that one thing the book tries to bring to light is the context and valence of values of the times, and the political furor of that era which directly contributed to the hatred and violence. I'm not sure that it's fair to say that they were just following orders without looking at the broader social context that people were living in up to the point that those orders were given.
I think that his concept of "eliminationist racism" is somewhat accurate, as I have known race-based supremacists in real life, and have had them protest/counter-protest public events I have been involved with providing security for.
I don't support racial supremacy or hatred in any way, in case that was ambiguous or unclear from context.
>"I think the majority of these people joined to uphold law and order or to protect all people in-general"
What delectable naivete.
Cops don't become psychopaths rather: Psychopaths become cops.
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I’d caution against taking simplistic views and recommend peaking behind the veil.
Id start by looking into the deportees, people like Abreco Garcia — working men and women who contributed to their society, and all those who received pardons — between rapists, violent criminals, and abusers, you’d have a hard time replacing many of the deportees.
Simplistic views like equating everything you don't like with fascism?
That’s a very tired position… the irony of it all is that this view is also simplistic and unworthy of HN.
How about we do better and say trying to steel man the claim and then refute? Of course one has to understand the claims before they can steelman the argument.
Peeking*
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Interesting point. There’s wide acceptance of commercial censorship, but censorship for the common good (rightfully) feels like a slippery slope. But are they actually so different? Couldn’t the latter be done in a way just as purposeful? Or does it always lead to loss of freedom disproportional to its goals?
I don't think that there's difference, just implementation details differ. Youtube was blocked in Turkey for many years because someone from Germany uploaded defamatory videos about Ataturk(illegal in TR) and it was considered protected speech and Germany & Google refused deleting those. The situation was resolved when someone copyrighted Ataturk in Germany and made Youtube remove these videos.
Besides copyright, especially among Americans, I find that its completely O.K. to censor content it is bad for business. A major one is censorship in order to be advertisement friendly but anything flies, even the guy owns the thing and can do whatever he pleases is good enough for many(slightly controversial).
This is a myth: in Germany, as in many other countries, copyright covers only specific expression; you cannot copyright either the name of a historical person or a topic of discourse. The videos were briefly taken down as an automatic response to a complaint, but it seems the complaint was not upheld and the videos were restored.
At the time, Germany had a law censoring insulting comments about foreign heads of state, but that only applied to living ones (and maybe only those in office at the time?) That law was repealed in 2018.
The videos remained blocked in Turkey, but on account of a specific law banning criticism of Ataturk, not copyright.
Okay, how this changes the core argument? The videos were not taken down briefly because they did not comply with the Turkish law that protects Ataturk from defamation but for the claim that they violated someones commercial interests.
As the claim you made about copyright being used to take down a video was completely false, how did it contribute to anything?
The video wasn't taken down over commercial interests. They were taken down because some old law prohibited insults at representatives of other nations, with whom Germany has diplomatic relationships.
https://archive.is/wWvwM
What is censorship for the "common" good? The point being that censorship is a top-down thing; it is not a "common" thing by definition.
Definition of Common good is doing what the political establishment sees as good for preserving their power.
It's not what's good for you, it's what's good for them.
This is some weird revisionism. The definition of a common good is what's good for a community.
Your definition is weird idealism from the past that doesn't work in today's corrupt political landscape.
Just because politicians are misusing a word to justify corruption doesn't mean the word doesn't have an actual meaning.
There's this weird effect I've noticed where people act like words don't have meanings any more. I don't know what to call it.
What about all the propaganda sites you like?
Would you ban all propaganda? Russian propaganda? Propaganda from countries engaged in illegal wars? How many social media or news sites survive? Heck, how many sites that allow comments and user interaction survive?
Yours is the "think of the children" argument, makes you feel warm and fuzzy when it aligns with your interests but you won't have a leg to stand on by the time it's used against you. Banning is just sweeping some of the trash under the carpet. The ones wielding the ban hammer don't care that most of the trash is still out in the open (social media?), they just need to open the door to arbitrary banning. The ones applauding the ban hammer are lacking the same critical thing that would otherwise handle propaganda and misinformation very well: education.
If you want your child to not smoke you don't just hide the cigarette pack on a higher shelf, you teach them what smoking is and does.
Meanwhile all the RT type crap is flooding social media under thousands of names. But that's fine as long as enough rubes are tricked into thinking banning one site did anything to solve the propaganda issue.
We have to stop rejecting the evidence of our eyes and ears. Propaganda is everywhere. That is a fact. Some of it is destroying the country. That is a fact. We either deal with it or accept the destruction of the country. That is a fact. Your choice is to accept the destruction of the country. That is a fact.
>We either deal with it or accept the destruction of the country. That is a fact.
No, it's a false binary choice presented by you in which the only outcomes are "dealing with it" (severe overreach) or the destruction of the country.
Blocking RT is a very light reach. If you believe the lightest of reaches is already a severe overreach then you are making it binary and polarized, not me.
Is your comment propaganda?
It’s just not as black-and-white as you say. Propaganda is doing a lot of harm to democracy and freedom in my country and the EU on a daily basis. Should we invest in education (that is generally already reasonably good, IIUC)? Should we leave it to commercial journalism, even the best of which are moving to clickbait headlines? Should we do nothing?
So then let me ask you, do you feel like arbitrarily banning sites worked? Are we having less of a propaganda and misinformation as we are going ahead with the bans? Because if it's not actually working it sounds a lot like "it's not helping but at least it looks like we're doing something".
The problem is just getting bigger because 1) we aren't actually doing anything else (real) about it and 2) we even actively allow propaganda and misinformation on so many other channels it's laughable.
I said above, the people doing the banning just need a vehicle to carry their interests and justify their banning powers. Since they don't care about the problem itself, they don't care about any of the real measures that could tackle it. They pick the only one which gives them what they really want: power to arbitrarily control information. Russia is a great excuse today (and honestly, almost throughout their history) but it will be used against you tomorrow.
You don't even have to dig too far to see the exact same type of propaganda freely spread on X or Facebook, where the people actually are. RT is happily active there. Far right Musk is there. Can you even pretend that banning the rt.com site in Germany does anything towards the goal of curbing disinformation?
> "Propaganda is doing a lot of harm to democracy and freedom"
What's "freedom" mean if not the right to read any publication you want, including (especially!*) media from hostile foreign countries? It's cynical to attack core civil liberties and say that you are doing so in defense of liberty.
*This is the most obvious thing in the world, IMHO, if you look at the general category, and ask yourself what you think about it when the actors are switched around. If China bans its citizens from reading the New York Times (it does), is that a human rights violation—or is it a simple exercise of sovereignty? When North Korea sends people into labor camps for possessing South Korean television shows (it does), is there a colorable case that *their* national security justifies that? Or is that totally out of the question?
One'd have to twist themselves into pretzels to plead exceptionalism for their own country doing anything of this category.
(There's a further subtext that anyone on HN knows how to trivially circumvent such blocks, so, these rules inherently can never apply to HN commenters, ourselves—it's always other people, we'd wish to apply these rules to).
I think that freedom includes, for example, the right not to be shot dead. When someone is using speech to cause people to be shot dead then we have to weigh which freedom is more important and I happen to think that not being shot is more important. If there not also your opinion, fine, you can go to America where speech is considered more important.
You don't want to live in America because it's dystopic and collapsing? Strange. Strange that there's a correlation between countries that hold your opinions and dystopia and collapse. One might even be lead to think that principles held by dystopic countries that collapse might be bad principles to build a country on. But those who promoter those principles told me to reject the evidence of my eyes and ears.
For one it runs into paradox of tolerance problems, for another it fallaciously relies on a "marketplace of ideas" to resolve friction which, despite the bumper sticker term, is not a real mechanism.
It's been a longstanding part of the fascist playbook to turn the norms of liberalism against itself, advocating for "free speech" when it helps actively amplify their message to audiences, and having no hesitation to abandon those purported principles once in power and able to censor opponents. Poof, there goes your free speech.
Principle agnostic approaches to freedom of expression lead to the collapse of democracies. Happened in Hungary, almost happened in Poland, and it's unfolding in the U.S. The point isn't that these idea's "win" in a marketplace of ideas but that they mobilize violent anti-democratic capacity.
> If you want your child to not smoke you don't just hide the cigarette pack in a higher shelf, you teach them what smoking is and does.
> just
So... you do both?
Y'all never made homeless people walk into the tobacco store to get cigs for you when you were kids? Or anyone who would do it for a quick buck.
The fact that some kids will still find ways to get them would be at least partially addressed by the "education" part of GP's comment. Even then, of course, some kids will still start smoking. Is that some kind of argument that we shouldn't do anything, or...?
> Is that some kind of argument that we shouldn't do anything, or...?
You keep trying to make it sound like we are doing "both". In reality we aren't doing the thing that works, and keep doing the thing that doesn't. The proof is that we live in a world with more disinformation on more channels than ever, while education is cratering.
So I guess the question is why are you pretending we're doing something useful about this? Why are you pretending the useless measure we keep applying needs to be applied nonetheless? Who convinced you that banning solves the problem when reality shows things getting worse and that if we pretend we "do both" it's as if we actually did?
Thank you for answering, pretty much my thoughts.
We do both, yet it does not work, so I ask the parent, now what do you suggest?
>door to arbitrary banning
lol the US has had that door removed
We do accept „censorship“ if it follows due process based on clear and well-intended laws. Think taking down piracy sites, child porn, slander.
But CUII is formed by a private oligopoly, with anonymous judges, implementing vague rules, trying to keep secret even what they block. All while limiting what the vast majority of Germans (who don’t know what DNS is) can access on the internet. IMO that’s the issue.
Commercial censorship is worse.
I see no way to have censorship and freedom and common good at the same time, so good of society is out of question - unless you don't value freedom at all.
It is a tool that entrenches current powers that be, system wise. Who decides what the "common" good is? the one in power.
It also hides societal problems and signals that could be used for policymaking.
The acceptance of censorship honestly scares me, and i grew up on stories of oppressive communist regime - full of censorship, secret police etc.
and frankly, commercial censorship might be even worse - it is a "for profit" enterprise, common good be damned.
and one last thing - even if you fully trust your current government, you're just one elections away from something vastly different. They will have access to the same powers that you've granted them(indirectly, by voting).
So you don't believe child porn should be illegal?
Everyone believes in censorship for the common good. People don't agree what should be censored for the common good.
Going straight for the loaded question and making extra assumptions? nice.
the issue with it isn't just in itself, but the fact that there's no way to make it without abuse.
> So you don't believe child porn should be illegal?
The Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse strike again!
It's a serious question - can you answer it?
If you believe nothing should be censored, then you believe child porn shouldn't be censored, so please either square that circle, or weaken the argument to "I believe this thing shouldn't be censored"
Child abuse is already illegal. Law enforcement tracks down creator? Good. Court orders website owner to take down material? Good. ISP preemptively decides what to block? Bad.
CP is often used as an "I win" card in this kind of arguments, as it can stir up emotions in the general public, in favor of ever expanding scope of surveillance and censorship. We should be extra aware of this.
You still haven't answered the question that I actually asked.
I didn't say "should child abuse be illegal?". I said "should child porn be illegal?".
You said it's good if a court orders the website owner to block the material, i.e. censors it, so I assume you're pro-censorship for child porn and likely also support jail time for those who possess it.
In which case, please do not claim to oppose all censorship.
imho that is just silly ... I can see various ways censorship and freedom and common good at the same time. Actually, I can imagine different set ups where this could work...
But then, you have to define these things. E.g.: freedom of person "A" to kill person "B" infringes on person "B" freedom of come and go and not be killed (by "A" or anyone else) ... so what is freedom. "Common good" is even more complicated ... who should defined it ? And how ?
On the other topic, I for one think that censorship of AI generated content and fake news, as well as AI generated ordering of results should be censored. But it's not that easy, and implementing that is an even bigger can of worms.
the issue is how do you prove the content was written by AI?
> But then, you have to define these things. E.g.: freedom of person "A" to kill person "B" infringes on person "B" freedom of come and go and not be killed (by "A" or anyone else) ... so what is freedom. "Common good" is even more complicated ... who should defined it ? And how ?
even worse - how do you make sure the definition of such terms stays up to date with changing times?
> So this website itself is about censorship, therefore people interested in this shouldn’t be using websites. New tools are needed, the mainstream will be controlled the way the local hegemony sees it fit.
It's tough to imagine what this might look like. I suspect it's too late.
Device attestation is becoming more prevalent, and required for increasingly more functionality. Passkeys are breathing down our necks.
Alternate protocols can only exist if the corporate and governmental powers look the other way. We have Signal and VPNs and BitTorrent and tor, but for how long?
And moreover, does it even matter what protocols we want to use, if most of us use devices that are fully controlled by the tech giants who want to do the censorship?
I don't know if there are particular good ground-level solutions to infrastructure (mesh networks can have their application but are difficult to drive critical mass adoption and every square inch of mesh network has "last mile" problems).
Ideally you would have good government involvement to enforce traffic neutrality, but that's out the door. I'm sure this has been talked to death but ground level P2P infrastructure is what I would be rooting for.
>Traditionally in the west censorship was through copyright rights. It wasn’t considered censorship if you do it for money and business.
To me, those 2 sentences contradict each other. Doing it through copyright rights, and doing it for money and business sound pretty much the same to me. But you're saying that traditionally one wasn't considered censorship, but the other was considered censorship.
They are saying that it is censorship, it just largely wasn't (and isn't) considered such.
Copyright is not censorship.
Censorship is state/company mandated retraction or blockage of certain information. Copyright is state/company mandated blocking of certain forms of expression.
Copyright permits you to publish any idea you so desire, only that you don't plagiarize someone else while doing so. (Which is always possible, as the fair-use doctrine is a thing)
> Copyright is not censorship.
Copyright law is absolutely a justification of and mechanism for censorship.
It may arguably be socially beneficial censorship, but then that's what is claimed by proponents of every basis and means of censorship.
Copyright is definitely not censorship, Copyright is the framework implemented to create intellectual properties to allow for commercial exploitation of text, sound, images and some other intellectual output(details depend on jurisdiction).
Removal of content due to copyrights is censorship, you are being denied to spread or consume certain content. It's not different than defining that some content is protected with "national security" or however else you define it and then prevent the spread and consumption of it. Same thing, different excuse.
You can use placeholders to see it more clearly, i.e. "This content is X therefore in accordance to the law needs to be removed, failure to do so may lead to prosecution and penalties of Y"
You can replace X with anything, including "copyrighted material", "support for Hamas terrorism", "hate speech", "defamation of our glorious leader","communist propaganda", "capitalist propaganda", "self harm".
Is the removal of any content for any reason "censorship"? I don't think that fits conventional usage of the term, and broadening the scope of the word to that level removes much of its usefulness.
If I steal an object, and the government takes that object away from me, would you call that government action "theft"?
> Is the removal of any content for any reason "censorship"? I don't think that fits conventional usage of the term
I think censorship is generally already considered to be any suppression of speech/communication/information. There are forms of censorship that many consider to be fine/justified, like taking down libel or removing inappropriate language in songs played on the radio, but it'd still conventionally be considered "censored".
The threat of 10 years in prison under the DMCA for providing information that lets people jailbreak/repair/reverse-engineer their own devices definitely fits the bill of censorship to me.
> If I steal an object, and the government takes that object away from me, would you call that government action "theft"?
If you see some state/company secret that you weren't supposed to, and the government prevents you communicating about it, I'd say that's a form of censorship. I don't think it can be analogized to stealing an object in a meaningful way.
> If you see some state/company secret that you weren't supposed to...
Indeed, but that's not really what we are talking about with piracy, is it? State secrets and copyrighted material are clearly different things.
Yes it is censorship. A 3rd party decides what you can consume, the only difference between instances is that you may or may not agree with that.
I don't want to go into the copyright discussion. The only thing I will tell you is this and I won't follow up: Piracy is not theft, it's something else and removal of content to elevate the claimed harm is still censorship. Other censorship types all claim greater good too, the "good guys" in this digital world are not just the copyright lawyers.
I am not saying this from anti-copyright perspective, I'm not anti-copyright although I have issues with it and IMHO needs a reform.
> The only thing I will tell you is this and I won't follow up
Good faith dialogue is not possible under these self-imposed constraints.
Yes, and yes. Property is theft. Monopoly on objects which have virtually zero cost to be duplicated can't be justified by any moral ground, so it's basically only possible with corrupted mind enforcing this as social policy using psychological manipulation since garden, and every brutal means that can impose them in the obey or suffer dichotomy mindset.
You believing all property is theft is very avant-garde of you, but at the same time it is not a stance the vast majority of the world agrees with (including Germany), so it hardly seems relevant to a constructive conversation centered around the behavior of German ISPs.
It's not avant-garde, the expression in this form for what I know was coined by the 19th century German philosopher Max Stirner.
The nub of the issue though is not really if something is theft on a legal definitional level. Laws themselves are extremely rarely enacted by direct decisions of those who are commanded to follow them. so they don't reflect what the vast majority of people would consider moral, which often include reciprocity, fairness, and staying beneficial to the society as a whole rather than benefit a tiny minority with highly detrimental consequences for the rest of people.
Copyright protects random individuals in the same way it protects corporations.
Sounds like "Weapons protects random knife holders in the same way it protects military–industrial complexes."
Not sure I follow. Weapons don't protect the military-industrial complex in the same way. Guns do protect random individuals in the same way they protect military soldiers though.
> i don't think that fits conventional usage of the term
Then I think it's on you to provide an alternative definition to the one in the dictionary:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship
I'm very curious as to what you think the word means.
Which of these definitions do you think supports your case?
The most relevant Merriam Webster definition, which is actually under "censor (verb)", I reproduce here:
> to examine in order to suppress (see suppress sense 2) or delete anything considered objectionable
Piracy is not typically considered bad due to being "objectionable", it is considered bad because many people/societies consider it equivalent to theft. You can obviously stretch the definition of objectionable to mean that, but it is on you to demonstrate that is a reasonable stretch. Blocking out sex scenes from a movie and removing pirated materials are obviously different actions, and this definition clearly refers to the former.
Something that annoys me is that OONI (which collects internet censorship data) only considers censorship of things like Twitter, Wikipedia, opposition political parties, Tiananmen Square, etc and Tor. It doesn't consider copyright censorship as censorship.
> freedom is out of fashion and those claiming otherwise want freedom for themselves only.
What a fun way to completely invalidate anyone who doesn't agree with you that "freedom is out of fashion"!
Yes, pre-empt the opposition Rumsfeld style and you ain't gotta worry about anyone taking that position any time soon #chat-with-ai
There is no technological solution. Only a political one. And I tell you already: voting is useless.
> And I tell you already: voting is useless.
If a low six figure number of people in a handful of states had voted last fall, none of the lawlessness that we’ve seen this year would have happened. The people telling you that voting is useless are enjoying the fruits of suckers believing them.
> If a low six figure number of people in a handful of states
The key part being "in a handful of states". There are many states in the country in which your vote is all but meaningless at the federal level. The Electoral College + relentless Gerrymandering that has been done over the past decades ensures that only a small fraction of eligible voters can cast meaningful votes. Makes it much easier to target and propagadandize those smaller groups. We saw it play out with Cambridge Analytica, but there hasn't been another "scandal" of that sort because it's just established practice now. Everyone has their hand in the pot doing the same thing, it's all above belt.
You should still vote, because you can enact change at the local + state levels, but the levers of federal power have been taken from the people.
You appear to be acknowledging that voting does matter, contrary to the previous sweeping claim.
Second, while some states may be unlikely to change their choice of president or senator, the local level matters quite a lot AND that’s where electoral reform will happen. If you don’t like the two party status quo, if you don’t like the electoral college, giving up on voting ensures defeat whereas supporting things like ranked-choice voting or the The National Popular Vote reform.
I kind of agree but think the upshot is exactly the reverse. First, swing states do matter as you acknowledge, which has exactly the opposite implication. Second, yes, by all means let's move beyond the Electoral college. There are organizations working to get a majority to sign the popular vote interstate compact. Check if your state is signed on and if not, I promise there's an org working on it that needs your help.
See? Same facts, but culminating in a call to action based on the premise that is affirmative of the value of democracy. If there was one person who mobilized this way for every ten who gave up in resignation it would be done already. But the battle against hedonic skepticism is hard.
> voting is useless
That also happens to be what the people in power would like you to believe.
How can you say that. Look at Trump.
I think this "derelicta" is actually advocating for Trumps position here so I bet "derelicta" has already had a look at Trump lol
I am not. I just don't see a difference between Trump and Biden. Or Merz and Scholz. Or Lepen and Macron. All these people serve Capital, and you'd be very wrong to believe I stand with capitalists.
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Calling someone who buys a platform and amplifies nazis, white nationalists and groups while sequestering marginalized groups of people free speech is basically 1984 double speak.
Calling people from other countries "savages from primitive cultures" is textbook hardcore racism.
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Would be very interested in hearing what's your definition of racism.
Textbook: discrimination (=unequal treatment) on the basis of race.
And I suppose you don't fall into that definition because you discriminate not based on their race but on their culture?
Of course, who doesn't?
Would you like people who think raping 12-year-olds is fine because their prophet did it, living in your neighborhood, and going from 10% to 90% of the local population?
Some cultures are just better than others. Some are downright evil.
These two comments are basically verbatim textbook lines from what white supremacists say as well as people who champion separating races and encourage racially segregated states.
This is not an argument.
Which part of that do you think deserves an argument?
If “racially segregated white supremacy” means we accept any race and nationality as long as they respect and are aligned with our cultural and moral norms… then 100% sign me up!
Culture is essentially always a nonsense purity test to rationalize things that have no other arguments. No one needs to respect whatever idea of culture you have in your head and based on your comments I hope they don't.
People need to obey laws, not whatever morals you want to pick and choose for others to accept.
Also when someone says you are repeating white nationalist talking points verbatim, your response should be 'I didn't realize that', not 'sign me up'.
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None of what you said is true.
Everything you put here could be a cut and paste from comments on white nationalist and neo nazi forums.
So, hardcore misoginy from Japan, among lolicon it's fine to you. And children marriage in the US, no issues with that, neither.
What does the political situation in America have to do with the topic of German Internet censorship?
The current US administration even called out the EU countries for excessive censorship so they have nothing to do with this.
Why can't people stay on topic without bringing Trump in the discussion every 5 minutes?