Australia and UK might soon go down this path.
Something quite depressing is if we (HN crowd) find workarounds, most regular folks won't have the budget/expertise to do so, so citizen journalism will have been successfully muted by government / big media.
I would have laughed in your face if you wrote this comment merely 6 months ago. Now I'm just depressed. (UK)
How were you not aware of UK precedents in surveillance and blocking Internet connections before 6 months ago?
In my books, the UK is the father of Orwellian censorship and surveillance, they just didn't get down to do it completely (yet).
America's Founders saw civil rights as inherent in the Constitution's framework, rooted in natural law. They added the Bill of Rights as an explicit bulwark. That's why we have the 1st Amendment's free speech, and if that falls, the 2nd Amendment ensures we have guns.
How's that working for you at the moment?
Sorry for the snide comment, but considering the last 6 - 8 months in the US, at least from what is being reported in the outside world, the 1st amendment doesn't seem to be providing much in the way of protection, and unless I'm missing something the general public doesn't seem to have the level of interest that would be required for your 2nd amendment to play out in any meaningful way.
The United States, uniquely, guards speech under its 1A, excepting only direct calls to violence. A hypothetical like "we ought to hang <person>, but the police would stop us, so have to draw a new plan first" is protected, a case study in law schools for where liberty draws its line.
If you suppress the avenues for peaceful political change, your courting violent revolution. History bears this out. Each, in its moment, seemed an unthinkable leap—overthrowing monarchs or empires—yet each remade its world.
The saying that history rhymes, not repeats, points to immutable human behavior.
Today, revolutionary pressures simmer. The U.S. saw a peaceful political shift in 2024, enabled by free speech's safety valve. Elsewhere, without such freedoms, violence fills the void. I pray other nations find paths to renewal without bloodshed, but history's lessons are not optimistic.
It’s working fantastic. US media is great at generating hysteria (competitive market pressures in the war for attention), but the US is at essentially very little risk for speech suppression at the level of the UK right now.
UK too, and concerned. I agree that amendment 1 and 2 provisions effectively underpin individual freedom in the US due to founder perspicacity. My fear re US constitutional provision is on separation of powers, and transfer of power. Fortunately Pence held to the constitution. Nobody ever willingly takes their hands of the levers of power!
Yeah just physical suppression with active military patrolling major cities.
> It’s working fantastic.
The ignorance of what's been happening the last few months is ridiculous. Trump and his people have successfully pressured, or denied access, or removed security clearances, or demonetized (public broadcasting), or directly fired, or just called out to cause a hate-storm from his supporters, companies, organizations, individuals.
Oh sure, it is different from the UK: Instead of technical blocks and surveillance this administration targets people and organizations directly.
https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2025/paramount...
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/11/us-journalist-dropp...
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/07/media/trump-cnn-press-con...
https://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/11/the-media-fe...
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/01/g-s1-51489/voice-of-america-b...
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/corporate-media-caves-t...
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I think John Bolton would disagree with you.
Only to watch the GOP completely disregard every aspect of it.
Don't worry. You'll call us conspiracy theories once you get used to the new goalposts and we warn you about the next thing.
How about instead of being depressed you start being vocal and defiant?
You know what, I think I've become lethargic after all the backwards garbage going on in my country attacking my way of life on all fronts - from rampant crime to government censorship. Your comment just gave me a kick up the ass. I'm gonna try and get some local stuff going in opposition to this lunacy.
When ES leaked his info to the Guardian people, they could still (2013) use the Guardian's US base to publish, protected by the US' stronger freedom of speech laws. Now, in 2025, if the same were to happen again, I'm not sure that would work quite the same way, with Trump aggressively taking American citizens' rights away.
Maybe The Guardian should open a branch in Sealand...
It was David Graeber that said we should be wary of places like The Guardian. They are a wolf in sheeps clothing. Used a lot of the more liberal momentum of the early 2010s combined with promoting some of the more left leaning writters to gain a fair bit of clout. But underneath, they will conform to the power structures if it comes down to survival. Alas, they nay not be a Sealand edition although that would be neat.
This was made really obvious since the Gaza genocide began, the guardian was pushing propaganda really hard like everybody else, but now public opinion has shifted enough to the point that continued total denial of reality would cost the guardian more credibility so there was a noticable shift in the way they talk about it now. This way they can preserve some credibility for the next time they need to push propaganda on other fronts.
in the US the NYT is similar, they will sometimes allow stuff get published to manufacture credibility for when they actually need it. Like see the Iraq war for example.
No American citizens’ rights have been taken away or can be taken away by a President.
We have whistleblowers and leakers from the administration itself on a literal weekly basis, our own Department of State actively funds Signal and Tor, our media has been heavily criticizing Trump and his allies for years. A couple organizations got hit with lawsuits for publishing misinformation or skirting campaign law, but that’s about it.
They tried to make flag burning illegal - which is illegal in Mexico, most of South America, all of Asia, and most of Europe - and it was shot down almost immediately as even that comes under 1st amendment rights.
Please don’t lump us into the same bucket as the UK. We may have a sharply divided electorate but we don’t have a failing state!
sorry but we are not like Europe, yes the US is backsliding but the notion that the Guardian would be blocked from publishing any article is absurd on face
In oz personally and yes, I warned folks of this a few years back, especially in the 12 months or so. Every time I was met with a fair bit of push back.
They would argue back on technical merits, I was talking political, a politics doesn't give a damn about the tech. We have slowly been going down this path for a while now.
“The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia,” - PM Malcolm Turnbull in 2017.
Don't worry, you shouldn't underestimate the capability of society.
I grew up in a pretty deprived area of the UK, and we all knew "a guy" who could get you access to free cable, or shim your electric line to bypass the meter, or get you pirated CD's and VHS' and whatever.
There will always be "that guy down the pub" selling raspberry pi's with some deranged outdated firmware that runs a proxy for everything in the house or whatever. To be honest with you, I might end up being that guy for a bunch of people once I'm laid off from tech like the rest. :)
Normally I would agree with you, but the ability to pull this kind of thing off hinges on there being enough shadows that the Eye doesn't look at for prolonged periods of time. And the overall trajectory of technological advance lately is such that those shadows are rapidly shrinking. First it was the street cameras (and UK is already one of the most enthusiastic adopters in the world). And now comes AI which can automatically sift through all the mined data, performing sentiment analysis etc. I feel that the time will come pretty soon when "a guy" will need to be so adept at concealing the tracks in order to avoid detection that most people wouldn't have access to one.
I wouldn’t worry about it.
They can barely handle wolf-whistlers let alone pedophile rape gangs consisting of the lowest IQ dregs of our society.
I know it’s only painfully stupid people who think the law is stupid, but dodgy Dave down the way tends to fly under the radar. Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many of them.
One of the problems with authoritarianism is that even though most dodgy Daves will be fine because the political apparatus doesn't have the time or energy to arrest everyone for everything, they retain the ability to arrest anyone for anything.
The moment your dodgy Dave offends your local cadre, even for reasons entirely other than being dodgy, they'll throw the book at him. And because there is now unpredictability around who will be arrested and for what reason, it acts as a chilling effect for everyone who values some degree of stability in their lives. So the arc of dodgy Daves bends toward compliance.
Very well explained
It's not that they couldn't handle the rape gangs; it's that they turned a blind eye towards them.
The eye doesn't care as long as you're not politically efficient in opposing their narratives or power.
Authoritarianism in the UK doesn't correlate with crime. The economy does.
The point of these things is not really to help citizens. "there's no money for that" like there's no money for healthcare or education (although there is for bombings in foreign countries). The point is protecting power from any threat that could mount against it.
I think both sides of this are fair. Power is interested in stability of itself, to keeps its back to the wall so that nobody can sneak up on it. But also political power has teamed up with corporate power/determination to create a far more nasty beast.
Seeing companies like Palantir (and many lesser known ones) buddy up to everyone that wants it, its a clear statement on how they want to monitor and control the populace.
Long term I don't think it can be done, but the pain mid term can be vast.
That absolutely sounds like a world I should be worried about, where our only choices are dodgy ones
Don't worry, you shouldn't underestimate the capability of society.
You should be worried. Don't underestimate the capabilities of the government bureaucrats. That "guys down the pub" will quickly disappear once they start getting jail time for their activities.
I think you really overestimate the capability of the UK to enforce laws. Yes, they can write them and yes they can fine large corporations, that's basically it.
They cannot enforce laws against such "petty" crimes, the reason society mostly functions in the UK is because most people don't try to break the law.
Pretty sure the local punters would kick the cops out if they came for one of their own, especially if he got them their porn back.
> They cannot enforce laws against such "petty" crimes
No, they aren't interested in enforcing laws against petty crimes. The establishment literally don't give a toss if someone breaks into your house and nicks your telly.
They are very interested in enforcing the kinds of infringements we're talking about here.
What do you mean? They already arrest thousands of people a year for posting (or even retweeting) things online in the UK.
What makes you think, if the Gov was to implement some sophisticated DPI firewall that blocks a million different things, they won't come after the people who circumvent it? They already enforce petty crimes. I could report you for causing me anxiety and you would have a copper show up at your door.
It's not just about UK abilities to enforce laws, but also about other factors. The described activities are extremely unattractive as criminal: small market, small margin, the need for planning, preparation and qualification.
There is no need for special efforts to enforce the law. Put a few people in jail - and everyone else will quickly find safer and more legal ways to spend their time. No one will do something like that unless they are confident of their impunity.
Yes, it's also dystopian to pin one's future on such hopes. People need to stick it to the government and demand their freedoms. Far too many things are being forced on us in the West that go against fundamental values that have been established for centuries.
Somehow, things that could be unifying protests where the working class of every political stripe are able to overlook their differences and push back against government never seem to happen. It is always polarized so that it's only ever one side at a time, and the other side is against them. How does that work?
Reflex. People's opinion on a subject changes if you tell them which political group supports it, sometimes even if they get asked twice in a row. Tribal identity determines ideology more than the other way around for a lot of people.
So as soon as Labour comes out for something, Cons are inclined to be against it and so on. The only way to have neutral protests is if no one visibly backs them and they don't become associated with a side, but then how do they get support and organization?
I've seen a technique where you tell someone $politician_they_hate is doing X, and they'll get mad - then you reveal the news story where it's actually $politician_they_love and the cognitive dissonance usually results in the anger getting redirected towards you for tricking them.
> People need to stick it to the government and demand their freedoms.
It will only work if they admit that they supported this and all forms of totalitarianism during COVID. You can't fall for that and then be surprised when the world keeps going down that obvious path.
In matters of public health, you cannot trust the public to do the right thing.
The problem with covid is that we weren't totalitarian enough. Regulations you could drive a coach & horses through and no way to enforce is a sop.
The first lock down needed to be a proper 'papers, please' affair. When we get a properly lethal pandemic, we're fucked. Hopefully Laurence Fox and Piers Corbyn will catch it quickly and expire in a painful and televised way, it's the only hope of people complying with actual quarantine measures.
People assess real risk all the time. The fact that you had to punish people and make them do performative acts was hygiene theater.
You're the kind of person that said that "measures didn't work because we didn't close hard enough, if we do 2 weeks of REAL lockdown...". It's ridiculous. You have absolutely no perspective of how the world work and how things break, people need health, food, working pipes.
You have an absolutely authoritarian mindset and an inability to asses risk. You also have deep contempt for your fellow human being who are "not deserving of democracy".
Lastly, it's funny to hear you admit this pandemic wasn't lethal because people don't actually comply the way you want, which means that the actions were theater and unneeded.
Lol, if you like.
Individually, the people of the UK are generally kind, thoughtful and considerate. As a mob, they're an absolute nightmare especially when wankers like Fox and Corbyn get involved.
Anyone who thinks otherwise has never had to tell people 'no'.
>Lastly, it's funny to hear you admit this pandemic wasn't lethal because people don't actually comply the way you want, which means that the actions were theater and unneeded
This pandemic was lethal, but it wasn't bubonic plague lethal. When we get something that cuts like a knife through hot butter, you'll soon be holed up inside screaming at strangers through the letterbox.
> Individually, the people of the UK are generally kind, thoughtful and considerate. As a mob, they're an absolute nightmare especially when wankers like Fox and Corbyn get involved.
This is true everywhere, mobs devolve us to primate behaviour; if you've been in a crowd that ever got angry, you know this - it drives the hindbrain in amazing and terrifying ways. Happy crowds can give you elation you'll never feel anywhere else; angry crowds can make a man kill, even though normally he'd never dream of it.
Of course, most countries don't need to have Anti-Social Behavioural Orders or ban people from buying butter knives, so there's something else going on in the UK that is a bit harder to put a finger on.
This type of thinking is why we are heading in a direction of authoritarianism everywhere.
And COVID was not "totalitarian enough"? Yet people were forbidden from leaving their homes for a time.
It was really amazing what fear could do to a population, how it rallied mostly together.
Seems to vary greatly by region, of course. Where I live, we barely had anything you could call a lockdown, but they got really insistent about vax passports for restaurants etc.
Sometimes I think about that: vax aside, they actually managed to provision trusted certificates for a huge percentage of the population in a short period of time. Could have actually been useful for online ID, though we know of the dangers there; but look, here I am signing into my government's website using my bank as a 3rd party IDP. Shouldn't I sign into the bank using the gov't instead??
I suppose that for this case, an underground black market of VPN providers might emerge - average individuals setting up VPN software on a cloud service provider, and then selling monthly access to people. Aside from the obvious danger of getting ripped off (someone might put you on a slow shared VPN with many other people, or shut down the server at any time), there is also the possibility of someone monitoring all your Internet activity.
I'd default assume black market VPNs will monitor internet activity since it's both easy and profitable
> most regular folks won't have the budget/expertise to do so
I think this (incorrectly) assumes that nobody will ever capitalize on easy (and free/cheap) access to workarounds and advertise it far and wide.
I am just waiting for red states in the US to try this too since their current laws requiring ID verification for porn sites aren’t effective.
> red states
Well you'd be surprised to find out that this stupid policy (and many more) have been brought forward by Labour (Left).
At this point, anyone who has been watching politics for a few decades understands that the left/right dichotomy is primarily one designed to keep the majority of people within a certain set of bounds. We see it revealed when politicians and ideologies that should be in opposition to one another still cooperate on the same strategies, like this one.
The goal right now is to make online anonymity impossible. Adult content is the wedge issue being used to make defending it unpalatable for any elected official, but nobody actually has it as a goal to prevent teenagers from looking at porn - if they did, they would be using more direct and efficient strategies. No, it's very clear that anonymous online commentary is hurting politicians and they are striking back against it.
There is a real left/right dichotomy, but there are very few left parties in power anywhere. Democrats, for example, are right.
It has been my impression that in UK, both parties are strongly authoritarian, with the sole difference being what kinds of speech and expression, precisely, they want to police.
Labour supported it but it was proposed and passed by Parliament in 2023 during the Tory government
Yep, here in Australia the social media age restriction was pushed through by both sides. Two sides of the same coin.
Both the major Australian parties (Liberal and Labor) seem as spineless as each other.
They're being pushed by media conglomerates News Corp and Nine Entertainment [0] to crush competition (social media apps). With the soon-to-be-introduced 'internet licence' (euphemism: 'age verification'), and it's working. If they ban VPN's, it will make social media apps even more burdensome to access and use.
[0] News Corp and Nine Entertainment together own 90% of Australian print media, and are hugely influential in radio, digital and paid and free-to-air TV. They have a lot to gain by removing access to social media apps, where many (especially young) people get their information now days.
How long until they produce an generative AI version of Burt Newton to do new episodes of 20 to 1 based on some social media slop?
Yep, not a great time line here.
90% of “citizen journalism” is nothing of the sort. Just like “citizen science” researching vaccines.
Hopefully, as a reader, you can see through the 90% and only really trust the 10% who provide factual reporting.
As with any source, always question what you are being offered: is this video clip full, what preceded it, what followed it? Who else confirms this person said this or experienced that?
Preach comrade!
Those citizen journalists with their primary sources, disgusting.
Thats nothing but propaganda.
Remember it doesnt matter what the video shows, it only matters who showed it to you.
>Remember it doesnt matter what the video shows, it only matters who showed it to you
In an age of mass media (where there's a video for anything) or now one step further synthetic media knowing who makes something is much more important than the content, given that what's being shown can be created on demand. Propaganda in the modern world is taking something that actually happened, and then framing it as an authentic piece of information found "on the street", twisting its context.
"what's in the video" is now largely pointless, and anyone who isn't gullible will obviously always focus on where the promoter of any material wants to direct the audiences attention to, or what they want to deflect from.
> Remember it doesnt matter what the video shows, it only matters who showed it to you.
Both matter.
>Remember it doesnt matter what the video shows, it only matters who showed it to you.
This should be Wikipedia's official motto. I really hate how they handle "reliable sources".
You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?
> 90% of “citizen journalism” is (trash)
You're right. But compared to what?
I guess 99% of mainstream "journalism" is irrelevant and/or inaccurate, hence citizen journalism is a 10x improvement in accuracy and relevancy! Not 10% better, 900% better! This makes a huge difference to our society as a whole and in our daily lives!
But this misses the most important point which is that the user should have the right to choose for themselves what they say and read. Making citizen journalism unduly burdensome deprives everyone of that choice.
Citizen journalism avoids the main weakness of a centralised system: it's incredible suspectible to capture. A prime example of this is the mass opposition around the world to Israel's genocide in Gaza. Israel committed such genocides prior to the event of social media, such as the Nakba, but it was rarely reported on, due to media ownership being concentrated in the hands of a few pro-Zionist individuals.
Using “pro-Zionist” when you mean “Jewish” doesn’t mean you aren’t antisemitic